Lots of questions here. âunder the pretense of serving as a translator.â Does that mean that he wasnât translating? Was he faking it, then? And who was he supposed to be translating for, Donald Jr. and the other buffoonâs from Trumpâs âteam,â or for the Russians? And if he wasnât there as a translator, what was he doing there?
âTrump Jr., who has also been questioned by congressional investigators, later said he never actually received any information from the Russian lawyer.â Maybe thatâs because the guy who was supposed to be his translator wasnât doing any translating. Maybe he didnât even know Russian.
If you believe that he was there to translate I got a bridge to sell you. This guy was convicted of running a money laundering scheme for the Russians years ago. He was there for a reason and translation ainât it.
He was âtranslatingâ, but it was not his only reason for being there. More than likely any translating he was doing was just to confirm for the Russians anything that the Trumpers might have been talking amongst themselves about.
Seems like the Trumpers did not bring their own translator to the meeting. Much like at G-20 when Trump met with Putin and his translator without any other US persons present.
Surprised that this guy didnât suffer an instant attack of Congressional Committee-induced aphasiaâŚbefore he suffers a case of terminal inability to speak, brought on by heavy metal poisoning, or piano-related defenestration.
The net is tightening.
Where the fuck do they keep finding these people? Itâs like the Trump campaign had an infinite set of nesting dolls, with another shady ex-Soviet clown under the last one.
Even foreigners with excellent English can miss idioms. Some people use a lot of them. Apparently, Jim Baker, Secretary of State under Bush, used a lot of Texas colloquialisms and gave translators headaches. Not to mention that people with a good grasp of British idioms can miss American ones and vice versa, particularly when they sound similar and mean different things. âTake the piss out ofâ and âpissed offâ have different meanings for âpissâ and neither is the dictionary definition.
That said, Putin probably wanted a witness and if he didnât, the lawyer might have wanted one who could back her up if the Trumps lied about the meeting in ways that made her look bad.
Really. We keep hearing about yet another attendee of this meeting. It must have been standing room only in that conference room.
Well, doing realtime dollar to ruble conversions is a kind of translation . . .
And you thought it was a quiet week in #trumprussia.
Irakaly âIkeâ Kaveladze is a US citizen and has talked to Mueller. The counsel he has is the same guy who represented Trump when Trump sued Bill Maher when Maher and that schtick about Trump looking like an orangutan. I donât think Kaveladze wants to go to jail so if Mueller can apply the appropriate pressure, Kaveladze will talk.
Kaveladze goes back w/Trump to 2013 when he attended a meeting in Vegas with Trump and the Agalarovs to cement the deal to host the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Kaveladze works for Agalarovâs Crocus Real Estate corp. The Crocus City Mall in Moscow (in its NW outer ring) was a possible site for a Trump development.
Ike was involved in setting up coâs to help launder over a billion dollars for Russians and other Eastern Europeans back in the 2000s. If the USIC wanted to track the activity of wealthy Russians with suspect mob ties in the US, theyâd probably track Ike because money seemed to flow through him. Itâs no surprise that Trump knew Kaveladze because Trump himself has spent years as a money laundering conduit for Russians. (One of the bigger revelations of this #trumprussia scandal is how little enforcement there is to prevent or stop money laundering).
The Congressional investigators are reportedly wondering why Ike was at the 6/9/16 meeting and if he set up the meeting in Trump Tower (given his prior history). I speculate that the reason he did not set up the meeting at Trump Tower is because USIC wouldâve tracked him, but not Rob Goldstone. The reason Ike attended the meeting is another question to ponder, as Rinat Akhmetshin was already there and could speak for the Russian govât. The simplest answer I can think of is that Ike is, at his core, a âmoney manâ. He helped launder billions without really getting caught and knows everything about how to get money into the US from foreign sources and perhaps disguise it.
Manafort made some cryptic notes about âdonationsâ and âGOPâ from that 6/9/16 meeting at Trump Tower. Perhaps Ike was there to say that he could make sure that money from Russia got into the US which could be used to grease several wheels. Itâs not the craziest theory in the world of this scandal, thatâs for sure.
The other thing about Kaveladze is that heâs part of the Agalarov team, and that team seems very important to Trump personally. Trump views them as his guys in Russia. They appear to be whom Trump considers among his closest and best connected âfriendsâ in Russia. There is a bond between them, because theyâre more legitimate than a hardened crook like Felix Sater. If Mueller could get to Emin Agalarov, I think weâd learn a lot more secrets.
This guy is an American citizen. Repercussions would be very different than when pesky opposition Russian leaders disappear.
@spacepenguin âThis guy is an American citizen. Repercussions would be very different than when pesky opposition Russian leaders disappear.â
Letâs hope youâre right in this case. Things can happen, yâknow?
Hereâs another interesting article from Yahoo. Someone is leaking that Mueller is carefully probing the Trump data operation and its connection to Russian trolls/bots:
In just the last few weeks, his prosecutors have begun questioning Republican National Committee staffers about the party digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states. They are seeking to determine if the joint effort was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate, according to two of the sources.
Not a quiet day in #trumprussia. Mueller has waited out the post-Flynn, post-Hicks interview Trumper Tantrum, and now more stuff is being revealed. Mueller would not have leaked this, but attorneys for potential witnesses and defendants or sources within the FBI might have.
Russia. That place is quite full of those kinds of people. This place is currently running a close second.
Donald T rump wears a napkin.
A sailing friend of mine asked a British tourist on his boat to move her fanny as they were tacking and the beam was going to come her way, she freaked out. He was most embarrassed when someone finally told him.
(âFannyâ means what trump likes to grab in British slang)
This is horrifying. Dems must make every attempt to flip Congress/Senate.