rolling trump-russian collusion

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/05/01/the-number-of-people-who-say-the-mueller-investigation-should-continue-is-shrinking/

"should end" = "hurry up and get this guy in jail"

Heard some cynical real talk today that more and more want it to end not because they think he's not guilty of anything or this is a witch hunt but because he *is* guilty, and they want the report to come out when the house and senate are still both crazy GOP rather than wait for one or two of them to flip this fall.

The accompanying questions in the article about the polling indicate it’s as simple as the relentless propaganda is working. It wears people down.

you can't spell "rubles" without rubes ; )

We found that @realDonaldTrump made an abrupt shift in 2006, from borrowing $ to buy properties to buying properties w/all cash. He's spent $400M in cash so far. But we're still reporting, trying to learn more abt 4 questions

Q1: Why did @realDonaldTrump make this change at that moment? @erictrump says it was an aversion to debt itself. But real estate is a debt business. Borrowing spreads out risk, lets you diversify investments, has tax benefits. As true in '06 as in '86.

Q2: Where was @realDonaldTrump's company getting all this ready cash? I'd like to know much more about the $ they had coming in, and costs going out, in that '06-'15 period.

Q3: If @realDonaldTrump's company had turned to a conservative, low-debt strategy in '06, why did they take on huge new loans ($295M in a year) in '12 to buy Doral and the D.C. hotel?

Q4: Have there been other, all-cash land purchases by @realDonaldTrump that we haven't found yet? He has a long list of LLCs, but w/names that don't always announce their purpose. "Trump Marks Asia," for instance, owns a townhouse in NoV

- David Fahrenthold (1978- (Harvard 2000 (?))), Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting (2017)

Also available as an article rather than a string of tweets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-the-king-of-debt-trump-borrowed-to-build-his-empire-then-he-began-spending-hundreds-of-millions-in-cash/2018/05/05/28fe54b4-44c4-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html

On the motivation Vekselberg payments: was it sanctions? Payments start in January, as Congress creates a sanctions bill. Trump fights the bill every step of the way, but it's passed unanimously. In August: Trump forced to sign the "seriously flawed" bill; Vekselberg's payments end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

'Veksel' in Danish means IOU. So Vekselberg kinda means 'Mountain of Debt' and everyone is comparing the name Viktor Vekselberg to Flintheart Glomgold and the like.

"Suggestion from source close to TRUMP and MANAFORT that Republican campaign team happy to have Russia as media bogeyman to mask more extensive corrupt business ties to China and other emerging countries." pic.twitter.com/HqugeMGqOZ

— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) May 13, 2018

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/the-fbis-trump-campaign-informant-what-you-need-to-know.html

who you gonna believe: sean hannity and tucker carlson or james clapper ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/former-intelligence-chiefs-argument-that-putin-did-indeed-sway-the-2016-vote/2018/05/22/0d26c13a-53ac-11e8-a551-5b648abe29ef_story.html

“Of course the Russian efforts affected the outcome. Surprising even themselves, they swung the election to a Trump win. To conclude otherwise stretches logic, common sense, and credulity to the breaking point. Less than eighty thousand votes in three key states swung the election. I have no doubt that more votes than that were influenced by this massive effort by the Russians.”

Was there active collusion between the Trump campaign — or the candidate himself — and Russian proxies or agents? Clapper does not go that far because he doesn’t have proof. But what he calls Trump’s “aggressive indifference” to the intelligence community’s detailed presentation of Russian activities is, in his view, damning enough. “Allegations of collusion and the results of the election were secondary to the profound threat Russia posed — and poses — to our system,” Clapper writes, and he does a fair job explaining why.

“I remember just how staggering the assessment felt the first time I read it through from start to finish, and just how specific our conclusions and evidence were,” Clapper writes. “We showed unambiguously that Putin had ordered the campaign to influence the election, that the campaign was multifaceted, and that Russia had used cyber espionage against US political organizations and publicly disclosed the data they collected through WikiLeaks, DCLeaks, and the Guccifer 2.0 persona. We documented Russian cyber intrusions into state and local voter rolls. We described Russia’s pervasive propaganda efforts through RT [satellite television], Sputnik, and the social media trolls, and how the entire operation had begun with attempts to undermine US democracy and demean Secretary Clinton, then shifted to promoting Mr. Trump when Russia assessed he was a viable candidate who would serve their strategic goals. . . . The Russian government had done all of this at minimal cost and without significant damage to their own interests, and they had no incentive to stop.”

This was not the now-famous “dossier” compiled by a former British spy about prostitutes and conniving oligarchs, which Clapper calls “pseudo-intelligence” — this was solid stuff. But Trump set out to discredit the whole report before he’d so much as seen it, claiming that it was all a plot by the Democrats to explain away their loss and casting doubts on the reliability — and abilities — of the intelligence community as a whole.

Unfortunately, on that point, Trump might find plenty of extra ammunition in Clapper’s bland but frank memoir. In many places it’s a defensive chronicle of private disappointments and public failures by America’s intelligence services, from Vietnam to, well, the elections of 2016.

America’s spies famously missed the coming collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989; they judged that Saddam Hussein was bluffing about an invasion of Kuwait in 1990; they failed to predict with any actionable intelligence Osama bin Laden’s attack on the United States in September 2001; and they completely misconstrued the evidence at hand (much of which was faked) about Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, which gave the George W. Bush administration the pretext it wanted to invade Iraq in 2003, with all the grim consequences that followed.

Clapper dismisses the excuses tendered by die-hard invasion rationalizers. They don’t “attribute the failure where it belongs — squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.”

The missteps continued after Obama made Clapper the director of national intelligence in 2010.

The Arab Spring came as a complete surprise, toppling several tyrants in the region who had been reliable partners to the intelligence community.

In September 2012, an attack on an ill-protected diplomatic compound and nearby CIA outpost in Benghazi, Libya, cost the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Clapper concluded that it was largely improvised and that the militant group or groups involved probably had no operational ties to al-Qaeda, but the initial intelligence reports, repeated by Obama officials, suggested that the whole thing had started as a protest, which was not the case.

Internally, on Clapper’s watch the intelligence community did not detect or stop the flood of classified documents Chelsea Manning sent to WikiLeaks, which were “embarrassing,” as Clapper puts it, and completely missed the much more damaging activities of Edward Snowden, a “traitor” who absconded with vast quantities of America’s most closely held secrets about intelligence operations. Then the 17 agencies of the intelligence community failed to anticipate the defeat of the Iraqi army by the Islamic State when it took Mosul in 2014.

So it is perfectly possible for Trump to argue that these tellers of “truths” often do not know what they are talking about. But the situation is actually worse than that for intelligence gatherers under Trump, because the very concept of their basic product is discredited.

As Clapper points out: “Getting its target audience to conclude that facts and truth are ‘unknowable’ is the true objective of any disinformation campaign. . . . If someone actually believes the falsehood, that’s a bonus, but the primary objective is to get readers or viewers to throw their hands up and give up on ‘facts.’ Do vaccines cause autism? Maybe. Was Senator Ted Cruz’s father involved with President Kennedy’s assassination? Anything’s possible. Is Hillary Clinton running a child-sex ring out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor? Who knows?”

“Could be” and “could have been” are, of course, staples of Trumpian discourse. Maybe the Russians were hacking the Democratic National Committee, maybe it was the Chinese, maybe it was “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds” or “some guy in New Jersey,” he said. Who knows?

Or maybe, just maybe, the problem is “the deep state,” which at least one member of Trump’s current legal team has suggested.

Given the overall tone and themes of the book, there are some passages by the old hand that readers may find surprising. At several points Clapper writes with considerable emotion about how unfairly LGBT intelligence officers were treated in the past and how pleased he is that they are fully accepted now.

Clapper is generally sympathetic to Obama’s leadership — but not always. On the problem of how to deal with North Korea, particularly, he thinks Obama’s “policy rationale of not discussing anything else until North Korea agreed to end its nuclear capability and ambitions was flawed.” Trump, “surprising everyone,” has agreed to talk, and Clapper concedes that as a result the situation is at least “poised for change,” although he adds grudgingly: “whether for better or for worse.”

Whatever progress is made on the Korea front or elsewhere, as Trump comes under increasing legal pressure from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, allegations of a “witch hunt” and talk of a “deep state” conspiracy will continue to divide the country.

Trump will want to convince his hard-core supporters that people like Clapper, and the men and women of the intelligence community and law enforcement whom Clapper worked with for so many years — Mueller and fired FBI director James Comey, for instance — were the real power in the country before Trump took over, and it is he, Trump, who is now speaking truth to them.

Could be. Who knows?

Why didn’t President Obama do something about the so-called Russian Meddling when he was told about it by the FBI before the Election? Because he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win, and he didn’t want to upset the apple cart! He was in charge, not me, and did nothing.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2018

He was in charge, not me, and did nothing.

Well, except that he apparently DID do something (namely, investigate your campaign), which you've spent previous tweets saying is the worst thing ever.

Which is it? Nothing, or the Worst Thing Ever?

gah fuck me why am I even trying to make sense of this soup (goes back in shell of booze-soaked denial)

that's not even cohesive nonsense. if i were a smart person who wanted to blame obama i still couldn't do anything with that. obama didn't act on the fbi's' assertions of russian pro-trump shenanigans, allegations which would damage the trump campaign if made public because he thought if he did it would hurt hillary's chances of a win which he assumed was the likely outcome anyway, is what trump is saying?

or is he saying the apple cart is the politically motivated fbi witch hunt and obama didn't want to bring it to light by taking any action which would draw attention to it, except he did, so blame obama for not doing anything to protect the country from foreign intervention in the american political process, which was a deep state fbi fabrication to discredit trump, and which obama kept silent about, but he didn't so blame obama for his cowardice in the face of foreign aggression which totally never happened and the obama regime and the deep state fabricated to discredit trump but never did anything about?

either way, this looks pretty bad for obama.

no wait. he means obama knew it was fake news, and didn't want to expose the fbi, who was colluding with obama because of the spy, who was implanted into the trump campaign to generate fake news that the obama administration would publicize to damage trump, so therefore if obama did anything about the fake russia scandal it generated it would expose the fake russia scandal which obama orchestrated and thereby upset the cart which had fake apples.

And then they went home in taters.

obama, in collusion with the fbi, created a fake russia-trump scandal to bring trump down but he totally ignored it to let hillary win, is how i eventually parse that, given what else he's said and factoring in schrodinger's cat, meaning it's obama's fault if the russia stuff is fake and it's his fault if the russia stuff is real, because if it's fake, worse than watergate but if it's real, weak on russia, who trump has totally been manly against.

the dog ate his homework

john schindler is just jealous of mr. trump's success

https://observer.com/2018/05/what-did-the-fbi-do-in-2016-about-russian-connections-to-donald-trump/

....Paul Manafort came into the campaign very late and was with us for a short period of time (he represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole & many others over the years), but we should have been told that Comey and the boys were doing a number on him, and he wouldn’t have been hired!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2018

cough

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/a_timeline_of_paul_manafort_s_relationship_with_the_trump_world.html

when's the vice writer he dated going to release her tell-all

The special counsel’s filing to a Washington DC’s district court yesterday included Manafort’s messages, described as “an effort to secure materially false testimony.” Manafort messaged people from The Hapsburg Group, a firm he worked with and funded to lobby for Ukraine’s interests in the United States. According to the filing, he was trying to convince them to lie to investigators about the group’s activities.

WhatsApp has a setting that automatically backs up messages to iCloud. If enabled, this would render the app’s famous end-to-end encryption useless in terms of hiding from law enforcement equipped with a search warrant. The US government routinely requests information from internet companies through warrants and subpoenas.

https://qz.com/1297543/paul-manafort-tried-to-hide-from-the-feds-using-encrypted-whatsapp-but-he-forgot-about-icloud/

Pretty crazy story. Worth noting that Wheeler began very skeptical of this whole “Russiagate” thing.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/03/putting-a-face-mine-to-the-risks-posed-by-gop-games-on-mueller-investigation/

I still don't get the thrust of that post? This guy approached her with info, turned out to be correct and she offered it to the feds? She's kind of burning him now but not clear as to why and to what the threat to her actually is.

i read this as "i burned a person of interest to the matter. i wont burn them publicly yet, but here is some proof i was in contact with a person of interest. i am scared. if anything happens to me, here is a trail to the person i burned to the fbi. i have little faith that ultimately the fbi can protect me under this administration, or will necessarily investigate fully due to circumstances. public notice might help so here."

it's not very clear, that's a...sea of inferences by me?

curious who it is.. at first I was thinking roger stone but not sure he would talk about 1 humint ratings

its Greenwald. I can't imagine it would be anyone else

the whole thing is written in a confusing way but I think the gist is that someone - most likely a journalist - had inside info about Flynn's plan to make good on (presumably) quid pro quo arrangements immediately after the election was called, and wound up going to the FBI about it. coming from Wheeler (who was always skeptical of this whole thing) this sounds like...a pretty big deal??

It’s probably not Greenwald because he hasn’t commented on it yet and has been posting about Louise Mensch all day.

Also it seems more like a roger stone character is more likely to present connections to other actors/bad actors who might possibly be threatening to a journo.

Someone asked if the person was a journalist and she said “no”

it’s quintuple-agent carter page obv

not journo could still be greenwald then amirite xp

It’s probably not Greenwald because he hasn’t commented on it yet and has been posting about Louise Mensch all day.

Reading this sentence, I felt the void open up below me and there's nothing but shouting stupidity in there.

hey what do you know, Trump is planning to meet with Putin one-on-one, with no aids or note takers or, you know, witnesses.

Two Scoops doesn't want anyone to see Putin kiss him on the belly, like a kitten

Honestly, among the most damning and suspicious things is that he has no idiotic nickname for Putin.

— Emily Nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) July 12, 2018

fair

Or Avenatti!

yea Trump's silence on Avenatti and the whole Stormy situation is pretty telling to me

“I don’t think in the history of the department there’s ever been anybody so ill-prepared” for this job, says Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who has been one of the chief agitators against Benczkowski’s nomination. He says Benczkowski has “barely set foot in a courtroom.” (Benczkowski has never prosecuted a case.) He continues, “So if the obvious reason for why you’d want him there is not evident, then you have to look for less obvious reasons.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/07/brian-benczkowski-justice-department-nominee-with-russia-ties-confirmation/

our "conservative" republican friends are such traditionalists and strict originalists that when they ram a candidate through with zero relevant experiences, it can only be because freedom, liberty, tax cuts, and small government. free paul manafort! fire rosenstein! mire mueller! lock strzok up!!

these comments help clarify the wheeler thing quite a bit

Trip says:
July 3, 2018 at 10:53 am
I’m confused (what else is new, amirite?). You mention that this person is lying, but then state that the text was, in essence, corroborated. So it’s not clear my excessive-heat fogged out brain what the lie is. Was it about the person’s true intentions? It’s weird to share that type of info that is kind of true and then spread disinformation. I might have an inkling about the source, but it would only be speculation, which I’m not gonna share.

Be safe. Holy shit, life comes at you fast.

dc says:
July 3, 2018 at 11:41 am
She indicated in a twitter post that the text correctly predicted what happened, and implied that the person told lies about other subjects. Marcy can correct me if I am wrong, but thought I would help out to close the loop on this question.

i'm still not quite sure how a journalist could play a 'significant role' in this though? as she says:

“a person whom I had come to believe had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US”.

unless she just means running interference over the media but there's plenty of that to go around as it is

like a ‘journalistic telationship’ doesn’t mean the person is a journalist, it’s more that she’s burning a source

idk i’m still a little confused. seems like a bit of well-thought out ass-covering for a very specific situation she anticipates playing out further

still have to listen, but pertinent:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/why-reporter-turned-in-source/

okay this interview is way better than her post, listen to it

strongly insinuates greenwald

As the source? Huh?

skip to 8:30

eh frankly i'm not terribly smart so don't listen to me. it still sounds like an actor in the campaign, idk. stone also admitted he was the unnamed collaborator in the indictment which was like pointing out that the sky is blue