FBI Closes in on Chumph Crew

Seems the FBI has been investigating the Chump crew for a while. FBI obtained at least two judicial warrants to wiretap Paul Manafort starting back in 2015.

It now appears Mueller has his second target in the bag, with Michael Flynn already having been assigned a post and blindfold in front of the firing squad.

This one may move quickly, as Mueller has already started issuing subpoenas for the involved.

The Daily 202: Mueller tightening the screws on Manafort

Two stories that popped overnight suggest that special counsel Robert Mueller is aggressively pursuing Paul Manafort, the former chairman of President Trump’s campaign.

— CNN reports that “U.S. investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election”: “The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump. Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation …

“A secret order authorized by the court that handles the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) began after Manafort became the subject of an FBI investigation that began in 2014,” per Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz and Pamela Brown. “It centered on work done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine’s former ruling party … The surveillance was discontinued at some point last year for lack of evidence … The FBI then restarted the surveillance after obtaining a new FISA warrant that extended at least into early this year. … Sources say the second warrant was part of the FBI’s efforts to investigate ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives. Such warrants require the approval of top Justice Department and FBI officials, and the FBI must provide the court with information showing suspicion that the subject of the warrant may be acting as an agent of a foreign power.”

— The CNN story, parts of which were subsequently confirmed by CBS News, raises a host of fresh questions. Among them:

• Was Trump himself picked up on any of the surveillance? CNN says that’s “unclear.” But it’s been widely reported that Manafort and Trump continued to talk after the inauguration and after it was reported that Manafort was under FBI investigation.

• When exactly did the second FISA warrant start? The reporters couldn’t figure that out.

• What did FBI agents find when, as part of the FISA warrant, they conducted a search of a storage facility belonging to Manafort earlier this year?

 

 

“Somebody Starting to Squeal!” – Another Chumph Business Partner Turns State’s Evidence

The Stoolies are squealing. Huge line in front of Independent Counsel Mueller’s door.

Won’t be long now….

Longtime Trump business partner ‘told family he knows he and POTUS are going to prison’: report

Felix Sater, one of Donald Trump’s shadiest former business partners, is reportedly preparing for prison time — and he says the president will be joining him behind bars.

Sources told The Spectator‘s Paul Wood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deep dive into Trump’s business practices may be yielding results.

Trump recently made remarks that could point to a money laundering scheme, Wood reported.

“I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows?” the president said.

Sater, who has a long history of legal troubles and is cooperating with law enforcement, was one of the major players responsible for selling Trump’s condos to the Russians.

And according to Wood’s sources, Sater may have already flipped and given prosecutors the evidence they need to make a case against Trump.

For several weeks there have been rumours that Sater is ready to rat again, agreeing to help Mueller. ‘He has told family and friends he knows he and POTUS are going to prison,’ someone talking to Mueller’s investigators informed me.

Sater hinted in an interview earlier this month that he may be cooperating with both Mueller’s investigation and congressional probes of Trump.

“In about the next 30 to 35 days, I will be the most colourful character you have ever talked about,” Sater told New York Magazine. “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it now, before it happens. And believe me, it ain’t anything as small as whether or not they’re gonna call me to the Senate committee.”

Sater is not the only one rumored confidante to have turned against Trump. An attack on former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort by the National Enquirer — a friendly outlet for the president — suggests that he may have already turned over damaging evidence to authorities.

 

Former Chumph NSC Adviser Flynn Now Under Investigation By Pentagon

Every day, another layer of dirt on Putin’s Bitch’s boys taking bribes from Russia.

Elijah Cummings just released new docs that destroy Mike Flynn’s defense for taking foreign cash

Newly released documents reveal that the Department of Defense warned former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn against taking money from foreign governments — but nevertheless, he persisted.

CNN reports that the new documents show Flynn was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency to not accept cash from foreign governments in 2014 as he entered retirement. Flynn nonetheless took money from both the Russian and Turkish governments for paid speeches and for lobbying work, respectively.

“These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who released the documents on Thursday. “Our next step is to get the documents we are seeking from the White House so we can complete our investigation. I thank the Department of Defense for providing us with unclassified versions of these documents.”

In a press statement on the documents, Cummings also noted that the newly revealed DIA letter “counters the suggestion by Flynn’s attorney on Tuesday that Flynn followed appropriate procedures for accepting foreign funds for his trip to Moscow.”

Both Cummings and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) this week said that it appeared that Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, might have committed a felony by not disclosing payments he received from foreign governments before he assumed the role of national security adviser.

What’s that thing Stevie Wonder sang?

“So, it’s gettin’ ready to blow
It’s gettin’ ready to show
Somebody shot off at the mouth and
We’re gettin’ ready to know

It’s gettin’ ready to drop
It’s gettin’ ready to shock
Somebody done turned up the heater
An’a it’s gettin’ ready to pop”

 

 

Russian Hackers Steal Trump Background Research From DNC

Appears the Russians are getting highly concerned over the possibility of a neo-Nazi madman like Trump becoming President…

Russian Hackers Penetrate Democratic National Committee, Steal Trump Research

Russian hackers have been accessing the Democratic National Committee’s computer network for the past year.

According to the Washington Post, which first broke the story Tuesday, the hackers accessed the DNC’s database of research on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and also read DNC staffers’ emails and chat conversations.

CrowdStrike, the security firm called in by Democrats to deal with the massive data breach, says two different groups of Russian hackers gained access to the DNC’s network. CrowdStrike doesn’t believe the groups — nicknamed COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR — collaborated with each other. “Instead,” company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch wrote in a lengthy blog post, “we observed the two Russian espionage groups compromise the same systems and engage separately in the theft of identical credentials.”

Alperovitch says one group of hackers first accessed the DNC network a year ago. The second group broke in in April.

In a statement, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “The security of our system is critical to our operation and to the confidence of the campaigns and state parties we work with. When we discovered the intrusion, we treated this like the serious incident it is and reached out to CrowdStrike immediately. Our team moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure our network.”

It’s not unusual for hackers to break into presidential candidates’ websites. In fact, it’s happened during the last two presidential campaigns. In the most high-profile incident, hackers shut down Mitt Romney’s campaign site for several hours in 2012.

Last month, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told lawmakers, “We’ve already had some indications of [political hacking]. And a combination of [the Department of Homeland Security] and FBI are doing what they can to educate both campaigns against a potential cyberthreat.”

This isn’t the DNC’s first high-profile data breach, either. Last December, a breakdown in the server that Democrats use to store information about voters allowed staffers from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign to briefly access files from the Clinton campaign.

But a campaign-to-campaign data breach is much different from the penetration of a network by foreign hackers. According to CrowdStrike, the two Russian hacking groups have also “previously infiltrated the unclassified networks of the White House,State Department, and US Joint Chiefs of Staff,” as well as private companies in the energy, media and aerospace sectors.

 

Cain Camp Lies About Accusers Fall Apart

The most disturbing thing about the defense put up by the Cain campaign is it is formulated around the “Bi67ch asked for it” rape defense.

It is falling apart rapidly, as the lies get blown up one after another…

The Accuser’s Son works for Politico lie –

Cain camp admits false claim about reporter

Herman Cain campaign manager Mark Block was not telling the truth when he claimed on Fox News that one of the women accusing Cain of sexual harassment is the mother of a reporter at the news outlet that broke the story, the Cain campaign acknowledged Wednesday.

After noting Tuesday night that “Karen Kraushaar had come out as one of the women” who accused Cain, Block told Sean Hannity that “we’ve come to find out that her son works at Politico,” the news site that first broke the harassment allegations.

Asked by Hannity if Block had “confirmed that,” Block (pictured at left) responded, “we confirmed that he does indeed work at Politico, and that’s his mother, yes.”

Block’s comment was inaccurate on multiple levels. First off, the reporter to whom he was referring, Josh Kraushaar, is a former Politico reporter; he has worked at National Journal since 2010. Second – and most importantly – he isn’t Karen Kraushaar’s son. And third, Block doesn’t appear to have tried very hard to verify his claim despite his statement that he had “confirmed” it.

On the National Journal website, Josh Kraushaar wrote Wednesday that he had responded to multiple inquiries Tuesday explaining that he is not related to Karen Kraushaar, and also put the information out in a Tweet. No one from the Cain campaign, he said, contacted him before Block went on the air.

“Despite that, Block proceeded to go on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to proclaim that I was Karen Kraushaar’s son and to suggest I was one of the people who leaked the story,” wrote Josh Kraushaar…

The “I never met the B*&^h” lie –

Sharon Bialek: Herman Cain knows who I am

On MSNBC Wednesday, Bialek recounted an incident, which others have said they witnessed, in which she approached Cain at a Tea Party rally.

“I simply grasped his elbow and leaned in towards him to acknowledge he knew exactly who I was,” she said. “He acknowledged who I was.”

Bialek declined to reveal what she said to Cain at the event, but she said, “It was simply a few statements to jar his memory … That was only a month ago.”

At a press conference on Tuesday, Cain said he did not recall ever seeing Bialek before she came forward with her allegations on Monday. “I tried to remember if I recognized her, and I didn’t. I tried to remember if I remembered that name, and I didn’t,” he said.