Mueller Announces Multiple Indictments Against Russians

Whoops! There goes that leg out from under the rickety Chumph table.

Now, the next step is actually to arrest these guys. If any of them are not in Russia, they may be arrested in any US ally country, or country with which the US has extradition agreement, The US may also seize any properties and bank accounts held outside of Russia – which may be even more devastating.

Of course, Putin will refuse to turn them over.

Special counsel issues indictment against 13 Russian nationals over 2016 election interference

Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly meddling in the 2016 presidential election, charging them with conspiracy to defraud the United States, the Department of Justice has announced.

In addition, three defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft.

Mueller has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election as well as any connections between Russia and Trump campaign associates.

Beginning as early as 2014, the Russian organization Internet Research Agency began operations to interfere with the US political system, including the 2016 elections, according to the indictment, which was released by Mueller’s office Friday.

The defendants allegedly posed as US persons, created false US personas, and operated social media pages and groups designed to attract US audiences, the indictment reads.

The Internet Research Agency had a “strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system” including the election, according to the indictment.

Russians posted “derogatory information about a number of candidates,” and by mid-2016 they supported Trump and disparaged Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. They bought ads and communicated with “unwitting” people tied to Trump campaign and others to coordinate political activities.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will announce the multiple indictments against Russian nationals and entities Friday afternoon, according to a Justice Department source.

 

FBI Investigating Second Dossier Backing Chumph’s “Golden Shower”

A second Dossier has emerged, claiming that the Chumph was compromised by the new KGB in a visit to Moscow in 2013.

No word at the moment about what else is in the document collected by British spies.

REVEALED: The FBI is assessing a second Trump-Russia dossier

The FBI is reportedly reviewing a second dossier alleging collusion between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin.

The Guardian reported Monday that the second dossier was written by former journalist and political activist Cody Shearer, and despite being viewed skeptically by media organizations he shared it with prior to the election, the bureau is still investigating its veracity.

The memo was given to the FBI in 2016 by former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the controversial”golden showers” dossier. The ex-M16 agent gave it to the bureau when they asked him to “provide any documents or evidence that could be useful in its investigation,” multiple sources confirmed to The Guardian.

Steele reportedly told the bureau he couldn’t vouch for the credibility of Shearer’s memo, “but that he was providing a copy because it corresponded with what he had separately heard from his own independent sources.” Shearer cited an unnamed source within the FSB, Russia’s state security service.

The authors of both documents claimed Trump was “compromised” during a 2013 trip to Moscow “that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel.”

 

Evidence Proving Russian KGB Hacks of Election Emerges Publically

What the folks in the US Intelligence Agencies knew all along about Russia and Trump collusion but never exposed publicly, has been released by the Dutch…Who actually hacked the Russian hackers.

This is just part of the information gathered by US and foreign Intelligence Services on Trump/Putin collusion, and the Russian effort to destabilize the US 2016 election in favor of their boy , the Chumph.

We also know that there are recordings of conversations between Chumph co-conspirators and Russian Intelligence are in the NSA’s hands. While the contents of such recordings are still classified, and as such we don’t know their contents – they are also likely in Mueller’s hands.And thanks to the criminal activity of Nunes, head of the House Investigation Committee in suborning information to protect the Chumph…None of that will be released to Congress.

This revelation comes from a Dutch Newspaper… Here is your “Smoking Gun”

With the release of information by the Dutch, several of the other countries’ Intelligence Services may step forward to release the information they collected.

Dutch agencies provide crucial intel about Russia’s interference in US-elections

Hackers from the Dutch intelligence service AIVD have provided the FBI with crucial information about Russian interference with the American elections. For years, AIVD had access to the infamous Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. That’s what de Volkskrant and Nieuwsuur have uncovered in their investigation.

It’s the summer of 2014. A hacker from the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has penetrated the computer network of a university building next to the Red Square in Moscow, oblivious to the implications. One year later, from the AIVD headquarters in Zoetermeer, he and his colleagues witness Russian hackers launching an attack on the Democratic Party in the United States. The AIVD hackers had not infiltrated just any building; they were in the computer network of the infamous Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. And unbeknownst to the Russians, they could see everything.

That’s how the AIVD becomes witness to the Russian hackers harassing and penetrating the leaders of the Democratic Party, transferring thousands of emails and documents. It won’t be the last time they alert their American counterparts. And yet, it will be months before the United States realize what this warning means: that with these hacks the Russians have interfered with the American elections. And the AIVD hackers have seen it happening before their very eyes.

The Dutch access provides crucial evidence of the Russian involvement in the hacking of the Democratic Party, according to six American and Dutch sources who are familiar with the material, but wish to remain anonymous. It’s also grounds for the FBI to start an investigation into the influence of the Russian interference on the election race between the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the Republican candidate Donald Trump.

‘High confidence’

After Trump’s election in May 2017, this investigation was taken over by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. While it also aims to uncover contacts between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government, the prime objective is bringing to light the Russian interference with the elections. An attempt to undermine the democratic process, and an act that caused tensions between the two superpowers to rise to new heights, bringing about a string of diplomatic acts of revenge.

Three American intelligence services state with ‘high confidence’ that the Kremlin was behind the attack on the Democratic Party. That certainty, sources say, is derived from the AIVD hackers having had access to the office-like space in the center of Moscow for years. This is so exceptional that the directors of the foremost American intelligence services are all too happy to receive the Dutchmen. They provide technical evidence for the attack on the Democratic Party, and it becomes apparent that they know a lot more.

Cozy Bear

It’s somewhat of a ‘fluke’ that the AIVD hackers were able to acquire such useful information in 2014. The team uses a CNA, which stands for Computer Network Attack. These hackers are permitted to perform offensive operations: to penetrate and attack hostile networks. It’s a relatively small team within a larger digital business unit of about 80-100 people. All cyberoperations converge here. Part of the unit is focused on intercepting or managing sources, while another team is dedicated to Computer Network Defence. In turn, this team is part of the Joint Sigint Cyber Unit, a collaborative unit of the AIVD and the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service MIVD, of about 300 people.

It’s unknown what exact information the hackers acquire about the Russians, but it is clear that it contains a clue as to the whereabouts of one of the most well-known hacker groups in the world: Cozy Bear, also referred to as APT29. Since 2010, this group has attacked governments, energy corporations and telecom companies around the world, including Dutch companies and ministries. Specialists from the best intelligence services, among them the British, the Israelis and the Americans, have been hunting Cozy Bear for years, as have analysts from major cybersecurity companies.

Vital information

The Dutch hacker team spends weeks preparing itself. Then, in the summer of 2014, the attack takes place, most likely before the tragic crash of flight MH17. With some effort and patience, the team manages to penetrate the internal computer network. The AIVD can now trace the Russian hackers’ every step. But that’s not all.

The Cozy Bear hackers are in a space in a university building near the Red Square. The group’s composition varies, usually about ten people are active. The entrance is in a curved hallway. A security camera records who enters and who exits the room. The AIVD hackers manage to gain access to that camera. Not only can the intelligence service now see what the Russians are doing, they can also see who’s doing it. Pictures are taken of every visitor. In Zoetermeer, these pictures are analyzed and compared to known Russian spies. Again, they’ve acquired information that will later prove to be vital.

Rare battle

The Dutch access to the Russian hackers’ network soon pays off. In November, the Russians prepare for an attack on one of their prime targets: the American State Department. By now, they’ve obtained e-mail addresses and the login credentials of several civil servants. They manage to enter the non-classified part of the computer network.

The AIVD and her military counterpart MIVD inform the NSA-liaison at the American embassy in The Hague. He immediately alerts the different American intelligence services.

What follows is a rare battle between the attackers, who are attempting to further infiltrate the State Department, and its defenders, FBI and NSA teams – with clues and intelligence provided by the Dutch. This battle lasts 24 hours, according to American media.

The Russians are extremely aggressive but do not know they’re being spied on. Thanks to the Dutch spies, the NSA and FBI are able to counter the enemy with enormous speed. The Dutch intel is so crucial that the NSA opens a direct line with Zoetermeer, to get the information to the United States as soon as possible.

Back and forth

Using so-called command and control servers, digital command centres, the Russians attempt to establish a connection to the malware in the Department, in order to request and transfer information. The Americans, having been told by the Dutch where the servers are, repeatedly and swiftly cut off access to these servers, followed each time by another attempt by the Russians. It goes back and forth like this for 24 hours. Afterwards, sources tell CNN that this was ‘the worst hack attack ever’ on the American government. The Department has to cut off access to the e-mail system for a whole weekend in order to upgrade the security.

Luckily, the NSA was able to find out the means and tactics of their attackers, deputy director of the NSA Richard Ledgett states at a discussion forum in Aspen in March 2017. ‘So we could see how they were changing their methods. That’s very useful information.’ On the authority of intelligence services, American media write that this was thanks to a ‘western ally’. Eventually, the Americans manage to dispel the Russians from the Department, but not before Russian attackers use their access to send an e-mail to a person in the White House.

Fake e-mail

He thinks he’s received an e-mail from the State Department – the e-mail address is similar – and clicks a link in the message. The link opens a website where the White House employee then enters his login credentials, now obtained by the Russians. And that is how the Russians infiltrate the White House.

They even gain access to the email servers containing the sent and received emails of president Barack Obama, but fail to penetrate the servers that control the message traffic from his personal BlackBerry, which holds state secrets, sources tell The New York Times. They do, however, manage to access e-mail traffic with embassies and diplomats, agendas, notes on policy and legislation. And again, it’s the Dutch intelligence agencies who alert the Americans about this.

Goldmine

Access to Cozy Bear turns out to be a goldmine for the Dutch hackers. For years, it supplies them with valuable intelligence about targets, methods and the interests of the highest ranking officials of the Russian security service. From the pictures taken of visitors, the AIVD deduces that the hacker group is led by Russia’s external intelligence agency SVR.

There’s a reason the AIVD writes in its annual report about 2014 that many Russian government officials, including president Putin, use secret services to obtain information. Recently, the head of the AIVD, Rob Bertholee, said on the Dutch TV program CollegeTour that there is ‘no question’ that the Kremlin is behind the Russian hacking activities.

Unprepared

The Americans were taken completely by surprise by the Russian aggression, says Chris Painter in Washington. For years, Painter was responsible for America’s cyber policy. He resigned last August. ‘We’d never expected that the Russians would do this, attacking our vital infrastructure and undermining our democracy.’

The American intelligence services were unprepared for that, he says. That is one of the reasons the Dutch access is so appreciated. The Americans even sent ‘cake’ and ‘flowers’ to Zoetermeer, sources tell. And not just that. Intelligence is a commodity: it can be traded. In 2016, the heads of the AIVD and MIVD, Rob Bertholee and Pieter Bindt, personally discuss the access to the Russian hacker group with James Clapper, then the highest ranking official of the American intelligence services, and Michael Rogers, head of the NSA.

In return, the Dutch are given knowledge, technology and intelligence. According to one American source, in late 2015, the NSA hackers manage to penetrate the mobile devices of several high ranking Russian intelligence officers. They learn that right before a hacking attack, the Russians search the internet for any news about the oncoming attack. According to the Americans, this indirectly proves that the Russian government is involved in the hacks. Another source says it’s ‘highly likely’ that in return for the intelligence, the Dutch were given access to this specific American information. Whether any intelligence about MH17 was exchanged, is unknown.

 

Oprah for President?

The country is suffering under serial disasters from our first celebrity president.

One of the characteristics of Third World countries is the election of popular entertainers over solid politicians. Leading to even more misery as the woefully underprepared singer/actor/media type struggles not only with how the country’s government works – but the far more complex world of international relations and finance. Saw that in Haiti, and it is one of the big reasons the rebuilding effort and flow of international money into the country stopped.

There isn’t any need to go into the long term and possibly catastrophic damage of the Chumph.

To  fix that is going to take an experienced and steady hand. And it will take years if not a decade.

Yeah the Stock Market is at 25,000. What are you going to do when the inevitable “reset” comes and it drops to 12,000? A number of folks I have talked to in finance and investment think that is on the short term horizon.

So… What is Oprah bringing to the party? She is undoubtedly a very intelligent person with communications skill non pareil. But she knows absolutely nothing (just like the current POS in office) about the more complex international and strategic issues.

So, in my view – Oprah, please don’t run!

‘The Boondocks’ predicted an ‘Oprah 2020’ presidency more than a decade ago

Oprah Winfrey’s speech on Sunday night at the Golden Globes pitched the worlds of politics, entertainment and media into fits of hysterical speculation. The television host and media titan delivered fist-pumping remarks after accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award — the first African American woman honored with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s top laurel.

The comments, while straying away from outright political terrain, focused on changing the world order controlled by “brutally powerful men,” a reference to the sexual harassment scandals that have upset so many industries. “A new day is on the horizon,” she concluded to applause.

Almost immediately rallying cries spread online for a “Oprah 2020” presidential campaign. Winfrey’s longtime partner, Stedman Graham, told a Los Angeles Times reporter that “it’s up to the people,” adding “she would absolutely do it.”

But in a fictional way, an Oprah Winfrey White House has already happened. In 2006, the edgy cartoon “The Boondocks” predicted a Winfrey 2020 presidency.

“The Boondocks,” the brainchild of artist and University of Maryland graduate Aaron McGruder, began as a syndicated comic strip in 1996 before jumping onto Cartoon Network as an animated show on the network’s lineup in 2005. Following the life of a young black family in a white neighborhood, McGruder’s work constantly bucked norms and pushed sensitive buttons.

The season one episode “Return of the King” was especially controversial. The program imagined an alternative history in which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not assassinated in 1968. Instead, he had fallen into a coma. In the episode he wakes up in 2000. King’s nonviolent views become so unpopular following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that he leaves to live in Canada.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist and political commentator, was incensed by the program. “Cartoon Network must apologize and also commit to pulling episodes that desecrate black historic figures,” he said, USA Today reported at the time.

The episode later won a 2006 Peabody Award.

In the show’s final frames, a newspaper headline from November 8, 2020, shows Oprah Winfrey has just been elected president.

McGruder’s premise was likely not intended as a complete farce. In the past, the artist has talked about Winfrey’s real power. “Oprah has the power to lay waste to entire industries with a mere utterance,” he told the New York Times in 2005. “That’s a power that you have to respect. And ultimately I respect it.”

Oddly, there is a precedent of edgy cable cartoons successfully forecasting future political events. In 2000, “The Simpsons” broadcast an episode entitled “Bart to the Future.” The plot involved a President Trump.

 

Mikkie Gets It! Former RNC Chair Denounces The Chumph

Don’t know if it is something in the coffee at MSNBC, vs something in the psychedelic moonshine at Faux – but Michael Steele, former chair of the RNC has had it with the Chumph’s racism.

 

Black Votes Matter

Wake up Democrats!

 

Russian Hacker Admits Orders From KGB

Yeah, it was ordered by Putin in his deal with the Chumph…

Russian hacker admits to breaking into DNC servers under direction of Kremlin intelligence: report

A Russian news website is reporting that a hacker has confessed to being ordered by a major general in the FSB to hack the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential election — and it has links to audio of the testimony as proof.

Fortune reports that Russian website The Bell has posted links to both a written transcript and an audio recording of testimony given by Konstantin Kozlovsky, who was on trial earlier this year for his role in a hacking scheme that stole $50 million from Russian bank accounts.

During his testimony, Kozlovsky claimed that he was ordered by Russian intelligence agency FSB to attack the DNC’s servers under the direction of Dmitry Dokuchayev, a major-general in the FSB. Kozlovsky also said that the hacking was done with the explicit purpose of manipulating the American electoral process.

“Dokuchayev is himself now in prison on charges of treason, accused of passing similar information to U.S. agencies,” reports Fortune. “In other words, Dokuchayev appears to be one of the main sources for the information on which joint U.S. agencies, in a report released by the director of national intelligence in January, argued that the Russian state had directed a campaign designed to polarize public opinion and broadly discredit the campaign of Hillary Clinton.”

The publication does note, however, that it has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the Kozlovsky testimony.

 

A White Supremacist President – Playing With Fire

Ta-Nehisi Coates take on the Chumph….

Disagree with Coates on the CHumph being the first. That dishonor would fall to Woodrow Wilson. I feel there are massive parallels between Wilson and the re-segregation of the Federal Government and the Chumph’s “ethnic cleansing” of the government as well as Wilson’s relationship with the KKK just like the Chumph’s relationship with the KKK and Neo-Nazis.

The First White President

The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy.

IT IS INSUFFICIENT TO STATE the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness—that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America’s founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detachment can be attributed to Donald Trump—a president who, more than any other, has made the awful inheritance explicit.

His political career began in advocacy of birtherism, that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear. He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government; called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and railed against “lazy” black employees. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” Trump was once quoted as saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” After his cabal of conspiracy theorists forced Barack Obama to present his birth certificate, Trump demanded the president’s college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for them), insisting that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.

It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power. Trump inaugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican “rapists,” only to be later alleged by multiple accusers, and by his own proud words, to be a sexual violator himself. White supremacy has always had a perverse sexual tint. Trump’s rise was shepherded by Steve Bannon, a man who mocks his white male critics as “cucks.” The word, derived from cuckold, is specifically meant to debase by fear and fantasy—the target is so weak that he would submit to the humiliation of having his white wife lie with black men. That the slur cuck casts white men as victims aligns with the dicta of whiteness, which seek to alchemize one’s profligate sins into virtue. So it was with Virginia slaveholders claiming that Britain sought to make slaves of them. So it was with marauding Klansmen organized against alleged rapes and other outrages. So it was with a candidate who called for a foreign power to hack his opponent’s email and who now, as president, is claiming to be the victim of “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.”

In Trump, white supremacists see one of their own. Only grudgingly did Trump denounce the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, one of its former grand wizards—and after the clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Duke in turn praised Trump’s contentious claim that “both sides” were responsible for the violence.

To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.” The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump’s counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible….Read the rest here...

 

Clinton Goes There – Questions About Trump’s Legitimacy

Yook long enough. Many of us see the Chumph’s election as illegitimate, not just because of voter suppression and Russian meddling.

About time someone comes out and says it.

It is also true the election never should have been that close. And that failure sits squarely on Hillary and her campaign staff’s lap.

Hillary Clinton on Trump’s Election: “There Are Lots of Questions About Its Legitimacy”

In an exclusive interview with Mother Jones, Clinton says Russian interference and GOP voter suppression efforts may have cost her the presidency.

A year after her defeat by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton says “there are lots of questions about its legitimacy” due to Russian interference and widespread voter suppression efforts.

In an interview with Mother Jones in downtown Manhattan, Clinton said Russian meddling in the election “was one of the major contributors to the outcome.” The Russians used “weaponized false information,” she said, in “a very successful disinformation campaign” that “wasn’t just influencing voters—it was determining the outcome.”

Republican efforts to make it harder to vote—through measures such as voter ID laws, shortened early voting periods, and new obstacles to registration—likewise “contributed to the outcome,” Clinton said. These moves received far less attention than Russian interference but arguably had a more demonstrable impact on the election result. According to an MIT study, more than 1 million people did not vote in 2016 because they encountered problems registering or at the polls. Clinton lost the election by a total of 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“In a couple of places, most notably Wisconsin, I think it had a dramatic impact on the outcome,” Clinton said of voter suppression.

Wisconsin’s new voter ID law required a Wisconsin driver’s license or one of several other types of ID to cast a ballot. It blocked or deterred up to 23,000 people from voting in reliably Democratic Milwaukee and Madison, and potentially 45,000 people statewide, according to a University of Wisconsin study. Clinton lost the state by fewer than 23,000 votes. African Americans, who overwhelmingly supported Clinton, were more than three times as likely as whites not to vote because of the law.

“It seems likely that it cost me the election [in Wisconsin] because of the tens of thousands of people who were turned away and the margin being so small,” Clinton said.

Clinton says of voter suppression that in at least one state, “It seems likely that it cost me the election.”

She noted that this was the first presidential election in more than 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court gutted the law in a 2013 ruling, and 14 states had new voting restrictions in effect for the first time. “So many places have really tried to make it as difficult as they possibly could for young people, for African Americans, the elderly, to vote,” she said.

For Clinton and others who question the legitimacy of the election results, particularly due to Russian interference, there’s not an obvious next step. “We don’t have a method for contesting that in our system,” she said. “That’s why I’ve long advocated for an independent commission to get to the bottom of what happened.” On Wednesday, Democrats in Congress introduced articles of impeachment against Trump, but Clinton thinks that’s the wrong approach. “I think we need the investigations to continue,” she said, “and I think that it’s premature.”

But Clinton stood by a claim she made during a presidential debate last year, that if Trump were elected president, he would be Putin’s “puppet.” Asked if she still felt that way, Clinton said, “I do.”

“I don’t know how the president of the United States, with all of the concerns about the integrity of our elections, could meet with Putin just recently and basically say, ‘Well, you know, he told me again he didn’t do it,’” she said. “I can’t believe that he’s so naïve. I think that he hopes or expects the rest of us to be naïve, or at least the people who support him to be naïve. But this is a serious cyberattack on America.”…More Here…

 

 

How Jared Kushner Committed Perjury and His Newspaper Colluded With Russian Spies

Probably slated for the third round of Mueller indictments (After the Flynn family), Chumph son-in-law Jared Kushner is being investigated for back door deals with Wikileaks and Putin’s KGB.

Kushner perjured himself in testimony before Congress, declaring the he, and non of the Chumph staff ever had contact with Wikileaks or the Russians,

That’s bald faced lie.

How Jared Kushner’s Newspaper Became a Favorite Outlet for WikiLeaks Election Hacks

The New York Observer, owned by Trump’s son-in-law, was a friendly outlet for the 2016 Russian hackers.

In the fall of 2014, Julian Assange, the embattled head of WikiLeaks, was meeting with a steady stream of supportive journalists in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had taken refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges. Among those seeking an audience with Assange was a freelancer working for the New York Observer, the newspaper owned and published by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key advisor, Jared Kushner.

Ken Kurson, the newspaper’s editor in chief — along with a freelance writer he’d hired — helped arrange a “no-holds-barred” interview with Assange that October.

“My editor Ken Kurson (kkurson@observer.com) and I are very interested in an interview with Julian Assange. This would be a cover story.… We will be in London the first week of October,” wrote Jacques Hyzagi, a freelance reporter for the Observer, to a press consultant who arranged interviews for WikiLeaks.

Kurson, when contacted by Foreign Policy, said he did not attend that meeting and has never communicated with Assange; he insists that the profile was Hyzagi’s idea. “We ran an interview pitched to us by a freelancer,” he wrote in an email.

“I have never communicated in any way with Julian Assange and this sort of fact-free, evidenceless charge is analogous to pizzagate and other totally ludicrous conspiracies,” he added.

Hyzagi did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

Yet a series of exchanges between Hyzagi and the WikiLeaks representative indicated that a meeting involving Kurson and Assange was in the works; at one point Leonardo DiCaprio was invited to tag along, according to emails obtained by FP. (DiCaprio did not end up attending.)

After that, the plan was to travel to Moscow to meet with Edward Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor. Snowden’s team declined a request for an interview from Hyzagi, according to Ben Wizner, Snowden’s attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Hyzagi’s meeting with Assange resulted in a friendly feature in the Observer and kicked off a long-running series of laudatory articles about the WikiLeaks founder — many of those stories including exclusive details about the Australian transparency advocate. Later, the Observer also became a favored outlet of Guccifer 2.0, a suspected Russian hacker, who along with WikiLeaks released troves of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). WikiLeaks tweeted some of the Observer’s coverage, including stories expressing doubt that the Russians had meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Kushner has long denied any collusion with the Russian government, which is suspected of targeting the 2016 election, but his newspaper proved a favored conduit for hacks, which the U.S. intelligence community says were carried out on Kremlin orders. The Observer was not the only outlet that received exclusive access to Guccifer 2.0 documents — or those from other outlets such as DC Leaks, widely believed to be part of the same campaign — but it was the only one owned by someone who was part of the Trump campaign.

“This would be of significant interest to law enforcement and investigators,” John Sipher, a former CIA officer who worked in Russia, wrote in an email to FP.

 

 

 

Roy Moore’s Racist Lawyer

Alabama Republican Roy Moore’s racist lawyer –

 

 

Sugar Coated Kisses for Putin From the Chumph

Putin’s boi toy rushed to arrive early in Hanoi met his master privately. Leaving the Chumph to breathlessly explain how good Putin was for him.

Noe – there are a few terabytes of hard information connecting the Russians to hacking the election. Putin’s bitch will have none of it.

 

 

As Number of Russian Spies at Chumph Jr. Meeting Rise…So Does the Heat

That Chumph Jr meeting with the Russian Lawyer?

Turns out that wasn’t a cozy one on one – it involved 7 to 8 people…

4 of them Russian with ties to the FSB/KGB/

I like Keith Olbermann’s view…

 

Now the Chumph’s are spending campaign money on lawyers to the tune of over $215,000 a month…

Yeah…There is nothing to see here…

 

 

Asking the Right – Why Are Republicans Hiding the Evidence of Trump Treason

Been saying for a while that the Russian hacking and collusion treason went far beyond just the Chumph and his merry band of morons and nitwit children.

Here, Digby begins asking the right questions at least.

Russia scandal goes well beyond Trump: GOP leaders definitely knew about hacking — did they benefit too?

Leading Republicans knew about Russian hacking long before Trump’s nomination. They said nothing and did nothing

Despite Europe’s clear disdain for President Trump it seems as though he’s over there every other week. In fact he’s arriving in France on Thursday at the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron to help celebrate Bastille Day and have dinner at the Eiffel Tower. Considering that Trump has implied repeatedly that Paris is nothing but a hellhole these days, it’s a testament to just how desperate he is to get out of Washington. The heat is on and he wants out of the kitchen.

You have certainly heard that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer to get some promised dirt on Hillary Clinton that was represented as being part of a Russian government program to help Trump get elected. Now we know their breathless protestations that they didn’t know nothin’ about no Russians were lies, and we also know that this particular tawdry scheme reached into the highest levels of the campaign. We’ll have to wait for the next shoe to drop. There is always another shoe.

There was one new story on Wednesday that added an interesting detail to the saga and points to a possible larger conspiracy. McClatchy reported that House and Senate investigators as well as the Justice Department are looking at the Trump campaign’s digital operation, one of Jared Kushner’s pet projects (financed by big-daddy benefactor Robert Mercer), to determine if it may have worked with Russia’s sophisticated micro-targeting and propaganda program during the 2016 campaign.

McClatchy also reported that the Justice Department is looking into “whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton.” That’s an issue I’ve written about previously here on Salon, based on some post-election investigative reporting by the New York Times.

This raises once again the question of just what was going on in the Republican Party during this period. After all, it wasn’t just Donald Trump who benefited from Russian hacking. The GOP-dominated House majority was a major beneficiary as well.

Remember, the congressional leadership knew in 2015 that it was happening. Reuters has reported that the so-called Gang of Eight (Republican leaders in Congress) was told that Russian hackers were attacking the Democratic Party but that the information was so top secret they could not share it. As we know, hackers attacked the Democratic National Committee and the personal email of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. But they also hacked the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and information gleaned from that hack was put to use in some 2016 campaigns for Congress.

Also recall that one month before Donald Trump Jr. took that meeting with the Russian lawyer, House Majority Leader Kevin “loose lips” McCarthy was talking about Trump’s connections to Vladimir Putin in a room full of Republicans:

A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016 exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. […]

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

This was the day after news had broken that the Russians had hacked the DNC and Ryan and McCarthy had just come from a meeting with the Ukrainian prime minister, who “had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.”

Republican leaders kept this from the public for a year, then lied repeatedly about it when confronted until someone produced an audiotape, at which point McCarthy, Ryan, et al., said it was just a joke. Maybe it was. But we know for sure that this idea about Trump being under Putin’s thumb was in the ether in GOP circles even as the party was getting ready to nominate him as its presidential candidate.

Fast forward to late August when the intelligence community was becoming frantic over the evidence of Russian interference and Director of National Intelligence John Brennan held private classified briefings with eight top congressional leaders, telling then that there was evidence the Russians were helping Donald Trump and that unnamed advisers to the Republican nominee might be working with them. In September, intelligence officials convened a big meeting with the Gang of 12, meaning the House and Senate leadership along with chairmen and ranking members of committees on intelligence and homeland security. It was assumed this would result in a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” to protest this threat to the integrity of the American democratic process.

That was an erroneous assumption. The Republicans refused to sign anything that implicated the Russian government, only agreeing to tell state elections officials to beware of “malefactors” attempting to hack election software. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly said he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly “an act of partisan politics.” That was that.

Since the election, when Republican officials aren’t actively helping the White House cover up and misdirect, as House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes did, with a few exceptions they still dismiss the scandal, even in the face of documentary evidence like the Donald Trump Jr. emails.

There’s a lot of punditry every day bemoaning the fact that President Trump refuses to admit that the Russian interference in the campaign happened, seeing it as a stubborn (and insulting) rejection of the U.S. intelligence community and a dangerous unwillingness to take needed action to prevent it happening again. But really, why is Trump the only one on the hook? The Republican leadership has turned a blind eye to what was happening since 2015. They knew. They may have even known more about it than Trump did, at least in the beginning. They did nothing about it then and have shown no signs that they plan to do anything in the future.

It’s not all on Donald Trump. He may been the principal beneficiary but the leaders of his party aided and abetted the crime. We may just learn that they benefited from it too. 

 

All of Putin’s Bitch’s Men Who Lied About Meeting With Russian Spies

Halderman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean. It follows a pattern if you dig what I mean.

Halderman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean. It follows a pattern if you dig what I mean.

Halderman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean. It follows a pattern if you dig what I mean. 

From the H2O Gate Blues by Gil Scott Heron

It sounds like Treason, you know what I mean.

These top Trump associates have all lied about contacts with Russia — and the list is growing

The recent revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney with close ties to the Kremlin is just another in a long line of coincidental meetings that President Donald Trump’s friends, family, and associates had with Russians.

A number of people close to Trump have claimed they never had contact with Russian operatives — only for their denial to be proven wrong later. Below is a list of some of the most prominent people:

1. Donald Trump Jr.

The most recent in the list of Trump allies is Trump’s own son. In a March interview with the New York Times, he denied having any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals.

“Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did,” he said. “But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly, none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.”

That was a lie.

The New York Times reported Sunday that Trump Jr., Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and former campaign chair Paul Manafort met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, who had claimed that she had information on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. has admitted he attended the meeting to see what the “dirt” was, but that the conversation resulted in nothing meaningful.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) noted that the meeting is important because it was the first indication that someone in the campaign demonstrated they were willing to collude with Russians.

2. Jeff Sessions

While under oath in his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) about any connections to Russians.

Sessions replied that he “did not have communications with the Russians” during the campaign. He also made the same statement in writing on the official questionnaire. He was told that any communications he had “as a senator” did not need to go on the form since that was as his capacity as an elected official.

That was a lie.

Sessions met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least twice during 2016. One meet up was even photographed during the Republican National Convention, where Sessions was taking meetings for Trump. The second took place in September.

3. Mike Pence

No one has denied the Russian collusion or connections more publicly than Vice President Mike Pence, who was allegedly setup to lie on national television just before Trump was inaugurated. Specifically, Pence claimed that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn never discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during their introductory phone calls.

That was a lie.

While Pence might try to maintain plausible deniability, the evidence is stacking up that over and over Pence was warned about Flynn’s contacts with Russia. In May, it was revealed that Flynn was warned by the transition team about his contacts with the Russian Ambassador on the day then-President Barack Obama issued sanctions against Russia for hacking. Pence was the head of the transition team after Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) was replaced.

Before the inauguration, Pence was sent a letter by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) warning the transition that Flynn had concerning lobbying contracts.

It was also revealed that acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn’s communications with Russians put him in a compromised position. She had two in-person meetings and one phone call specifically because she was concerned about Pence’s comments on “Face the Nation.”

When Yates testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in May, she said that she told White House officials on Jan. 26 that Pence deserved to know that Flynn had not been truthful about his communications with Russian officials. Flynn was not asked to resign until Feb. 13.

“Either they were criminally negligent — or they weren’t and they knew,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said about Pence and the Trump team in March.

4. Michael Flynn

Flynn told anyone who asked him about his communications between the Russian Ambassador Kislyak that he didn’t recall the issue of sanctions coming up, but “isn’t completely certain.”

That was a lie.

It was further found that Flynn lied to investigators about payments from work that Flynn had done with Russians so that he could get his security clearance.

5. Jared Kushner

To gain his top-secret security clearance, Trump’s son-in-law was required to disclose any encounters with foreign government officials for the past seven years. Kushner did not list at least three such meetings.

Kushner’s attorney said that the omission of dozens of contacts with Russians was nothing more than an error. It’s also a lie.

Kushner’s first meeting that we know of came during that June 9, 2016 meeting with Veselnitskaya, in which he, Trump Jr. and Manafort were told the Kremlin-linked lawyer had damaging information on Clinton.

Another meeting was in December with Ambassador Kislyak and the third was with the leader of the Russian state-owned bank Vnesheconombank, which was arranged at Kislyak’s command.

Kushner’s attorney claims that the form was submitted prematurely and that they informed the FBI they would be sending supplemental information. In the absence of that information, Kushner was issued an interim clearance.

After the evidence was revealed that Kushner lied about the meetings, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, called for Kushner to lose his top-secret clearance until questions can be answered.

6. Paul Manafort

In a July 2016 interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week,” Paul Manafort claimed that there were no ties between him or Trump’s campaign and Putin.

“That’s absurd…there’s no basis to it,” Manafort said.

In another July interview, this time with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Manafort swore that any allegations about links between Putin and Trump, including his own personal role, was “crazy.”

Also around that time, Manafort was asked in a “CBS This Morning” interview if Trump had any financial relationships with Russian oligarchs.

“That’s what he said. That’s what I said, uh, that’s obviously what my position is,” Manafort stammered.

All of that was a lie.

In March, the Associated Press broke a story that Manafort “secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics.”

The AP quoted “interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP,” who revealed that Manafort’s secret work for Putin. It “appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests,” the AP said.

7. Carter Page

In a Feb. 2017 interview with Judy Woodruff on the PBS NewsHour, foreign policy advisor Carter Page said that he had “no meetings” with Russian officials last year.

That was a lie.

Page later told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, “I do not deny” meeting with the ambassador last summer in Ohio at the RNC convention.

“I will say I never met him anywhere outside of Cleveland. Let’s just say that much,” he added.

It was then revealed that Page went to Russia with a secret recording of Trump asking Putin to hack 2016 election to be hacked.

While close friend and ally of Roger Stone had communications with those involved in the Russian hack, he didn’t lie about it, in fact, he bragged about it. It is unclear if there are others close to Trump, but the list might expand as the investigations continue.