Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the president’s business ties to Russian state institutions go deeper than previously known. The Journal said on Wednesday that the state-run bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) financed an $850 million deal with Russian-Canadian real estate developer Alexander Schnaider — who then funded the construction of a Trump-branded hotel in Toronto.

A lawyer for Schnaider told the Journal that he is “not able to confirm that any funds … went into the Toronto project” from the VEB deal. The letter from Trump’s lawyers would seem not to apply to transactions between Russian state entities and Trump business partners, where the money could indirectly — but decisively — go toward supporting Trump projects.

The Journal report comes amid a flood of other revelations about Trump’s apparent attempts to squelch an FBI criminal investigation into his associates’ contact with Moscow.

A Russian state bank reportedly financed an $850 million deal with a Trump business partner

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A real family..

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Republican colleagues in a private conversation last year that he thought Donald Trump was being paid by Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Washington Post report published Wednesday.

McCarthy made the comments to House Speaker Paul Ryan and other party leaders in Washington on June 15, 2016 — a month before Trump clinched the Republican nomination, and just after news reports surfaced that Russia had hacked into the Democratic National Committee.
"There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump," McCarthy said, the Post reported, citing a recording it obtained of the conversation. Dana Rohrabacher is a Republican congressman from California.

When some of his audience laughed at the comments, McCarthy added: "Swear to God," the Post reported.
Ryan reportedly ended the conversation and insisted those present to not discuss it with the press.

"This is an off the record," Ryan told staffers, laughing. "NO LEAKS...alright?! This is how we know we're a real family here."
Rep. Steve Scalise, the majority whip, chimed in: "That's how you know that we're tight."
"What's said in the family stays in the family," Ryan said..

Kevin McCarthy said he thought Putin was paying Trump - Business Insider

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Former FBI Director James Comey may have been building a case against President Donald Trump before he was fired, a former Justice Department official said. News that Comey wrote a memo in February detailing how Trump urged him to stand down on an investigation into fired NSA Director Michael Flynn has stunned the White House, Capitol Hill and much of the public. But the existence of the document should come as no surprise to those who know the career law enforcement officer, according to Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman and MSNBC analyst. In fact, the document may have been more than an afterthought following a troubling Oval Office conversation, he said.

Comey may have been using memos to a build a case against Trump

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A simple summary of the last 24 hours, a long time in politics..

Let’s do a quick summary of the past 24 hours. The Justice Department tapped former FBI Director Robert Mueller to be a special counsel with broad powers to investigate Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The New York Times reported that Trump picked Michael Flynn to be his national security adviser even though his team knew Flynn was under investigation for secretly working as a Turkey lobbyist.

Wednesday night, we learned the “code word” intelligence Trump shared with the Russians in the Oval Office came from Israel’s best anti-ISIS spy, threatening the safety of the operative and making Israel — and other US allies — potentially less likely to share valuable intelligence with the Trump White House.

It doesn’t stop there. The Washington Post reported that in 2016 — in the heat of the presidential primaries — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told his colleagues that Trump might be on Putin’s payroll.

Reuters reported that Trump’s team made at least 18 previously undisclosed contacts with Russians officials.

Finally, during the presidential transition, McClatchy reported that Flynn had put a halt to a military operation Turkey opposed. This raises red flags due to Flynn’s ties to Ankara.

It’s a lot of news, on a lot of different Trump-related scandals, to track, and it’s understandably hard to digest it all. What follows is a summary of what was reported, what we know so far — and the implications of it all.

When Trump fired James Comey as the FBI director, the White House said it was because of a memo Rosenstein co-authored with his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which made the case to let Comey go.

But here’s the thing: Trump told Rosenstein and Sessions to write that memo. So when the White House tried to pin Comey’s ouster on Rosenstein, it didn’t sit too kindly with him, and he even considered resigning. (Later, though, in true Trump fashion, the president contradicted the official story. In an interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt, Trump said he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation.)

The past 24 hours of devastating Trump news, explained - Vox

Read the rest of the article for the details.

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More lies..

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told senators in a closed-door briefing Thursday that he knew FBI Director James Comey would be fired before he wrote a memo outlining his mishandling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, a top Democratic senator said. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri told reporters gathered outside the briefing room that Rosenstein had "acknowledged that he learned Comey would be removed prior to him writing his memo," despite the White House initially insisting that Trump fired Comey on Rosenstein's recommendation.

McCaskill: Rod Rosenstein knew of Comey firing before memo - Business Insider

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President Donald Trump told Russian diplomats in an Oval Office meeting last week that his firing of "nut job" FBI Director James Comey had taken "great pressure" off of him, The New York Times reported Friday. The comments were read to the Times by an American official and were from a White House document summarizing the meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not dispute the comments to the Times. "I just fired the head of the FBI," Trump said. "He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."

Trump: Firing 'nut job' James Comey took 'great pressure' off me - Business Insider

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Get ready for President Pence. Hardly an improvement, by the way..

President Donald Trump told two Russian diplomats in an Oval Office meeting last week that by firing "nut job" FBI Director James Comey, he had taken "great pressure" off of himself, The New York Times reported on Friday. Comey, who was leading an FBI investigation into Trump's campaign team and whether it colluded with the Kremlin during the 2016 election, was fired earlier this month. The next day, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Trump's comments last week and in February — when he reportedly nudged Comey to drop the bureau's investigation into Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser — have led lawmakers and legal experts to question whether Trump sought to obstruct justice, a criminal and impeachable offense.

"Telling the Russians — the adversary at issue the investigation itself — that firing Comey would ease pressure is compelling evidence of corrupt intent under normal circumstances," said Andrew Wright, an associate professor at Savannah Law School who specializes in federal criminal law and national security. "Many a criminal defendant have gotten convicted on evidence of their intent just like that." Jeffrey Toobin, a CNN legal analyst, said Trump's reported comments were "close to a confession of obstruction of justice."

Trump comments on Comey to Russia: Obstruction of justice? - Business Insider

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Kushner and Russia..

By now, though, it’s clear that Kushner (at least sometimes) is the person who wants to lash out at the investigators. Here’s what happened (according to reports from the New York Times) when the Trump administration found out that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Mueller as a special counsel to lead the Trump/Russia probe:

Most of those gathered recommended that the president adopt a conciliatory stance and release a statement accepting Mr. Rosenstein’s decision and embracing a swift investigation that would clear the cloud of suspicion hovering over the West Wing.
Mr. Kushner — who had urged Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Comey — was one of the few dissenting voices, urging the president to counterattack, according to two senior administration officials. After a brief discussion, however, calmer heads prevailed, and Mr. Trump’s staff huddled over a computer just outside the Oval Office to draft the statement that was ultimately released, asserting the president’s innocence and determination to move on.

What could Kushner be so worried about?

He does appear to have been relatively close to the disgraced Flynn. According to at least one report (from NBC News’ Peter Alexander), he and Ivanka Trump were the ones who assured Flynn he could get the job of National Security Advisor — at a meeting at Trump Tower after the election, Alexander said, Ivanka Trump and Kushner told Flynn that his “loyalty” to the family would be rewarded.

Kushner also accompanied Flynn to his meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period — part of the pattern of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak that Flynn subsequently lost his job for lying about. Kushner, however, also arranged subsequent meetings with Kislyak and other Russian officials — and the White House didn’t disclose those at the time, either.

Kushner’s meetings with Russian officials were enough to bring him onto the radar of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Trump/Russia probe, which is questioning all Trumpworld figures who had contacts with Russia. And his failure to disclose all of those meetings — even when applying for a security clearance — has raised some eyebrows (Democratic Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) has called for Kushner’s clearance to be stripped.)

At least one figure within the Trump White House saw Kushner’s contacts with Russia as a disaster waiting to happen for the administration: Steve Bannon. During a power struggle between Kushner and Bannon in early April, the Times reported that “Mr. Bannon has told confidants that he believes Mr. Kushner’s contact with Russians, and his expected testimony before Congress on the subject, will become a major distraction for the White House.”

Kushner won the power struggle. Perhaps Bannon’s warnings about Kushner and Russia were discarded as just an attempt to weaken a rival (which, in part, they almost certainly were). But in retrospect, it’s becoming clear that Bannon wasn’t wrong.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jared Kushner is part of Trump’s Russia problem - Vox

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Former FBI director James Comey believes that President Trump was trying to influence him and the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, a source familiar with Comey's thinking told CNN on Saturday.  Comey is set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee after Memorial Day, and the main question around his hearing will be whether Comey believes Trump was trying to intervene in the FBI's investigation.

James Comey reportedly believes Trump was trying to influence him - Business Insider

His testimony could become quite interesting..

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Michael Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trump's campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race, current and former US officials familiar with the exchanges told Reuters. The previously undisclosed interactions form part of the record now being reviewed by FBI and congressional investigators examining Russian interference in the US presidential election and contacts between Trump's campaign and Russia. 

Conversations between Flynn and Kislyak accelerated after the November 8 vote as the two discussed establishing a back channel for communication between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could bypass the US national security bureaucracy, which both sides considered hostile to improved relations, four current US officials said.

Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed conversations with Russians - Business Insider

On Wednesday, The Times reported that Flynn had informed the Trump transition team that he was under FBI investigation on January 4. According to The Times, Flynn told transition team member Don McGahn, who now serves as White House counsel, about the investigation.
The Times' report seems to contradict the Trump administration's claim that it was not aware Flynn was under investigation before former Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, mentioned it later in January. The White House did not dismiss Flynn until 18 days after Yates warned that he may be vulnerable to Russian blackmail..

Intelligence community hails Mueller appointment as special prosecutor - Business Insider

Privately, however, a person in the room with Trump and his aides when they heard of Mueller's appointment said that "everyone knew this wasn't good news," according to Politico.  Foreign policy analyst Max Boot tweeted a similar assessment on Wednesday. He said the White House was " desperately spinning the special counsel as good news, but a retired FBI agent tells me Mueller will 'crush' Trump."

Will special prosecutor help or hurt Trump in Russia probe? - Business Insider