Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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Roger Stone's Twitter account suspended after the latest tirade..

Roger Stone, a longtime Republican strategist and an informal adviser to President Donald Trump, had his Twitter account suspended on Saturday. 
Stone spent much of Friday evening and night attacking CNN personalities after the outlet reported that special counsel Robert Mueller had filed the first charges in his Russia investigation. Mueller is examining Russia's interference in the 2016 election, as well as whether any members of the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow to tilt the election in his favor. 

After the news broke, Stone took to Twitter and lashed out at CNN's Jake Tapper and Don Lemon, as well as network commentator and New York Times columnist Charles Blow. He accused them, without evidence, of lying and called them "fake news," as well as several derogatory slurs. Stone told Business Insider after his Twitter account was suspended that his tweets directed at Lemon were not related to revelations about Mueller's indictments, but rather Lemon's "nonsensical claim that the Clinton's [sic] have been cleared in the Uranium One scandal."

Though the 2010 deal made its way back into headlines over the last week, extensive reporting and fact-checking found no signs of wrongdoing when the Obama administration allowed Rosatom, a Russian nuclear energy firm, to acquire Canada-based Uranium One, which had significant mining stakes in the US. The deal required approval from several government agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which Hillary Clinton had no control over, The New Yorker reported on Saturday. 

[/url][url=http://www.businessinsider.com/roger-stone-twitter-account-suspended-2017-10]Roger Stone's Twitter account has been suspended - Business Insider

Given the amount of bizarre conspiracy theories this guy makes a living off and the corrosive effect this has on institutions, he is a damaging influence on the country and the President.

[Admin]

The real scandal is that the media are indeed failing, but not in the way you might expect:

About a year ago, I met a man named Christopher David Steele. It was unusual for him to be speaking with a journalist. He had spent most of his adult life in the shadows, as a counterintelligence officer for MI6, the British foreign intelligence service. His specialty was Russia.   More recently, he had been something of a spy-for-hire, running a corporate intelligence business based in London that did hush-hush work for private clients. He was, he told me, not accustomed to chatting with outsiders.

But Steele was worried. He had spent several months, as the world now knows, researching connections between Donald Trump and Russia, and he had unearthed information (which was then unconfirmed) indicating that Russia had been trying to co-opt and cultivate Trump for years, that the Trump camp had been trading information with the Russians, and that Vladimir Putin’s regime had gathered compromising material on Trump. (Yes, including the infamous supposed “pee tape.”)

All of this so frightened Steele—imagine a man tied to Moscow in this fashion winning the White House!—that he was willing to talk to me and be quoted, though not named. By the time Steele and I spoke, Putin’s meddling in the 2016 campaign—with Russian intelligence hacking Democratic targets, stealing sensitive material, and then publicly dumping the material via several cut-outs, including WikiLeaks—should have been a massive scandal. But it wasn’t. Nor were the odd relationships between Trump, his associates, and Russia drawing great notice.

I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp
— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) October 3, 2016

Already, the FBI was digging into the Trump crew’s interactions with Russia and looking for any instances of collusion between the Trump camp and Moscow, though the American public had not yet been informed the bureau was doing so. Steele believed this was absolutely critical information for voters to have and he wanted the word out—even if that put him at risk of exposure.

I wrote a story—after confirming Steele’s bona fides—and emphasized that the FBI had requested information from him and apparently was investigating the allegations his memos contained. It was published on October 31, just a week before the election. (I did report that Steele’s research was being funded by a Democratic source. This week we learned that it was a law firm that had been working for the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.) 

The story drew a measure of attention, but it never gained traction in the major media. American voters ended up hitting the polls with the Russia matter far lower on the list of major campaign issues than Hillary Clinton’s email server troubles—especially after FBI director James Comey revived that controversy 11 days before the election.

The Trump-Russia Scandal Is a Huge Media Fail – Mother Jones

A must read

[Admin]

I recently reached out to Renato Mariotti, who served as a federal prosecutor from 2007 to 2016, and asked him what we can infer from Mueller’s aggressive approach to this case. He told me that Mueller is employing what he calls a “divide and conquer” strategy, meaning he’s looking to exploit conflicts between people under investigation in order to turn them against one another. That Mueller’s team is homing in on Manafort, he adds, suggest two things: that they have the strongest case against him and that they believe he has incriminating information about other people under investigation.

Why is Mueller’s team homing in on Paul Manafort? I asked a former federal prosecutor. - Vox

Perhaps just as significant, the first liar..

An early foreign policy adviser and aide to President Donald Trump's campaign team, George Papadopoulos, secretly pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to the FBI about the nature and extent of his contacts with foreign nationals who he knew had ties to senior Russian government officials. Papadopoulos, 30, was a foreign policy adviser to Trump's campaign in early 2016. He sent at least six emails to top Trump advisers during the campaign offering to set up meetings with Russian officials, the Washington Post reported in August. The first of those emails was sent in March 2016 with the subject line " Meeting with Russian Leadership - Including Putin." The newly unsealed charge filed on October 3 by the special counsel's office alleged that on January 27, Papadopoulos lied to FBI agents about "the timing, extent, and nature of his relationships and interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with senior Russian government offiicials." Papadopoulos apparently told the FBI that his outreach to the Russia-linked foreign nationals occurred before he joined the campaign. But his first interaction with an "overseas professor" with ties to high-level Russian officials occurred on March 14, 2016, weeks after he joined the campaign.

who is George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty FBI Russia contacts - Business Insider

[Admin]

More significant stuff. Reminder, this Papadopoulos guy already pleaded guilty...

George Papadopoulos, an early Trump campaign adviser, was told Moscow had potentially damning information on Hillary Clinton in April 2016. The revelation, from an FBI document, alters the timeline of Russia's election interference. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to federal investigators. George Papadopoulos, an early foreign policy adviser and aide to President Donald Trump's campaign team, was told that Moscow had dirt on Hillary Clinton in April 2016, newly unsealed court documents show. The revelation alters the timeline of Russia's efforts to interfere in the US presidential election. The offering on Clinton, in this case, was in the form of "thousands of emails," disclosed to Papadopoulos by a person identified as an "overseas professor." The court document, filed by special counsel Robert Mueller's office in early October, alleges that Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about the nature and extent of his contacts with foreign nationals who he knew had ties to senior Russian government officials.

George Papadopoulos offered dirt on Clinton in April 2016 - Business Insider

The linked article gives an extensive timeline of the events, it's pretty useful.

[Admin]

Not proven yet, but pretty plausible..

Two things are true about the indictments unsealed by special counsel Bob Mueller Monday:

• They don’t provide a “smoking gun” proving collusion between Donald Trump’s operation and Russia.
  
• They make it almost impossible to believe that there wasn’t collusion between Trump’s operation and Russia.
  

Here is what we now know: The Trump campaign was filled with operatives connected in shady ways to the Russian government. It included individuals who knew that the Russians had obtained Clinton-related emails and who lied about that knowledge to federal investigators. Top campaign officials (and Trump family members) dropped everything to meet with Russian operatives when they believed there was useful opposition research on offer. Trump publicly asked Russia to hack into Clinton’s computers to find and release her missing emails.

We also know the Russians really did hack into John Podesta’s and the DNC’s email accounts and found and released emails that damaged Clinton. They really did conduct social media operations designed help Trump. Both their targets and their timing were extremely sophisticated for a foreign government that has traditionally shown itself to have a poor understanding of American politics. After winning the White House, Trump attacked the CIA and fired the director of the FBI in an effort to discredit or end their investigations into Russia’s role in the election. At this point, it would be a truly remarkable coincidence if two entities that had so many ties to each other, that had so much information about what the other was doing, and that were working so hard toward the same goal never found a way to coordinate.

It sure looks like there was collusion between the Trump operation and Russia - Vox

The linked story goes on to make a compelling case, based on:

1) Russia stole Democratic emails.
2) At least one Trump adviser knew of the theft in advance, and lied about it. 
3) Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was a paid operative of a Russia-linked political party in Ukraine. 
4) In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian operative who promised them dirt on Clinton.
5) In July 2016, Trump publicly asked the Russian government to find and release other emails Clinton deleted. 
6) Russians released emails to help Trump, planted fake news and social media bots to help Trump, and tried to hack election systems in 21 states. 
7) After being elected president, Donald Trump fired the director of the FBI to end his investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election.

A list like this can get much longer — I haven’t mentioned Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s habit of forgetting meetings with Russian officials, for instance, or the notably pro-Russian policy positions Trump adopted during the campaign — but the bottom line is: We do not yet have hard evidence of actual collusion between the Trump operation and Russia. But given what we do know, it would truly be remarkable if all this happened and yet the two sides never explicitly worked together.

For the details, see the linked story.

[Admin]

The CIA said on Thursday that the U.S. intelligence community has not reached new conclusions on Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, hours after the agency's director, Mike Pompeo, said that intelligence agencies had determined that the meddling had no effect on the results. “The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed,” Ryan Trapani, a CIA spokesman, told The Washington Post, “and the director did not intend to suggest that it had.” Pompeo reportedly said during a security conference in Washington on Thursday that "the intelligence community’s assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election."

CIA: Intelligence assessment has not changed on Russia election interference | TheHill

[Admin]

Nothing to see here.. 

The House Intelligence Committee on Monday released the full transcript of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page's testimony before the panel last week, portions of which corroborate details in an explosive collection of memos outlining alleged collusion between the campaign and Moscow during the election. Page revealed during his testimony that he met with both members of Russia's presidential administration and with the head of investor relations at the state-owned Russian oil giant Rosneft during his trip to Moscow last July. He also said that Trump campaign adviser Sam Clovis had asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement upon joining the campaign — and that he discussed his July Moscow trip with Clovis both before he went and after he returned.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff confronted Page with an email he wrote on July 8 from Moscow to Trump campaign adviser J.D. Gordon saying that he had received "incredible insights and outreach from a few Russian legislators and senior members of the presidential administration here." Former British spy Christopher Steele wrote in the dossier that an "official close to Presidential Administration Head, S. IVANOV, confided in a compatriot that a senior colleague in the Internal Political Department of the PA, DIVYEKIN (nfd) also had met secretly with PAGE on his recent visit." According to that official in the dossier, Diveykin told Page that the Kremlin had a dossier of kompromat on Hillary Clinton that they wanted to give to the Trump campaign. In his congressional testimony, Page denied meeting with Diveykin and said the "senior members of the presidential administration" that he had referred to in his email was actually just "a brief, less-than-10-second chat with [deputy Prime Minister] Arkadiy Dvorkovich."

Carter Page congressional testimony corroborates Steele dossier portions - Business Insider

[Admin]

This is amazing. Trump asks Putin. Putin says who, us meddling in your elections? Never! Trump believes Putin, over his own intelligence services, all of them, and a host of evidence on social media. He goes on to slam his own intelligence services..

Yea, mr. President, Putin really is our friend and the Democrats our enemy..

President Trump on Saturday lashed out at U.S. intelligence leaders for their conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, calling them “political hacks” and slamming the investigations into Russian interference as a “Democratic hit job.” Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump blasted former U.S. intelligence officials by name, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey. "I mean, give me a break, they are political hacks," Trump said, according to White House pool reports. He was discussing the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russia sought to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump. "So you look at it, I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper and you have Comey," he continued. "Comey is proven now to be a liar and he is proven now to be a leaker.” “So you look at that and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with them," he continued, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump said that the investigation into Russian interference in the election was a “Democratic-inspired thing” and a “pure hit job." Trump went on to say that he wasn’t going to “argue” with Putin about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election. “He said he didn’t meddle, he said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times,” Trump said, according to pool reports. “I can’t stand there and argue with him, I would rather have him get out of Syria, I would rather get to work with him on the Ukraine," he added. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI, have concluded that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election, and several congressional investigations are currently underway to determine the scale and scope of Russia’s interference.

Trump slams former US intel leaders as 'political hacks' | TheHill

Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted on Saturday in a meeting with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that Russia did not meddle in the US election — and Trump said he believed him. "He said he didn't meddle. He said he didn't meddle," Trump told reporters from Air Force One. "I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did." It is unclear who Trump meant when he said "they" — but the US intelligence agencies who examined the election meddling concluded in January that Putin ordered the interference to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told CNN that the leaders did not discuss Russian meddling. Asked whether or not he believed Putin's denial, Trump replied: "Every time he sees me he says, 'I didn't do that,' and I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. But he says, 'I didn't do that.' I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country." Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the CIA, NSA, and FBI's assessment of Russia's interference, calling it a "hoax" that the Democrats have used to justify losing the election. Putin similarly denied that Russia had interfered in the election when he met with Trump in July on the sidelines of the G20 summit. The Russian leader "asked for proof and evidence" that Moscow was behind the hacks and disinformation campaign, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was present at the meeting, said at the time. “President Trump has said that he has heard earlier declarations from Mr. Putin that Russian leadership and Russian government has not interfered in the elections," Tillerson told reporters. "And he accepts the things that Mr. Putin has said...not a single fact has been presented” that would prove allegations of Russian meddling, he added.

Trump: 'I really believe' Putin when he tells me Russia didn't interfere in the election - Business Insider

[Admin]

Congress voted for new sanctions on Russia because of election meddling with overwhelming majority but guess who actually wants to reduce sanctions on Russia....

President Donald Trump suggested softening America's stance toward Russia on Sunday. His comments Sunday came on the heels of remarks he made on Saturday, when he claimed he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin when Putin said Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. Trump said an amicable relationship with Russia would be an asset for the US, not a liability.

President Donald Trump suggested in Vietnam on Sunday that US sanctions against Russia are too tough and that he prefers being on more amicable terms with the Kremlin.

Trump suggests softening the US' stance towards Russia, easing sanctions - Business Insider

These sanctions have yet to be implemented as the Administration is curiously dragging its feet..

[Admin]

Hmm..

George Papadopoulos told senior Trump campaign policy adviser Stephen Miller that he had received "interesting messages" from Moscow — one day after learning that Russia had alleged "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The email could shed light on why Miller was reportedly interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe. Papadopoulos continued to pitch a Trump-Putin meeting to high-level campaign officials after learning of Russia's "dirt."

George Papadopoulos contacts Stephen Miller after Clinton 'dirt' promise - Business Insider