Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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During a hearing the Senate Intelligence Committee held on election security Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio described a "hypothetical" scenario that he says could call into question the legitimacy of a new president and potentially trigger a constitutional crisis.

"Let's assume for a moment that the year is 2020 or 2024, and there's a foreign leader who's tired of being lectured about democracy in their own country," Rubio said, "and they decide they want to create chaos in the United States and create doubts about our legitimacy, so he or she orders an operation against our presidential election."

The Florida Republican continued: "Now, one of the things they've perfected over the years is the ability to inject misinformation into the bloodstream of the internet. And they watch as this misinformation spreads like a virus until a significant number of people believe it." "They've also perfected strategic leaking of altered or factual information, which the mainstream media picks up on, and it fits perfectly into their red versus blue dynamic that plays out on cable news, making them unwitting agents."

Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who testified at the hearing with current DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, suggested that Rubio's scenario was not just a hypothetical, but a reality, mirroring what took place in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.

Marco Rubio describes how a foreign power could undermine US election - Business Insider

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And wasn't Roger Stone in contact with this guy?

Guccifer 2.0, the supposed lone hacker of Democratic National Committee emails, just so happens to be an agent of Russian intelligence, the Daily Beast reports. The Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman and Kevin Poulsen reconfirmed what US intelligence had conjectured: that Guccifer 2.0 was not the lone Romanian hacker he claimed to be, and was instead a front for the Russian military intelligence agency known as GRU. But Ackerman and Poulsen add to this narrative: Guccifer 2.0 is a specific (but still unnamed) Russian military intelligence officer. It turns out the hacker who caused chaos in the United States elections made a small but critical error that allowed US investigators to trace his identity.

It raises more questions about the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, given the well-documented chats between Guccifer 2.0 and Trump adviser and surrogate Roger Stone.

DNC hacker Guccifer 2.0 is reportedly a member of Russian military intelligence - Vox

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This really isn't a surprise..

A new report from a Democrat-aligned group lays out the ways in which the House Intelligence Committee failed to conduct a thorough investigation into the President Donald Trump campaign's contacts with Russia. The committee's Republican majority voted to release their final report on Thursday, which officially closed their investigation. But the Moscow Project's report claims that in 81% of the campaign's known contacts with Russia, the committee did not get a complete picture of the interactions from the Trump associates they interviewed.

The House Intel Committee didn't complete its Russia investigation - Business Insider

If you don't subpoena critical witnesses or allow them to keep mum when you interview them, don't follow up leads, etc. etc. you are merely going through the motions and are whitewashing. We don't even mentioning the distractions and stunts that the Committee's chairman pulled off..

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For the very first time, the President actually does something (even while he was congratulating Putin with his election victory against pretty adamant instructions in his security brief)..

Donald Trump is removing Russian diplomats from their roles at the US embassy, UN nation, and Seattle consulate. The measures are in retaliation over the attempted assassination of ex-spy Sergei Skripal on March 4. Fourteen EU member states have also announced plans to expel diplomats from their countries.

US expels 60 Russian diplomats over Skripal poisoning - Business Insider

[Admin]

They're at it again..

A huge story about Russian hacking got lost amid all the Trump administration staffing drama and Stormy Daniels news over the past week: On March 15, the US government released a report describing a massive Russian hacking campaign to infiltrate America’s “critical infrastructure” — things like power plants, nuclear generators, and water facilities.

The joint report from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security claims that Russian hackers gained access to computers across the targeted industries and collected sensitive data including passwords, logins, and information about energy generation. While the report doesn’t specify any identifiable sabotage, the intrusion could set up future attacks that do more than just record observations..

Russia’s hacking of the US power grid, explained - Vox

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A top ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush warned that “people are going to the slammer” in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference. Richard Painter said on CNN’s “OutFront” on Thursday that he has no doubt that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential race. He pointed to a new court filing by Mueller alleging that former Trump campaign adviser Richard Gates was knowingly in contact with a Russian intelligence agent during the campaign. Painter called the revelations of Russian contacts that have been made so far “probably only the beginning” of evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Ex-Bush ethics lawyer: People are ‘going to the slammer’ over Mueller probe | TheHill

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The court filing said van der Zwaan not only spoke with both Gates and the unnamed person about Skadden's report on a Ukrainian politician's controversial trial, but also destroyed evidence Mueller's office was seeking, including the September 2016 email... 

Last month's filing from Mueller's office said it was "pertinent to the investigation" that "Gates and Person A were directly communicating in September and October 2016." It added that federal investigators had assessed that Person A is directly tied to Russian intelligence "and had such ties in 2016." The filing continued: "During his first interview with the Special Counsel's Office, van der Zwaan admitted that he knew of that connection, stating that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with the GRU," Russia's military intelligence unit.

Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan sentenced to jail in Mueller probe - Business Insider

Soo, we have:

• Contact between Gates (then member of Trump's campaign team) and a Russian intelligence officer in 2016.
  
• A Dutch lawyer of Gates (and Manafort) lying about that, and destroying evidence of it.
  
• They knew the person was a Russian intelligence officer.
  

[Admin]

Tough on Russia, right? 

The State Department says that a number of Russian diplomats expelled from a Russian consulate in Washington state could be replaced by other Russian officials, noting that the same is true for a number of American officials recently expelled from a consulate in St. Petersberg. In a statement to CNN, the State Department said it was common practice for a country to replace expelled officials if the total number of allowed personnel under a bilateral agreement isn't reduced.

State Department: Expelled diplomats can be replaced | TheHill

[Admin]

Hardly a surprise, but still..

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort authorised a secret media operation on behalf of Ukraine’s former president featuring “black ops”, “placed” articles in the Wall Street Journal and US websites and anonymous briefings against Hillary Clinton.

The project was designed to boost the reputation of Ukraine’s then leader, Viktor Yanukovych. It was part of a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort carried out by Manafort on behalf of Yanukovych’s embattled government, emails and documents reveal.
The strategies included:
• Proposing to rewrite Wikipedia entries to smear a key opponent of the then Ukrainian president.
• Setting up a fake thinktank in Vienna to disseminate viewpoints supporting Yanukovych.
• A social media blitz “aimed at targeted audiences in Europe and the US”.
• Briefing journalists from the rightwing website Breitbart to attack Clinton when she was US secretary of state.

Manafort’s Ukraine strategy anticipated later efforts by the Kremlin and its troll factory to use Twitter and Facebook to discredit Clinton and to help Trump win the 2016 US election. The material seen by the Guardian dates from 2011 to 2013.

Ex-Trump aide Paul Manafort approved 'black ops' to help Ukraine president | US news | The Guardian

Yanukovych, for the uninitiated, was (a highly corrupt) Moscow's guy who later fled to Moscow after a people's uprising.

[Admin]

Trump riling against Bob Mueller for doing his job. Mueller came across evidence for criminal activity by Trump's personal lawyer (and "fixer") Michael Cohen. As he is obliged to do, he simply referred this to another part of the Justice system. And the fact that other parts of the system undertook this action (by multiple appointees of Trump himself and a judge) suggest the evidence was strong...

Consider the raid on the hotel room and offices of Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. These raids arose out of a referral from the office of the special counsel (that is, Robert Mueller) but were:

• Sought by the office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York;
  
• Approved by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein;
  
• And authorized by a magistrate judge.
  

Rosenstein is Trump's nominee, thought you might forget that given the president's near-constant raging against him. The interim US Attorney for the SDNY, Geoffrey Berman, is also a Trump appointee, though he is recused from this case— again, an example of the bureaucracy behaving as it is supposed to.

This isn't a case of Mueller behaving like Inspector Javert and looking through anybody's files he wants. It's a case of him setting off an arms-length process which led to a diverse group of officials deciding the correct course of action was a highly unusual raid not just on any lawyer, but the president's lawyer. Criminal defense attorney Ken White has a useful post laying out how high the hurdles must have been to get such raids approved, and why the president should be very concerned that they were met.

Trump should be scared about legal system working - Business Insider