Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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From bad to worse..

White House counsel Don McGahn has been a Trump loyalist since the early days of Trump’s presidential campaign. That didn’t stop him from threatening to quit last summer when President Donald Trump ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller. That’s the central takeaway from an explosive New York Times report on Thursday night detailing how Trump directed McGahn to fire Mueller last June, an order McGahn refused to carry out. Instead, the White House lawyer threatened to resign his own post.

Report: Don McGahn threatened to quit over Trump’s order to fire Mueller - Vox

President Donald Trump pressed senior aides last June to devise and carry out a campaign to discredit senior FBI officials after learning that those specific officials were likely to be witnesses against him as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to two people directly familiar with the matter.

Trump launched a campaign to discredit potential FBI witnesses - Business Insider

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Let's see..

First we have the director of the CIA arguing he saw no reduction in Russian's dirty games to tilt Western politics

CIA Director Mike Pompeo was interviewed by the BBC on Monday and answered questions about Russia's possible interference in the 2018 midterm elections.  Pompeo said he expects Russia to try to meddle in the midterm elections and that he hasn't seen any diminishing attempts on their part.

CIA Director Pompeo: Russia will try to meddle in the 2018 election - Business Insider

Then we have the Trump government not imposing sanctions (despite near universal bipartisan support from Congress)

The Trump administration indicated on Monday that it would not seek specific sanctions against Russian operatives for its meddling in the 2016 US election. President Donald Trump signed into law in August a bill designed to curb billions of dollars in Russian defense sales. The US State Department says the effects of that law are "beginning to become apparent," and thus new sanctions against the Kremlin "will not need to be imposed." Political observers viewed the move as a sign Trump may be unwilling to punish Russia's US-election meddling. He has publicly expressed doubt about the activity, instead viewing it as a domestic attempt to delegitimize his presidency.

Trump administration says it won't impose new sanctions against Russia - Business Insider

What is it with Trump and Putin??

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The Trump administration faced blowback on Capitol Hill Tuesday for declining to implement new sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. The State Department on Monday said it would not immediately levy penalties on entities doing business with Russia’s defense sector, saying that the law passed by Congress last summer has already prevented a windfall of cash from going to Russia. “I’d like to know why they’re not doing more,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of the sanctions. “There may be a good reason, but I don’t want to send anything that could be a signal of weakness.” Lawmakers last year passed legislation to punish Moscow with a veto-proof majority in both chambers of Congress, forcing President Trump to sign it. The law tied Trump’s hands on Russia, limiting his abilities to ease sanctions on the country — and he made clear his unhappiness with it. He called the law “seriously flawed” and said it infringed on his powers under the Constitution.

Trump officials take heat for declining Russia sanctions | TheHill

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President Donald Trump reportedly asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein whether he was "on my team" during a meeting in December. The interaction is the third known instance during which Trump asked a top law-enforcement official where their loyalties lie. Rosenstein is increasingly emerging as a crucial witness in the Russia investigation, and experts said the reported interaction is an important new piece of evidence for special counsel Robert Mueller as he examines whether Trump sought to obstruct justice in the Russia probe.

Trump asked Rosenstein if he was 'on my team' - Business Insider

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This is so predictable.. The Fox News President in action..

President Trump took to Twitter to tout a Fox News report that Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) attempted to make contact with the author of the controversial dossier linking Trump to Russia. “Wow! -Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch,” Trump tweeted. “Warner did not want a ‘paper trail’ on a ‘private’ meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame. All tied into Crooked Hillary.” Fox News reported Thursday that Warner had "extensive contact" last year with lobbyist Adam Waldman, whose firm reportedly also has ties to Hillary Clinton. Warner was seeking to establish contact with the author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Warner exchanged text messages with Waldman, who worked as a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch, about making contact with Steele, according to the Fox News report. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, dismissed the report in a tweet Thursday, noting Warner “fully disclosed” the contacts to the committee and saying they had “zero impact” on the committee’s investigation.

Trump touts report Warner attempted to talk to dossier author | TheHill

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Amazing stuff..

Trump's tweets were his latest attack on Obama for what he says was a failure to adequately address concerns about Russian meddling, despite efforts by the U.S. intelligence community to investigate the plot in the months prior to the election. Trump raised the point in a tweet on Monday, questioning why Obama didn't do more to address the Russian efforts. 

Trump hit Obama on Russia one more time later on Tuesday, tweeting, “I have been much tougher on Russia than Obama, just look at the facts. Total Fake News!”

Trump blames Obama over Russia election meddling | TheHill

So Trump is arguing:

• Obama didn't do anything to address the Russian meddling
  
• He has been much tougher on Russia
  

Of course this stuff is total nonsense:

• Obama told Putin off to his face, Trump argued that he believed Putin when he argued it wasn't the Russians
  
• Trump has not even acknowledged the problem of Russian meddling until that line became totally indefensible with the Mueller indightments
  
• Even now Trump has done nothing to address the Russian meddling
  
• He hasn't even implemented the sanctions on Russia which had overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. Obama did implement sanctions.
  

When the CIA determined in late 2016 that Russia put its thumb on the scale during the election in a specific effort to aid the Trump campaign, his transition team released the following statement: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'"

Mueller indictment challenges core a belief about Trump's 2016 victory - BI

And even today that hasn't really changed all that much:

Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley claimed during an appearance on Fox News on Saturday that Democratic politicians and the mainstream press have done more to interfere in the electoral system than Russia has. Responding to a question about the indictment handed down by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday — which accused 13 Russians and three Russian companies of a coordinated social media campaign to bolster Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election — Gidley brushed aside the allegations against Russia, and quickly pivoted to other scapegoats. “What the Russians were trying to do, as outlined by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, was create chaos in the American election system,” Gidley said. “And I will just say this: There are two groups that have created chaos more than the Russians, and that’s the Democrats and the mainstream media, who continued to push this lie on the American people for more than a year — and quite frankly Americans should be outraged by that.”

Trump spokesperson defends Russia, blames election interference on the mainstream media – ThinkProgress

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The famous Trump tower meeting with Don Jr., Kushner and Manafort with Russians about dirt on Hillary, the complete story so far:

Still, there are two more Goldstone emails sent after the meeting that also fit awkwardly with the “such a nothing” scenario. In the first, he says a story on Russia hacking the DNC was “eerily weird” considering what they had just discussed at Trump Tower. In the second, he says that at the meeting, he said a contact of his working at a Russian social media site could set up a page for Trump and “Paul had said he would welcome it.”

These point to two possible topics of further discussion at the meeting — Russian hacking and Russian social media help for Trump — that could have implications with regards to collusion.
Finally, President Trump’s personal involvement in dictating his son’s misleading story that the meeting was about Russian adoptions and not Russian government dirt on Clinton is eyebrow-raising. Here’s how the New York Times describes what happened aboard Air Force One last July:

The president supervised the writing of the statement, according to three people familiar with the episode, with input from other White House aides. A fierce debate erupted over how much information the news release should include. Mr. Trump was insistent about including language that the meeting was about Russian adoptions, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion.

And here’s how Michael Wolff recounted the Air Force One deliberations in his book Fire and Fury:

An aggrieved, unyielding, and threatening president dominated the discussion, pushing into line his daughter and her husband, [Hope] Hicks, and [Josh] Raffel. [Marc] Kasowitz — the lawyer whose specific job was to keep Trump at arm’s length from Russian-related matters — was kept on hold on the phone for an hour and then not put through. The president insisted that the meeting in Trump Tower was purely and simply about Russian adoption policy. That’s what was discussed, period. Period.

Trump’s preferred story was soon debunked, but the question remains why he was so insistent on putting it out in the first place, especially because he wasn’t at the meeting and claims to know little about it. Was he just trying to cover himself politically? Or is there another reason?

Trump Russia news: Mueller investigation focused on Trump Tower meeting - Vox

Click the link for the complete story

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A 2008 quote from President Donald Trump's eldest son about his family's assets resurfaced on Sunday in a New York Times op-ed article. "In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump Jr. said at a New York real-estate conference that year. "Say, in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo, and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." Trump Jr.'s comment has taken on new meaning amid the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 US election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.

Donald Trump Jr. in 2008 said a lot of Trump assets were in Russia - Business Insider

Special counsel Robert Mueller is probing what, and how much, President Donald Trump knew about the Russian government-backed effort to hack the Democratic National Committee, and the subsequent release of stolen emails at the height of the 2016 campaign. Mueller is also looking into Trump's relationship with Roger Stone, a longtime Republican strategist who was in touch with WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0 during the election. The revelations indicate Mueller is zeroing in on what appears to be a growing timeline of Trump associates' communications with Russia-linked actors during the final months of the campaign.

Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was in touch with WikiLeaks several times between September 2016 and July 2017, The Atlantic reported last year. WikiLeaks first contacted Trump Jr. via a private, direct message on Twitter on September 20, 2016 to tell him about a PAC-run anti-Trump website, called putintrump.org, and asked him if he had "any comments" on who was behind it. WikiLeaks also told Trump Jr. that it had "guessed the password" to the anti-Trump website, and told him it was "putintrump." Trump Jr. replied, "Off the record I don't know who that is, but I'll ask around. Thanks." On the day he received that message, Trump Jr. emailed high-ranking campaign officials, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Jared Kushner, informing them that WikiLeaks had contacted him.

Timeline emerges as Mueller probes Trump, WikiLeaks, Roger Stone - Business Insider

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And yet another possible channel..

The National Rifle Association is fielding a growing number of questions about its ties to Alexander Torshin, a prominent Kremlin-allied Russian banker, politician, and gun-rights activist. Torshin, who has been described as "President Putin's emissary" in the US, said in 2015 that he knew President Donald Trump through the NRA. The FBI is currently investigating whether Torshin illegally funneled money through the NRA to help sway the 2016 US election in Trump's favor. He was also touted as the main point of contact from Russia's side when his longtime assistant and a Republican strategist tried to set up a backdoor meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during an NRA convention at the height of the election.

NRA draws scrutiny over association with Putin ally Alexander Torshin - Business Insider

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However, Nunberg also told CNN’s Jake Tapper in yet another interview that Trump “talked about” the infamous Trump Tower meeting his son Don Jr. had with a Russian lawyer and other Russia-tied individuals in June 2016 the week before. Participants have claimed that Trump knew nothing about the meeting, but Nunberg scoffed at that:

TAPPER: President Trump says he knew nothing about the meeting, do you think that that’s true?
NUNBERG: No.
TAPPER: You don’t think that’s true?
NUNBERG: No! It doesn’t — and Jake, I’ve watched your news reports, you know it’s not true. He talked about it a week before. And I don’t know why he did this. All he had to say was, “Yeah, we met with the Russians. The Russians offered us something. And we thought they had something.” And that was it. I don’t know why he went around trying to hide this.

It is unclear exactly how solid Nunberg’s information is here, since, again, he had been fired several months earlier..

Sam Nunberg interview: former Trump aide dares Robert Mueller to arrest him live on television - Vox