Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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Nothing to see here either, right?

Roger Stone, an adviser to Donald Trump during his successful presidential campaign, exchanged private messages with Guccifer 2.0, the person (or group) that hacked and leaked documents from the Democratic National Committee in 2016. The DNC hack occurred in July and was followed by multiple other breaches of Democratic party systems.

Stone and Guccifer 2.0 communicated via Twitter private messages in mid-August, according to The Washington Times. The messages were sent about two weeks after Stone published an article on Breitbart claiming Russia didn't hack the DNC -- Guccifer 2.0 did.

The US Intelligence Community found in October that top Russian officials orchestrated the DNC and other hacks throughout the 2016 campaign season, and in January those same officials said they had "high confidence" the Guccifer 2.0 account was a Russian front.

On August 14th, Stone sent Guccifer 2.0 a direct message on Twitter saying he was "delighted" to see the hacker's account reinstated, The Washington Times says. According to the report, Guccifer 2.0 responded as follows:

"wow. thank u for writing back, and thank u for an article about me!!! do u find anything interesting in the docs i posted?"

...

As The Hill points out, Stone publicly denied his connection to the Russian-backed hacks in October, after he seemed to predict the leak of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Stone tweeted the following message on August 21st: "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary." Podesta's emails were made public on October 9th.

Trump adviser spoke with DNC hacker during the campaign

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Closing in?

Why, after all, did Trump have a midweek meltdown that dashed pundits’ hopes that he would act in more sober fashion? The answer is as obvious as it is significant: On the evening of March 1, the day after his lauded speech, major new revelations emerged about the mysterious links between the Trump camp and the Kremlin.

The New York Times was first out of the gate that evening with a story reporting: “American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates.” 

The Times story would have been big news were it not almost immediately overshadowed by a Washington Post article with an even more alarming finding: “Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.”

Smaller but still significant revelations followed the next day. The Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump Jr. “was likely paid at least $50,000 for an appearance late last year before a French think tank whose founder and his wife are allies of the Russian government in efforts to end the war in Syria.” (What could Trump Jr. say that would possibly be worth $50,000?)

J.D. Gordon, Trump’s national security advisor during the campaign, admitted that, contrary to his earlier denials, he had directly intervened at Trump’s instigation to remove the language in the 2016 Republican platform which had called on the United States to arm Ukraine against Russian aggression.

And campaign advisor Carter Page admitted that, contrary to his earlier denials, he had met with the Russian ambassador at the Republican National Convention. It is hard to imagine why so many people would lie if they didn’t have something pretty significant to cover up. Out of all of these revelations it was the news about Sessions — which may open him to perjury charges — that was the most significant.

But why would Sessions’ recusal make Trump so unhinged? The president must have felt relatively confident that the “Kremlingate” probe would go nowhere as long as it was in the hands of Trump partisans such as Sessions, Rep. Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Richard Burr of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But with Sessions out of the picture, the way is now clear for the deputy attorney general — either the current placeholder, career Justice Department attorney Dana Boente, or Trump’s nominee to replace him, Rod Rosenstein, another career government lawyer — to appoint a special counsel because of the “extraordinary circumstances” surrounding this case.

Trump knows the feds are closing in on him - Business Insider

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Wikileaks as part of the Trump government, from Foreign Policy:

A presidential candidate, Donald Trump declared, “I love WikiLeaks!” And he had good reason to display affection to this website run by accused rapist Julian Assange. By releasing reams of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, WikiLeaks helped tilt the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.

As president, Trump hasn’t come out and said anything laudatory about WikiLeaks following its massive disclosure of CIA secrets on Tuesday — a treasure trove that some experts already believe may be more damaging than Edward Snowden’s revelations. But Trump hasn’t condemned WikiLeaks.

The recent entries on his Twitter feed — a pure reflection of his unbridled id — contain vicious attacks on, among other things, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the New York Times, and Barack Obama but not a word about WikiLeaks.

Did the president not notice that the intelligence community he commands has just suffered a devastating breach of security? Or did he simply not feel compelled to comment? Actually there is a third, even more discomfiting, possibility: Perhaps Trump is staying silent because he stands to benefit from WikiLeaks’ latest revelations.

WikiLeaks Has Joined the Trump Administration - Business Insider

And they have pretty good arguments:

• Releases have often been timed for maximum political damage (Podesta emails three days before Democratic convention, etc.)
  
• Wikileaks has never released Russian secrets
  
• And these new CIA releases by Wikileaks are very useful to Trump as they claim the CIA uses hacker codes, which rightwing news media already have jumped upon by arguing it was the CIA which hacked the Democrats, posing as Russians. No wonder Trump hasn't denounced Wikileaks...
  

The article is a must read.

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Retired Gen. Michael Flynn was paid $11,250 by Russia's top cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky, in 2015, according to new documents obtained and published by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday. Flynn was also paid $11,250 by the Russian charter cargo airline Volga-Dnepr Airlines, according to the documents. Flynn was paid for his work with both companies while he still had top-secret-level security clearance, a year after he was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, The Wall Street Journal's Shane Harris reported.

Flynn paid by Russian cybersecurity firm while he had top-secret clearance - Business Insider

But this is all just a coincidence, I mean, they had no ties to the Russians..

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Trump’s soft spot for Russia is an ongoing mystery, and the large number of condominium sales he made to people with ties to former Soviet republics may offer clues. “We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” says Debra Stotts, a sales agent who filled up the tower. The very top floors went unsold for years, but a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states, a Bloomberg investigation shows. The reporting involved more than two dozen interviews and a review of hundreds of public records filed in New York.

Behind Trump’s Russia Romance, There’s a Tower Full of Oligarchs - Bloomberg

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Mostly unnoticed in all the bruhaha over FBI chief Comey's hearing, but why on earth did he come out in public with Hillary's email investigation during the election campaign while saying nothing about the potentially much more serious investigation about the potential Russian-Trump collusion??!  

After all, he just admitted that the latter investigation has been going on since July 2016...   WTF!?

And then there is this:

You know, not for nothing, but back in my day (2016) there was a lot of consensus opinion-having that merely being the subject of an FBI probe was a disqualification for serving as the leader of the free world. Yep, if my dusty memories serve as any guide, then that was, at one point, a whole big thing that lots of people believed. And they especially believed it about then-presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. People such as presidential candidates! Here’s old Jeb Bush, giving “Fox & Friends” his considered opinion on the matter: “All I’m saying is that she’s under investigation by the FBI. Just pause and think about that. That’s not, that’s a pretty uncommon thing for a presidential candidate. And each and every week it just seems like there’s more information.” 

RUBIO: Obviously, we all understand the importance of this presidential race. I would just ask everybody this: Can this country afford to have a president under investigation by the FBI? Think of the trauma that would do to this country.
Oh, man. Marco Rubio must be pretty traumatized right now.

That last tweet jogs a memory loose. When the FBI announced, late in the campaign, that it was “reopening” the investigation into Clinton’s email server, then-RNC Chair Reince Priebus was very precise: “This alone should be disqualifying for anyone seeking the presidency, a job that is supposed to begin each morning with a top secret intelligence briefing.” As Trump’s White House chief of staff, he must be thinking back over all the intelligence briefings that have transpired, and feeling kind of queasy about them.

Let's Revisit All Those Times Trump Surrogates Said You Can't Elect Someone Under FBI Investigation | The Huffington Post

A whole lot more people, like Kelleyanne Conway and others (see article) are now exposed as hypocrites. Hardly surprising but still..

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Remember Paul Manafort (if you don't, you should read this). The erstwhile Trump campaign manager with a past of helping really nasty guys like the Russian backed Ukrainian leader Yannukovich, that suddenly disappeared

Here are some messages from the hacked phone of his daughter.

In a series of texts reviewed by Business Insider that appear to have been sent by Andrea to her sister, Jessica, in March 2015, Andrea said their father had "no moral or legal compass." "Don't fool yourself," Andrea wrote to her sister, according to the texts. "That money we have is blood money." "You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly," she continued, according to the reviewed texts. "As a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered." Andrea did not respond to a request for comment. Paul was a top adviser to Yanukovych from 2004 to 2014. 

In a series of texts to a friend in March 2015, Andrea appears to have said Ukraine was "late in paying" her father. "He is cash poor right now," the text said. "And now Ukraine is late in paying him." In a later exchange with a man who appeared to be Andrea's cousin — and one of her father's former employees — Collin Bond, Andrea appears to have said her mother and father couldn't go through a "public divorce" because Manafort had "too many skeletons" and "his  work and payment in Ukraine is legally questionable."

"He is a sick f---ing tyrant," Andrea appears to have said to Bond about her father. "And we keep showing up and dancing for him. ... We just keep showing up and eating the lobster. Nothing changes."

Ledgers uncovered by an anticorruption center in Kiev in 2016 suggested that the Party of Regions had designated $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments for Manafort between 2007 and 2012. Manafort's lawyer has denied that he ever collected the earmarked payments.

The New York Times reported on Monday that a Ukrainian member of parliament had accused Manafort  of trying to hide $750,000 in payments from the Party of Regions by funneling it to offshore accounts. Manafort's spokesman told The Times that the allegations were "baseless" and should be "summarily dismissed."

Manafort's daughter's hacked text messages lead to calls for probe - Business Insider

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Take Manafort, the former campaign head. Just hours after FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency was pursuing a criminal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia Monday, a Ukrainian lawmaker released documents allegedly showing that Manafort funneled money through offshore accounts in Belize and Kyrgyzstan to hide money that he received from a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party.

Then on Wednesday morning, the Associated Press broke a bombshell story revealing that as recently as 2009, Manafort had a $10 million annual contract with a Russian oligarch in Putin’s inner circle in which he agreed to promote the Kremlin’s interest in Washington. He had not previously disclosed the lobbying agreement, and it stands at odds with all his public claims that he never worked for Russian interests.

Flynn, meanwhile, has been at the center of two substantial revelations regarding his foreign ties in recent weeks. On March 7, Flynn registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent. He admitted to the public only after he’d been pushed out of office that he was a lobbyist for the Turkish government while he was a campaign operative — and almost until the very day he became national security adviser.

Then late last week, documents from a congressional oversight committeerevealed that Flynn had received tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of payments from Russian companies in 2015 that had never been previously disclosed.

The revelations have the White House going to absurd lengths to try to distance itself from the two men. White House spokesperson Sean Spicer has tried to downplay Flynn’s connection to Trumpworld by referring to him as a mere “volunteer” for the campaign, when in reality he was a top aide with huge influence on Trump’s worldview and platform. That work, in turn, positioned him to become Trump’s national security adviser after the election.

Spicer also said Manafort had a “very limited role” on the campaign “for a very limited time,” when in reality he was the manager of the entire Trump campaign operation for several months.

It’s not clear exactly how much money he received for his work in total or how exactly he delivered on his commitment, but the two had a business relationship at least as recently as 2009, and money transfers amounted to tens of millions of dollars, according to the AP’s sources and documents.
Manafort notified Deripaska that he was pushing policies "at the highest levels of the U.S. government — the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department."

Manafort didn’t file his lobbying efforts with the Justice Department, which is required by law under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. He admitted to the AP that he worked for Deripaska, but says it was only for “business and personal matters” on behalf of Deripaska’s investments.

Deripaska is closely tied to Putin. As the AP notes, US diplomatic cables have characterized Deripaska as "among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis." It’s safe to say the Kremlin almost certainly considered Manafort a substantial strategic political asset abroad.

This news is huge. It shows Manafort had a much more serious and overtly politicized relationship with Moscow than we ever knew before. That kind of relationship doesn’t necessarily just vanish after a few years go by. And it seems like the exact kind of relationship that investigators looking for possible coordination between the Trump team and Moscow will probe deeper into.

Just a couple days earlier, another set of documents came to light that could possibly strengthen the case that Manafort has taken money under the table from Russia-aligned politicians in Ukraine.

We’re learning a lot more about the Trump team’s financial ties to Russia - Vox

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The plot thickens..

Until now, there has been no public acknowledgement from US lawmakers or the intelligence community of concrete evidence tying Trump or his associates to collusion with the Kremlin. But in an interview on MSNBC Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said of the investigation: "There is more than circumstantial evidence now." Schiff declined to go into specifics when pressed by host Chuck Todd. "But I will say there is evidence that is not circumstantial," Schiff said, "and it is very much worthy of investigation." Schiff's comments echo a CNN report published Wednesday evening that cited unnamed US officials who told the network the FBI has information indicating people associated with Trump may have coordinated with suspected Russian operatives on the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. The information includes "human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings," CNN reported, citing its sources.

Adam Schiff on Trump-Russia: 'More ore than circumstantial evidence now' - Business Insider

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Just to remind people what kind of guy rules the Kremlin, this just in the last week..

A Moscow lawyer who represents the family of a now-deceased Russian whistleblower was severely injured Tuesday after falling several stories, just one day before he was scheduled to appear in court.

The lawyer, Nikolai Gorokhov, represents the family of Sergei Magnitsky, another Russian attorney who mysteriously died in custody in Moscow in 2009 after accusing law enforcement and tax officials of a massive fraud worth $230 million. Magnitsky’s death sparked international outrage and led to U.S. legislation in 2012 imposing sanctions on several Russian officials. 

The circumstances surrounding Gorokhov’s injury are not clear. He was in serious but not critical condition as of Thursday, according to investor Bill Browder, a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the man Magnitsky was working for when he was arrested.

Browder wrote that Gorokhov was “thrown from the top floor of his apartment building” and is currently hospitalized with severe head injuries in the intensive care unit at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital.

Lawyer For Russian Whistleblower's Family Falls From Building One Day Before Hearing | The Huffington Post

The former Russian MP Denis Voronenkov has been shot and killed in Kiev. Police said an unidentified gunman had shot Voronenkov dead at the entrance of an upmarket hotel in the Ukrainian capital. Voronenkov, 45, a former member of the Communist faction in the lower house of the Russian parliament, had moved to Ukraine last autumn and had been granted Ukrainian citizenship. He left Russia with his wife, the singer Maria Maksakova, who was also an MP.

He said he had to leave the country because the Russian security agencies were persecuting him, and he renounced his Russian citizenship. Voronenkov gave a number of interviews after his defection that were sharply critical of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Kremlin policy in Ukraine. However, the decision to grant him citizenship after he had taken part in the parliamentary vote to annex Crimea was strongly criticised in Ukraine.

Denis Voronenkov: former Russian MP who fled to Ukraine shot dead in Kiev | World news | The Guardian