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| # Russia, investigations, Wikileaks, Assange | |
| Russia's plan: Foundations of Geopolitics | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thenewcoldwar/comments/5j3lmb/foundations_of_geopolitics_europe/ | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/5hlgck/the_foundations_of_geopolitics_the_geopolitical/ | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/5b2p5g/why_vladimir_putins_russia_is_backing_trump/d9lnah7/ | |
| How The Foundations of Geopolitics became Russia's plan | |
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/27/geopolitics-russia-mackinder-eurasia-heartland-dugin-ukraine-eurasianism-manifest-destiny-putin/ | |
| * Mackinder wrote: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World." | |
| * Russia's push into Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, and its recent campaign in Syria, as well as its efforts to consolidate a sphere of influence in the inner Eurasian heartland of the former USSR called the Eurasian Union, all are eerily foretold in geopolitical theory. Mackinder held that geography, not economics, is the fundamental determinant of world power and Russia, simply by virtue of its physical location, inherits a primary global role. Under Putin, the slightly kooky tenets of Mackinder's theory have made inroads into the establishment, mostly because of one man, Alexander Dugin, a right wing intellectual and bohemian who emerged from the Perestroika era in the the 1980s as one of Russia's chief nationalists. | |
| * Mackinder's arguments were useful to Dugin and other hardliners who contended that conflict with the West was a permanent condition for Russia, though they had trouble explaining why. | |
| * Dugin, who in 1997 published The Foundations of Geopolitics | |
| * Dugin thus set out self-consciously to write a how-to manual for conquest and political rule in the manner of Niccolò Machiavelli. | |
| * Until 1991 he had been one of the hardliners' chief propagandists, writing a combination of conspiracy theories and nationalist demagoguery for The Day, a newspaper funded by the defense ministry. | |
| * The Foundations of Geopolitics sold out in four editions, and continues to be assigned as a textbook at the General Staff Academy and other military universities in Russia. "There has probably not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period which has exerted a comparable influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites," | |
| * Dugin's main argument in Foundations came straight from Haushofer's pages: the need to thwart the conspiracy of "Atlanticism" led by the United States and NATO and aimed at containing Russia within successive geographic rings of newly independent states. The plan was simple: first put the Soviet Union back together, counseled Dugin, and then use clever alliance diplomacy focused on partnerships with Japan, Iran, and Germany to eject the United States and its Atlanticist minions from the continent. | |
| * "the main mistake of Hitler was that he tried to make Europe German. Instead, he should have tried to make it European." Russia, it followed, would not be making a Russian Empire, but a Eurasian one. "The Eurasian Empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, the strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us," wrote Dugin. | |
| * It preached that the country's humiliation was the result of foreign conspiracies. The dust jacket was emblazoned with a swastika-like runic symbol known in occult circles as the "star of chaos," and the book itself favorably profiled several Nazis and extreme rightists. If the parallels with the Third Reich were not already plentiful enough, it called for the formation of a geopolitical "axis" which would include Germany and Japan. | |
| * in Dugin's view that the USSR must be put back together; Georgia must be dismembered and Ukraine annexed: "Ukraine, as an independent state with certain territorial ambitions, represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia." Azerbaijan, though, could be given away to Iran in exchange for a "Moscow–Tehran axis." Finland could be added to the Russian province of Murmansk, while Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece would join Russia as an Orthodox "Third Rome" or Russian South. | |
| 1990s Manifesto outlining Russia's plans is starting to come true | |
| https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/1990s-manifesto-outlining-russias-plans-is-starting-to-come-true/news-story/343a27c71077b87668f1aa783d03032c | |
| Russia's Plan for World Domination – and America's Unwitting Cooperation With It | |
| https://www.leecoweb.com/russian_plan/ | |
| * The Russian government is actively pursuing a strategy of breaking up western alliances such as NATO and the EU, following a blueprint laid out in a 1997 book by Aleksandr Dugin. So far, their efforts have proved largely successful, in part because Americans are acting as Russia's unwitting pawns. | |
| * The spread of western ideals such as free speech, free and open elections, and multiculturalism into eastern Europe are perceived as a threat to Russian culture and Russian influence. | |
| * Objectives include: | |
| * Separate the United Kingdom from Europe. | |
| * Russian annexation of Ukraine. | |
| * A strategic alliance between Russia and Iran. | |
| * Create "geopolitical shocks" within Turkey. | |
| * Russian annexation of Tibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria. | |
| * Finland should be absorbed into Russia. | |
| * Encourage Germany and France to cooperate with each other and isolate themselves from Europe. | |
| * Dismember the nation of Georgia. | |
| * Geopolitical defeat of the United States | |
| * In terms of tactics, Foundations of Geopolitics recommends subversion of America and its alliances by encouraging and supporting separatism, isolationism, nationalism, and the creation of factions. It also calls for supporting radical separatist movements in western countries, including support for organizations that espouse extremist, racist, and sectarian ideals. | |
| Track Russia's online influence | |
| http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_Russia | |
| Russia's ongoing hacking activity | |
| http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/russian-apt-groups-continue-stealthy-operations/ | |
| Yuri Bezmenov (Soviet defector, KGB propaganda expert): Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of Western Society | |
| https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g | |
| Nigel Farage is 'person of interest' in FBI investigation into Trump and Russia | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/01/nigel-farage-is-person-of-interest-in-fbi-investigation-into-trump-and-russia | |
| * FBI interested in former Ukip leader's ties with people connected to US president and WikiLeaks' Julian Assange | |
| * the former Ukip leader had raised the interest of FBI investigators because of his relationships with individuals connected to both the Trump campaign and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whom Farage visited in March. [Farage passed Assange a thumb drive according to Simpson] | |
| * If you triangulate Russia, WikiLeaks, Assange and Trump associates the person who comes up with the most hits is Nigel Farage. He's right in the middle of these relationships. He turns up over and over again. | |
| * The former Ukip leader has voiced his support for the Russian president, calling Vladimir Putin the leader he most admired | |
| * the examination of Farage's activities was considered especially delicate given his role as an MEP | |
| * Farage's ties to Stone are also under scrutiny, it is understood. Stone has frequently publicised his relationship with Assange and described him on Twitter as "my hero". | |
| * After Trump's victory, Farage was one of the first foreign politicians to meet and celebrate with the Republican president-elect | |
| * Trump suggested in a tweet Farage should become the UK's ambassador to the US. | |
| * Asked what he's doing now: "Changing public opinion. That's what I have been doing for 20 years. Using television, media. Shifting public opinion. That's what I am good at." | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/23/when-nigel-farage-met-julian-assange | |
| * No press or cameras around, that is, until BuzzFeed turned up just in time to catch Farage leaving, 40 minutes later. Asked by BuzzFeed News if he’d been visiting Julian Assange, the former Ukip leader said he could not remember what he had been doing in the building. | |
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/nigel-farages-name-keeps-coming-up-in-the-robert-mueller-probe | |
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/11/revealed-nigel-farage-met-donald-trump-asked-back-no-deal-brexit/ | |
| * The US president was urged to support walking away from the table if a bad agreement is on offer - just like he had done during North Korea talks in Vietnam. | |
| Russian linked leave.eu figures targeting elections worldwide | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1842 | |
| * the Electoral Commission (EC), the independent body which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK, released a statement confirming they had "begun an investigation into Leave.EU's EU Referendum spending return." This inquiry relates to Leave.EU employing the services of Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm employed by the Trump campaign and subsequently linked to Russia election interference in the UK and US | |
| Brexit, Trump, Russia: The Whole Story | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1936 | |
| Russia and the far-right have aligned internationally, working in a complex network to undermine democracy and the stability of western powers. Likely taking an active role in terror attacks aimed at the democracies being targeted. | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1633 | |
| Schwarzenegger's Kremlin connections: Torshin, Kislyak, Rohrabacher, etc. | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaLago/comments/95wkih/when_arnold_schwarzenegger_met_alexander_torshin/ | |
| ## Russia, Britain, Brexit | |
| Russia meddling in brexit | |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/russian-interference-brexit-highly-probable-referendum-hacking-putin-a7472706.html | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/2048 | |
| Founder of pro-Brexit think-tank has link with Russian intelligence, says MP | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/01/christopher-chandler-founder-of-pro-brexit-thinktank-has-link-with-russian-intelligence-mp-says | |
| Arron Banks 'met Russian officials multiple times before Brexit vote' | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/09/arron-banks-russia-brexit-meeting | |
| * Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled Nigel Farage's campaign to quit the EU, had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, documents seen by the Observer suggest. | |
| * Multiple meetings between the leaders of Leave.EU and high-ranking Russian officials, from November 2015 to 2017. | |
| * Two meetings in the week Leave.EU launched its official campaign. | |
| * An introduction to a Russian businessman, by the Russian ambassador, the day after Leave.EU launched its campaign, who reportedly offered Banks a multibillion dollar opportunity to buy Russian goldmines. | |
| * A trip to Moscow in February 2016 to meet key partners and financiers behind a gold project, including a Russian bank. | |
| * Continued extensive contact in the run-up to the US election when Banks, his business partner and Leave.EU spokesman Andy Wigmore, and Nigel Farage campaigned in the US to support Donald Trump's candidacy. | |
| Russian trolls targeting American election also targeted Brexit | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1934 | |
| Why Putin Is Meddling in Britain's Brexit Vote | |
| http://www.thedailybeast.com/why-putin-is-meddling-in-britains-brexit-vote | |
| * Relations between London and Moscow are already at their lowest ebb since the Cold War, exacerbated by the findings of an official inquiry earlier this year that émigré Alexander Litvinenko had likely been assassinated with radioactive poison on the orders of the Kremlin. | |
| Suspecting Russian Meddling in ‘Brexit' Vote, Lawmaker Seeks Inquiry | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/world/europe/russia-brexit-arron-banks.html | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/04/brexit-ministers-spy-russia-uk-brexit | |
| * what the Observer has learned – is that both Mifsud and Papadopoulos also had links into the heart of the British government. | |
| * Nalobin was intimately connected to the FSB, and that the Conservative Friends of Russia was a Moscow influence operation. | |
| Russia used Twitter to influence Brexit | |
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/brexit-russia-influence-twitter-bots-internet-research-agency | |
| The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy | |
| * This article is the subject of legal complaints on behalf of Cambridge Analytica LLC and SCL Elections Limited. | |
| * "It was back when we were still just a psychological warfare firm." [...] "That's what it is. Psyops. Psychological operations – the same methods the military use to effect mass sentiment change. It's what they mean by winning ‘hearts and minds'. We were just doing it to win elections in the kind of developing countries that don't have many rules." | |
| * To anyone concerned about surveillance, Palantir is practically now a trigger word. The data-mining firm has contracts with governments all over the world – including GCHQ and the NSA. It's owned by Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and major investor in Facebook, who became Silicon Valley's first vocal supporter of Trump. | |
| * Mercer is a brilliant computer scientist, a pioneer in early artificial intelligence, and the co-owner of one of the most successful hedge funds on the planet (with a gravity-defying 71.8% annual return). And, he is also, I discovered, good friends with Nigel Farage. Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU's communications director, told me that it was Mercer who had directed his company, Cambridge Analytica, to "help" the Leave campaign. | |
| * A source emailed me to say he had found that AggregateIQ's address and telephone number corresponded to a company listed on Cambridge Analytica's website as its overseas office: "SCL Canada". A day later, that online reference vanished. [...] If AggregateIQ is involved then Cambridge Analytica is involved. And if Cambridge Analytica is involved, then Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon are involved. | |
| * SCL/Cambridge Analytica was not some startup created by a couple of guys with a Mac PowerBook. It's effectively part of the British defence establishment. And, now, too, the American defence establishment. An ex-commanding officer of the US Marine Corps operations centre, Chris Naler, has recently joined Iota Global, a partner of the SCL group. This is not just a story about social psychology and data analytics. It has to be understood in terms of a military contractor using military strategies on a civilian population. | |
| * SCL/Cambridge Analytica contracted a scientist at [Cambridge] university, Dr Aleksandr Kogan, to harvest new Facebook data. And he did so by paying people to take a personality quiz which also allowed not just their own Facebook profiles to be harvested, but also those of their friends – a process then allowed by the social network. | |
| * The company also (perfectly legally) bought consumer datasets – on everything from magazine subscriptions to airline travel – and uniquely it appended these with the psych data to voter files. It matched all this information to people's addresses, their phone numbers and often their email addresses. "The goal is to capture every single aspect of every voter's information environment," said David. "And the personality data enabled Cambridge Analytica to craft individual messages." | |
| * Its key objective, according to a memo the Observer has seen, was "voter disengagement" and "to persuade Democrat voters to stay at home" | |
| * I don't think Mercer even cares if it ever makes any money. It's the product of a billionaire spending huge amounts of money to build his own experimental science lab, to test what works, to find tiny slivers of influence that can tip an election. Robert Mercer did not invest in this firm until it ran a bunch of pilots – controlled trials. This is one of the smartest computer scientists in the world. He is not going to splash $15m on bullshit. | |
| * "The capacity for this science to be used to manipulate emotions is very well established. This is military-funded technology that has been harnessed by a global plutocracy and is being used to sway elections in ways that people can't even see, don't even realise is happening to them," she says. "It's about exploiting existing phenomenon like nationalism and then using it to manipulate people at the margins. | |
| * Documents seen by the Observer show that this was a proposal to capture citizens' browsing history en masse, recording phone conversations and applying natural language processing to the recorded voice data to construct a national police database, complete with scores for each citizen on their propensity to commit crime. "The plan put to the minister was Minority Report. It was pre-crime. And the fact that Cambridge Analytica is now working inside the Pentagon is, I think, absolutely terrifying," | |
| * The company that helped Trump achieve power in the first place has now been awarded contracts in the Pentagon and the US state department. Its former vice-president Steve Bannon now sits in the White House. It is also reported to be in discussions for "military and homeland security work". In the US, the government is bound by strict laws about what data it can collect on individuals. But, for private companies anything goes. Is it unreasonable to see in this the possible beginnings of an authoritarian surveillance state? | |
| * Documents detail Cambridge Analytica is involved with many other right-leaning billionaires, including Rupert Murdoch. One memo references Cambridge Analytica trying to place an article with a journalist in Murdoch's Wall Street Journal | |
| * at least one senior Palantir employee consulted with Cambridge Analytica in relation to the Trinidad project and later political work in the US. But at the time, I'm told, Palantir decided it was too much of a reputational risk for a more formal arrangement. Palantir is a company that is trusted to handle vast datasets on UK and US citizens for GCHQ and the NSA, as well as many other countries. Now though, they are both owned by ideologically aligned billionaires: Robert Mercer and Peter Thiel. The Trump campaign has said that Thiel helped it with data. A campaign that was led by Steve Bannon, who was then at Cambridge Analytica. | |
| * Gettleson and Borwick, both previously consultants for SCL and Cambridge Analytica, were both core members of the Vote Leave team. | |
| * a motivated US billionaire – Mercer and his chief ideologue, Bannon – helped to bring about the biggest constitutional change to Britain in a century. | |
| * Britain had always been key to Bannon's plans, another ex-Cambridge Analytica employee told me on condition of anonymity. It was a crucial part of his strategy for changing the entire world order. | |
| * Because it's what Russia wants, and Bannon has been revealed as a Kremlin asset. | |
| * A map shown to the Observer showing the many places in the world where SCL and Cambridge Analytica have worked includes Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Iran and Moldova. Multiple Cambridge Analytica sources have revealed other links to Russia, including trips to the country, meetings with executives from Russian state-owned companies, and references by SCL employees to working for Russian entities. | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/24/aggregateiq-data-firm-link-raises-leave-group-questions | |
| * Cambridge Analytica has undisclosed links to the Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ that played a pivotal role in the official Vote Leave campaign in 2016 | |
| * Wylie was also a central figure in setting up AIQ, which accounted for 40% of Vote Leave's campaign budget. | |
| * Although AIQ and Cambridge Analytica appeared separate, the two were bound by a skein of threads so intimate that some Cambridge Analytica staff referred to the Canadian data firm as a "department" within the company. Wylie said that the two businesses shared the same underlying technology. | |
| * "We mostly do psychological warfare work for Nato," he said. "But a lot of projects involve a socio-political element." | |
| * That's how AIQ got started: originally to service SCL and Cambridge Analytica projects | |
| Peter Thiel and Palantir Are at the Heart of the Iran Nuclear Deal | |
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-08/peter-thiel-in-eye-of-iran-storm-as-deadline-looms-for-trump | |
| AggregateIQ created Cambridge Analytica's election software | |
| https://gizmodo.com/aggregateiq-created-cambridge-analyticas-election-softw-1824026565 | |
| ## Russia, Europe, international | |
| Russia has been meddling in foreign elections for decades | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/01/05/russia-has-been-meddling-in-foreign-elections-for-decades-has-it-made-a-difference/ | |
| * 27 Russian electoral interventions since 1991 | |
| Accused Russian spy was in the room for Trudeau talks with Ukrainian PM | |
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-translator-russian-spy-canada-1.4461346 | |
| Russia interfering in Catalan referendum, amplifying divisive messages; Assange helping | |
| https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-catalonia-referendum-fake-news-misinformation/ | |
| * The efforts — aimed at discrediting Spanish political and legal authorities that are trying to clamp down on the Catalan government's attempt to hold the outlawed referendum — follows similar digital misinformation campaigns during Europe's season of elections in 2017. These online activities are intended to cast doubt over Europe's democratic processes at a time of heightened tensions between the EU and Russia, experts warn. | |
| * These Russian news agencies, as well as Russian users on Twitter, also repeatedly promoted the views of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, who has taken to social media to call for Spanish authorities to respect the upcoming vote in Catalonia. | |
| Russian bots have gone global, spreading to 30 countries | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/russian-bots-have-gone-global-spreading-30-countries-710339 | |
| * over the last 12 months, disinformation tactics employed by these countries had a role in influencing elections in the United States and at least 17 other countries. | |
| * For the third straight year, China was named by the report as the world's worst abuser of internet freedom | |
| Russian botnet promoting far-right (AfD) propaganda | |
| https://medium.com/dfrlab/electionwatch-final-hours-fake-news-hype-in-germany-cc9b8157cfb8 | |
| Marine Le Pen's financial links and open investigations reveal the scale of Russia's EU operations. | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1631 | |
| Russia likely behind climategate | |
| https://www.digitalicons.org/issue04/tracking-the-portrayal-of-russian-hackers-during-cyber-conflict-incidents/ | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/climategate-wikileaks-russia-trump-hacking/ | |
| * Wikileaks published the emails, Trump promoted the disinformation on Fox. | |
| * Podesta was a leading advocate of climate action, later became target of 2016 DNC hack. | |
| * Assange claimed the university was suppressing information, and he was a key part of the climategate influence operation. | |
| Examples of Russian disinformation | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ActiveMeasures/comments/68ctku/russias_disinformation_campaign/ | |
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/holgerroonemaa/russia-propaganda-baltics-baltnews | |
| https://www.salon.com/2019/01/31/russians-reportedly-altered-mueller-documents-and-leaked-them-online-to-discredit-probe/ | |
| https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/alleged-russian-troll-farm-attorneys-could-be-sanctioned-over-altered-discovery-debacle/ | |
| Sowing division over shootings | |
| https://www.wired.com/story/pro-gun-russian-bots-flood-twitter-after-parkland-shooting/ | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-the-parkland-shooting-pro-russian-bots-are-pushing-false-flag-allegations-again/2018/02/16/46c3a674-1356-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html | |
| Trump doubles down on arming school personnel to stop mass shootings | |
| https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/policy/guns/article223255410.html | |
| Russian oligarch behind unrest in Macedonia to keep it out of NATO | |
| https://www.occrp.org/en/28-ccwatch/cc-watch-indepth/8329-russian-businessman-behind-unrest-in-macedonia | |
| Behind Russia's deadly plot to stop Montenegro embracing the West | |
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/18/reconstruction-full-incredible-story-behind-russias-deadly-plot/ | |
| * The 45-year-old told officials he had been hired to buy weapons and rent a hideout for a gang of Serbian nationalists who were to launch a bloody attack on the Parliament. The resulting massacre by the gang, who boasted of powerful backing from abroad, could tip the country into bloody civil war and derail any hopes of the country entering the Western fold. | |
| * the news that around 20 Serbian nationalists had been arrested, and an attempted coup in Montenegro foiled, attracted little attention elsewhere. | |
| * Yet senior Whitehall and Nato sources have now told The Telegraph that not only did the foiled plot appear to have been genuine, but it was directed by Russian intelligence officers with backing from Moscow. The attempted coup would have killed the then pro-West Prime Minister, Milo Djukanovic, and replaced him with a pro-Russian government, after years of warnings from the Kremlin that Montenegro should not join Nato. The plot is being seen as one of the latest aggressive attempts by Russia to undermine the West and it was hatched at the same time that Moscow was accused of trying to sway the US elections. | |
| * The prosecutor said early inquiries found the gang wanted to seize the Prime Minister, Mr Djukanovic, but detectives later found "evidence that the plan was not only to deprive of liberty, but also to deprive of life the then Prime Minister". | |
| ## Russian corruption | |
| Russian attacks on media | |
| https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/12/22/russian-hackers-targeted-more-than-200-journalists-globally-for-access-and-intimidation.html | |
| * Russian hackers (Fancy Bear) targeted more than 200 journalists globally since mid-2014 for access and intimidation | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-knife-in-the-throat-nearly-silences-a-top-independent-broacaster-in-moscow | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_freedom_in_Russia | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia | |
| https://cpj.org/europe/russia/ | |
| https://cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/ | |
| How Russia instituted social media surveillance dominance on its people | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/02/the-red-web-review-andrei-soldatov-irina-borogan-review-russias-attack-internet-freedoms | |
| Russian intelligence planted child porn on political enemy | |
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/10/509170300/fbis-comey-says-russia-also-harvested-data-from-republicans | |
| * Florida Sen. Marco Rubio raised a U.K. case in which Russian intelligence officers purportedly compromised the computer of a political enemy and then deposited child pornography on it. Local police were notified, they investigated, and the man was arrested and charged. | |
| Russian government attacking environmentalist activists | |
| https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42431009 | |
| * Chirikova was arrested several times and other activists and journalists were set upon by unknown assailants. When Khimki newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov raised suspicions that local officials were profiting from the motorway project, his dog was killed, his car was set on fire and finally he was attacked so brutally that he suffered brain damage and never regained the power of speech. Chirikova remembers going to visit him in intensive care. He had lost several fingers, had a leg amputated and part of his skull was missing after a beating with an iron bar. | |
| * For Chirikova there was harrassment & threats, and they tried to take her kids away. | |
| Russia Committed ‘Multiple and Grave' Rights Abuses in Crimea, U.N. Says | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/world/europe/russia-crimea-un.html?partner=rss&emc=rss | |
| Magnitsky TLDR | |
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20626960 | |
| * "The full list of names has never been released." | |
| Lie: This story is from 2013. The Cardin list was published in 2010. Proof: | |
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101128221618/http://russian-untouchables.com/eng/cardin-list/ | |
| Magnitsky story | |
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/sergei-magnitsky-murder-114878?paginate=false | |
| * If Kerry managed to keep the Magnitsky Act off of the Foreign Relations Committee agenda then the president would look favorably on Kerry's application to become Secretary of State. And for months, in spite of requests from Cardin and others, Kerry did just that. [This was due to Obama's "reset" of diplomatic relations with Russia. Was happy to sign it once passed.] | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/magnitsky-act-kremlin/535044/ | |
| Cardin list of corrupt Russian officials from Magnitsky investigation | |
| http://russian-untouchables.com/eng/cardin-list/ | |
| URL existed in 2010: | |
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101128221618/http://russian-untouchables.com/eng/cardin-list/ | |
| Why Does the Kremlin Care So Much About the Magnitsky Act? | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/magnitsky-act-kremlin/535044/ | |
| * The Magnitsky Act is not, nor has it ever been, about adoptions. [...] the only Americans the [Russian adoptions ban] bill directly targeted were the ones involved in putting the Magnitsky Act together. | |
| Panama Papers strongly suggest Putin profited from Magnitsky crime | |
| https://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/articles/5728d557d7863f665c6eaa21/ | |
| * Magnitsky money wound up in the offshore accounts of Sergei Roldugin, a Russian concert cellist and one of Putin's oldest and closest friends, who is widely suspected as a bagman for some of the latter's substantial, undeclared wealth, a charge he denies. | |
| Some of the Magnitsky money has been traced to a US-sanctioned affiliate of Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons program | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-is-why-putin-is-targeting-three-dhs-agents | |
| Alexander Perepilichny, Russian whistleblower who helped Browder, may have been murdered in UK with poisoned soup | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/the-poison-flower/508736/ | |
| Collusion at Trump Tower: In their own words | |
| https://themoscowproject.org/explainers/collusion-at-trump-tower-in-their-own-words/ | |
| Veselnitskaya, ties to FSB, corruption | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/veselnitskaya-fsb/534528/ | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tower-russian-lawyer-natalia-veselnitskaya-exposed-in-swiss-corruption-case | |
| * Natalia Veselnitskaya, who organized the notorious Trump Tower meeting, has been named in an explosive Swiss court case about bribery, corruption, and double-agents. | |
| * The interest of Veselnitskaya and the Russian prosecutor general’s office is likely to be linked back to a $230 million tax fraud that was uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who was working for Bill Browder, whose Hermitage Capital had major investments in Russia. After discovering the massive financial crime that could be linked back to the Russian government, Magnitsky was arrested, beaten, and allowed to die in a Russian jail cell. | |
| * A large portion of those stolen funds are believed to have made their way into the Swiss banking sector, sparking investigations by Swiss authorities, including its federal police and the Swiss prosecutor’s office, both of which worked closely with K. | |
| * Alexander Perepilichnyy, a Russian businessman living near London, had tipped off Magnitsky about the role played by Switzerland in the international scam. A few weeks before he was due to give evidence at a hearing in Lausanne, he died suddenly while he was out running. | |
| Adoptions is an established euphemism used in reference to the Magnitsky Act, sanctions that are meant to cripple the power of Putin | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/magnitsky-act-kremlin/535044/ | |
| Police File Exposes Holes In The Investigation Into US Death Of Putin's Media Czar (RT) | |
| https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/police-file-exposes-holes-in-the-investigation-into-us | |
| * police files expose significant holes in the investigation into the death of Vladimir Putin's media czar two years ago in Washington, DC, casting doubt on the official finding of how he died. | |
| * BuzzFeed News showed how America's closest ally, the UK, has turned a blind eye to 14 deaths on its own soil that US intelligence suspects were in fact hit jobs by the Russian state security services or mafia organizations, two groups that sometimes work together. US spy agencies have shared intelligence on each of those deaths with Britain, yet British police have ruled out foul play in every last case. | |
| * three FBI agents and an intelligence officer said Lesin had in fact been bludgeoned to death, directly contradicting the official finding. Two of them said he died on the eve of a planned interview with officials from the Department of Justice, who wanted to learn about the inner workings of RT, the Russian state-funded news and propaganda network that Lesin founded. | |
| * They say that Lesin paid for his room with $1,200 in cash, contradicting FBI agents who previously told BuzzFeed News that the Justice Department had paid for the room. Reached again, the FBI agents, who spoke on condition of anonymity, continued to maintain that the Justice Department had paid for Lesin's room. | |
| * the day before Lesin was found dead, the Secret Service asked for a hotel security officer to be placed outside his room from 1:45 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. so that Lesin "does not leave the room." Lesin was not a member of the Russian government at that time, so it is unclear why the US government's elite security force — which protects the president, vice president, and foreign dignitaries — would have intervened to have him watched. | |
| * a Secret Service spokesperson, did not respond to questions about why the Secret Service apparently offered guidance to hotel security but told BuzzFeed News that Lesin "has never been a protectee of the US Secret Service." | |
| ## Putin | |
| Putin's political opponents tend to end up dead | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/world/europe/moscow-kremlin-silence-critics-poison.html | |
| https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/24/europe/dead-russians/ | |
| https://investigaterussia.org/human-rights-abuses | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/wife-putins-alleged-assassination-plotter-shot-dead-near-kiev-capital-697079 | |
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/27/mystery-death-ex-kgb-chief-linked-mi6-spys-dossier-donald-trump/ | |
| Possible: | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/927198094961397760 | |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-diplomat-found-dead-athens-greece-apartment-police-andrey-malanin-a7518276.html | |
| Putin's Kremlin employs assassination abroad as state policy in a manner not seen in Moscow since Stalin | |
| https://observer.com/2016/01/the-return-of-wetwork-kgb-goons-radiated-a-former-associate-in-london/ | |
| Putin controls government, doesn't think opposition candidates can solve Russia's problems | |
| https://www.polygraph.info/a/putin-news-opposition/28920988.html | |
| Putin is a dictator. Doesn't allow good candidate to run who would reduce corruption | |
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42479909 | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/01/12/if-putin-is-so-popular-why-is-he-so-afraid-of-competition/ | |
| * Not once during his 18 years in power has Vladimir Putin faced off against a genuine challenger. | |
| * the former prime minister withdrew from the presidential race, angrily noting "how far our society is … from genuine democracy." | |
| * planning a return to the Russian parliament in 2016 and considering a challenge to Putin in 2018. The plans came to an end when Nemtsov was gunned down in the center of Moscow | |
| * The second challenger was Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner [...] the Russian Supreme Court formally barred Navalny from the race, confirming an earlier decision by the Central Election Commission. The disqualification was based on Navalny's conviction on fraud charges in 2013, a verdict that was clearly aimed at disqualifying him from participating in the elections. The European Court of Human Rights later called his conviction "arbitrary" and "prejudicial" — after which his sentence was formally overturned, and then reissued, word for word, in a new trial. At his last press conference, Putin did not hide the political motivation behind the barring of Navalny, comparing him with former Georgian president and "Rose Revolution" leader Mikheil Saakashvili, whom he accused of fomenting chaos in his home country. | |
| Putin kleptocracy | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/panama-papers-money-hidden-offshore | |
| https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160403-putin-russia-offshore-network.html | |
| Putin has failed to stop terrorist attacks in Russia | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/timeline-terrorism-russia-president-vladimir-putin-578227 | |
| Why Russia's reaction to terror is all about strengthening Putin's power | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/2017/04/21/russia-st-petersburg-bombing-strengthening-putin-581681.html | |
| * Over the 18 years of Putin's rule, every major terrorist outrage has been followed by a crackdown. In 2004, he scrapped direct elections of governors after Chechen militants massacred schoolchildren in Beslan; in 2010, after suicide attacks on the Moscow metro, he enacted legislation to control the internet; in 2013, when Moscow's Domodedovo airport was bombed, he expanded the definition of extremism to include dissidents of every stripe, from environmentalists to historians. | |
| * Yury Shvytkin, deputy chair of the Duma's Defense Committee, proposed a moratorium on public protests. Such a move is necessary for public safety, he said, because terrorists time their attacks to "significant events and significant dates…. We should refrain from holding any planned rallies, especially now." At the same time, authorities announced a series of "anti-terror rallies" across Russia. (Shvytkin didn't explain how these would be less of a target for terrorists than opposition marches.) | |
| Bill Browder's Testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browders-testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee/534864/ | |
| * Putin's net worth estimated at $200 billion: I estimate that he has accumulated $200 billion of ill-gotten gains from these types of operations over his 17 years in power. | |
| https://www.occrp.org/en/putinandtheproxies/ | |
| * According to OCCRP's calculations and their 2017 Forbes ratings, the total wealth of Putin's inner circle -- a mix of family members, old friends, and friends who became family members -- stands at nearly $24 billion. Their most successful businesses are either linked to the largely state-controlled oil and gas sector or connected to other state corporations. | |
| * OCCRP did not include politicians and top state company managers among Putin's friends. He also has other friends and relatives whose wealth is unknown. | |
| * Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. | |
| * The documents seized by the Interior Ministry were used to fraudulently re-register our Russian investment holding companies to a man named Viktor Markelov, a known criminal convicted of manslaughter. After more digging, Sergei discovered that the stolen companies were used by the perpetrators to misappropriate $230 million of taxes that our companies had paid to the Russian government in the previous year. | |
| * We filed criminal complaints with every law enforcement agency in Russia, and Sergei gave sworn testimony to the Russian State Investigative Committee (Russia's FBI) about the involvement of officials in this crime. | |
| However, instead of arresting the people who committed the crime, Sergei was arrested. Who took him? The same officials he had testified against. | |
| * we have the most well-documented case of human rights abuse coming out of Russia in the last 35 years. | |
| * the murder of Sergei Magnitsky was done to cover up the theft of $230 million from the Russian Treasury. I knew that the people who stole that money wouldn't keep it in Russia. | |
| * since 2012 it's emerged that Vladimir Putin was a beneficiary of the stolen $230 million that Sergei Magnitsky exposed. Recent revelations from the Panama Papers have shown that Putin's closest childhood friend, Sergei Roldugin, a famous cellist, received $2 billion of funds from Russian oligarchs and the Russian state. It's commonly understood that Mr. Roldugin received this money as an agent of Vladimir Putin. Information from the Panama Papers also links some money from the crime that Sergei Magnitsky discovered and exposed to Sergei Roldugin. | |
| * This is particularly worrying for Putin, because he is one of the richest men in the world. I estimate that he has accumulated $200 billion of ill-gotten gains from these types of operations over his 17 years in power. He keeps his money in the West and all of his money in the West is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation. Therefore, he has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions. | |
| The second reason why Putin reacted so badly to the passage of the Magnitsky Act is that it destroys the promise of impunity he's given to all of his corrupt officials. | |
| * the Putin regime has gone after everybody who has been advocating for the Magnitsky Act. | |
| * Boris Nemtsov testified, making the point that the Magnitsky Act was a "pro-Russian" piece of legislation because it narrowly targeted corrupt officials and not the Russian people. In 2015, Boris Nemtsov was murdered on the bridge in front of the Kremlin. His protege was also poisoned. The lawyer who represented Sergei Magnitsky's mother was due in court to testify about the state cover up of Sergei Magnitsky's murder, was thrown off the fourth floor of his apartment building the day before. | |
| * U.S. government sources have warned me about a planned Russian rendition against me. [Browder] | |
| * According to them, Sergei wasn't murdered and he wasn't a whistle-blower, and the Magnitsky Act was based on a false set of facts. | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/killer-flower-found-in-dead-russian-whistleblowers-stomach | |
| * Whistleblower behind Magnitsky investigation murdered by Kremlin. | |
| Klyuev crime syndicate worked with Russian government, police, to raid and steal Browder's companies to commit tax fraud (Magnitsky) | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/the-poison-flower/508736/ | |
| Polish Official Says Putin Responsible for Plane Crash That Killed President | |
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-14/polish-officials-says-putin-responsible-for-2010-plane-crash | |
| * He said Russia is blocking the truth by refusing to return the plane's wreckage, its black boxes and "all navigation instruments." | |
| The Secrets Of One Of The World's Dirtiest Banks And Its Powerful Western Protectors | |
| https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomwarren/secrets-of-one-of-the-worlds-dirtiest-banks-revealed | |
| * Blatant forgery. Snarling guard dogs. Shredded evidence. Leaked documents reveal the farcical scramble inside one of the world's dirtiest banks to conceal incriminating information – while some of the planet's most prestigious accountants and lawyers used their powers to keep the bank in business. | |
| * FBME Bank had been accused by the US government of allowing money laundering on a vast scale for terrorists, drug traffickers, repressive dictators, organised crime groups, and financiers for the Syrian regime | |
| * The lion's share of the bank's business came from highly secretive Russian clients who relied on FBME to funnel their money into the global financial system without asking too many questions – and the dollar ban threatened to destroy it with a single stroke. | |
| * William Burck, who was special counsel to President George W. Bush and is now representing two key White House figures in the inquiry into whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia. [...] Burck, who now represents White House Counsel Donald McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus | |
| * learned of an ant's nest of accounts inside the credit card division that was responsible for astronomically high rates of fraudulent transactions. Fraud ratios that high could cause trouble with card processors such as Visa and Mastercard. But the account holders appeared to have devised a way around that by "miscoding" their transactions to make them look innocent, as well as buying up prepaid FBME credit cards "in bulk" and using them for millions of dollars in innocuous transactions so that the overall fraud rate would go down and the card processors wouldn't notice. The ploy ultimately failed: Visa had noticed, and had commissioned an audit | |
| * An FBME client had just been sanctioned for his connections to the Syrian regime. And they had identified a second customer that appeared to be part of a nexus of accounts funneling money to financiers for the Syrian chemical weapons programme. | |
| * In the years leading up to the poison gas attacks launched by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on his own people in 2013, FBME had funnelled hundreds of millions of pounds through the accounts of Issa al-Zeydi, a Moscow-based financier for the regime's chemical weapons programme. And the money kept flowing even as images of young children foaming at the mouth and fighting for breath sent shockwaves around the world. Zeydi was sanctioned weeks after the first public notice against FBME. The US government later issued sanctions against at least seven other FBME clients over their financial links to the Assad regime. | |
| * the Saabs and Quinn Emanuel are still fighting, most notably in their claim against the Republic of Cyprus in a highly secretive global court that settles disputes between corporations and nation states. The investor-state dispute settlement tribunal system was exposed by BuzzFeed News last year for frequently favoring corporate interests over small governments and allowing executives to escape punishment for their crimes. In that venue, the Saabs are demanding that Cyprus fork over $1.3 billion in damages for taking control of the bank's accounts. That is equivalent to 15% of the Cypriot government's entire annual budget and could prove ruinous for the tiny island nation. | |
| Senior US officials say Russia is arming the Taliban | |
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41842285 | |
| * Russian officials say these contacts are aimed at ensuring the security of Russian citizens and political offices in Afghanistan | |
| * emergence of IS in Afghanistan prompted fears in Moscow that the group may expand into Central Asia and Russia. | |
| * Russian officials insist the Afghan conflict needs a political, not a military, solution. [...] Moscow says the contacts are intended to encourage the Taliban to enter peace talks. | |
| Russia, Putin, Oligarchs, roots in organized crime | |
| https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/a-tangled-web-organized-crime-and-oligarchy-in-putins-russia/ | |
| * the political calculus of the criminal world changed in the final days of the Soviet Union, setting organized criminals on a trajectory that would lead them to assume political influence and wealth at the end of the Soviet period and in the tumultuous transitional period that followed. | |
| * Two recent books by Seth Hettena and Craig Unger, on the other hand, explore in detail Trump's ties with Russian professional criminals who have laundered their money into his properties and even conducted a high-level gambling operation out of Trump Tower. Between the two, Hettena more clearly documents these relationships and explores their important implications for democracy. | |
| https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Russia-Definitive-Seth-Hettena/dp/1612197396/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0 | |
| https://www.amazon.com/House-Trump-Putin-Untold-Russian/dp/152474350X | |
| * Organized criminals were key actors in the waning years of Soviet power, and they emerged with great visibility and potency after the old government had fallen. Soviet authorities had stamped out private enterprise, but the entrepreneurial character of many vory, combined with their willingness to use extraordinary violence, positioned them to assume a vital economic role in the early post-Soviet period — what Galeotti calls a "gangsterisation of business." The criminal world benefited greatly from the privatization of state property, and organized criminals became arbiters of disputes in the absence of a functioning state. | |
| * post-Soviet organized crime was not based on the more common forms of transnational crime, but rather was much more a product of the privatization of former state property. | |
| * Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (a.k.a. Taivanchik), the fixer of an Olympics also discussed in Galeotti's book, was identified as a key criminal behind a large-scale gambling operation in Trump Tower. | |
| * Corporate raiding is a key element of the Russian economy, a significant deterrent to entrepreneurship, and a contributor to capital flight. Galeotti overlooks this phenomenon, even though organized crime has assumed a key role in the violence used to take over desirable properties owned by competitors or individuals with fewer political connections. Hundreds of thousands of Russian businessmen have been victims of corporate raids, and many have turned over their businesses to the predators after they and their families have been threatened or assaulted by organized crime. Others have sought to invest their gains in valuable properties abroad, hence the desire to purchase properties in Trump buildings. In this way, organized crime plays a key role in the consolidation of oligarchical fortunes and the predatory behavior of Putin's powerful cronies. | |
| * deforestation has also occurred on a massive scale in Karelia and Ukraine, thanks to the collusion of organized criminals and corrupt government officials. Russian criminals have been key actors in the massive illicit fish trade, establishing important linkages with the professional criminals of Japan, the yakuza, who, like their Russian-speaking counterparts, assume key roles in the ports of their country. These Russian-Japanese crime connections are not limited to fish: The Aum Shinrikyu, a powerful and wealthy Japanese doomsday sect behind the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, used their links with both corrupt officials and Russian criminals to seek nuclear materials for other acts of terrorism. | |
| Kremlin-Linked Slush Funds Funneling Money To Syria's Chemical Weapons Financiers, ISIS, organized crime | |
| https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexcampbell/kremlin-linked-slush-funds-exposed | |
| * confidential files expose Kremlin connections to a network of shadowy people fronting for Syria's chemical weapons programme, ISIS, and organised crime. | |
| * The web of accounts at FBME Bank, revealed in an explosive cache of leaked documents, also moved hundreds of millions of dollars from suspect Moscow-based figures including associates of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, mafia figures, and Kremlin officials. | |
| * Russian accounts at FBME did not serve just one purpose. They were involved in an array of activities that have caused political strife in the West – including the massive theft by Russian government officials that led to the passage in the US of the Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned more than 44 prominent Russians and infuriated Putin. More than $22 million of the stolen cash ended up in FBME accounts controlled by a major Russian mafia boss, according to documents seen by BuzzFeed News. | |
| * The list of account owners in the network now includes people sanctioned by the US government for facilitating some of the Assad regime's worst crimes. The files show: | |
| * Issa al-Zeydi, a Russian-Syrian national now outed as a frontman for Syria's chemical weapons regime, moved hundreds of millions of dollars through the Kremlin-linked slush fund network. | |
| * One crucial FBME account signed contracts worth 9.5 million euros with a business whose owner would later be sanctioned for trading oil with ISIS on behalf of the Syrian regime. | |
| * Altogether, at least eight individuals and entities in the slush fund network have been sanctioned for bankrolling Syria's chemical weapons programme or propping up Assad's regime. | |
| * FBME held accounts for Putin associates including Vladimir Smirnov – the former head of a state-owned nuclear export company who ran Russian operations for a company named in German intelligence files as a suspected money laundering vehicle for the Tambov mafia group in St Petersburg. | |
| * The bank also moved funds for a financier whose clients included a Russian oligarch with ties to organised crime and to the Kremlin. | |
| * The bank was so important to the Kremlin that when the Central Bank of Cyprus seized control of FBME accounts, the documents show Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov personally raised the matter with the Cyprus government. ... the FBME files show how that family-owned bank became a major Kremlin-linked conduit for moving secret and illicit money around the world. | |
| * more than $22 million of the stolen money [Magnitsky uncovered] flowed into two accounts controlled by the suspected crime boss Dmitry Klyuev. | |
| How Deutsche Bank Enabled A Dirty Offshore Bank To Move Dark Money | |
| https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomwarren/how-deutsche-processed-millions-for-a-dirty-bank | |
| * The German giant processed hundreds of millions of dollars of suspicious transactions into the US for a Cyprus bank awash with dirty money linked to the Kremlin, Syrian chemical weapons, organised crime, and ISIS. | |
| * Deutsche – and its New York subsidiary under scrutiny for its loans to Donald Trump – provided a crucial bridge between FBME Bank and the global financial system, acting as its longstanding correspondent bank in the US and helping some of its most nefarious clients move illicit money into the West. | |
| * The documents show: | |
| * Deutsche processed hundreds of millions of dollars of suspicious transactions for FBME clients – including a Kremlin-linked network of Russian slush funds funnelling money to financiers of the Syrian regime and a businessman trading oil with ISIS. | |
| * The German giant was kept in the dark about the true owners of suspicious FBME accounts whose transactions it was authorizing – despite requirements for correspondent banks to perform additional checks when signs of money laundering arise. | |
| * Deutsche continued to facilitate suspicious transactions for FBME even after staff repeatedly raised questions about some of the Cyprus bank's most sinister Russian accounts. | |
| * A top executive charged with preventing money laundering at Deutsche privately told FBME that US law enforcement was probing its accounts and asked an executive to "please refrain" from discussing the situation in writing to avoid giving the "wrong impression". | |
| * Deutsche showered FBME with "Processing Excellence" awards for at least four straight years before the bank was named as a "primary money laundering concern" by the US government. | |
| * Deutsche has been hit with billions of dollars of fines in recent years for evading sanctions, manipulating lending rates, and selling toxic mortgages in the buildup to the financial crisis – paying a further $630 million to regulators earlier this year for failing to prevent a vast money laundering scheme led by rogue traders in its Moscow office. | |
| * Deutsche has faced questions over why it lent Trump $640 million at a time when other Wall Street banks had frozen him out. The bank was reportedly subpoenaed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is apparently investigating the US president's finances alongside his campaign's contacts with Russia. | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/2017/12/29/donald-trump-russia-secret-deutsche-bank-753780.html | |
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-16/banned-over-terror-clients-fbme-bank-has-added-woe-u-s-probe | |
| ## Trump, administration | |
| Trump's crimes | |
| https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/new-report-trump-appears-to-have-committed-multiple-crimes/ | |
| * There is compelling evidence that President Trump may have personally committed up to eight criminal campaign finance and related offenses while running for president and during his first year in office | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/comments/aumvc3/trumps_8_criminal_offenses_related_to_campaign/ | |
| Right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation stocking Trump's government | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.html | |
| * The Trump team may not have been prepared to staff the government, but the Heritage Foundation was. In the summer of 2014, a year before Trump even declared his candidacy, the right-wing think tank had started assembling a 3,000-name searchable database of trusted movement conservatives from around the country who were eager to serve in a post-Obama government. The initiative was called the Project to Restore America, a dog-whistle appeal to the so-called silent majority that foreshadowed Trump's own campaign slogan. [Racist much?] | |
| * Its $80 million annual budget depends on six-figure donations from rich Republicans like Rebekah Mercer, whose family foundation has reportedly given Heritage $500,000 a year since 2013. | |
| * Heritage's recommendations included some of the most prominent members of Trump's cabinet: Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos (whose in-laws endowed Heritage's Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society), Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions and many more. | |
| * it was not difficult for him to see where the future of the think tank lay: the Tea Party. Heritage had helped organize and underwrite the anti-tax, anti-government — and, most of all, anti-Obama — movement, even creating a lobbying organization, Heritage Action, to help harness the energy it unleashed. | |
| * DeMint and his leadership team were much more aggressive. Papers were heavily edited or even withheld from release altogether. Several scholars quit. DeMint replaced them, bringing in as Heritage's chief economist Stephen Moore, a Wall Street Journal editorial writer and a founder of the Club for Growth, a lobbying group that advocates cutting taxes. | |
| * There were thousands of jobs to fill, and the priority was to fill them with "change agents," he said. "When it comes to personnel decisions, that is the most frequently asked question, even before 'Are they qualified?' 'Are they a change agent?' " | |
| * Heritage's staff on the transition tried to put forward every Heritage employee who wanted to work for the administration, whether in policy, administration or management jobs. "Any list we touched we made sure had as many Heritage people as possible," | |
| * One of Heritage's labor economists, James Sherk, an advocate of rolling back labor rights, joined the White House domestic-policy council; another, David Kreutzer, who was a co-author of a Heritage policy paper arguing that "no consensus exists that man-made emissions are the primary driver of global warming," joined the Environmental Protection Agency. Roger Severino, the director of Heritage's DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, who has opposed extending civil rights protections to gay, lesbian and transgender people, joined the Department of Health and Human Services to run its Office for Civil Rights. Sean Doocey, a former Heritage employee who had worked at the think tank's Training and Recruitment Center, joined the Presidential Personnel Office — the little-known agency responsible for recruiting and vetting appointees for the executive branch — as its deputy director. | |
| Putin's friend Dimitri Simes had early access to Trump's pro-Russia foreign policy speech | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-friend-had-early-access-to-trumps-infamous-pro-russia-speech | |
| * Democrats on the House intelligence committee tried to investigate Simes' relationship to Trump's campaign, but Republican committee Chairman Devin Nunes blocked their efforts. | |
| * The outline also included a negative comment about Russia that didn't appear in the final speech. "Russia is a declining but proud country with a nuclear arsenal that could obliterate our country," the outline reads. | |
| * the Committee has reason to believe that Mr. Simes played a central role in drafting portions of the speech related to Russia," committee Democrats wrote. "The Committee should also obtain relevant personal correspondence between Mr. Simes and Trump campaign officials and any individuals with direct or assumed links to the Russian government." | |
| * Simes, who was born in Moscow and served as an adviser to Richard Nixon, has distinguished himself from the largely monolithic Washington think-tank crowd by his working relationships with Kremlin officials | |
| https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/04/28/Transcript-Donald-Trump-s-Foreign-Policy-Speech-April-27-2016 | |
| Bannon group in 2015 shopped document tying Trump to mobsters | |
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/367963-bannon-group-shopped-document-tying-trump-to-mobsters-in-2015-report | |
| Donald Trump's business links to the mob - BBC Newsnight (2016) | |
| https://youtu.be/-k3B-tw2sB0 | |
| Trump white house weighing plans for private spies to counter "deep state" enemies | |
| https://theintercept.com/2017/12/04/trump-white-house-weighing-plans-for-private-spies-to-counter-deep-state-enemies/ | |
| * considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering "deep state" enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump's presidency. | |
| * Among the capabilities Prince offers is a network of deniable assets — spies, fixers, foreign intelligence agents — spread across the globe that could be used by the White House. "You pick any country in the world Erik's been in, and it's there," said a longtime Prince associate. "They're a network of very dark individuals." The associate, who has worked extensively with Prince, then began rattling off places where the private spies and paramilitaries already operate — Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, "all across North Africa." | |
| Devin Nunes Vanished the Night Before He Made Trump Surveillance Claims | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/devin-nunes-vanished-the-night-before-he-made-trump-surveillance-claims | |
| * Where Nunes went and who his source was for this information—which he said was still incomplete—is now a mystery with serious repercussions for the independence of his investigation into Russian interference with U.S. elections. | |
| Nunes was likely extorted in 2015 by Kremlin, possibly over leaking NATO secrets | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Mueller/comments/9b8bp4/devin_nunes_dramatically_changed_his_positions_on/e511ihe/ | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/7jmngr/trump_dossier_firm_republicans_leaked_bank/dr83rxc/ | |
| Winery part-owned by Devin Nunes sued over cocaine and underage prostitutes at yacht party | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/winery-part-owned-devin-nunes-sued-over-cocaine-and-prostitutes-yacht-party-942405 | |
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/05/24/rep-devin-nunes-linked-to-napa-winery-that-allegedly-held-prostitutes-and-cocaine-cruise/ | |
| * The link was made by a California newspaper Nunes recently described in extremely unflattering terms. | |
| * Nunes is an investor in the winery but there's nothing to suggest he was aboard the yacht on the night in question. | |
| * The men allegedly drew straws to sort out who would claim which prostitutes "and thereafter took the prostitutes to the bedrooms on the lower deck of the yacht to engage in sexual activities." | |
| * Nunes' office did not respond to the Bee's requests for comment, according to the newspaper. | |
| https://upolitics.com/news/winery-tied-to-devin-nunes-sued-for-yacht-party-allegedly-with-cocaine-and-prostitutes-report/ | |
| * The lawsuit said Anase believed some of the alleged paid sex workers may have been underage. The suit read: | |
| "Plaintiff realized that the men had brought prostitutes, hard liquor, and what appeared to be cocaine onto the Yacht. Plaintiff was extremely disturbed by the presence of the prostitutes, especially because it appeared that some of the girls were too young to consent to sexual activity." | |
| https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/xy97bj/devin-nunes-sank-all-his-money-into-a-winery-with-alleged-russia-ties | |
| * the winery tweeted last week that its sole business interaction in Russia was a one-time sale of 22 cases of wine to an unnamed broker back in 2013. | |
| * Luding, to this day, lists Alpha Omega as a supplier on its website. In fact, Luding's website lists for sale a 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, a 2010 proprietary red, and a 2012 unoaked Chardonnay, all from Alpha Omega Winery. This seems to contradict the claim made in the winery's recent tweet. | |
| Donald Trump pal Tevfik Arif (aka Arifov, Bayrock's former chairman) busted in Turkey for allegedly running hooker ring aboard yacht | |
| https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/trump-pal-busted-allegedly-running-hooker-ring-yacht-article-1.191136 | |
| Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo owes his political career to the Koch brothers | |
| https://qz.com/1227882/secretary-of-state-nominee-mike-pompeo-owes-his-political-career-to-the-koch-brothers/ | |
| The G.O.P.'s "Boil the Frog" Strategy to Save Trump | |
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-gops-boil-the-frog-strategy-to-save-trump | |
| * North Korea gradually improved its nuclear and rocket technology to the point that it is now on the cusp of becoming what the last five American Presidents said they would never allow: a rogue state with the capability of reaching the U.S. mainland with nuclear missiles. | |
| * "the Trump campaign interacted with Russians at least thirty-one times throughout the campaign" and there were at "at least 19 known meetings." If the full scope of the Trump-Russia story had been known all at once—Paul Manafort's work for a pro-Putin party in Ukraine, Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner's back channels to Russian officials, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos's machinations, Donald Trump, Jr.,'s eager embrace of a Russian lawyer with alleged dirt on Hillary Clinton, the F.B.I.'s investigation, the intelligence community's warnings—it would have been akin to North Korea going nuclear overnight. The audacity of the Trump campaign's lies would have been shocking. | |
| White House May Share Nuclear Power Technology With Saudi Arabia | |
| https://www.propublica.org/article/white-house-may-share-nuclear-power-technology-with-saudi-arabia | |
| Trump Surrenders to Russia in Syria and Says He Believes Putin's Election Meddling Denials | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-surrenders-to-russia-in-syria-and-says-he-believes-putins-election-meddling-denials | |
| Trump made deal with ISIS to let them & their families, escape Raqqa (with weapons & ammo), breaking promise | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/11/did-president-trump-approve-a-deal-that-allowed-hundreds-of-isis-fighters-to-escape-raqqa/ | |
| Trump killing record number of civilians | |
| https://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42426-trump-is-killing-record-numbers-of-civilians | |
| Trump's many close personal connections to figures in organized crime | |
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910 | |
| His father bailed out his struggling casino by illegally buying $3.5 million in chips | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/trump-files-fred-trump-funneled-cash-donald-using-casino-chips/ | |
| Trump is sabotaging American healthcare to allow Fridman & fellow Alfa Group billionaires to invest in it | |
| https://www.naseba.com/who-we-are/our-blog/foreign-billionaires-seeking-steady-profits-us-healthcare/ | |
| * With US government healthcare spending on a steady rise, foreign investors are turning to US healthcare in pursuit of a reliable stream of revenue. These include Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, who – like many investors in the Middle East – is now looking beyond oil for viable investment opportunities. | |
| Along with three fellow Alfa Group billionaires, Fridman plans to invest up to 3 billion USD into healthcare over the next three years. | |
| * Fridman and his associates are relying on the help of two Washington insiders to help them implement their US investment plans | |
| Jeff Sessions Is in Charge of a Bribery Prosecution Involving Two of His Top Donors | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/jeff-sessions-is-in-charge-of-a-bribery-prosecution-involving-two-of-his-top-donors/ | |
| The "Everything Terrible The Trump Administration Has Done So Far" Omnibus | |
| https://paperspaperspapers.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/the-everything-terrible-the-trump-administration-has-done-so-far-omnibus/ | |
| How Republicans got Trump so wrong | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/how-republicans-got-trump-catastrophically-wrong/542568/ | |
| NASA video of accomplishments under Trump focuses on the moon, omitting Mars, which has been primary focus | |
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/06/the-journey-to-mars-seems-to-be-pretty-much-dead/ | |
| Trump's Top Science Adviser Job Vacant Eight Months After Inauguration | |
| https://cacm.acm.org/news/221552-trumps-top-science-adviser-job-vacant-eight-months-after-inauguration | |
| Trump loves Wikileaks | |
| https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/300327-trump-i-love-wikileaks | |
| Not all Trump's tweets are his | |
| http://www.nicholasvanhorn.com/posts/trump-tweets.html | |
| Trump's secret appointees | |
| https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/beachhead#134252 | |
| https://www.propublica.org/article/lifting-the-veil-on-another-batch-of-shadowy-trump-appointees#134208 | |
| Reverse cargo cult - why Trump supporters aren't dissuaded by his lies | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/5rru7g/kellyanne_conway_made_up_a_fake_terrorist_attack/dd9vxo2/ | |
| Might Trump turn the US into a dictatorship? | |
| https://fusion.net/story/579834/the-u-s-needs-to-prepare-for-the-possibility-that-trump-wont-leave-office-peacefully/ | |
| https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fusion/ - MIXED (does satire) | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/creeping-authoritarianism-trump-trumpocracy/ | |
| Trump administration corruption (swamp) | |
| https://www.propublica.org/article/lifting-the-veil-on-another-batch-of-shadowy-trump-appointees/ | |
| https://sunlightfoundation.com/2017/07/20/trump-administration-open-government-record/ | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-most-corrupt-history-698935 | |
| https://thinkprogress.org/trump-anti-corruption-measures/ | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-pledged-to-drain-the-swamp-instead-he-filled-it-with-industry-sharks | |
| https://thehill.com/policy/finance/361778-white-house-calls | |
| * Mulvaney, a staunch conservative who once called the CFPB "a sick, sad joke" would likely freeze or significantly change the agency's current agenda. | |
| https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-duncan-hunter-chris-collins-indictments_us_5b7caf60e4b07295150dd6cb | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/trump-still-doing-business-foreign-governments-769177 | |
| https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/article192131074.html | |
| Trump's swamp of billionaires and lobbyists revealed in secret white house visitor logs | |
| http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-white-house-billionaires-big-business-interests-visitor-logs-719721 | |
| * CEOs from the health care industry and big businesses, a handful of lobbyists representing Koch Industries and several billionaires intent on shaping White House policy, including casino magnate Steve Wynn—a close friend of the president—and corporate leader Charles Schwab. | |
| * Mulvaney, who recently told Politico, "I don't think anyone in this administration is more of a right-wing conservative than I am." The director has met frequently with representatives from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy think tank that has stirred controversy over its stances on issues including immigration and health care. | |
| The oil and gas industry is quickly amassing power in Trump's Washington | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-oil-and-gas-industry-is-quickly-amassing-power-in-trumps-washington/2016/12/14/0d4b26e2-c21c-11e6-9578-0054287507db_story.html | |
| https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/25/oil-and-gas-allies-want-trump-to-slow-down-242008 | |
| https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/22/trump-administration-may-have-halted-a-second-energy-anti-corruption-effort.html | |
| Justice Official Quits Over White House Conduct | |
| https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/hui-chen-quits-justice_us_5959be5ce4b0da2c732455c9 | |
| * A top Justice Department corporate crime expert has quit, saying it's impossible to hold suspected lawbreakers to standards that President Donald Trump is not meeting himself. | |
| * was the compliance counsel in the fraud unit of DOJ's criminal division | |
| EPA is now allowing asbestos back into manufacturing | |
| https://archpaper.com/2018/08/epa-asbestos-manufacturing/ | |
| Eliminated NASA's carbon monitoring system | |
| https://www.sciencealert.com/the-trump-administration-just-quietly-got-rid-of-nasa-s-carbon-monitoring-system | |
| Trump gave classified info to Russia | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html | |
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/trump-intel-slip | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1660 | |
| Trump revealed a covert CIA program over Twitter | |
| https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/25/16025136/trump-syria-cia-twitter-program-end-covert | |
| * he confirmed the existence of a covert CIA program to arm and train Syrian rebels to remove Bashar al-Assad from power. | |
| Trump's conflicts of interest | |
| https://sunlightfoundation.com/tracking-trumps-conflicts-of-interest/ | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/donald-trump-foreign-business-deals-national-security-498081.html | |
| Trump's mafia, criminal ties & activity | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/trump-swam-in-mob-infested-waters-in-early-years-as-an-nyc-developer/2015/10/16/3c75b918-60a3-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/17/trump-ocean-club-panama-money-laundering-reports | |
| * The reports detailed how the future president gave the project to his daughter Ivanka as a "baby" effort to gain real estate experience, and said it ended up drawing a cast of characters accused of fraud, corruption and kidnapping. | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-trump-panama-tower-riddled-with-drug-mob-money | |
| Trump's many close personal connections to figures in organized crime | |
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910 | |
| https://time.com/4433880/donald-trump-ties-to-russia/ | |
| Trump's bid for Sydney casino 30 years ago rejected due to 'mafia connections' | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/16/trumps-bid-for-sydney-casino-30-years-ago-rejected-due-to-mafia-connections | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-alleged-mafia-connections-sydney-casino-651352 | |
| https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/ | |
| * whatever the nature of President-elect Donald Trump's relationship with President Putin, he has certainly managed to accumulate direct and indirect connections with a far-flung private Russian/FSU network of outright mobsters, oligarchs, fraudsters, and kleptocrats. | |
| * one of the most central facts about modern Russia: its emergence since the 1990s as a world-class kleptocracy, second only to China as a source of illicit capital and criminal loot, with more than $1.3 trillion of net offshore "flight wealth" as of 2016. | |
| * The exact date that Sater joined Bayrock is unclear. A New York Times article says 2003, but this appears to be too late. Sater says 1999, but this is much too early. A certified petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court places the time around 2002, which is more consistent with Sater's other activities during this period, including his cooperation with the Department of Justice on the Coppa case in 1998–2001, and his foreign travel. | |
| * Whatever Felix Sater has been up to recently, the key point is that by 2002, at the latest, Tevfik Arif decided to hire him as Bayrock's COO and managing director. This was despite the fact that by then Felix had already compiled an astonishing track record as a professional criminal, with multiple felony pleas and convictions, extensive connections to organized crime, and—the ultimate prize—a virtual "get out of jail free card," based on an informant relationship with the FBI and the CIA that is vaguely reminiscent of Whitey Bulger. | |
| * Felix Sater's FBI handler stated that he "was well familiar with the crimes of Sater and his (Sater's) father, a (Semion) Mogilevich crime syndicate boss."21 A 1998 FBI report reportedly said Mogilevich's organization had "approximately 250 members," and was involved in trafficking nuclear materials, weapons, and more, as well as money laundering. | |
| * soon after the events of September 11, 2001, the ever-creative Sater succeeded in brokering information about the black market for Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the CIA and the FBI. According to Klotsman, this strategy "bought Felix his freedom," allowing him to return to Brooklyn. It is still not clear precisely what information Sater actually provided, but in 2015 U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch publicly commended him for sharing information that she described as "crucial to national security." | |
| * Alex Shnaider, who co-financed the seventy-story Trump Tower and Hotel, Canada's tallest building. | |
| * in addition to running Seabeco, Birshtein was a close business associate of Sergei Mikhaylov, the reputed head of Solntsevskaya Bratva, the Russian mob's largest branch, and the world's highest-grossing organized crime group as of 2014 | |
| * Birshtein and his associates had acquired extraordinary influence with key Ukraine officials, including President Leonid Kuchma, with the help of up to $5 million of payoffs. | |
| * Manafort's partner, Rick Davis, also served as national campaign manager for Senator John McCain in 2008 | |
| * One of Manafort's biggest clients was the dubious pro-Russian Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash. By his own admission, Firtash maintains strong ties with a recurrent figure on this scene, the reputed Ukrainian/Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich. His most important other links are almost certainly to Putin. Otherwise it is difficult to explain how this former used-car salesman could gain a lock on trading goods for gas in Turkmenistan and also become a lynchpin investor in the Swiss company RosUrEnergo, which controls Gazprom's gas sales to Europe. In 2008, Manafort teamed up with a former manager of the Trump Organization to purchase the Drake Hotel in New York for up to $850 million, with Firtash agreeing to invest $112 million. According to a lawsuit brought against Manafort and Firtash, the key point of the deal was not to make a carefully-planned investment in real estate, but to simply launder part of the huge profits that Firtash had skimmed while brokering dodgy natural gas deals between Russia and Ukraine, with Mogilevich acting as a "silent partner." | |
| * After Firtash pulled out of the deal, Manafort reportedly turned to Trump, but he declined to engage. Manafort stepped down as Trump's campaign manager in August of 2016 in response to press investigations into his ties not only to Firtash, but to Ukraine's previous pro-Russian Yanukovych government, which had been deposed by a uprising in 2014. However, following the November 8 election, Manafort reportedly returned to advise Trump on staffing his new administration. He got an assist from Putin—on November 30 a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of leaking stories about Manafort in an effort to hurt Trump | |
| * One typical example involves the alleged Russian mobster Anatoly Golubchik, who went to prison in 2014 for running an illegal gambling ring out of Trump Tower—not only the headquarters of the Trump Organization but also the former headquarters of Bayrock Group LLC. This operation reportedly took up the entire 51st floor. Also reportedly involved in it was the alleged mobster Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, who has the distinction of making the Forbes 2008 list of the World's Ten Most Wanted Criminals, and whose organization the FBI believes to be tied to Mogilevich's. Even as this gambling ring was still operating in Trump Tower, Tokhtakhounov reportedly travelled to Moscow to attend Donald Trump's 2013 Miss Universe contest as a special VIP. | |
| * Dmytro Firtash—the Mogilevich pal and Manafort client that we met earlier—also turns up in the Panama Papers database as part of Galina Telesh's network neighborhood. | |
| * At one point, David Bogatin (considered by the FBI to be one of the key members of Semion Mogilevich's Russian organized crime family in the United States) owned five separate condos in Trump Tower that Donald Trump had reportedly sold to him personally. And Vyacheslav Ivankov, another key Mogilevich lieutenant in the United States during the 1990s, also resided for a time at Trump Tower, and reportedly had in his personal phone book the private telephone and fax numbers for the Trump Organization's office in that building. | |
| * Trump has also literally spent decades cultivating senior relationships of all kinds with Russia and the FSU. And public and private senior Russian figures of all kinds have likewise spent decades cultivating him, not only as a business partner, but as a "useful idiot." After all, on September 1, 1987 (!), Trump was already willing to spend $94,801 on full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the New York Times calling for the United States to stop spending money to defend Japan, Europe, and the Persian Gulf, "an area of only marginal significance to the U.S. for its oil supplies, but one upon which Japan and others are almost totally dependent." | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-donald-trumps-empire-why-he-didnt-run-for-president-in-2012 | |
| https://www.vox.com/world/2018/9/12/17764132/trump-russia-business-ties-mafia-putin-craig-unger | |
| * in 1984 when David Bogatin — who is a Russian mobster, convicted gasoline bootlegger, and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin came to that meeting prepared to spend $6 million, which is equivalent to about $15 million today. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. | |
| * I document something like 1,300 transactions of this kind with Russian mobsters. By that, I mean real estate transactions that were all cash purchases made by anonymous shell companies that were quite obviously fronts for criminal money-laundering operations. And this represents a huge chunk of Trump's real estate activity in the United States, so it's quite hard to argue that he had no idea what was going on. | |
| Trump Organization, Tenants of Trump Tower, Bayrock, Mafia, Russian Mob, etc. | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/thenewcoldwar/wiki/index#wiki_trump_organization.2C_tenants_of_trump_tower.2C_bayrock.2C_mafia.2C_russian_mob.2C_etc. | |
| One of the world's most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, ran a money-laundering network out of unit 63A in Trump Tower in New York. Tokhtakhounov also appeared near Donald Trump in the VIP section of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/trump-russian-mobster-tokhtakhounov-miss-universe-moscow/ | |
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/story-fbi-wiretap-russians-trump-tower/story?id=46266198 | |
| Dirty money: FT probe finds evidence a Trump venture has links to alleged laundering network | |
| https://www.ft.com/content/33285dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923 | |
| * Jennifer Shasky Calvery, then director of the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, warned in January that "corrupt foreign officials, or transnational criminals, may be using premium US real estate to secretly invest millions in dirty money". | |
| Russian official linked to South Florida biker club spent millions on Trump condos | |
| http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article157640179.html | |
| http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article176586256.html | |
| * Igor Zorin lost his job running a state-owned Russian communications firm after a Miami Herald investigation revealed he owned multi-million dollar condos at Trump Palace in Sunny Isles Beach — and had ties to members of a South Florida motorcycle club dedicated to Russia's special forces, the Spetsnaz. | |
| * The Herald also found he had an undisclosed business relationship with the security firm of a former Russian intelligence officer, Svyatoslav Mangushev, who now lives in South Florida. | |
| * The group, Spetsnaz M.C., asked for official recognition from the Night Wolves, a powerful motorcycle club in Russia closely allied with President Vladimir Putin and hit with sanctions by the Obama and Trump administrations. The Night Wolves fought alongside separatist militias in Ukraine backed by Russia. | |
| Legal Experts: Ivanka Trump May Have Committed Felony Fraud | |
| https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/legal-experts-ivanka-trump-may-have-committed-felony-fraud-by-lying-about-real-estate-deals/ | |
| * The SoHo property shenanigans were egregious enough to raise alarm bells with New York City investigators. The report notes, "The Manhattan district attorney's office [under Cyrus Vance] considered charging the Trumps but backed off after a visit from a donor — Trump's attorney Marc Kasowitz." | |
| https://features.propublica.org/trump-inc-podcast/trump-family-business-panama-city-khafif/ | |
| Ivanka was working with Russian mafia, journalist who helped uncover it (among other things) was assassinated | |
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-panama/ | |
| * Despite being a third party, Nogueira and his partners played a major part in the Trump project's success, according to interviews with former key staff at Homes, developers, investors and lawyers, and an analysis of Panama corporate records and other public documents. | |
| * listed as director of four Trump Ocean investment companies was Igor Anopolskiy, who in 2007 was Homes Real Estate's representative in Kiev. Police records state he was arrested in March of that year for suspected people trafficking. | |
| Panamanian judge says Trump lawyers threatened her over hotel dispute | |
| https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/378695-judge-says-trump-lawyers-threatened-her-over-panama-hotel | |
| Trump in Panama Papers | |
| http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-first-appearance-panama-papers-uncovered-722266 | |
| Most Trump properties sold to secretive buyers | |
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/06/13/trump-property-buyers-make-clear-shift-secretive-llcs/102399558/ | |
| Trump's Russian Laundromat | |
| https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate | |
| * Ivankov made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having "willfully violated" anti-money-laundering regulations for years. | |
| * the fact that a top Russian mafia boss lived and worked in Trump's own building indicates just how much high-level Russian mobsters came to view the future president's properties as a home away from home. | |
| * Throughout the 1990s, untold millions from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump's luxury developments and Atlantic City casinos. | |
| * a massive international gambling and money-laundering syndicate that was run out of Trump Tower in New York. The ring, according to the FBI, was operating under the protection of the Russian mafia. | |
| * one week before National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was fired for failing to report meetings with Russian officials, Trump's personal attorney reportedly hand-delivered to Flynn's office a "back-channel plan" for lifting sanctions on Russia. The co-author of the plan, according to the Times: Felix Sater. | |
| * The operation, which prosecutors called "the world's largest sports book," was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a "sophisticated money-laundering scheme" that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States. | |
| Federal Authorities Raided Trump Fundraiser's Office in Money Laundering Probe | |
| https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-authorities-raided-trump-fundraisers-office-in-money-laundering-probe | |
| * federal agents scoured Elliott Broidy's office for documents related to China, Saudi Arabia and a Miami Beach club promoter. | |
| * investigating: conspiracy, money laundering and violations of the law barring covert lobbying on behalf of foreign officials. | |
| Russians Flock to Trump Properties to Give Birth to U.S. Citizens | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-flock-to-trump-properties-to-give-birth-to-us-citizens | |
| Trump is a liar | |
| https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ | |
| https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/ | |
| https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/oct/27/donald-trumps-top-10-most-misleading-claims/ | |
| https://thinkprogress.org/on-his-first-day-in-office-trump-broke-34-promises-683c957286dc | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/ | |
| * In 787 days, President Trump has made 9,197 false and misleading claims | |
| https://www.factcheck.org/2015/12/the-king-of-whoppers-donald-trump/ | |
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/2016-donald-trump-fact-check-week-214287 | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-week-reveals-bleak-view-dubious-statements-in-alternative-universe/2016/09/24/4f8a6ff6-80cf-11e6-b002-307601806392_story.html | |
| https://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/trump-on-the-stump/ | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/10/president-trump-has-made-1318-false-or-misleading-claims-over-263-days/ | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html | |
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/30/trump-lies-reversals-rudderless-unprincipled-leader-psychologist-column/848728002/ | |
| Trump threatens freedom of press | |
| https://www.mediamatters.org/trumps-war-on-the-press | |
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/320168-trump-the-media-is-the-enemy-of-the-american-people | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html | |
| http://fair.org/home/corporate-media-analysts-indifference-to-us-journalists-facing-70-years-in-prison/ | |
| https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/03/09/how-trumps-white-house-delegitimizing-anything-could-get-way-its-propaganda/215613 | |
| Began looking for ways to force journalists to reveal their sources | |
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-sessions-leaks-idUSKBN1AK1UR | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/trump-wants-to-censor-the-press/542142/ | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/trump-press-crackdown/542670/ | |
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-11/trump-threatens-nbc-tv-licenses-after-story-on-nuclear-buildup | |
| https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/trump-praises-rep-greg-gianforte-for-assaulting-reporter.html | |
| Kavanaugh won't commit to recusal from Trump, Mueller-related matters | |
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/kavanaugh-commit-recusal-trump-mueller-related-matters/story?id=57534501 | |
| SC Justice Kennedy (replaced by Kavanaugh) whose son led real-estate division at Deutsche Bank was involved in lending Trump at least 640 million | |
| https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-kennedy-son-loaned-president-trump-over-a-billion-dollars-2018-6 | |
| * The son of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was leading a real-estate division of Deutsche Bank as it gave President Donald Trump over $1 billion in loans to finance his real-estate projects when other banks wouldn't | |
| * Justin Kennedy, the former global head of Deutsche Bank's real-estate capital markets division, was one of Trump's close business associates | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/07/12/untangling-the-links-between-trump-deutsche-bank-and-justice-kennedys-son/?noredirect=on | |
| * Trump's relationship with Deutsche Bank and Justin Kennedy has been documented over the years in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and other media. | |
| * Iffy reporting by New Republic: | |
| https://newrepublic.com/minutes/149496/trumps-relationship-justice-kennedy-sounds-shady-new-report | |
| * He could have been voting in favor of Trump's positions because he agreed with them. | |
| * Considering his age, party affiliation and conservative views on many issues, it's not clear why Kennedy would have needed some secret inducement to create a vacancy for Trump. | |
| * Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank is "the financial institution with probably the strongest ties" to Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2016. | |
| * In 2005, Deutsche Bank and others loaned the future president $640 million to build the Trump International Hotel and Tower, which is now the second-tallest building in Chicago. This appears to be the only Deutsche Bank loan to Trump that involved the younger Kennedy. [...] Justin Kennedy does know Trump and knows the president's children socially, the two people said. | |
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/anthony-kennedy-resignation-trump/ | |
| * Did Anthony Kennedy Resign from the Supreme Court to Protect His Son? Unproven. | |
| Five Times Brett Kavanaugh Appears to Have Lied to Congress While Under Oath | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/five-times-brett-kavanaugh-appears-to-have-lied-to-congress-while-under-oath/ | |
| https://mobile.twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1037723994995269632 | |
| Missing Kavanaugh Docs Being Kept Secret to Cover up Evidence of Crime, Fmr Fed Prosecutor Says | |
| https://lawandcrime.com/live-trials/live-trials-current/brett-kavanaugh-confirmation-hearing/missing-kavanaugh-docs-being-kept-secret-to-cover-up-evidence-of-crime-fmr-fed-prosecutor-says-watch/ | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/03/hours-before-kavanaugh-nomination-hearings-bush-lawyer-releases-42000-pages-of-documents-to-judiciary-committee/ | |
| Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. Were Close to Being Charged With Felony Fraud | |
| https://www.propublica.org/article/ivanka-donald-trump-jr-close-to-being-charged-felony-fraud | |
| * New York prosecutors were preparing a case. Then the D.A. overruled his staff after a visit from a top donor: Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz. | |
| * For two years, prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney's office had been building a criminal case against them for misleading prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo development that was failing to sell. | |
| Voter fraud commission has 7 lawsuits against them | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/18/trumps-voter-fraud-commission-is-now-facing-at-least-7-federal-lawsuits/ | |
| * NAACP: was formed with the intent to discriminate against voters of color in violation of the Constitution. | |
| * EPIC: the Commission's demand for detailed voter histories also violates millions of Americans' constitutional right to privacy. | |
| * ACLU: the commission is failing to comply with federal transparency laws. Some still unreleased. | |
| * Florida ACLU: commission's data collection efforts amount to "an unjustified invasion of privacy not authorized under the Constitution and laws of the United States or the individual states." | |
| * Public Citizen: commission's "collection and dissemination of [voter] information violates the Privacy Act, which prohibits the collection, use, maintenance or distribution of any 'record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.'" | |
| Trump scandals vs Clinton narrative | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/5b3adm/the_real_clinton_email_scandal_is_that_a_bullshit/d9lj0py/ | |
| https://apnews.com/fc9ab2b0bbc34f11bc10714100318ae1 | |
| * Disguised Russian agents on Twitter rushed to deflect scandalous news about Donald Trump just before last year's presidential election while straining to refocus criticism on the mainstream media and Hillary Clinton's campaign | |
| Trump dodged military draft | |
| https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/politics/john-mccain-trump/index.html | |
| Congress: Trump Won't Implement Russia Sanctions—and He Won't Tell Us Why | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/congress-trump-wont-implement-russia-sanctionsand-he-wont-tell-us-why | |
| * Trump breaking the law over Russian sanctions in public. | |
| Donald Trump's hotel in Azerbaijan linked with corruption, Iran's Revolutionary Guard | |
| https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-azerbaijan-hotel-linked-with-corruption-iran-2017-3 | |
| I Used to Run the Immigration Service—and Trump's Refugee Policy Is Baseless | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/vetting-refugees-trump/544430/ | |
| Trump's ex-wife claims he violently assaulted and raped her; many others too. Years later retracted "rape" terminology | |
| https://www.9news.com.au/world/2018/07/25/15/38/leaked-donald-trump-tapes-dredges-up-1989-spousal-rape-accusation | |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/donald-trump-ex-wife-claim-he-raped-her-resurfaces-in-new-documentary-a6836151.html | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-wife-donald-trump-made-me-feel-violated-during-sex | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations | |
| Trump accused of raping a 13-year-old aspiring teen model two decades ago has again dropped a federal lawsuit over threats | |
| https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-rape-lawsuit-dropped-230770 | |
| Tillerson criticized Russia's use of novichok nerve agent on Skripals, fired next day | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-ousts-tillerson-will-replace-him-as-secretary-of-state-with-cia-chief-pompeo/2018/03/13/30f34eea-26ba-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html | |
| Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's oil & Russia connections | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7p9fys/trumprussia_senator_dianne_feinstein_releases/dsfoigo/?context=1000 | |
| Rex Tillerson completely gutted a formerly functioning State Department essentially crippling US influence abroad | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/us/politics/state-department-buyouts.html | |
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/26/state-department-scraps-sanctions-office/ | |
| * The Trump administration was three weeks late on a Russia sanctions deadline. But it's killed the office that coordinates them. | |
| Putin intervened to block Romney nomination to insist on someone who would lift sanctions | |
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier | |
| State Department [Tillerson] Scraps Sanctions Office, rather than enforce sanctions against Russia | |
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/26/state-department-scraps-sanctions-office/ | |
| ## Investigations, American activities | |
| https://themoscowproject.org/ | |
| https://investigaterussia.org | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaLago/wiki/faq | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ActiveMeasures/wiki/index | |
| https://www.2016activemeasures.org/ | |
| https://www.2016activemeasures.org/resources/ | |
| * Court docs, Intelligence reports, Congressional testimony, journalist & expert resources, journalist summaries, Trump/Russia timelines, link collections | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/topics/russia | |
| AG Barr's summary was misleading, called to testify in response | |
| https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1109913142933573632 | |
| Trump knew Mueller report was coming shortly, returned to attacking Mueller | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-kept-asking-friends-if-the-mueller-report-would-drop-this-week | |
| https://apnews.com/87c52ad4f7a84eb59c1d587befcc1ae2 | |
| Piecing together Mueller's report from court documents | |
| https://www.apnews.com/2b8513d4a4224a559d7048edb396cdfd | |
| https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-shorts-speaking-indictments-robert-s-mueller-iii | |
| Court records reveal a Mueller report right in plain view | |
| https://apnews.com/2b8513d4a4224a559d7048edb396cdfd | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/trump-mueller-report-smoking-guns/583336/ | |
| * The fevered speculation about when the special counsel will conclude his work overshadows how much the public already knows about the president and Russia. | |
| Shortly after RNC hacked, 26 Republicans announce retirement | |
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/here-are-all-the-republicans-retiring-from-congress-in-2018/ | |
| The RNC Files: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak | |
| https://www.upguard.com/breaches/the-rnc-files | |
| * In what is the largest known data exposure of its kind, UpGuard's Cyber Risk Team can now confirm that a misconfigured database containing the sensitive personal details of over 198 million American voters was left exposed to the internet by a firm working on behalf of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in their efforts to elect Donald Trump. The data, which was stored in a publicly accessible cloud server owned by Republican data firm Deep Root Analytics, included 1.1 terabytes of entirely unsecured personal information compiled by DRA and at least two other Republican contractors, TargetPoint Consulting, Inc. and Data Trust. In total, the personal information of potentially near all of America's 200 million registered voters was exposed, including names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details, as well as data described as "modeled" voter ethnicities and religions. | |
| * The RNC data repository would ultimately acquire roughly 9.5 billion data points regarding three out of every five Americans, scoring 198 million potential US voters on their likely political preferences using advanced algorithmic modeling across forty-eight different categories. | |
| * anyone with an internet connection could have accessed the Republican data operation used to power Donald Trump's presidential victory, simply by navigating to a six-character Amazon subdomain: "dra-dw". | |
| * An additional 24 terabytes of data was stored in the warehouse, but had been configured to prevent public access. | |
| Flynn's secret text messages show Trump colluded with Russia, experts say | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/mike-flynns-secret-messages-show-trump-colluded-russia-experts-740246 | |
| * Flynn also wanted U.S. sanctions against Russia lifted in order to complete an international energy project he was working on. | |
| * General Michael Flynn—within minutes of Donald Trump being sworn in as president—was communicating directly with his former business colleagues about their plans to work with Russia to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East | |
| White House counsel (and likely Trump) knew in January Flynn probably violated the Logan Act | |
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/20/white-house-counsel-knew-in-january-flynn-probably-violated-the-law/ | |
| How the Russia Inquiry Began (Papadopoulos) | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html | |
| * Papadopoulos claimed Russia had political dirt on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails to Australia's top diplomat, two months before the leak. | |
| * The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired. | |
| * It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies. | |
| Papadopoulos smoking gun on collusion? | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/921456148984758274 | |
| * at the Trump International Hotel in D.C.—Papadopoulos told Trump that Putin wanted to deal with him. | |
| * If Trump was legally put on notice that the Kremlin wanted to deal as of that date, his subsequent actions would be considered collusion. | |
| * THE DAILY CALLER—a conservative publication—has just confirmed that Papadopoulos revealed himself as a Kremlin agent on March 31st, 2016. | |
| * Papadopoulos told Trump's NatSec team he was acting on behalf of the Kremlin. | |
| * THE DAILY CALLER believed it was assisting Trump by reporting (falsely) that Trump's NatSec team "shot down" Papadopoulos' entreaties. | |
| * If Trump had that knowledge and took steps to negotiate with the Russians, it would be collusion; if he did so *post-hacking*, a crime. | |
| * Manafort wouldn't have said, over email, "Trump can't be involved," as Sessions would've indicated *no one* could be involved. | |
| * The team decided a "private citizen" could hold secret meetings in Moscow. In July, Page went to Moscow as— he says—a "private citizen." | |
| * Shortly after the March 31st, 2016 meeting, Trump—per the IC and major-media reports—had his son call the Russian ambassador (Kislyak). | |
| * Trump then gave a speech in which he promised to give Russia a "good deal"—on sanctions—if elected POTUS. Kislyak was in the front row. | |
| * Aiding and abetting via negotiation—offering, reports imply, no-strings sanctions relief—to a nation waging cyberwar on us is a *crime*. | |
| * Today's news confirms Trump negotiated sanctions relief before AND after he learned of Russian hacks in July '16. Thus—collusion. /end | |
| * An acquaintance of Papadopoulos is said to be the source for much of the Steele dossier. | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/921945470557212673 | |
| * On August 17, 2016, the IC told Trump that Russia was waging cyberwar on America; 3 weeks later he had Sessions negotiate sanctions relief | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/921945790288924672 | |
| * On March 31, 2016, Trump learned Putin wanted to negotiate. That day he ordered his NatSec team to change the GOP platform to benefit Putin. | |
| Papadopoulos offered to negotiate with Russians, according to Sessions | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/931273196187287552 | |
| * "I remember that he suggested an ability to negotiate with Russians or others, and I thought he had no ability, or it would not be appropriate for him to do so." | |
| https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4692316/raskinsessionsrussia | |
| 17 days after his hire, Trump sent self-admitted Kremlin agent Papadopoulos to Israel to talk Russia policy | |
| http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Know-Comment-The-Donalds-foreign-policy-450602 | |
| * Trump, says Papadopoulos, sees Russian President Vladimir Putin as a responsible actor and potential partner. | |
| Papadopoulos lied about his credentials to get on national security team | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/gop-foreign-policy-elite-doesnt-know-whether-theyll-serve-if-trump-is-president/2016/04/15/5cd1e87c-0016-11e6-b823-707c79ce3504_story.html | |
| Papadopoulos was not low level | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/925910586545844225 | |
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNlsPGfU8AAATtH.jpg:orig | |
| At the inauguration, the Greek Defense Minister "met with Chief of Staff Priebus and Trump adviser Papadopoulos." | |
| http://www.ekathimerini.com/215454/article/ekathimerini/news/kammenos-confident-of-close-cooperation-with-trump-administration | |
| Papadopoulos met with Kammenos in Greece same time as Putin, also meeting Kammenos | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/for-trump-adviser-at-center-of-russia-probe-a-rapid-rise-and-dramatic-fall-in-his-ancestral-land/2017/12/10/91bb696a-d390-11e7-9ad9-ca0619edfa05_story.html | |
| Adam Schiff on collusion | |
| https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/925899492024516608 | |
| Trump Campaign Got Early Word Russia Had Democrats' Emails | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/trump-russia-mueller-indictment.html | |
| * Court documents revealed that Russian officials alerted the campaign, through an intermediary in April 2016, that they possessed thousands of Democratic emails and other "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. That was two months before the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was publicly revealed and the stolen emails began to appear online. | |
| * Same month of the hack, and lots of undisclosed communication between Trump team and Russian officials. | |
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-contacts-idUSKCN18E106 | |
| Carter Page made the largest #PayToPlay deal in history for @realDonaldTrump with his "full authority". pp 30-31 | |
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html#document/p30 | |
| FBI covered up Russian influence on Trump's election win, Harry Reid claims | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/10/fbi-russia-trump-election-harry-reid-james-comey-wikileaks | |
| * Senator calls for James Comey to resign for withholding information revealed in CIA report that Russian operatives gave hacked emails to WikiLeaks | |
| * A secret CIA analysis found that people with connections to the Russian government provided emails, hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks in the final months of the election | |
| * "The FBI had this material for a long time but Comey, who is of course a Republican, refused to divulge specific information about Russia and the presidental election," | |
| * Comey had previously angered Democrats when, 10 days before election day, he sent a letter to Capitol Hill leaders indicating the FBI had located additional emails potentially related to its investigation of Clinton's private email server. Two days before the election, he sent another letter saying the review was complete and that he stood by the bureau's original conclusion finding no criminal wrongdoing. | |
| * "So at end of close election, FBI deeply hurt HRC [Clinton] based on no evidence, while CIA sat on clear evidence of Putin interference for Trump." | |
| * The call poses a dilemma for Republicans who have increasingly rallied around Trump and do not want to be seen undermining his legitimacy. | |
| * If all they wanted to do was discredit our political system, why publicise the failings of just one party, especially when you have a target like Trump? | |
| * "A foreign adversary has been caught trying to influence an American election. The intelligence community must have certainty that the evidence is concrete to support the conclusion. But revealing the evidence may not be in the national interest and undermine future capabilities to monitor Russia's next attack on the nation." | |
| Domestic conspiracy helped Trump win | |
| https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-domestic-conspiracy-that-gave-trump-the-election_us_587ed24fe4b0b110fe11dbf9 | |
| * Information presently public and available confirms that Erik Prince, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump conspired to intimidate FBI Director James Comey into interfering in, and thus directly affecting, the 2016 presidential election. This conspiracy was made possible with the assistance of officers in the New York Police Department and agents within the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All of the major actors in the conspiracy have already confessed to its particulars | |
| * sources within the FBI—active agents—who had told him of virulent anti-Clinton sentiment in the New York field office and an internal rebellion against Comey's July decision not to indict Clinton, Prince claimed to have sources within the Weiner investigation who were illegally leaking information to him. | |
| * disinformation Comey feared would be given to voters, and, more importantly, believed by voters, if he did not complete his investigation into the duplicate emails and announce his findings before Election Day. This alone explains his deviation from FBI protocol prohibiting discussion of open cases (and announcements regarding major investigations within two months of a general election). | |
| * 4. Both polling, poll analysis, and internet meta-data (see below) confirm that the Comey Letter was sufficient to hand Trump the 77,143 combined votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that won him the election. We know from the statements made by Giuliani, and from numerous statements made by Trump on the campaign trail, that both men believed the Clinton email server case could be leveraged to ensure Clinton's defeat in November. It turns out they were correct. | |
| * http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bigger-than-watergate-concerns-grow-that-anti-clinton_us_5850bb12e4b0b662c2fddebc | |
| * http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/12/14/nate-silver-clinton-would-be-president-if-it-werent-for-james-comey-n2258940 | |
| Comey's letter helped swing the election to Trump | |
| http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/12/14/nate-silver-clinton-would-be-president-if-it-werent-for-james-comey-n2258940 | |
| * Comey was manipulated into it: | |
| https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/was-rudy-giuliani-at-the-center-of-an-fbi-trump-campaign_us_585ad14ce4b014e7c72ed993 | |
| Trump expected to lose, didn't want to win | |
| https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/michael-wolff-fire-and-fury-book-donald-trump.html | |
| Doubting the intelligence, Trump pursues Putin and leaves a Russian threat unchecked | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald-trump-pursues-vladimir-putin-russian-election-hacking/ | |
| * The Russian operation seemed intended to aggravate political polarization and racial tensions and to diminish U.S. influence abroad. The United States' closest alliances are frayed, and the Oval Office is occupied by a disruptive politician who frequently praises his counterpart in Russia. | |
| * Current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update — known as the president's daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him. | |
| * Trump's initial briefing covered the most highly classified information U.S. spy agencies had assembled, including an extraordinary CIA stream of intelligence that had captured Putin's specific instructions on the operation. [Legally, that makes his secret plan to unilaterally drop Russia sanctions a crime and an impeachable offense.] | |
| * At the end of a lavish banquet for world leaders, Trump wandered away from his assigned seat for a private conversation with the Russian leader — without a single U.S. witness, only a Kremlin interpreter. A Trump administration official described the reaction to the encounter as overblown, saying that Trump had merely left his seat to join the first lady, Melania Trump, who had been seated for the dinner next to Putin. | |
| Putin ordered theft of Clinton's emails from DNC, Russian hacker confesses | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/russian-hacker-stealing-clintons-emailshacking-dnc-putinsfsb-745555 | |
| * A Russian hacker accused of stealing from Russian banks reportedly confessed in court that he hacked the U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) and stole Hillary Clinton's emails under the direction of agents from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). | |
| * experts say there are reasons to be skeptical of the confession. Many of the individuals implicated in Kozlovsky's letter are currently on the bad side of the Russian government. | |
| https://thebell.io/ya-byl-zaverbovan-haker-iz-ekaterinburga-vzyal-na-sebya-otvetstvennost-za-vzlomy-v-ssha/ | |
| * One of the defendants in the case of the hacker group Lurk claims that he ordered the US Democratic Party by order of the FSB. | |
| * Kozlovsky said that he "performed various tasks under the supervision of FSB officers, in particular," hacking "of the National Committee of the Democratic Party of the USA and electronic correspondence of Hillary Clinton, and also" hacking "very serious military enterprises of the United States and other organizations." | |
| * before his arrest, Stoyanov was one of the participants in the investigation into the case of the Lurk group [...] A representative of Kaspersky Lab confirmed | |
| * US intelligence agencies believe that Gucifer 2.0 is a "legend" invented by the GRU. | |
| Trump campaign knew Kremlin had Clinton's emails as late as May 2016 | |
| https://twitter.com/DanScavino/status/730559333105319936 | |
| * Kremlin has Hillary's emails. Russia has 20,000 emails stolen from her secret home server. @IngrahamAngle #Trump2016 | |
| * 8:44 PM - 11 May 2016 from Trump Tower | |
| * screenshot: | |
| https://i.imgur.com/zGMSkpr.png | |
| Secret Finding: 60 Russian Payments "To Finance Election Campaign Of 2016" | |
| https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/secret-finding-60-russian-payments-to-finance-election | |
| Rigged: How Voter Suppression Threw Wisconsin to Trump | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/voter-suppression-wisconsin-election-2016/ | |
| * An analysis by Media Matters for America found that only 8.9 percent of TV news segments on voting rights from July 2016 to June 2017 "discussed the impact voter suppression laws had on the 2016 election," while more than 70 percent "were about Trump's false claims of voter fraud and noncitizen voting." | |
| * Three years after Wisconsin passed its voter ID law in 2011, a federal judge blocked it, noting that 9 percent of all registered voters did not have the required forms of ID. Black voters were about 50 percent likelier than whites to lack these IDs because they were less likely to drive or to be able to afford the documents required to get a current ID, and more likely to have moved from out of state. | |
| * the state couldn't present a single case of voter impersonation that the law would have stopped. "It is absolutely clear that [the law] will prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes," | |
| * surveyed about why they didn't cast a ballot. Eleven percent cited the voter ID law and said they didn't have an acceptable ID | |
| * There were more than 1 million lost votes, Stewart estimates, because people ran into things like ID laws, long lines at the polls, and difficulty registering. Trump won the election by a total of 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. | |
| * nine primarily Southern states—and cities and counties in six others—with long histories of voting discrimination no longer had to clear new election rules with the federal government. The 2016 election was the first presidential contest in more than 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. | |
| * She had secretly recorded the DMV employees to show that the state was not complying with a court order to distribute voter IDs within a week to people like Moore who did not have access to their birth certificates or other required documents. | |
| Russia probing electrical grid | |
| https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-gain-switch-flipping-access-to-us-power-systems | |
| Russian politician: US spies slept while Russia elected Trump | |
| https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/12/politics/russian-politician-us-election-intelligence/index.html | |
| Top-secret NSA report details Russian hacking effort days before 2016 election | |
| https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-hacking-effort-days-before-2016-election/ | |
| Russia was probing electoral systems, succeeded | |
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/06/nsa_document_ou.html | |
| https://www.cyberdefensemagazine.com/fbi-flash-alert-says-foreign-hackers-compromised-state-election-systems/ | |
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/russian-hackers-targeted-half-states-voter-registration-systems/story?id=42435822 | |
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-hackers-target-election-systems-20160930-story.html | |
| * Federal officials and many cybersecurity experts have said it would be nearly impossible for hackers to alter an election's outcome because election systems are very decentralized and generally not connected to the internet. | |
| * The FBI last month warned state officials of the need to improve their election security after hackers targeted systems in Illinois and Arizona. | |
| * "While it is theoretically possible to disrupt an election by infiltrating a voter registration system, their compromise would not affect election results" [unless you target races] | |
| https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/12/10/evidence-prove-russian-hack/ | |
| https://qz.com/898168/three-russian-cyber-arrests-one-suspicious-death-and-a-new-twist-in-the-us-election-hack/ | |
| * Likely purge related to the hack. Kaspersky involved. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-us-cyber-officials-russia-poses-a-major-threat-to-the-countrys-infrastructure-and-networks/2017/01/05/36a60b42-d34c-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html | |
| * Top U.S. intelligence official: Russia meddled in election by hacking, spreading of propaganda | |
| * Republican party doesn't want to hear it, supports Trump; doesn't want to be seen undermining legitimacy. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/23/what-we-know-about-the-21-states-targeted-by-russian-hackers/ | |
| * Illinois: There is no evidence that votes were altered but, as previously reported, personal information for tens of thousands of voters was exposed. | |
| * "in Arizona, the Russian hackers did not compromise the state voter registration system or even any county system. They did, however, steal the username and password of a single election official in Gila County, state officials said." | |
| https://techscience.org/a/2017090601/ | |
| * Harvard study: Voter Identity Theft: Submitting Changes to Voter Registrations Online to Disrupt Elections | |
| * Websites for 35 states and DC in 2016 were vulnerable to voter identity theft attacks: an imposter could submit changes to voter registration information | |
| * A voter identity theft attack could disrupt an election by imposters submitting address changes, deleting voter registrations, or requesting absentee ballots. State offices have processes and practices that could limit attacks | |
| * This reportedly happened during the 2016 Republican primary election in Riverside County, California. | |
| * We found that in 2016, the District of Columbia and 35 of the 50 states had websites that allowed voters to submit registration changes. These websites determined whether a visitor was an actual voter by requesting commonly available personal information. Some websites gave multiple ways for a voter to self-identify. | |
| https://www.cyberscoop.com/harvard-study-online-voter-registration-vulnerabilities-election-officials-pushback/ | |
| * Election officials are pushing back against a new Harvard study saying hackers could disenfranchise Americans in 35 states and the District of Columbia by exploiting vulnerabilities in online voter registration systems. | |
| * "The vast majority of states mentioned in the report already do the things [the authors] recommend [as mitigations] and take security measures … to prevent bulk changes to voter records," | |
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/russian-breach-of-39-states-threatens-future-u-s-elections | |
| * Russian Cyber Hacks on U.S. Electoral System Far Wider Than Previously Known | |
| * In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. | |
| * the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states | |
| * Why did they apparently not use their access? "A more likely explanation is that several months of hacking failed to give the attackers the access they needed to master America's disparate voting systems spread across more than 7,000 local jurisdictions." Or because Trump was winning. | |
| * When then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said last August that the department wanted to declare the systems as national critical infrastructure -- a designation that gives the federal government broader powers to intervene -- Republicans balked. Only after the election did the two sides eventually reach a deal to make the designation. | |
| * the White House was ultimately unwilling to risk public confidence in the election's integrity | |
| Kaspersky obtained secret NSA cyber tools | |
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/the-cases-for-and-against-claims-kaspersky-helped-steal-secret-nsa-secrets/ | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-exploited-antivirus-software-to-steal-us-cyber-capabilities/2017/10/05/a01bf546-a9fc-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html | |
| https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kz755a/ex-nsa-hackers-are-not-surprised-by-bombshell-kaspersky-report | |
| * The Wall Street Journal story doesn't mention that this incident with the unnamed contractor is how the mysterious hacking group The Shadow Brokers obtained the top secret documents and hacking tools that they've been leaking for more than year now. [...] "Very cautious working assumption: yes," tweeted Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins who has been studying Russian government hacking operations for years. | |
| https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609100/israeli-spies-spied-russian-spies-spying-on-american-spy-plans-via-kaspersky/ | |
| * Israeli Spies Spied Russian Spies Spying on American Spy Plans via Kaspersky Software | |
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/kaspersky-reportedly-modified-its-av-to-help-russia-steal-nsa-secrets/ | |
| * The Wall Street Journal reports that the assistance could have come only with the company's knowledge. | |
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-kaspersky-germany/germany-no-evidence-kaspersky-software-used-by-russians-for-hacks-idUSKBN1CG284 | |
| * Germany's BSI federal cyber agency said on Wednesday it had no evidence to back media reports that Russian hackers used Kaspersky Lab antivirus software to spy on U.S. authorities. | |
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/russian-hackers-reportedly-used-kaspersky-av-to-search-for-nsa-secrets/ | |
| * Reports say Israeli spies burrowed inside Kaspersky's network caught Russia red handed. | |
| * the spies watched in real time as Russian government hackers turned Kaspersky antivirus software used by 400 million people worldwide into an improvised search tool that scoured computers for code names of US intelligence programs. The NYT likened to a "sort of Google search for sensitive information." The Israeli spies, in turn, reported their findings to their counterparts in the US. | |
| https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/kaspersky-nsa-malware.html | |
| * Claims comp was full of malware. | |
| Court document points to Kaspersky Lab's cooperation with Russian security service | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/court-document-points-to-kaspersky-labs-cooperation-with-russian-security-service/2017/12/13/14ba9450-df42-11e7-bbd0-9dfb2e37492a_story.html | |
| Obama threatened retaliation if Russia attempted direct manipulation or undermining results - apparently stopped | |
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-obama-said-putin-red-phone-about-election-hack-n697116 | |
| * we didn't see further tampering of the election process. | |
| Obama was quiet on Russian interference because McConnell refused bipartisan statement and didn't want to be seen as influencing the election | |
| https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/955863706054873089 | |
| * Biden says that when McConnell refused to join bipartisan statement condemning Russian interference ahead of the election, they decided Obama couldn't speak out -- "the die had been cast ... this was all about the political play" | |
| Sources: Comey acted on Russian intelligence he knew was fake | |
| http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/james-comey-fbi-investigation-fake-russian-intelligence/index.html | |
| * Then-FBI Director James Comey knew that a critical piece of information relating to the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email was fake -- created by Russian intelligence -- but he feared that if it became public it would undermine the probe and the Justice Department itself | |
| * The Russian intelligence at issue purported to show that then-Attorney General Lynch had been compromised in the Clinton investigation. The intelligence described emails between then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a political operative suggesting that Lynch would make the FBI investigation of Clinton go away. | |
| * he felt that it didn't matter if the information was accurate, because his big fear was that if the Russians released the information publicly, there would be no way for law enforcement and intelligence officials to discredit it without burning intelligence sources and methods. There were other factors behind Comey's decision | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/us/politics/devin-nunes-fbi-russia.html | |
| * The FISA application drew on other intelligence that the Republican memo misleadingly omits — but revealing that other information to rebut the memo would risk blowing other sources and methods of intelligence-gathering about Russia. | |
| Russia's election hack | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plot_to_Hack_America | |
| * Original version was published before election. | |
| https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5/21/1664597/-A-look-at-The-Plot-to-Hack-America-by-Malcolm-Nance | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections | |
| * Russian gov started discussing Trump a lot before he announced candidacy. | |
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170108/02061336434/what-us-intelligence-russia-hacked-our-election-report-could-have-said-didnt.shtml | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Special_Counsel_investigation | |
| Election Hackers Altered Voter Rolls, Stole Private Data, Officials Say | |
| https://time.com/4828306/russian-hacking-election-widespread-private-data/ | |
| Dutch agencies provide crucial intel about Russia's interference in US-elections | |
| https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html | |
| https://www.volkskrant.nl/media/dutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections~a4561913/ | |
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fmedia%2Fdutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections~a4561913%2F&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0 | |
| * Russian Cozy Bear DNC hack was observed by Dutch intelligence | |
| * The Cozy Bear hackers are in a space in a university building near the Red Square. The group's composition varies, usually about ten people are active. The entrance is in a curved hallway. A security camera records who enters and who exits the room. The AIVD hackers manage to gain access to that camera. Not only can the intelligence service now see what the Russians are doing, they can also see who's doing it. Pictures are taken of every visitor. In Zoetermeer, these pictures are analyzed and compared to known Russian spies. | |
| * From the pictures taken of visitors, the AIVD deduces that the hacker group is led by Russia's external intelligence agency SVR. | |
| * the head of the AIVD, Rob Bertholee, said on the Dutch TV program CollegeTour that there is 'no question' that the Kremlin is behind the Russian hacking activities. | |
| Georgia election server wiped after suit filed | |
| https://apnews.com/877ee1015f1c43f1965f63538b035d3f/APNewsBreak:-Georgia-election-server-wiped-after-suit-filed | |
| Right-Wing And "Alt-Right" Media Mischaracterize VOA Report To Lie About Russian Hacking | |
| https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/04/07/right-wing-and-alt-right-media-mischaracterize-voa-report-lie-about-russian-hacking/215950 | |
| * Right-wing media are attacking CrowdStrike [...] in an attempt to discredit the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election | |
| How Twitter was used to mine voter location and sentiments, fed to neural net | |
| https://medium.com/tow-center/cambridge-analytica-the-geotargeting-and-emotional-data-mining-scripts-bcc3c428d77f | |
| Kremlin Propagandist Boasted of His Hacking Efforts, Strongly Implied Colluding With Trump Team in Facebook Posts | |
| https://medium.com/@ScottMStedman/kremlin-propagandist-boasted-of-his-hacking-efforts-strongly-implied-colluding-with-trump-team-in-a905104965a1 | |
| * Describes working with Trump, Cambridge Analytica & Wikileaks. | |
| Russia funded a $191-million investment in Twitter, $1 billion in Facebook | |
| https://euvsdisinfo.eu/figure-of-the-week-191-million/ | |
| * Russia's state-controlled VTB bank funded a $191-million investment in Twitter. | |
| * According to the Paradise Papers, another Russian state institution, Gazprom Investholding, financed an offshore company that then funded an investment vehicle owning $1 billion in Facebook shares. | |
| * Both VTB and Gazprom are currently under U.S. sanctions. | |
| Russia targeted "alt-right" supporters | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/10/trump-putin-alt-right-comintern/506015/ | |
| Direct evidence exists of collusion | |
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/schiff-more-circumstantial-evidence-trump-associates-colluded-russia-n737446 | |
| Trump-Russia investigation tldr | |
| https://rantt.com/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-to-the-trump-russia-investigation-d92ce03ceb97 | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Special_Counsel_investigation | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_campaign%E2%80%93Russian_meeting | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_James_Comey | |
| https://www.factcheck.org/2017/06/timeline-russia-investigation/ | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-russia-were-finally-going-to-find-out/2017/11/02/8ba33bba-bff5-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html | |
| Trump campaign connections to Russia; timeline | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials | |
| https://www.politico.com/interactives/2018/trump-russia-investigation-ties/ | |
| * Many important names missing. | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_campaign%E2%80%93Russian_meeting | |
| http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/ | |
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170705223744/https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-03-15/trump-s-long-romance-with-russia | |
| * Trump's attempts to expand his business and his brand there date back decades, and this history casts a shadow over his pro-Russian foreign policy. As a presidential candidate, he courts Putin's favor | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/trump-russia/ | |
| * Nov. 9, 2013 | While in Moscow for his Miss Universe competition, Trump meets with Russian businessmen, including real estate developer Aras Agalarov, an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Before the pageant, Trump said to MSNBC, "I do have a relationship" with Putin. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-trumps-financial-ties-to-russia-and-his-unusual-flattery-of-vladimir-putin/2016/06/17/dbdcaac8-31a6-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html | |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/a-whos-who-of-the-trump-campaigns-russia-connections-w469977 | |
| * a Politico report in February described text messages, hacked from phones belonging to Manafort's daughter, that suggest Manafort was being blackmailed by a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko. Leshchenko reportedly threatened to turn over documents incriminating both Manafort and Trump to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the FBI if he did not hear from Manafort. | |
| * In the hacked texts, Manafort's daughter refers to her father's work in Ukraine as "legally questionable" and the money he was paid for that work as "blood money." | |
| * Roger Stone claimed to have inside knowledge about the content of the emails hacked from the Clinton campaign and the timing of their release. When WikiLeaks released emails hacked from the DNC over the summer, Stone touted knowledge that more would come. In August, months before Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's emails were leaked, he tweeted a warning: "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary." | |
| * At the dinner [in honor of Kremlin-funded news network RT], also attended by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, both Flynn and Stein were seated at Putin's table. | |
| * at least two occasions on which Sessions, the former Alabama senator recently confirmed as Trump's attorney general, met with Kislyak, the Russian ambassador: | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-spoke-twice-with-russian-ambassador-during-trumps-presidential-campaign-justice-officials-say/2017/03/01/77205eda-feac-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html | |
| * After lying under oath to Congress about his own communications with the Russians, the Attorney General must resign | |
| * Asked whether he viewed Putin as a good or bad leader, Sessions pushed for better relations w/Russia. | |
| https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-boot-trump-russian-connection-20160725-snap-story.html | |
| * In 2013, Trump tweeted: "Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?" | |
| * reports of Putin killing political opponents didn't bother him — "Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also," he said. | |
| * Trump positively glows as he repeats reports that "Putin likes me." | |
| * Trump has sought and received funding from Russian investors for his business ventures, especially after most American banks stopped lending to him following his multiple bankruptcies. | |
| * Paul Manafort, was a longtime consultant to Viktor Yanukovich, the Russian-backed president of Ukraine who was overthrown in 2014. Manafort also has done multimillion-dollar business deals with Russian oligarchs. | |
| * Trump's foreign policy advisor Carter Page has his own business ties to the state-controlled Russian oil giant Gazprom. | |
| * Another Trump foreign policy advisor, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, flew to Moscow last year to attend a gala banquet celebrating Russia Today, the Kremlin's propaganda channel, and was seated at the head table near Putin. Flynn is a regular guest on Russia Today; he refuses to say whether he gets paid. | |
| * Given the pro-Putin orientation of Trump and his circle, it is no surprise that his campaign quietly rolled back a call in the GOP platform for arming Ukraine to fight back against Russian aggression, as most Republican foreign-policy experts have advocated. Trump has more than once criticized NATO, the chief obstacle to Russian designs, as obsolete and has said he wouldn't necessarily come to the aid of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's members if they are attacked by Russia. Trump also cheered Britain's vote to exit the European Union, another institution that Putin sees as an impediment to his influence. | |
| * Without the countering influence of the U.S., Putin has a good chance to achieve his dream of undoing the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he has called a "geopolitical catastrophe," by re-swallowing Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and other former Soviet republics. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-trumps-financial-ties-to-russia-and-his-unusual-flattery-of-vladimir-putin/2016/06/17/dbdcaac8-31a6-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html | |
| * Trump seemed energized by his interactions with Russia's financial elite at the pageant and a glitzy after-party in a Moscow nightclub. "Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room," Trump bragged to Real Estate Weekly upon returning home. | |
| * The overwhelming consensus among American political and national security leaders has held that Putin is a pariah who disregards human rights and has violated international norms in seeking to regain influence and territory in the former Soviet bloc. | |
| * "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Trump's son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-ambassador-told-moscow-that-kushner-wanted-secret-communications-channel-with-kremlin/2017/05/26/520a14b4-422d-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html | |
| * Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret communications channel with Kremlin | |
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/investigators-follow-flow-money-trump-wealthy-donors-russian/story?id=50100024 | |
| https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/09/russia-born-trump-donor-be-the-key-to-a-cryptic-manafort-note/ | |
| * Simon Kukes, former chief executive of Russian oil giant Yukos. A Russian-born American citizen. | |
| * Kukes, it seems, is no stranger to greasing a few palms to influence officials. CIA documents released in 2003 claim that "Kukes said that he bribed local officials," | |
| * All told, Kukes contributed $283,283 during the 2016 cycle. More than 99 percent came after the Trump Tower meeting in June. | |
| * https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/12/15/putins-proxies-helped-funnel-millions-gop-campaigns | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html | |
| * Betsy DeVos's brother, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, held talks to establish secret back channel with the Russian government | |
| * The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump's inauguration | |
| https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/carter-page-russia-trip-trump-corey-lewandowski-235784 | |
| * Trump campaign approved adviser's trip to Moscow | |
| * Campaign leaders knew in advance of Carter Page's Russia visit in July 2016, former aide says. | |
| * Donald Trump's former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski approved foreign policy adviser Carter Page's now-infamous trip to Moscow last summer on the condition that he would not be an official representative of the campaign, according to a former campaign adviser. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-campaign-emails-show-aides-repeated-efforts-to-set-up-russia-meetings/2017/08/14/54d08da6-7dc2-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html | |
| * Papadopoulos told Trump Russia wanted to negotiate, 3 months before Trump Jr meeting. | |
| * Papadopoulos, offered to set up "a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump," telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity | |
| * The proposal sent a ripple of concern through campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis wrote that he thought NATO allies should be consulted before any plans were made. Another Trump adviser, retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, cited legal concerns, including a possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia and of the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from unauthorized negotiation with foreign governments. But Papadopoulos, a campaign volunteer with scant foreign policy experience, persisted | |
| * it is unclear whether he was acting as an intermediary for the Russian government, although he told campaign officials he was. | |
| * the internal resistance to Papadopoulos's requests is at odds with other overtures Trump allies were making toward Russia at the time, mostly at a more senior level of the campaign. | |
| * in July, a few weeks after Papadopoulos asked his superiors whether other campaign advisers or aides could accept some of the Russians' invitations, Carter Page, another foreign policy adviser, spoke at a Russian university in Moscow. | |
| * Page, who has been the subject of a foreign surveillance warrant over his connections to Russia, said the Papadopoulos email exchange was another sign that the Russia communications were inconsequential. | |
| * On May 4, Papadopoulos forwarded Lewandowski and others a note he received from the program head for the government-funded Russian International Affairs Council. In it, Ivan Timofeev, a senior official in the organization, reached out to report that Russian foreign ministry officials were open to a Trump visit to Moscow and requested that the campaign and Russians write a formal letter outlining the meeting. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/09/26/trumps-russia-adviser-speaks-out-calls-accusations-complete-garbage/ | |
| * Page denies meeting with sanctioned Russian officials during the trip to Moscow. | |
| * Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and unnamed intelligence officials, who have suggested that on a July trip to Moscow, Page met with "highly-sanctioned individuals" and perhaps even discussed an unholy alliance between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. | |
| * Reid wrote to FBI Director James B. Comey asking him to initiate an investigation into Page's Moscow visit, where Page gave a speech at the graduation ceremony of the New Economic School. Without naming Page, Reid said the FBI should investigate his meetings as part of the larger look into whether the Trump campaign was conspiring with the Russian government to tamper with the U.S. presidential election. | |
| * Citing "a well-placed Western intelligence source," Yahoo news last week reported that the U.S. government had received intelligence reports that Page met with Igor Sechin, a friend of Vladimir Putin who runs Russian oil giant Rosneft, and Igor Diveykin, a high–ranking Russian intelligence official. The article floated accusations that Page had conducted "talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president." Various other reports have alleged Page met with Sergei Ivanov, who until recently was the chief of Putin's presidential administration. | |
| * senior Trump campaign staff at the time, who he said approved his trip in advance with the understanding no campaign issues would be discussed. | |
| * Reid's letter came after senior intelligence officials briefed him about Russian hacking of U.S. political organizations and election systems. During the briefing, intelligence officials told Reid they were looking into Page's meetings during his Moscow visit | |
| * Page also disclosed that he has sold his stake in the Russian energy giant Gazprom, at a loss. Page's investments in Gazprom, a company he has performed consulting work for in the past, have often been mentioned as evidence of a conflict of interest for the Trump campaign because Gazprom is a Putin-friendly entity that operates in collusion with the Russian government. | |
| * the likelihood that Page is the center of a Kremlin-Trump conspiracy to undermine the U.S. democratic system is extremely low. He is simply not senior enough to play that role for either side. | |
| https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-rick-gates-bio-photo-indicted-trump-russia-probe-manafort-2017-10 | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/professor-named-in-russia-disclosures-says-he-has-clean-conscious/2017/10/31/41a7a08e-be3b-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html | |
| * Putin -> Mifsud -> Papadopoulos -> Trump. | |
| http://billmoyers.com/story/pence-timeline/ | |
| * Pence, Flynn timeline | |
| * After Mueller takes over Flynn, Manafort investigations: Vice President Mike Pence hires an outside attorney to deal with issues arising from the Trump-Russia investigation. | |
| * In a Fox News interview, Vice President Mike Pence's spokesperson refuses to answer directly whether Pence ever met with any Russians during the presidential campaign. | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/ | |
| * "Hey Don. We have an unusual idea," WikiLeaks wrote on October 21, 2016. "Leak us one or more of your father's tax returns." WikiLeaks then laid out three reasons why this would benefit both the Trumps and WikiLeaks. One, The New York Times had already published a fragment of Trump's tax returns on October 1; two, the rest could come out any time "through the most biased source (e.g. NYT/MSNBC)." It is the third reason, though, WikiLeaks wrote, that "is the real kicker." "If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality," WikiLeaks explained. "That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won't be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump' ‘pro-Russia' source." [...] "The same for any other negative stuff (documents, recordings) that you think has a decent chance of coming out. Let us put it out." | |
| * WikiLeaks didn't write again until Election Day, November 8, 2016. "Hi Don if your father ‘loses' we think it is much more interesting if he DOES NOT conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of rigging that occurred—as he has implied that he might do," WikiLeaks wrote at 6:35pm, when the idea that Clinton would win was still the prevailing conventional wisdom. (As late as 7:00pm that night, FiveThirtyEight, a trusted prognosticator of the election, gave Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning the presidency.) WikiLeaks insisted that contesting the election results would be good for Trump's rumored plans to start a media network should he lose the presidency. | |
| * https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/donald-trump-jrs-messages-with-wikileaks-point-to-campaign-finance-violations/545903/ | |
| https://qz.com/1202800/alexey-navalny-says-oleg-deripaska-transmitted-trump-campaign-information-from-paul-manafort-to-the-kremlin/ | |
| * Paul Manafort worked with Deripaska for many years before joining the Trump campaign, and was under FBI investigation as early as 2014. In 2016, while working as Trump’s campaign manager, Manafort reportedly offered to brief Deripaska on the Trump campaign. | |
| https://twitter.com/navalny/status/961582757557174272 | |
| * Navalny, the anti-corruption Putin opposition candidate in Russia, claims oligarch Oleg Deripaska is connected to the Kremlin | |
| * Deripaska is the one Manafort offered to report to. | |
| * Deripaska is connected with the Deputy Prime Minister: | |
| https://youtu.be/RQZr2NgKPiU | |
| Hungarian backchannel to Putin, Wikileaks | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/855861076411506688 | |
| * (1) Part I: Dr. András Göllner, former Concordia professor, argues Arthur Finkelstein is Russiagate's missing link. | |
| http://hungarianfreepress.com/2017/04/13/the-budapest-bridge-hungarys-role-in-the-collusion-between-the-trump-campaign-and-the-russian-secret-service/ | |
| * It is known, for example, that the Russians and the Trump campaign had identical strategic interests. They both wanted to position Hillary Clinton as a „crooked and untrustworthy" candidate. What has not been known, up to now is, that the unacknowledged architect of this grand strategy was the notoriously secretive Arthur J. Finkelstein, a long time New York associate of Donald Trump | |
| * Finkelstein is perhaps the most bitter opponent of Hillary Clinton amongst a small circle of pro-Republican campaign gurus, and a frequent flyer to many of the capitals where Putin is seen as a hero. Finkelstein introduced Paul Manafort years ago to Putin's pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs, who use their corporate hats, to advance Putin's fortunes abroad. Finkelstein also had a big hand in Manafort's addition to the Trump team. Finkelstein has also served as chief political strategist for the past 10 years, to Putin's most loyal follower in the Western alliance – the Hungarian PM, Viktor Orbán. | |
| * By conservative estimates Budapest is home to approximately 1000 members of the Russian secret service, most of them in the possession of Hungarian passports provided for by Hungary's pro-Russian Ministry of the Interior. | |
| * The Hungarian government's corrupt passport system, enables Russia's top operatives to work and travel without any restrictions within the EU, and more importantly, to travel to the USA without a visa. Hungary's bank laws provide an impenetrable financial shelter to those who are dealing with Putin's secret services. Orbán's Ministry of the Interior provides a protective umbrella against internet and telephone snooping. | |
| * Finkelstein and Orbán's top Hungarian strategist, Árpád Habony, have a London based joint company, close to the headquarters of Wikileaks. The Russian leakage of embarrassing information about Hillary Clinton, was coordinated through Budapest, and London, and was designed to lower Clinton's trustworthiness at pre-planned moments during the campaign. | |
| * The Congressional investigators should also talk to Senator Sessions' right hand man during the campaign, J.D. Gordon, who travelled six times to Budapest, and considers Putin's Trojan Horse [Orbán] as one of the finest leaders within the Western alliance. Last, but not least, the FBI and the Congressional team should investigate Sebastian Gorka, Bannon's "terrorism expert" and a man with a 15 year connection to anti-American, pro-Russian, pro-Iranian radicals in Hungary. | |
| * By marrying an American multimillionaire, a Trump campaign donor with connections in high places, Gorka managed to secure access to the White House on behalf of forces, that, are diametrically opposed to America's national interests. | |
| * (2) Part II: Göllner argues Trump advisers Finkelstein and Gorka used FSB contacts in Hungary as Putin backchannels. | |
| http://hungarianfreepress.com/2017/04/14/the-budapest-bridge-hungarys-role-in-the-collusion-between-the-trump-campaign-and-the-russian-secret-service-part-2/ | |
| * Finkelstein was Trump's pick for the anti-Hillary onslaught. Trump knew him well, and used him on previous occasions. He too is a member of the gang that admired the techniques of Roy Cohn, the brain child of McCarthyism, the man, who developed the science of making accusations stick without proper regard for evidence. Finkelstein has been instrumental in numerous Republican victories in New York state. His entire life was dedicated to demonizing Democrats and progressive ideas. And most importantly, he spearheaded the "Get Hillary" campaign in 2006 – he held a decade long personal grudge against Hillary. | |
| * Leakage of the hacked documents, according to our sources was coordinated through Budapest, the European HQ of the FSB, and with Orbán's knowledge. | |
| * the London based joint company, set up by Finkelstein and Habony at the start of the Trump campaign (Danube Business Consulting Ltd) played an important role in the transfer of the hacked documents to Assange and Wikileaks. | |
| * Roger Stone should be asked: Was he in contact, during his visits to London with Tamás Lánczi, the Director of Danube Business Consulting, Ltd, and did any of his discussions with Lánczi pertained to the hacked documents of the DNC and their transfer to Wikileaks? | |
| * One of the first things the FBI should do, along with the Congressional intelligence Committees, is to examine J.D. Gordon's Hungarian agenda book. [...] He travelled six times to Budapest, the European Headquarters of the Russian secret service. He should be questioned under oath and asked point blank: Who paid for his visits to Hungary, during the campaign? Why was it so important for him to spend so much time in this small, politically insignificant country, as a member of the Trump campaign team? Did he meet Finkelstein or Habony in Budapest, or Lánczi in London? | |
| * Most international experts, refer to the Orbán regime as Russia's Trojan Horse in the Western alliance. | |
| * (7) Göllner alleges Trump adviser Finkelstein and powerful Hungarians began a venture to coordinate WikiLeaks leaks. https://bbj.hu/business/szazadvegs-analyst-to-team-up-with-habony_97588 | |
| * (10) In hiring Fabrizio—which Trump and others conceded was about more than hiring a pollster—Trump built a deniable channel to Finkelstein. | |
| * (11) Göllner alleges that top Trump foreign policy adviser J.D. Gordon traveled to Budapest six times in 2016. Gordon also met with Kislyak. | |
| * 13) The Guardian confirms European intel agencies picked up _multiple_ Trump advisers dealing with Russians abroad. | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia | |
| * Gordon met Kislyak, is pro-Russia, made the GOP platform pro-Putin, ran Trump's NatSec wing. Who's looking into him? | |
| http://heavy.com/news/2017/03/jeffrey-d-gordon-jd-russia-meet-meeting-with-russia-ambassador-sergei-kislyak-pentagon-spokesman-guantanamo-bay-sarah-palin-herman-cain-comments-today-republican-national-convention/ | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/11/carter-pages-mysterious-trip-to-budapest-highlights-hungarys-effort-to-win-over-trump/ | |
| MICE: How Russian intelligence exploits people's vulnerabilities | |
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/26/trump-team-prey-putin-215743 | |
| * MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego | |
| * Paul Manafort: Money | |
| * Michael Flynn: Money, Ideology, Ego | |
| * Felix Sater: Money, Coercion, Ego | |
| * Jared Kushner: Money, Coercion | |
| * Donald Trump Jr.: Money, Ego | |
| * Donald Trump: Ego | |
| Trump had undisclosed hour-long meeting with Putin at G-20 summit | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-had-undisclosed-hour-long-meeting-with-putin-at-g20-summit/2017/07/18/39c18dd4-6bd0-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html | |
| Flynn Takes The 5th, Refuses To Turn Over Documents To Senate Panel | |
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/22/529498045/flynn-to-take-the-5th-refuses-to-turn-over-documents-to-senate-panel | |
| * The panel wants to see documents relating to Flynn's interactions with Russian officials as part of its probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election. | |
| * Flynn "may have lied to security clearance investigators conducting Flynn's background check in 2016." | |
| Carter Page says he won't testify before Senate Intelligence panel in Russia probe | |
| https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/10/carter-page-russia-probe-243648 | |
| * informed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he will not be cooperating with any requests to appear before the panel for its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and would plead the Fifth | |
| * the Trump campaign distanced itself from the adviser not long after, with former officials saying that Page and Trump had never met. | |
| * Page also attracted attention earlier this year after it was revealed that he once came under scrutiny by the FBI for his contact with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013 | |
| Former Trump adviser Carter Page under FISA warrant since 2014: Report | |
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/former-trump-adviser-carter-page-under-fisa-warrant-since-2014-report/article/2630576 | |
| Richard Burt helped shape Trump's first foreign-policy speech while lobbying on behalf of a Moscow-controlled gas company. | |
| https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-campaign-lobbyist-russian-pipeline-229264 | |
| Trump spreads Russian propaganda | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-benghazi-sputnik-508635 | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/08/12/trump-allies-wikileaks-and-russia-are-pushing-a-nonsensical-conspiracy-theory-about-the-dnc-hacks/ | |
| Steele dossier | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93Russia_dossier | |
| https://themoscowproject.org/dossier | |
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html | |
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/27/mystery-death-ex-kgb-chief-linked-mi6-spys-dossier-donald-trump/ | |
| * Spy who compiled dossier tying Trump to Russia found dead in Moscow. May have assisted with Steele dossier. | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/was-this-russian-general-murdered-over-the-steele-dossier | |
| https://www.justsecurity.org/44697/steele-dossier-knowing/ | |
| * the dossier's information on campaign collusion is generally credible when measured against standard Russian intelligence practices, events subsequent to Steele's reporting, and information that has become available in the nine months since Steele's final report. | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/07/trump-russia-steele-dossier-moscow | |
| * Steele dossier describes Kremlin's cultivation of Trump over years. | |
| * Burr said his committee had come to a consensus in supporting the conclusions of a US intelligence community assessment in January this year that Russian had conducted a multi-pronged campaign to interfere in the 2016 election, in Trump's favour. | |
| * The memo says "the tactics would be to spread rumours and misinformation about the content of what already had been leaked and make up new content". | |
| * The Russian official alleged by Steele's sources to be in charge of the operation, Sergei Ivanov – then Putin's chief of staff – is quoted as saying: "The audience to be targeted by such operations was the educated youth in America as the PA [Russian Presidential Administration] assessed that there was still a chance they could be persuaded to vote for Republican candidate Donald Trump as a protest against the Washington establishment (in the form of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton)." | |
| * The Steele dossier said one of the aims of the Russian influence campaign was to peel off voters who had supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries and nudge them towards Trump. | |
| * Evidence has since emerged that Russians and eastern Europeans posing as Americans targeted Sanders supporters with divisive and anti-Clinton messages in the summer of 2016, after the primaries were over. | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/05/donald-trump-russia-investigation-fake-news-hillary-clinton | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/trump-russia-golden-shower-dossier-679973 | |
| * Although Steele's findings assert that Russia attempted to collect compromising material on both Trump and his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton, the Kremlin is said to have been far more successful in its attempts regarding the Republican candidate. Indeed, the dossier claims that the Russian FSB spy agency possesses a video of Trump successfully requesting prostitutes to urinate on a bed while staying in a Moscow hotel room once occupied by the former president and first lady, Barack and Michelle Obama. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/08/09/trump-russia-and-the-opposition-research-firm-run-by-ex-journalists/ | |
| * Fusion's original client for the Trump opposition research was said to have been a Republican. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html | |
| * Before that agreement, Fusion GPS's research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary. | |
| * there is no evidence Fusion took money from the Russian government. It worked on behalf of an American law firm, which was hired by a company owned by a Russian whose father is a government official. Even Browder, a fierce critic of Fusion, said in an interview the White House is "conflating two issues." | |
| * Fusion's hiring of Steele to produce the dossier was for a different client, not the Russian government. U.S. intelligence agencies raised warnings about the Russian efforts to influence the election, long before the dossier became public. So the dossier is not the source of "Russia scandal fake news." | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/who-is-source-d-the-man-said-to-be-behind-the-trump-russia-dossiers-most-salacious-claim/2017/03/29/379846a8-0f53-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html | |
| * Steele's document said that Millian's assertions had been corroborated by other sources, including in the Russian government and former intelligence sources. | |
| * The most explosive allegation that the dossier says originally came from Millian is the claim that Trump had hired prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton and that the Kremlin has kept evidence of the encounter. | |
| * Millian told several people that during the campaign and presidential transition he was in touch with George Papadopoulos, a campaign foreign policy adviser, according to a person familiar with the matter. Millian is among Papadopoulos's nearly 240 Facebook friends. | |
| * Questioned about dossier, he strongly supports Trump. | |
| * Millian, identified in different portions of the dossier as "Source D" and "Source E," is described as a "close associate of Trump." | |
| * Steele wrote that Millian asserted that there was a "well developed conspiracy of cooperation between [Trump] and Russian leadership," claiming the relationship was managed for Trump by former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. | |
| * Millian boasted that when he was in New York, Trump introduced him to his "right-hand man," Michael Cohen, a longtime Trump adviser — a claim that Cohen has denied. | |
| * Millian told people last year that he was in touch with Papadopoulos, whom Trump had described in a March 2016 Washington Post editorial board interview as a member of his foreign policy team and an "excellent guy." | |
| * Papadopoulos told a group of researchers in Israel that Trump saw Putin as "a responsible actor and potential partner," [...] He also criticized U.S. sanctions on Russia in an interview with the Russian news outlet Interfax. | |
| https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/the-oligarchs-are-next-russian-businessmen-prepare-for-us-sanctions-59391 | |
| * It states that the Alfa Group allegedly carried out Putin's orders and helped interfere in U.S. elections. | |
| Shearer memo independently made many of the same claims as the Steele dossier. FBI still investigating. | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/30/trump-russia-collusion-fbi-cody-shearer-memo | |
| Pee tape thread | |
| https://twitter.com/sethabramson/status/916721604570288128 | |
| * A3: Steele's dossier says (1) a member of the Ritz Moscow staff, and (2) a member of Trump's entourage, confirm the veracity of the claim. | |
| * A10: The U.S. intel community confirms this is a *common* FSB—former KGB—tactic and that it is *regularly* used against U.S. businesspeople. | |
| * Trump's only explanation for why it couldn't have happened is he's a germophobe—which itself is certainly true. | |
| * A18: There's *no* allegation Trump touched any urine, and a germophobe would be *more* likely to order another to use urine to defile a bed. | |
| * A19: Every media source that's looked at the issue says Trump has hated Obama near-obsessively ever since Obama made fun of him at a dinner. | |
| * A23: That night Trump was partying—it's confirmed—with Russian businessmen who hated Obama and would've (like Trump) thought this hilarious. | |
| * A25: Yes, we know Trump was at the wee-hours, club-hosted pageant after-party. And he'd just closed *the biggest business deal of his life*. | |
| * A26: Media reports indicate Trump, Aras Agalarov, Sverbank's CEO, and Putin's permits man Vlad Kozhin agreed on Trump Tower Moscow that day. | |
| * A28: *Yes*. In a press conference after Buzzfeed published the dossier, Trump said he assumed his room was audio-/video-bugged on that trip. | |
| * A30 (KEY ANSWER): *Yes*. We have ample independent evidence suggesting that Trump lied about his conduct in Moscow on the night in question. | |
| * A31: Earlier that night, Trump propositioned Miss Hungary 2013 for sex—an adulterous liaison that would've taken place in his (bugged) room. | |
| * A32 (KEY ANSWER): Yes. Miss Hungary—unaware it mattered—made the allegation *before* Steele's dossier was published. | |
| https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/allegations-by-former-miss-hungary-contradict-trump_us_587e91b9e4b06a0baf649129 | |
| * Q34: So U.S. media—and Congress—keep calling the "pee tape" allegation "salacious" and "unverified," but they won't interview a key witness? | |
| * A36 (KEY ANSWER): Per Paul Wood—the BBC's top Russia correspondent—an American Ritz Moscow guest alleges that prostitutes went to the room. | |
| * Q37: That's intriguing—a witness [actually plural] neither media nor the Senate has sought out who saw a fight over alleged prostitutes going to Trump's room. | |
| * A39 (KEY ANSWER): Paul Wood (BBC) says both a European intel agency chief and a CIA contact confirm a tape consistent with Steele's dossier. | |
| * A45 (KEY ANSWER): Steele's Russia sources are so good Putin has had at least one—Erovinkin—killed. A spy expert calls Steele a "James Bond." | |
| * A46: A Putin-blackmailed POTUS *can't be trusted*. Powerful Trump allies won't investigate it, as it *discredits the dossier* until proven. | |
| * PS8: Note too that Trump began publicly lying about even the *length* of his Moscow trip the moment Steele's "salacious" allegations arose. | |
| One of the two men (Artem Kluyshin and Konstantin Rykov) allegedly involved in both the 2013 Trump-kompromat prostitute plot AND the 2012-2016 hacking plot runs a brothel in Moscow. | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/933175883543674882 | |
| Trump intended to build a Trump tower in Moscow | |
| https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/399939505924628480 | |
| * @AgalarovAras I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW! --11 Nov 2013 | |
| Why Trump didn't build anything in Russia | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/why-didnt-trump-build-anything-in-russia/539274/ | |
| * To do business in Russia you need a backer to ensure things don't go sideways. Trump got Putin on board. | |
| Trump Tower @ Heart of Russia Scandal | |
| https://storify.com/wesmorgan1/getting-started | |
| * Better tweets (formatting, links), but multi-page. | |
| https://demu.gr/10029554787 | |
| * Trump was working on a real estate deal with a KNOWN Kremlin agent for SEVEN MONTHS while running for president. | |
| * 9/ So all of Trump's historically pro-Russia foreign policy was developed at a time he thought he was making a pitch for Trump Tower Moscow. 10/ To reverse his policy positions in office would be to admit that they'd not been formulated with U.S. interests in mind—a sad catch-22. | |
| * Putin awarded Agalarov Russia's "Order of Honour"—one of the highest honors any Russian civilian can receive. 22/ Consider, too, that Agalarov received this honor—Putin's clearest-possible imprimatur—TEN DAYS before Trump went into business with him. | |
| * remember who Trump was partying with the night Steele's dossier says Putin got his kompromat: Aras Agalarov.) | |
| * 89/ Trump met with Putin's "property chief"—the guy who says if you can build in Moscow or not—and Putin's real estate developer, Agalarov. | |
| * 122/ Trump's chief defense to claims that Putin has kompromat on him is that he acted like a saint while in Moscow: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/allegations-by-former-miss-hungary-contradict-trump_us_587e91b9e4b06a0baf649129 | |
| * 129/ The CIA says this: "There is more than one tape, audio and video, from more than one date, in more than one place, of a sexual nature." | |
| * 132/ So in the same 24 hours Putin gave Trump the biggest win of his business career—his first Russia deal—he snared Trump's future loyalty. | |
| * 135/ The message—whether Putin plans to use his tapes or not—is clear: Trump WILL get BACK his big win—Trump Tower Moscow—IF he acts right. | |
| * 141/ Sater underscores, though, that Putin's re-initiated support for Trump Tower Moscow (via permits) depends on Trump becoming president. 142/ This is what Sater meant in writing Cohen, "Our boy Trump can become President of the United States of America and we can engineer it." | |
| * 175/ So the only crime we know for ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN Trump committed —because he did it *on video* —was done to protect Trump Tower Moscow. | |
| * 191/ Manafort was Putin's assurance Trump would stay on track—he set up the Mayflower event with Jared so Trump/Sessions could meet Kislyak. | |
| * 195/ The message is clear: the November '13 accord Trump reached with Putin's agents, reaffirmed at the Mayflower in '16, is still in place. 196/ Putin gets the unilateral lifting of sanctions Trump plotted on taking office and a friendly voice—eerily unflinchingly friendly—in DC. 197/ Trump gets Russian enrichments while in office—see Steele's dossier on the December '16 Rosneft deal—and eventually Trump Tower Moscow. | |
| Moscow Ritz weekend thread | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/928779229252280321 | |
| Van Ronkel, a friend of Putin, Emin Agalarov, is a Hollywood fixer for Russia, worked with Trump on Miss Universe & was at Moscow 2013 w/Trump | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/933598357569851393 | |
| Those with Trump in Moscow in Nov 2013 knew he was running for pres 18 mo before announcement (Jan 22, 2014) | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/933608762501410816 | |
| * Alferova and Klyushin convinced Trump to bring Miss Universe to Moscow | |
| In 2014 Trump admits he spoke to Putin at Moscow 2013 Miss Universe | |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkKQmbyECw&t=48m23s | |
| * In that conversation he revealed his intent to run for president. Incentive for the Trump Tower deal. | |
| Trump associate bragged that Trump real estate deal in Russia will get Trump elected | |
| https://thinkprogress.org/trump-associate-bragged-that-trump-real-estate-deal-in-russia-will-get-trump-elected-1e77f8d7813f/ | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-tower-putin-felix-sater.html | |
| U.S. intercepts capture senior Russian officials celebrating Trump win | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-intercepts-capture-senior-russian-officials-celebrating-trump-win/2017/01/05/d7099406-d355-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html | |
| * intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome. | |
| * the identification of "actors" involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website | |
| * [report] details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years. | |
| * "The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on Nov. 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did," | |
| * the Kremlin are adept at spreading disinformation. | |
| * U.S. intelligence officials think that Putin has for years held a grudge against Clinton, whom he accused of fomenting demonstrations in Moscow in 2011 and 2012 that embarrassed Putin and rattled the former KGB operative's confidence in his grip on power. | |
| * Russia also used social media and "fake news" platforms as an "accelerant" to try to boost Trump and undermine Clinton, the second official said. | |
| Manafort faced blackmail attempt, hacks suggest | |
| https://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/paul-manafort-blackmail-russia-trump-235275 | |
| * Stolen texts appear to show threats to expose relations among Russia-friendly forces, Trump and his former campaign chairman. | |
| * Paul Manafort confirmed the authenticity of the texts hacked from his daughter's phone | |
| * Blackmail note: | |
| http://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015a-66f4-d2c6-a7db-7efd5e020001 | |
| * evidence related to Manafort's financial arrangement with Ukraine's former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub. | |
| June 27: Manafort registers retroactively as a Foreign Agent with the United States Department of Justice, showing that his firm received $17.1 million over two years from Yanukovych's Party of Regions | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-trump-campaign-chairman-paul-manafort-files-as-foreign-agent-for-ukraine-work/2017/06/27/8322b6ac-5b7b-11e7-9fc6-c7ef4bc58d13_story.html | |
| Manafort flight records show deeper Kremlin ties than previously known | |
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/exclusive-manafort-flight-records-show-deeper-kremlin-ties-than-previously-known/ar-BBFvRMd | |
| * Manafort took at least 18 trips to Moscow and was in frequent contact with Vladimir Putin's allies for nearly a decade as a consultant in Russia and Ukraine for oligarchs and pro-Kremlin parties. | |
| * flew to Kiev another 19 times over the next 20 months while working for the smaller, pro-Russian Opposition Bloc party. Manafort went so far as to suggest the party take an anti-NATO stance | |
| Special counsel's Russia probe loses top FBI investigator (Strzok) | |
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/special-counsels-russia-probe-loses-top-fbi-investigator/story?id=49249486 | |
| Possible covert back channel communications through Alfa Group bank | |
| https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html | |
| * Communication timeline chart: | |
| https://slate-features.s3.amazonaws.com/features/2016/10/frank/img/frank3.png | |
| * Some of the most trusted DNS specialists—an elite group of malware hunters, who work for private contractors—have access to nearly comprehensive logs of communication between servers. | |
| * In late July, one of these scientists—who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data—found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves' attention. [...] what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue. | |
| * The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn't the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn't an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank. | |
| * When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses. [...] Eighty-seven percent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. "It's pretty clear that it's not an open mail server," Camp told me. "These organizations are communicating in a way designed to block other people out." | |
| * the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, there's no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the internet work. After studying the logs, he concluded, "The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project." Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence. | |
| * I asked nine computer scientists [...] if the DNS logs that Tea Leaves and his collaborators discovered could be forged or manipulated. They considered it nearly impossible. It would be easy enough to fake one or maybe even a dozen records of DNS lookups. But in the aggregate, the logs contained thousands of records, with nuances and patterns that not even the most skilled programmers would be able to recreate on this scale. "The data has got the right kind of fuzz growing on it," Vixie told me. "It's the interpacket gap, the spacing between the conversations, the total volume. If you look at those time stamps, they are not simulated. This bears every indication that it was collected from a live link." I asked him if there was a chance that he was wrong about their authenticity. "This passes the reasonable person test," he told me. "No reasonable person would come to the conclusion other than the one I've come to." | |
| * Alfa Bank emerged in the messy post-Soviet scramble to create a private Russian economy. Its founder was a Ukrainian called Mikhail Fridman | |
| * Richard Burt, who helped Trump write the speech in which he first laid out his foreign policy, previously served on Alfa's senior advisory board. | |
| * Fridman and Aven have significant business interests to promote in the West. One of their holding companies, LetterOne, has vowed to invest as much as $3 billion in U.S. health care. [...] This is, of course, money that might otherwise be invested in Russia. According to a former U.S. official, Putin tolerates this condition because Alfa advances Russian interests. | |
| * The Times hadn't yet been in touch with the Trump campaign—Lichtblau spoke with the campaign a week later—but shortly after it reached out to Alfa, the Trump domain name in question seemed to suddenly stop working. When the scientists looked up the host, the DNS server returned a fail message, evidence that it no longer functioned [...] The Trump Organization shut down the server after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the connection | |
| * the new host name may have represented an attempt to establish a new channel of communication. But media inquiries into the nature of Trump's relationship with Alfa Bank, which suggested that their communications were being monitored, may have deterred the parties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask questions, the traffic between the servers stopped cold. | |
| * They denied any server communication beyond DNS, calling it "regular" DNS traffic. There's no such thing. DNS is for enabling other communications. | |
| https://theintercept.com/2017/10/26/russian-bank-accused-of-trump-connection-tries-to-clear-name-by-pressuring-u-s-computer-researcher/ | |
| Not using common DNS communication tools | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6miy5v/trump_jr_was_told_in_email_of_russian_effort_to/dk2zj8y/ | |
| * It was not Iodine. It was not OzymanDNS. It was not Dns2tcp, hyoka, DNSCat, NXTX, DNScapy, MagicTunnel or a VPN sent over udp/53. It was plain vanilla RFC 1034 DNS resolution. | |
| * Other traffic, besides DNS was sent, and this includes tcp traffic to/from Alfa and Trump's organization. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/01/flood-of-scoops-about-donald-trump-and-russia-adds-up-to-not-much/ | |
| * and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank. | |
| https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-connecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/ | |
| * The Intercept confirmed that the IP address in question, and all other IP addresses on Spectrum Health's network, did not host a Tor node during the time period. | |
| * How? Scans would be firewalled. No link to public record. | |
| * On Tea Leaves' WordPress site, he claimed that "only two networks resolved the mail1.trump-email.com host." This is contradicted by the very works of analysis furnished by Tea Leaves' collaborators: The author of the white paper found that at least 19 IP addresses, all belonging to different networks except for the two that belong to Alfa Bank, had looked up Trump's server. And these are only the 19 the author was able to observe in a short time period — it can't be ruled out that there were many more, which quickly deflates the portrait of a shady Russian backchannel. | |
| Alfa Bank threatens lawsuit over data revealing Trump connection | |
| https://www.cyberscoop.com/alfa-bank-l-jean-camp-donald-trump-cfaa-suit-dns-data/ | |
| Trump's Crime-Enforcer Pick Meets Senate Fire Over Alfa Bank | |
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/trump-s-crime-enforcer-pick-meets-senate-fire-for-alfa-bank-work | |
| * Senators seek answers from Trump's DOJ nominee to oversee federal criminal investigations | |
| * Brian Benczkowski advised Alfa Bank on BuzzFeed response | |
| * The job, he told a Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, was to supervise an internal bank investigation into traffic on the bank's computer system as well as advise the bank on its response to the publication of an intelligence dossier linking the bank to the Trump campaign. | |
| * That assignment came shortly after he wrapped up work leading the Trump administration's transition team at the Justice Department, which included advising the incoming administration on staffing and other matters. Benczkowski previously served as a top aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, now the U.S. attorney general. | |
| * After BuzzFeed published an intelligence dossier alleging in part that Alfa Bank was part of a Russian scheme to influence the 2016 election, Mikhail Fridman, the bank's founder, and his partners sued the site for defamation. | |
| * The claims are made by the dossier, not BuzzFeed. | |
| * Benczkowski said that the purpose of the internal investigation into the electronic communications was to take the findings to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department, which he said the firm did. | |
| * So Alfa Bank hires him before taking case to DOJ, then Trump nominates him to run the relevant division in the DOJ... | |
| * Asked in the hearing whether, if confirmed, he would have any visibility into Mueller's probe, Benczkowski said he didn't know. When asked by Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, whether he was hired to interfere with Mueller's investigation, he said "absolutely not, Senator, and if I were asked to do anything like that, I would steadfastly refuse." | |
| * Of course he'd say that. | |
| WSJ buried an editorial highlighting Trump's underworld connections | |
| https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/wall-street-journal-killed-editorial-on-trumps-mob-ties.html | |
| * WSJ has increasingly conformed with the pro-Trump dictates of the rest of the Murdoch media empire. | |
| * fomented various right-wing conspiracy theories about Robert Mueller and called for his firing. | |
| * Called Trump less vulgar than Bill Clinton. | |
| Facebook uncovers 'Russian-funded' divisive misinformation campaign | |
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41182519 | |
| Google uncovers Russian-bought ads on YouTube, Gmail and other platforms | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/10/09/google-uncovers-russian-bought-ads-on-youtube-gmail-and-other-platforms/ | |
| * The discovery by Google is also significant because the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook -- a sign that the Russian effort to spread disinformation online may be a much broader problem than Silicon Valley companies have unearthed so far. | |
| Trump adviser K. T. McFarland admitted in an email that Russia "had thrown the U.S.A. election to Trump" — and said that's why Trump team opposed sanctions | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/us/russia-mcfarland-flynn-trump-emails.html | |
| Rosenstein decides whether Mueller can make his conclusions public. We may never know. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-mueller-cant-save-us/2017/10/10/c0422a56-a9e9-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html | |
| * Mueller is the anti-Trump. | |
| Russia served notice over consulate fire | |
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41251020 | |
| Russian troll farm still operating, targeting America | |
| https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article179799311.html | |
| The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/politics/russia-facebook-twitter-election.html | |
| George Soros is a favorite target of the right — here's how that happened | |
| https://www.businessinsider.com/how-did-george-soros-become-the-favorite-boogeyman-of-the-right-2017-5 | |
| Republicans take up Russia-aligned attack on Soros | |
| https://www.politico.eu/article/republicans-take-up-russia-aligned-attack-on-soros/ | |
| * It's an accusation that's being fomented and championed by Moscow. Soros, who survived the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary and fled after World War II when it was under Soviet control, has been long a bête noire of the Kremlin, which sees his funding for civil society groups in former Soviet satellite states as part of a plot to install pro-Western governments. | |
| * Russia is trying to exploit the crisis in Macedonia to sow distrust of the U.S. and pull the right-wing party into its orbit, regional analysts say. And the Republican lawmakers' concern — that the U.S. is, in the words of Lee's letter to Tillerson, "fomenting political unrest, disrespecting national sovereignty and civil society" — handed Moscow a major propaganda coup, they warn. Russia's state-controlled English-language websites rushed to trumpet Lee's and Smith's letters, holding them up as proof that the U.S. is guilty of exactly what it accuses Russia of doing in 2016 — interfering in another country's politics. | |
| Putin was trying to get spies close to Hillary Clinton for years | |
| https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/356630-fbi-watched-then-acted-as-russian-spy-moved-closer-to-hillary | |
| * Russians had set their sights on Hillary Clinton's circle, because she was the quarterback of the Obama-Russian reset strategy and the assumed successor to Obama as president," | |
| Russian TV editor says his network got calls from the Kremlin to attack Clinton | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/russian-tv-editor-says-his-network-got-calls-kremlin-take-down-clinton-721104 | |
| This Russian Campaign Turned Against Trump In The Days After The Election | |
| https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryancbrooks/this-russian-campaign-turned-against-trump-in-the-days | |
| * Pressuring Trump? | |
| Hackers compromised Trump Org 4 yrs ago, never noticed. Perpetrators have possible ties to Russia. | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/11/hackers-compromised-the-trump-organization-4-years-ago-and-the-company-never-noticed/ | |
| Jeff Sessions gets owned by his own testimony | |
| https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/930999631097470976 | |
| The Kremlin Likes Rohrabacher (Cali congressman) So Much It Gave Him a Code Name | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/politics/dana-rohrabacher-putin-trump-kremlin-under-fire.html | |
| * Rohrabacher was one of the first GOP members of Congress to publicly embrace Trump entering the 2016 race. | |
| * as investigators in Washington scrutinize the Russian interference campaign, Mr. Rohrabacher, like an extra in an spy thriller, just keeps showing up | |
| * Last August he was in London to meet Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. American intelligence agencies believe Assange acted as a conduit for Russian operatives seeking to release a trove of hacked Democratic emails. Assange denies the accusation, and Rohrabacher hoped to broker a meeting with Trump to allow him to make his case. Then earlier this year, this time on Capitol Hill, Rohrabacher dined with Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian central bank who has been linked both to Russia's security services and organized crime. During Trump's presidential campaign, Torshin tried to set up a "backdoor" meeting between Trump and Putin, according to an email that has been turned over to Senate investigators. | |
| * Rohrabacher said his efforts to connect Assange with the president have been stonewalled by John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff. | |
| Trump & Rohrabacher on Putin's payroll, according to Paul Ryan | |
| https://youtu.be/eFAugsKExNI | |
| The pro-Kremlin talking points of Jill Stein | |
| https://thinkprogress.org/jill-stein-campaign-russia-ecf424ac3b7e/ | |
| ### Attacks on investigation | |
| Comey had 25 indictments ready before he was fired | |
| https://twitter.com/FraudeTaylor1/status/924771284755664896 | |
| Trump Aides, Seeking Leverage, Investigate Mueller's Investigators | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/us/politics/donald-trump-robert-mueller-russia-investigation.html | |
| * President Trump's lawyers and aides are scouring the professional and political backgrounds of investigators hired by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, looking for conflicts of interest they could use to discredit the investigation — or even build a case to fire Mr. Mueller or get some members of his team recused, according to three people with knowledge of the research effort. | |
| Trump can't kill Mueller probe | |
| https://www.lawfareblog.com/president-cant-kill-mueller-investigation | |
| Uranium One propaganda fact checks | |
| https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/30/donald-trump/donald-trump-inaccurately-suggests-clinton-got-pai/ | |
| https://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-uranium-russia-deal/ | |
| https://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/a-false-corruption-claim/ | |
| https://www.factcheck.org/2017/10/facts-uranium-one/ | |
| * Hillary couldn't stop the deal, only president had that authority. | |
| https://www.lawfareblog.com/unpacking-uranium-one-hype-and-law | |
| https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/oct/24/what-you-need-know-about-hillary-clinton-and-urani/ | |
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/the-west-wing-trump-is-apoplectic-as-allies-fear-impeachment | |
| * U1 propaganda is Stone's strategy to target Mueller, Comey, and Rosenstein. | |
| * Roger Stone believes defunding Mueller isn't enough. Instead, Stone wants Trump to call for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's role in approving the controversial Uranium One deal that's been a locus of rightwing hysteria (the transaction involved a Russian state-owned energy firm acquiring a Canadian mining company that controlled a large subset of the uranium in the United States). It's a bit of a bank shot, but as Stone described it, a special prosecutor looking into Uranium One would also have to investigate the F.B.I.'s role in approving the deal, thereby making Mueller—who was in charge of the bureau at the time—a target. | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/clinton-obama-uranium-one-informant-probe-russian-firm-lobbyist-713762 | |
| A GOP senator wrote a bill to protect Robert Mueller. Trump called him to try to kill it. | |
| https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/24/16196792/robert-mueller-tillis-trump-russia | |
| Investigation is important, some Republicans (esp Burr) obstructing investigation | |
| https://amp.businessinsider.com/rep-mike-quigley-discusses-trump-russia-investigation-2017-9 | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/why-its-impossible-republicans-investigate-trump-russia-scandal/ | |
| * the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal has made little progress, with its Republican chairman, Richard Burr of North Carolina, refusing to sign off on subpoenas and witness interviews and failing to devote to the inquiry sufficient staff power and resources. | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/does-the-house-intel-committee-have-enough-staff-to-investigate-the-trump-russia-scandal/ | |
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-house/partisan-feud-undercuts-trump-russia-probe-u-s-democrats-charge-idUSKBN1CP2MN | |
| * Republican Representative Trey Gowdy told Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and White House aide, that he was testifying voluntarily and could leave whenever he liked. After about two-and-a-half hours, one of the sources said, Kushner took the cue and left before Democrats had finished questioning him. | |
| * given the lack of preparation and the absence of many Republican members, hearings amount to "going through the motions" rather than a serious investigation, one source said. | |
| GOP Blocks Probes Into Trump-Russia Ties | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-blocks-probes-into-trump-russia-ties | |
| * congressional Republicans are crippling any investigations—while their Clinton probes continue. | |
| The Republicans Have Developed a Theory of Alt-Collusion to Defend Trump From Mueller | |
| https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/alt-collusion-the-gop-theory-to-defend-trump-from-mueller.html | |
| The White House is trying to rush the Russia probes. We can't let that happen. | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-house-is-trying-to-rush-the-russia-probes-we-cant-let-that-happen/2017/10/13/3cb11684-b024-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html | |
| * there are growing calls from the White House and outside parties aligned with the president to halt the congressional investigations rather than allow the evidence to dictate the pace and breadth of our inquiry. The White House may hope it can prematurely end the congressional probes and then apply pressure to wrap up special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's work as well. | |
| This would be a terrible subversion of justice. But already these efforts are having an effect, as some witnesses are being rushed before Congress without regard for best investigative practices, sometimes out of order or before we obtain documents necessary to question them. Still other witnesses, essential to laying the foundation for the more significant interviews, have yet to be invited before the committee. | |
| Russian bots targeted Clinton and Mueller leading up to collusion indictments | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/russian-bots-targeted-clinton-and-mueller-leading-collusion-indictments-698160 | |
| Republicans and Democrats are now pursuing their own investigations. | |
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/the-senate-judiciary-committees-russia-probe-just-blew-up/ | |
| Is Trump interfering in Mueller's Russia probe by pushing out a u.s. attorney? | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/dana-boente-resignation-trump-mueller-russia-investigation-720389 | |
| Openly attacking Mueller probe | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/republicans-hammer-mueller-fbi-as-russia-investigation-intensifies/2017/12/06/4a6097ca-dabb-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html | |
| Trump admits to obstruction of justice | |
| https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/937022705378975744 | |
| Trump Launched Campaign to Discredit Potential FBI Witnesses | |
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/26/trump-launched-campaign-to-discredit-potential-fbi-witnesses/ | |
| * The president targeted three bureau officials who could provide key testimony in the Mueller probe. | |
| * 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 employees were likely to be witnesses against him as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation | |
| Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/us/politics/trump-mueller-special-counsel-russia.html | |
| Russia is attempting to influence Mueller investigation in an 'ongoing attack,' Democrats say | |
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/democrats-warn-russia-trying-to-influence-mueller-investigation.html | |
| * A website monitoring Russia-linked Twitter accounts found that their use of #releasethememo increased nearly 300,000 percent in just a few days. | |
| Assange also working with Sean Hannity to target Mark Warner | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-thought-he-was-messaging-sean-hannity-when-he-offered-news-on-democrat-investigating-trump-russia | |
| ### Kremlin motive, goals, context | |
| Before election: how Russia is trying to destroy American democracy | |
| https://warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolling-for-trump-how-russia-is-trying-to-destroy-our-democracy/ | |
| * Russia's social media campaigns seek five complementary objectives to strengthen Russia's position over Western democracies: | |
| * Undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance; | |
| * Foment and exacerbate divisive political fractures; | |
| * Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions; | |
| * Popularize Russian policy agendas within foreign populations; | |
| * Create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction | |
| * Russian social media propaganda pushes four general themes to advance Moscow's influence objectives and connect with foreign populations they target. | |
| * Political messages are designed to tarnish democratic leaders or undermine institutions. Examples include allegations of voter fraud, election rigging, and political corruption. | |
| * Financial propaganda weakens citizen and investor confidence in foreign markets and posits the failure of capitalist economies. Stoking fears over the national debt, attacking institutions such as the Federal Reserve, and attempts to discredit Western financial experts and business leaders are all part of this arsenal. | |
| * Social issues currently provide a useful window for Russian messaging. Police brutality, racial tensions, protests, anti-government standoffs, online privacy concerns, and alleged government misconduct are all emphasized to magnify their scale and leveraged to undermine the fabric of society. | |
| * Finally, wide-ranging conspiracy theories promote fear of global calamity while questioning the expertise of anyone who might calm those fears. Russian propaganda operations since 2014 have stoked fears of martial law in the United States, for instance, by promoting chemtrails and Jade Helm conspiracy theories. More recently, Moscow turned to stoking fears of nuclear war between the United States and Russia. | |
| * RT and Sputnik push Kremlin-approved English-language news on television and the Internet. These outlets broadcast a mix of true information (the vast majority of content), manipulated or skewed stories, and strategically chosen falsehoods. | |
| * Conspiracy sites include outlets such as InfoWars and Zero Hedge, along with a host of lesser-known sites that repeat and repackage the same basic content for both right- and left-wing consumers. | |
| * Data dump websites, such as Wikileaks and DC Leaks, overtly claim to be exposing corruption and promoting transparency by uploading private information stolen during hacks. But the timing and targets of their efforts help guide pro-Russian themes and shape messages by publishing compromising information on selected adversaries. | |
| * The people who run these sites do not necessarily know they are participants in Russian agitprop | |
| * Regardless of who wins, Russian operators might save particularly damaging information for release after the inauguration, when talk of impeachment could further diminish his or her influence in Washington and abroad. | |
| Comey decided not to prosecute Hillary in part due to Russian forgery meant to ensure prosecution | |
| https://www.npr.org/2017/11/01/561203044/charges-hearings-sharpen-the-big-picture-about-russias-influence-campaign | |
| Putin gambled and won big; was reacting in part to Panama Papers | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-game/546548/ | |
| * "It wasn't a strategic operation," says Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist with deep sources in the security services, who writes about the Kremlin's use of cybertechnology. "Given what everyone on the inside has told me," he says, hacking the U.S. political system "was a very emotional, tactical decision. People were very upset about the Panama Papers," which cast light on Putin's wealth. | |
| * "The Panama Papers were a personal slight to Putin," says John Sipher, a former deputy of the CIA's Russia desk. "They think we did it." Putin's inner circle, Soldatov says, felt "they had to respond somehow." According to Soldatov's reporting, on April 8, 2016, Putin convened an urgent meeting of his national-security council; all but two of the eight people there were veterans of the KGB. Given the secrecy and timing of this meeting, Soldatov believes it was then that Putin gave the signal to retaliate. | |
| * The original aim was to embarrass and damage Hillary Clinton, to sow dissension, and to show that American democracy is just as corrupt as Russia's, if not worse. "No one believed in Trump, not even a little bit," Soldatov says. "It was a series of tactical operations. At each moment, the people who were doing this were filled with excitement over how well it was going, and that success pushed them to go even further." "A lot of what they've done was very opportunistic." "They cast a wide net without knowing in advance what the benefit might be." The Russian hackers were very skilled, Alperovitch says, but "we shouldn't try to make them out to be eight feet tall" and able to "elect whomever they want. They tried in Ukraine, and it didn't work." Nor did it work in the French elections of 2017. | |
| * "We observed the two Russian espionage groups compromise the same systems and engage separately in the theft of identical credentials," | |
| * Putin fears American pro-democracy activities will target him. | |
| * Regime change in Libya and Ukraine led to Russia propping up Bashar al-Assad in Syria. "Not one more" is how Jon Finer, former Secretary of State John Kerry's chief of staff, characterizes Putin's approach in Syria. It also led inexorably to Russian meddling in the U.S. election: Russia would show the U.S. that there was more than one regime-change racket in town. | |
| * Fear of collapse is also why Russian propaganda is intent on highlighting the bloody aftermath of revolutions the world over. | |
| * In 2012, when Putin ran for his third term amid protests, the Kremlin put out the message that the system had to deliver at least 50 percent of the vote to Putin to prevent an embarrassing runoff. But as that target moved down through the giant Russian bureaucracy, each layer added a little extra padding, to avoid the wrath of supervisors. The electoral machinery employed various tricks—manipulating voter rolls, stuffing ballot boxes, driving busloads of supporters around to vote at multiple precincts. All the padding added up. [to 64%] | |
| The Paradise Papers tell a story about the Kremlin's evolving methods of manipulating the internet—and how it exported them. | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/yuri-milner-paradise-papers/545483/ | |
| * The Kremlin got involved with Konstantin Rykov's online ventures at exactly the point Rykov says his plot to help elect Trump (with the assistance of Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks) began. And Trump's connected to Rykov's pal, Artem Klyushin. | |
| * The Russian companies that DST invested his money in also did quite well, but that was only half the point. The other half was to give the Kremlin a way to control these new and very influential companies, to make sure there was a receptive person there when the Kremlin called with a demand. "What is DST? DST is the main government internet company," | |
| Russia is escalating | |
| https://www.foreignpolicyi.org/content/fpi-conference-call-russian-interference-foreign-elections | |
| * "[Russians] say, look you're meddling in our elections so were going to do the same thing to you. It's very interesting because what the Russians conceive of as U.S. meddling is entirely different. It is essentially … supporting a foundation that monitors elections and calls for free and fair elections. That's the Russian idea of U.S. meddling in an election." – Hannah Thoburn | |
| * "We need to understand the kind of Russia we're talking about these days, which is a Russia that was very pleased to see the flow of refugees into Europe, exacerbating a refugee crisis there; a Russia that has supported the murderous Assad regime in Syria, along with Iran; a Russia that has invaded its neighbors, Ukraine starting in 2014, Georgia, 2008…. They demonize us, they vilify us, they threaten us. They talk about using nuclear weapons. They buzz our aircraft and our ships. And so this is not a benign regime in the least. And I think we have to look at this hacking incident against that backdrop, that this is just the latest of many very disturbing developments we've seen coming out of Moscow." – David Kramer | |
| * "Russians get most of their news and information from TV and so taking over television was the way for Putin to make sure he had control over the way Russians receive their news and information. We, in my view, should not engage in counter-propaganda, we should support fact-based journalism to help get news and information inside Russia as well to Russian-speaking populations and countries along Russia's border to let them know what's really happening inside their country." – David Kramer | |
| Declassified report says Putin ‘ordered' effort to undermine faith in U.S. election and help Trump | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-chiefs-expected-in-new-york-to-brief-trump-on-russian-hacking/2017/01/06/5f591416-d41a-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html | |
| * The campaign initially sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, "denigrate" Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and damage her expected presidency. But in time, Russia "developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump" and repeatedly sought to artificially boost his election chances. | |
| * Russia appears to have concluded that a Clinton victory was inevitable right up until election night. | |
| * "pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP, on election night," then had to shelve it when Trump won. | |
| Gerasimov "doctrine" | |
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/gerasimov-doctrine-russia-foreign-policy-215538 | |
| * All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character. | |
| * Chaos is the strategy the Kremlin pursues: Gerasimov specifies that the objective is to achieve an environment of permanent unrest and conflict within an enemy state. | |
| * Former captive nations Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania all sounded the alarm in recent years about Russian attempts to influence their domestic politics and security, as the Obama administration downplayed concerns over a new Cold War. But all three countries now have parties with Russian financial connections leading their governments, which softly advocate for a more open approach to Moscow. | |
| https://www.wired.com/story/a-guide-to-russias-high-tech-tool-box-for-subverting-us-democracy/ | |
| * Perhaps the first identifiable active-measures operation, Nimmo says, was the 1903 publication of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a fabricated anti-Semitic pamphlet circulated by the Czarist Russian police that described a Jewish plot for world domination. Its purpose: to give a pretext for Russia's anti-Jewish pogroms. | |
| * "the goal of Russian propaganda is not necessarily to convince people that the Russian view of the world is the right one or that their interpretation of events is better, but rather to destroy and undermine confidence in the Western media." | |
| * themes pushed by the Kremlin: ‘Clinton isn't healthy.‘ 'She can't endure.‘ 'Clinton is corrupt.‘ 'Clinton emails.' All of that was pumped very heavily by the Russians even before Trump was a serious candidate. Then going into the last two months: ‘Election fraud, vote rigged, Sanders got a raw deal.' It was all started by the Kremlin, and Trump repeated all of it." | |
| * Trump himself mentioned Wikileaks and the emails at least 164 times in the final month of the campaign, saying at one point, "Boy, that WikiLeaks has done a job on her, hasn't it?" | |
| * Putin has struck a deal with the country's oligarchs that allows them to pillage the country's economy in exchange for personal kickbacks. "From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world | |
| * "The Russians didn't identify Donald Trump six years ago as a likely president." Donnelly says. "Every rich powerful person heading to Moscow is going to be targeted." | |
| * it hasn't escaped the notice of investigators and intelligence services that there have been a number of suspicious deaths tied to the 2016 election operation, including a one-time KGB official who appears to have been a source for the infamous Christopher Steele "dossier" assembled about alleged Trump ties to Russia. "Follow the trail of dead Russians," Watts told the US Senate this spring during a hearing about Russia's interference in the election. "There have been more dead Russians in the past three months that are tied to this investigation. They are dropping dead, even in Western countries." | |
| * Putin's government has amassed a varied set of Western political allies, from UK nationalist leader Nigel Farage to Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser. While much of the attention has focused on the Kremlin's boosting of far-right nationalist movements in Europe, Russia is just as likely to embrace a far-left politician, as it did with 2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who sat at a table with Flynn and Vladimir Putin during a December 2015 gala dinner in Russia. (Flynn was paid upward of $40,000 for his presence.) | |
| * Their goals are essentially to rebuild the Soviet Union's territory, and to do that you've got to get rid of two things: the NATO alliance and the European Union | |
| * intelligence professionals say the Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Trump campaign leaders bears the hallmarks of a covert mission. | |
| * The Trump Tower meeting has all the earmarks of a so-called intelligence test—the ambiguous offer of Russian assistance, determining whether the meeting would be granted or reported to the FBI, who would participate, and what reaction the Russian discussion would elicit. Would the Trump campaign confront and reject Russian assistance or keep it silent? The fact that the meeting happened—and that the Trump campaign kept silent about it—was, according to a long-time CIA officer, perhaps the "green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election." | |
| Russian hybrid warfare and other dark arts | |
| https://warontherocks.com/2016/03/russian-hybrid-warfare-and-other-dark-arts/ | |
| * the problem was not his article, but the interpretation of it in Western circles. That publication did more damage to Western analysis of Russian military thought than any deception operation could. It was presumed to be a blueprint of Russian military thinking and doctrine, a "Gerasimov Doctrine" if you will (which is what some literally call it). Not only has it been overly convenient to believe that after barely a few months on the job Gerasimov wrote the Rosetta Stone for Russian military thinking, but even more puzzling is the idea that within a year the Russian General Staff had moved this collection of observations off PowerPoint and into a brilliant hybrid warfare campaign in Ukraine. | |
| * Russian leadership is remarkably conspiratorial in their views of U.S. involvement abroad | |
| * Gerasimov made the point that there is a four to one ratio of non-military to military measures in modern conflict, but he was talking about how the West shapes the battlefield prior to intervention, not suggesting that Russia must do the same. This was not a worked-out doctrine, but identification of elements to pursue and capabilities to develop. | |
| How Russia wins an election | |
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/how-russia-wins-an-election-214524 | |
| * These "active measures" are techniques Moscow has honed for decades, continually adapting its formula to changing technology and new circumstances. All of it is in service of Putin's grand strategy of breaking up the European Union and NATO from the inside out—without even firing a shot. Having shattered many Americans' faith in their democracy, Russia now feels emboldened. And with major elections coming up in France, Germany and the Netherlands, you can bet that Putin's work is not done. | |
| * The U.S. election may consist of a far larger number of votes, but the system, we now know, can be gamed even more easily. Russian social media influence efforts needed to pump up Trump and tear down Clinton in just four key states. Trump won Wisconsin and Michigan by less than 1 percent and Florida and Pennsylvania by less than 1.5 percent. | |
| * targeted audiences vulnerable to their influence across the West—largely supporters of the "alt-right" and others angered by the perceived effects of globalization, immigration, terrorism and economic hardship. | |
| * The United Kingdom observed a similar campaign. Dating back to the earliest parts of 2015, Russian media outlets incited fear of immigration and promoted Brexit advocate Nigel Farage's accusations of American manipulation to foster popular support for the British to leave the EU. | |
| * Russia then strategically releases true, manipulated true, and false information to data dumpsites such as WikiLeaks. | |
| * Germany, the key remaining player in the EU, has already noted Russian hacks against its parliament in 2015, along with a sharp uptick in propaganda ahead of the country's upcoming elections. | |
| * the firehose of fake or manipulated news often drowns out the mainstream media's efforts to correct the record. The net result is an information world in which Western electorates cannot distinguish fact from fiction, eroding the integrity of democratic institutions and the voters' trust. | |
| * Even the Electoral College, historically a rubber stamp, is becoming another partisan battlefield. | |
| Russia focusing on cyber warfare to achieve goals | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/01/18/russias-radical-new-strategy-for-information-warfare/ | |
| * top Russian cyber official told a security conference in Moscow that Russia was working on new strategies for the "information arena" that would be equivalent to testing a nuclear bomb and would "allow us to talk to the Americans as equals." | |
| * We are at the verge of having ‘something' in the information arena, which will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals. | |
| * In Putin's mind, the United States attacked first in the information war [Panama Papers]. Russia is now strong enough to retaliate, as Krutskikh signaled | |
| Plan to sway election drafted by Putin-linked Russian think tank: Russian Institute for Strategic Studies | |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-putin-russia-think-tank-plan-swing-us-election-2016-say-us-officials-a7692021.html | |
| * A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the US electoral system's legitimacy and damage Clinton's reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency | |
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-election-exclusive-idUSKBN17L2N3 | |
| * The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin's office. | |
| * Putin had the objective in mind all along, and he asked the institute to draw him a road map | |
| * intercepted messages and conversations among senior Russian officials in Putin's inner circle indicated they were aware of the hacking campaign and celebrated Trump's election as a victorious end to the campaign. | |
| * Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin. | |
| J.D. Gordon is pro-Russia, meets with Kislyak, changes GOP platform to benefit Putin | |
| https://heavy.com/news/2017/03/jeffrey-d-gordon-jd-russia-meet-meeting-with-russia-ambassador-sergei-kislyak-pentagon-spokesman-guantanamo-bay-sarah-palin-herman-cain-comments-today-republican-national-convention/ | |
| * Another Trump advisor says he met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention. | |
| * This comes after it was revealed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in July 2016, despite having said during his Senate testimony that he "did not have communications with the Russians." | |
| * He Was the Trump Campaign's Director of National Security | |
| * He Told RT, Russia's State-Run Media, That Russia is Not the Top Threat to the United States | |
| * He Met With the Russian Ambassador at the Republican National Convention & Changed the GOP Platform to be Softer on Russia | |
| * One of the times Gordon met with Kislyak was when they both attended the Global Partners in Diplomacy program in Cleveland. The Republican party's platform was altered during the RNC so as to take a softer stance on Russia; the platform originally called for providing "lethal defense weapons" to rebels in Ukraine fighting against Russia, but this was changed to say that the U.S. would provide "appropriate assistance." | |
| * according to CNN, Gordon now says that the new language in the GOP platform was the "language Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for back in March…" | |
| https://twitter.com/NetworkJunkyz/status/837443306569228288 | |
| Controversial Russian ambassador (and spy) Sergey Kislyak | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/2017/06/30/spy-diplomat-sergey-kislyak-russia-ambassador-russia-probe-washington-627982.html | |
| * Many analysts doubt Kislyak is a spymaster. | |
| * U.S. intelligence officials listening in on Kislyak's phone overheard the ambassador apparently discussing a request from Kushner to establish a secret, secure channel to communicate with the Kremlin and avoid monitoring by U.S. intelligence. | |
| * The Obama administration fought the regulations—and played down mounting evidence of Russian hacking—in part to build support from Moscow for a peace deal in Syria. | |
| * The main motivation behind the Russian hacking [...] was "to make as much of a firestorm as possible so that Clinton would be busy carting buckets of water domestically and would be too busy to act against the Russian interest." | |
| * Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. | |
| * The report noted that the Russians "developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump"—but in reality, says Galeotti, the Kremlin has always been "much more alarmed and downbeat on Trump than official propaganda suggests.… The U.S. missile strike on Syria [in May] was Russia's worst nightmare. America has a president who is totally unpredictable, has a low threshold for use of force. That's a real problem for Russia." | |
| * "All the Russian foreign policy disasters of recent years—especially the annexation of Crimea—have been based on deep ignorance of America's real agenda | |
| * "Putin and his inner circle really believed that [Ukraine's 2014] Maidan revolution was a U.S.-backed coup. They believed that NATO was imminently going to seize [the Russian naval base of] Sevastopol. Invade Crimea and save Sevastopol from NATO, that was their logic.… But it was based on a totally false view of reality. | |
| Kislyak blames US for poor Russia relations | |
| https://www.polygraph.info/a/who-is-guilty-of-destroying-us-russia-realtions-fact-check/28735904.html | |
| Russia, U.S. Elections, and the Fake News Cycle. Conspiracy theories tend to be a tool of those out of power. | |
| https://www.snopes.com/2017/04/18/russia-us-fake-news/ | |
| * Although the term "fake news" has been weaponized for political purposes like attacking the credibility of mainstream news organizations that report stories unpopular with the president and his supporters, it was a term that became popular as the 2016 election cycle wound down and the fact that a Russian-sponsored network of bots, trolls and a hodgepodge of dubious web sites collaborated to disrupt the election and in so doing, shake the trust in the groundwork of American democracy. | |
| * "Russian active measures hope to topple democracies through the pursuit of five complementary objectives: One, undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance; two, foment, exacerbate divisive political fissures; three, erode trust between citizens and elected officials and their institutions; four, popularize Russian policy agendas within foreign populations; and five, create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction — a very pertinent issue today in our country. | |
| From these objectives the Kremlin can crumble democracies from the inside out, achieving two key milestones: One, the disillusion of the European Union; and two, the break-up of NATO." | |
| Trump, Putin and the hidden history of how Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/trump-putin-russia-interfered-presidential-election-541302 | |
| * At the Kremlin last August, officials began to worry that they had committed a massive blunder. Donald Trump, they feared, was psychologically unstable. | |
| * In a series of operations overseen by Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, Russia had engaged in similar interference in the Netherlands, Estonia, Germany, Britain and other nations with mixed success. | |
| * Former Ukranian president met in secret with Putin to assure him there's no paper trail connecting him to Manafort after paying him $12.7 mil. | |
| * Russia came to see Trump as too unpredictable and feared that, should he win, the Kremlin would not be able to rely on him or even anticipate his actions. | |
| * Some of these overseas agencies also believe the effort was not set in motion by Putin, but received his support once underway. | |
| * The hacking campaign, according to this analysis, was designed to split the Democratic Party so that as president, Clinton would have to spend enormous amounts of time dealing with domestic discord driven by Republicans and progressives tricked into believing that the Democratic National Committee had rigged her nomination. | |
| * some Western European intelligence agencies have concluded, Putin's larger goal is to damage NATO so the allied nations would be less likely to interfere in Russia's domestic affairs and less capable of responding to the Kremlin's military campaigns or cyberattacks on neighboring nations. | |
| * Russian hackers penetrated the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department. | |
| * Moscow is seen as a direct threat to the interests of NATO and other American allies—both in its aggressive efforts to reshape global alliances and for its power to damage Western Europe, which obtains almost 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia. Should the United States, the last remaining superpower, tilt its policies away from NATO to the benefit of Russia, the alliance between America and Western Europe could be transformed in unprecedented ways. | |
| Russia gains by Trump siding with Israel on Jerusalem | |
| https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/trumps-decision-on-jerusalem-might-open-door-for-russia-oped-59908 | |
| * For Russia, whose stance on the conflict is in line with the international community, the move signaled an opportunity to deepen its role as a power broker in the Middle East. | |
| Trump strategy document says Russia meddles in domestic affairs worldwide | |
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-nationalsecurity/trump-strategy-document-says-russia-meddles-in-domestic-affairs-worldwide-idUSKBN1EC109 | |
| * Russia uses information operations as part of its offensive cyber efforts to influence public opinion across the globe. Its influence campaigns blend covert intelligence operations and false online personas with state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or ‘trolls,' | |
| ### Wikileaks, Assange, Greenwald | |
| Trump Jr. colluded with Wikileaks | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/ | |
| * "Hey Don. We have an unusual idea," WikiLeaks wrote on October 21, 2016. "Leak us one or more of your father's tax returns." WikiLeaks then laid out three reasons why this would benefit both the Trumps and WikiLeaks. One, The New York Times had already published a fragment of Trump's tax returns on October 1; two, the rest could come out any time "through the most biased source (e.g. NYT/MSNBC)." It is the third reason, though, WikiLeaks wrote, that "is the real kicker." "If we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality," WikiLeaks explained. "That means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won't be perceived as coming from a ‘pro-Trump' ‘pro-Russia' source." [...] "The same for any other negative stuff (documents, recordings) that you think has a decent chance of coming out. Let us put it out." | |
| * WikiLeaks didn't write again until Election Day, November 8, 2016. "Hi Don if your father ‘loses' we think it is much more interesting if he DOES NOT conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of rigging that occurred—as he has implied that he might do," WikiLeaks wrote at 6:35pm, when the idea that Clinton would win was still the prevailing conventional wisdom. (As late as 7:00pm that night, FiveThirtyEight, a trusted prognosticator of the election, gave Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning the presidency.) WikiLeaks insisted that contesting the election results would be good for Trump's rumored plans to start a media network should he lose the presidency. | |
| Assange also working with Sean Hannity | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-thought-he-was-messaging-sean-hannity-when-he-offered-news-on-democrat-investigating-trump-russia | |
| Russian leaks to Wikileaks coordinated through Budapest | |
| http://hungarianfreepress.com/2017/04/13/the-budapest-bridge-hungarys-role-in-the-collusion-between-the-trump-campaign-and-the-russian-secret-service/ | |
| * Finkelstein and Orbán's top Hungarian strategist, Árpád Habony, have a London based joint company, close to the headquarters of Wikileaks. The Russian leakage of embarrassing information about Hillary Clinton, was coordinated through Budapest, and London, and was designed to lower Clinton's trustworthiness at pre-planned moments during the campaign. | |
| Julian Assange: the key to Russia's disinformation machine | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1903 | |
| * In that evidence the far-right's global network, including our very own Leave.EU and Bannon's Breitbart, were outed as Russian assets. | |
| * Not long after this, Nigel Farage was confirmed as a person of interest in the FBI's Russia probe. | |
| * What you need to understand first is that this disinformation campaign by Assange is aimed not primarily at Spain internally, but at the international audience. | |
| * We already know disinformation surrounding Catalonia is a Kremlin-Led operation, aimed at further destabilising the EU and, by proxy, NATO. And this is further confirmed by this new analysis. | |
| https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1855 | |
| * The EU are also aware of this, knowing full well they are being targeted by an external military operation focused on destabilising the union for its own ends. | |
| * Malign intentions were trained on the Catalan referendum from the outset. Hands we now recognise have been all over it. Snowden, Assange, RT, Sputnik. Every single one of them suddenly appeared in the sphere of commentary and from this point the situation began to transform at pace. | |
| * El Pais documented a 2000% increase in traffic from Russian networks. | |
| * The aim is not independence or dependence. It is disruption and chaos which reaches as far as possible by any means available. Drive the wedge. | |
| * simply re-running the OSoMe analytics on the domestic tag #Catalunya, Assange's positioning becomes less important, confirming what he is doing is not for the Spanish or Catalan people. It's for everybody else. | |
| * The alt-right disinformation channels also linked to Russia - including Breitbart and InfoWars - have pitched in to the external narrative creation around Catalonia, supporting Assange in carrying out what is clear Kremlin tasking. | |
| Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage | |
| * With links to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage, the rightwing US computer scientist is at the heart of a multimillion-dollar propaganda network | |
| * Mercer was Trump's biggest donor ($13.5m). | |
| * Mercer funds a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute | |
| * It was $10m of Mercer’s money that enabled Bannon to fund Breitbart – a rightwing news site which is bigger than PornHub; the biggest political site on both Facebook and Twitter. | |
| * Mercer has a $10m stake in Cambridge Analytica, a psyops firm. | |
| * Where Mercer’s money is, Steve Bannon is usually close by: it was reported that until recently he had a seat on the board. | |
| * On its website, Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters – its USP is to use this data to understand people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly. The system, according to Albright, amounted to a “propaganda machine”. | |
| * Behind Trump’s campaign and Cambridge Analytica, he said, were “the same people. It’s the same family.” | |
| * “The danger of not having regulation around the sort of data you can get from Facebook and elsewhere is clear. With this, a computer can actually do psychology, it can predict and potentially control human behaviour. It’s what the scientologists try to do but much more powerful. It’s how you brainwash someone. It’s incredibly dangerous. It’s no exaggeration to say that minds can be changed. Behaviour can be predicted and controlled. I find it incredibly scary. I really do. Because nobody has really followed through on the possible consequences of all this. People don’t know it’s happening to them. Their attitudes are being changed behind their backs.” | |
| * SCL Group (which CA is part of) has specialised, at the highest level – for Nato, the MoD, the US state department and others – in changing the behaviour of large groups. It models mass populations and then it changes their beliefs. [...] They are trying to amplify particular political narratives. And they are selective in who they go for: they are not doing this for the left. | |
| * Wigmore met with Trump’s team right at the start of the Leave campaign. “And they said the holy grail was artificial intelligence.” Who did? “Jared Kushner and Jason Miller.” | |
| * Many of the techniques were refined in Russia, he says, and then exported everywhere else. “You have these incredible propaganda tools developed in an authoritarian regime moving into a free market economy with a complete regulatory vacuum. | |
| * A quote by Marshall McLuhan, the great information theorist of the 60s: “World War III will be a guerrilla information war, with no divisions between military and civilian participation.” By that definition we’re already there. | |
| Head of Cambridge Analytica said he asked WikiLeaks founder for help finding Clinton's 33,000 deleted emails | |
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-data-guru-i-tried-to-team-up-with-julian-assange | |
| * Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didn't want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own. | |
| * Assange: "We can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks." | |
| * At least one Republican operative tried to recruit hackers to obtain those emails, according to The Wall Street Journal. | |
| * on the campaign trail, Trump praised WikiLeaks and tweeted about its findings. Politifact calculated that he mentioned the site about 137 times during the campaign. | |
| http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/apr/21/jackie-speier/did-trump-really-mention-wikileaks-over-160-times-/ | |
| * Cambridge Analytica has a number of ties to Trump campaign. | |
| * The Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica millions for its work. A former Trump campaign staffer previously told The Daily Beast that the firm did very little actual work for the campaign. | |
| Greenwald claims Russia story falls apart over uncertainty whether Wisconsin was targeted | |
| https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/ | |
| The U.S. intelligence community's assertion that Wikileaks was working in concert with Russian military intelligence | |
| https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf | |
| Wikileaks had hacked RNC data, didn't leak it | |
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-election-hack.html | |
| Wikileaks collaborated with RT, Russian state propaganda | |
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-director-calls-wikileaks-a-non-state-hostile-intelligence-service/ | |
| U.S. intel report identifies Russians who gave emails to WikiLeaks -officials | |
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-cyber-celebrate-idUSKBN14P2NI | |
| Wikileaks manipulated leaks to hurt Democrats | |
| https://www.newsweek.com/trump-putin-russia-interfered-presidential-election-541302 | |
| * For example, as part of the campaign, Russian hackers obtained emails from the DNC that were then sliced into small bits and put out on the internet through participants in the propaganda effort. In many of these instances, the real documents were misrepresented. For example, WikiLeaks released a number of May 2016 emails on the eve of the Democratic convention that made it appear as if the DNC was solely pulling for Clinton; in many online postings, the date was removed so readers would have no idea unless they searched for the original document that was written at a time when Sanders could not possibly have won the nomination. | |
| https://www.apnews.com/dea73efc01594839957c3c9a6c962b8a/Inside-story:-How-Russians-hacked-the-Democrats'-emails | |
| * there were signs of dishonesty from the start. The first document Guccifer 2.0 published on June 15 came not from the DNC as advertised but from Podesta's inbox, according to a former DNC official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. The official said the word "CONFIDENTIAL" was not in the original document. Guccifer 2.0 had airbrushed it to catch reporters' attention. | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/6xtvr0/call_to_action_the_intelligence_authorization_act/ | |
| * If they stuck to just publishing leaks and didn't start influencing politics then I'd agree with you. They aren't condemning free speech, they're responding appropriately to hostile action against the US. If you get all the facts it paints a picture. | |
| * He's not a warrior for freedom of the press. He's hiding behind it after establishing credibility in that department. Freedom of the press and any whistleblower protection has been turned against the US here to target US politics. | |
| Assange requested and received Russian operatives for bodyguards | |
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_assange_founder_of_wikileaks_ask_me/dc8ygpf/ | |
| https://20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-is-a-front-for-russian-intelligence/ | |
| Assange pushing alt-right ideology | |
| https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/904021394106847236 | |
| "No. Everything has evolved to maximize corphttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-cyber-celebrate-idUSKBN14P2NIorate profit. More women on labor market = lower wages. More migration = lower wages." | |
| https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/892155436031410176 | |
| "Very interesting discussion by US popular new right media personality @Cernovich on the firing of @Scaramucci" | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/rightwing-parties-wikileaks-preferences | |
| https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/917117344731758592 | |
| * Promoting Nigel Farage on Catalonia. | |
| Repeating claim Obama wiretapped Trump | |
| https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/909932273902014464 | |
| Assange/Wikileaks declined to publish Russian leaks | |
| https://gizmodo.com/assange-turned-down-dirt-on-russia-strongly-suggesting-1797954045 | |
| Not publishing Russia leaks, Assange meeting with pro-Russia congressman, and white supremacist | |
| https://www.salon.com/2017/08/19/calls-for-fbi-investigate-to-dana-rohrabachers-meeting-with-julian-assange-grow/ | |
| Wikileaks offered $20k reward for info about murder of DNC staffer who's subject to debunked right-wing conspiracy theory | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/wikileaks-offers-reward-in-killing-of-dnc-staffer-in-washington/2016/08/09/f84fcbf4-5e5b-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/08/12/trump-allies-wikileaks-and-russia-are-pushing-a-nonsensical-conspiracy-theory-about-the-dnc-hacks/ | |
| Assange claims the whole 'Russia-gate' is 'nearly all fiction'; evades, changes subject when pressed about Stone | |
| https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/10/julian_assange_accusations_of_wikileaks_trump | |
| David Duke Thanks Julian Assange for Trump Victory | |
| https://www.snopes.com/2016/11/09/david-duke-thanks-julian-assange-for-trump-victory/ | |
| # N. Korea, Russia | |
| Russian scientists in 90s may have provided NK designs for newest missiles | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/documents-shed-light-on-north-koreas-startling-gains-in-sea-based-missile-technology/2017/12/27/dd82878a-e749-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html | |
| Russia provides NK's internet, helps them evade sanctions | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/10/02/north-korea-appears-to-have-a-new-internet-connection-thanks-to-the-help-of-a-state-owned-russian-firm/ | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-russia-quietly-undercuts-sanctions-intended-to-stop-north-koreas-nuclear-program/2017/09/11/f963867e-93e4-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html | |
| Why Putin's backing NK - to be seen as a great world power | |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/07/26/why-is-putin-backing-north-korea-to-build-up-russia-as-a-great-power/ | |
| * Russia wants to prove it's a better international broker than the United States | |
| * Russia is trying to reinforce its image at home as a great power | |
| * Russia wants to lead the nations that resist what they see as U.S. diplomatic and military coercion | |
| Russia fears an unstable North Korea more than it fears a nuclear North Korea | |
| https://www.npr.org/2017/09/15/551163434/how-russia-sees-a-nuclear-north-korea | |
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/russia-north-korea-putin-kim-nuclear-united-nations-sanctions/539592/ | |
| * U.S. State Department approximates that around 20,000 North Koreans are sent—most, forcibly—to work in Russia each year for Russian companies (some estimates say the number is as high as 50,000) | |
| * Russia has hosted North Korean labor camps since 1967 | |
| Putin calling for more dialog, while Trump issues threats? Makes Russia look like a great power while US looks foolish and unreliable | |
| https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/07/asia/north-korea-russia/index.html | |
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/30/donald-trump-says-china-does-nothing-to-thwart-north-koreas-nuclear-quest | |
| Putin promotes NK as a threat | |
| http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/asia/north-korea-putin/index.html | |
| 5 assumptions we've got wrong about North Korea | |
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/5-assumptions-weve-got-wrong-about-north-korea |
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