Trump's Flynn-flam man seeks immunity deal: Darcy cartoon
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- President Donald Trump's call for "extreme vetting" obviously never applied to his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Saturday, The White House released financial statements for its staff, revealing Flynn had not initially disclosed financial payments from Russian entities, when disclosure forms were filled out in February.
The payments to Flynn included a $45,000 speaking fee from RT, the Russian television network operated by the government.
On Thursday, Flynn, through his attorney, requested immunity before testifying before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, and collusion between the Trump administration and Russia.
"General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should circumstances permit," wrote Flynn's attorney, Robert Kelner.
Kelner explained that "no reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch-hunt environment without assurance against unfair prosecution."
Both the Senate and House committees indicated they would not consider granting Flynn immunity until they are further along in their investigations.
In their press conference last week, the leaders of the Senate Intel committee said they wouldn't call individuals to even testify until they had done their due diligence on them.
Normally, Congress does not grant immunity before first consulting with the Department of Justice, because granting immunity to a target of a DOJ investigation can seriously jeopardize the DOJ's chances of sustaining a conviction, as was proven in the case of Oliver North.
North's convictions in the Iran-Contra scandal were overturned due to his being given immunity by Congress for his testimony.
It's speculated that the North case may have been one of the reasons Flynn's lawyer has made an aggressive move seeking immunity, hoping maybe House Chairman-Trump lap dog, Devin Nunes might bite.
Usually, prosecutors only grant immunity when they know what the subject is going to say, and know that testimony will hook a bigger fish. The only bigger fish than the President's National Security Adviser, linked to the Russia investigation, are Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Trump himself.
During his speech at the Republican National Convention, Flynn egged on "Lock Her Up!" anti-Clinton chants. Turns out, they should have been playing John Lennon's "Instant Karma."
In September, on "Meet the Press" Flynn, said that "when you are given immunity that means you've probably committed a crime, " referring to Clinton associates.
A day later at a rally, Trump asked,"If you're not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity for?"
Now, of course, Trump's tweeting out a different tune when it's his former National Security Advisor seeking immunity.
"Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!"
Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, "The president is very clear that he wants Mike Flynn to go and be completely open and transparent with the committee and whatever it takes to do that he is supportive of."
A week earlier, Spicer was in full cover-up spin mode, dismissing Flynn as just a campaign "volunteer" and Manafort, the campaign manager for six months, as someone who had a "limited role" for a "limited time,"
Flynn's immunity request "doesn't look good," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, House Oversight Committee Chairman. "The witch hunt, I don't buy that either. We're just trying to get to the facts."
Here are the known facts so far on Trump's flimflam man, Michael Flynn:
Mislead Mike Pence and FBI about calls to the Russian Ambassador.
Flynn was ousted as National Security advisor after misleading Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI about his calls to the Russian Ambassador and the nature of those calls. Flynn had indicated to the FBI that he had not discussed the sanctions that had just been imposed by the Obama administration. The transcripts showed that he had. Lying to the FBI is a felony.
DOJ warned Trump that Flynn could be compromised.
Prior to being fired, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates warned Trump that Flynn had mislead Pence about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador and that Flynn could be compromised by the Russians. Despite this grave notice, Trump did not take immediate action to remove Flynn.
Flynn did not disclose he was a "foreign agent" for Turkey.
Flynn did not disclose he was a "foreign agent," as legally required, doing consulting and lobbying work for Turkey, until after he was ousted.
Flynn failed to report financial payments from Russian entities.
Saturday, the White House released staff financial disclosure forms showing Flynn failed to report payments from Russia, including a speaking fee of $45,000 from RT, the state-run Russian propaganda television network.
Former CIA Director implicates Flynn in kidnapping plot.
Former CIA Director James Woosely told The Wall Street Journal he attended a meeting where Flynn and representatives of Turkey's government discussed a "covert step in the dead of the night to whisk away" Turkish dissident leader Fethullah Gulen from his home in Pennsylvania. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, blamed Gulen for the failed coup attempt against his government. At the time, Flynn was a campaign adviser to Trump and a lobbyist for Turkey.
The only presidential campaign under federal investigation on election day was Trump's, not Clinton's. The only one now seeking an immunity deal, is Trump's former National Security Advise, not Hillary Clinton.
Unfortunately for Trump, flimflam Flynn didn't make his immunity request on April Fool's Day.
Read the whole story
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Trump Says US Ready to Act Alone on North Koreaby webdesk@voanews.com (Associated Press)
President Donald Trump says that the United States is prepared to act alone if China does not take a tougher stand against North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's comments in an interview with the Financial Times come just days before he is set to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago estate in south Florida. The two are expected to discuss a number of issues, including North Korea, trade and territorial disputes in the South China Sea during their meeting on Thursday and Friday. “Yes, we will talk about North Korea,” Trump told the newspaper for a story that appeared Sunday on its website. “And China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won't. And if they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don't it won't be good for anyone.” Trump said trade was the incentive for China to work with the United States. Still, he said the United States could “totally” handle the situation in North Korea without China's help. Asked how he would tackle North Korea, Trump said: “I'm not going to tell you. You know, I am not the United States of the past where we tell you where we are going to hit in the Middle East.” While China provides diplomatic and economic support to its neighbor, it claims that its influence over Kim Jong Un's government is limited. The relationship between the United States and China has been uncertain since Trump's election. During his campaign he accused China of unfair trade practices and threatened to raise import taxes on Chinese goods and declare Beijing a currency manipulator, though it is unclear whether Trump will follow through with either threat. Trump told the newspaper that he doesn't “want to talk about tariffs yet, perhaps the next time we meet.” Trump's ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, also offered tough talk on China, saying on ABC's “This Week” that the U.S. is pressing China to take a firmer stand regarding North Korea's nuclear program. U.N. resolutions have failed so far to deter North Korea from conducting nuclear and missile tests. Last year, the North conducted two nuclear tests and two dozen tests of ballistic missiles. “They need to show us how concerned they are,” Haley said. “They need to put pressure on North Korea. The only country that can stop North Korea is China, and they know that.” Asked what the U.S. would do if China doesn't cooperate, Haley said: “China has to cooperate.” Former defense secretary Ash Carter, however, said he doubted that Beijing will cooperate. “I've been working on the North Korea problem since 1994,” Carter said on ABC. “And we have consistently asked Chinese leaders ... because they uniquely have the historical and the economic relationship with North Korea to make a difference.” “They haven't used that influence, and so it's hard for me to be optimistic with that,” he said.
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In Trump's Russia controversy, John McCain sees 'echoes of the Cold War'
Washington Post Russia's actions, McCain told ABC's Martha Raddatz on “This Week,” are “echoes of the Cold War. They just tell flat-out lies.” Raddatz and McCain talked in depth about the recent revelations of purported ties between Russia and President Trump's ... McCain on Russia probe: 'Every time we turn around, another shoe drops from this centipede'The Hill all 5 news articles » |
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The Surveillance and “Unmasking” of Trump and his Associates
We learned this week that surveillance of Trump began long before he was the Republican nominee, and that the names in the intercepted communications were “unmasked” -- that is, identified by name or context -- by someone high up in the intelligence community.
In addition, citizens affiliated with Trump’s team who were unmasked were not associated with any intelligence about Russia or other foreign intelligence, sources confirmed. The initial unmasking led to other surveillance, which led to other private citizens being wrongly unmasked, sources said.
"Unmasking is not unprecedented, but unmasking for political purposes... specifically of Trump transition team members... is highly suspect and questionable,” an intelligence source told Fox News. “Opposition by some in the intelligence agencies who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton teams was strong. After Trump was elected, they decided they were going to ruin his presidency by picking them off one by one."
Nunes and Surveillance Reports
The best summation of this week’s distraction -- respecting chairman of the House intelligence committee, Devin Nunes -- is Victor Davis Hanson’s which I urge those of you interested to read in its entirety.
First, the central question remains who leaked what classified information for what reasons; second, since when is it improper or even unwise for an apprehensive intelligence official to bring information of some importance to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for external review -- in a climate of endemic distrust of all intelligence agencies?[snip] Nunes also said that the surveillance shown to him “was essentially a lot of information on the President-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.” Further, he suggested that the surveillance may have involved high-level Obama officials. When a reporter at Nunes’ second March 22 press conference asked, “Can you rule out the possibility that senior Obama-administration officials were involved in this?” Nunes replied, “No, we cannot.” Ipso facto these are startling disclosures of historical proportions -- if true, of an anti-constitutional magnitude comparable to Watergate. Given the stakes, we should expect hysteria to follow, and it has followed. [snip]Some notion of such intrigue, or rather the former nexus between Congress, the Obama administration, the intelligence agencies, and the monitoring of incoming Trump officials, was inadvertently disclosed recently by former Obama-administration Department of Defense deputy assistant secretary and current MSNBC commentator Evelyn Farkas. In an interview that originally aired on March 2 and that was reported on this week by Fox, Farkas seemed to brag on air about her own efforts scrambling to release information on the incoming Trump team’s purported talks with the Russians. Farkas’s revelation might put into context the eleventh-hour Obama effort to more widely disseminate intelligence findings among officials, one that followed even earlier attempts to broaden access to Obama-administration surveillance.
In any event, the White House invited the highest ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees to come view the documents themselves. Adam Schiff did, and reported he’d seen what Nunes had, after which he did not deny the intercepted 
communications contained nothing about Russia or Trump. They clearly were of no national intelligence significance, but rather, as Hanson noted, were evidence that the prior administration was snooping on political adversaries using the apparatus of the state to do so.
communications contained nothing about Russia or Trump. They clearly were of no national intelligence significance, but rather, as Hanson noted, were evidence that the prior administration was snooping on political adversaries using the apparatus of the state to do so.
We also learned this week that Hillary (despite her uncontested mishandling of classified information when she was Secretary of State), and her aides, including Farkas, were given access to classified information long after she left the Department of State which, with Farkas’ admission on MSNBC, underscores the apparent misuse of intelligence from her end.
FBI Director James Comey and former DNI James Clapper
As for Comey, Hanson notes:
There is no need to rehash the strange political career of FBI director James Comey during the 2016 election. As Andrew McCarthy has noted in his recent NRO analyses, news accounts alleged that Comey’s FBI investigations of supposed contacts between General Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador were shared with Obama-administration officials -- but why and how we are not sure. Comey himself was quick to note that his agency is investigating supposed collusion between Team Trump and Russia, but he refused to comment on whether or not the FBI is investigating possibly inappropriate or illegal intercepts of Trump officials and the surely illegal dissemination of intercepted info through leaks to favorable media.
But there’s much more to be said about him and his “investigation” which seems to be continuing only to cover his own backside.
The FBI was concerned that the ill-secured DNC internet communications were being hacked and sought to examine them. The DNC refused and engaged an outfit called Crowd Strike to do the job. Crowd Strike reported the Russia had likely tapped their server. There’s no explanation of why Crowd Strike was chosen, why the FBI allowed this, and why it apparently relied on that outfit’s findings. Recently Crowd Strike has walked back many of its claims after a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.
And then there’s the dossier compiled by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. If you recall, this dossier was commissioned through a DC firm, Fusion GPS, by Hillary to dig up opposition research on her opponents, and when she dropped it, unnamed Republicans followed up on the contract. At some point (accounts vary about how this occurred), dog in the manger John McCain got it and widely distributed it to the press and political figures. These Republicans, too, dropped the service, at which time the FBI picked it up, though they claim not to have paid GPS. Comey apparently has based his still ongoing “investigation” on it. The dossier is utter bunk. Ironically, it is Fusion GPS that is tied to Russian intelligence.
“It is highly troubling that Fusion GPS appears to have been working with someone with ties to Russian intelligence -- let alone someone alleged to have conducted political disinformation campaigns -- as part of a pro-Russia lobbying effort while also simultaneously overseeing the creation of the Trump/Russia dossier,” writes [Senator] Grassley.Akhmetshin hired Simpson and Fusion GPS last year to work on a campaign to roll back the Magnitsky Act, a law passed in 2012 which imposed sanctions against a handful of Russian criminals accused of human rights violations.The law was named in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was killed by jail guards in 2009. Magnitsky was working for Bill Browder, a London-based investor who once operated in Russia, when he uncovered a $230 million fraud being carried out by the Russian government.After Magnitsky’s death, Browder began lobbying U.S. lawmakers to enact sanctions against Russian criminals engaged in human rights abuses.In a FARA complaint submitted in July, Browder laid out the case that Akhmetshin conducted a covert lobbying campaign to hinder the Global Magnitsky Act, an expansion of the original law.
The report is not worthy of consideration, but the FBI and Rep. Adam Schiff did apparently rely on it, drawing into question the FBI’s “independence from politics” and Schiff’s credulity or venality:
Citing current and former government officials, the New Yorker reported the dossier prompted skepticism among intelligence community members, with the publication quoting one member as saying it was a “nutty” piece of evidence to submit to a U.S. president.Steele’s work has been questioned by former acting CIA director Morell, who currently works at the Hillary Clinton-tied Beacon Global Strategies LLC. Beacon was founded by Phillippe Reines, who served as Communications Adviser to Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state. From 2009-2013, Reines also served in Clinton’s State Department as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications. Reines is the managing director of Beacon...Morell, who was in line to become CIA director if Clinton won, said he had seen no evidence that Trump associates cooperated with Russians. He also raised questions about the dossier written by a former British intelligence officer, which alleged a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia…Morell pointed out that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Meet the Press on March 5 that he had seen no evidence of a conspiracy when he left office January 20.“That’s a pretty strong statement by General Clapper,” Morell said.Regarding Steele’s dossier, Morell stated, “Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can’t judge the information -- you just can’t.”Morell charged the dossier “doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think.”“I had two questions when I first read it. One was, How did Chris talk to these sources? I have subsequently learned that he used intermediaries.”Morell continued:And then I asked myself, why did these guys provide this information, what was their motivation? And I subsequently learned that he paid them. That the intermediaries paid the sources and the intermediaries got the money from Chris. And that kind of worries me a little bit because if you’re paying somebody, particularly former FSB officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they’re going to call you up and say, “Hey, let’s have another meeting, I have more information for you,” because they want to get paid some more.I think you’ve got to take all that into consideration when you consider the dossier.’
Maybe Comey is continuing the investigation to blur his own role in the Obama administration's improper and illegal snooping on his party’s opponents. He has not closed the investigation despite its apparently flimsy basis, perhaps to protect himself. He was supposed to report this investigation in a timely manner to the Congressional and Senate intelligence committees and did not.
As a correspondent with some knowledge of these matters related to me:
“When push comes to shove, no investigation gets opened, no FISA order is applied for, without James Comey's say-so. They can bluster, but it's damned hard to get rid of an FBI Director without a very, very public stink. He could have said no, but he didn't. That means the investigation is bound to focus on him. And count on it -- the decision to short circuit Congressional oversight was probably pushed on him by those same people, but once again, it was ultimately his decision. He could've gone to the Committee, but he didn't. His decision, his responsibility.”
His view is strengthened by Comey’s obfuscation at a Congressional hearing:
The counter-intel investigation, by his own admission, began in July 2016. Congress was not notified until March 2017. That’s an eight month period – Obviously obfuscating the quarterly claim moments earlier.The uncomfortable aspect to this line of inquiry is Comey’s transparent knowledge of the politicized Office of the DNI James Clapper by President Obama.The first and second questions from Stefanik were clear. Comey’s understanding of the questions was clear. However, Comey directly evaded truthful response to the second question. When you watch the video, you can see Comey quickly connecting the dots on where this inquiry was going.There is only one reasonable explanation for FBI Director James Comey to be launching a counter-intel investigation in July 2016, notifying the White House and Clapper, and keeping it under wraps from congress. Comey was a participant in the intelligence gathering for political purposes -- wittingly, or unwittingly.As a direct consequence of this mid-thought-stream Comey obfuscation, it is now clear -- at least to me -- that Director Comey was using his office as a facilitating conduit for the political purposes of the Obama White House.
John Brennan
It’s possible that the tissue-thin, incredible Steele “dossier” was not the only disinformation source. At the Spectator there’s a plausible account of how Obama’s CIA director John Brennan worked with Hillary and certain Baltic figures to discredit Trump with the charge of collusion with Russia.
Brennan pushed for a multi-agency investigation of the Trump campaign, using as his pretext alleged intelligence from an unnamed Baltic state. That “intelligence” was supplied at the very moment Baltic officials had their own political motivation to smear Trump.“Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was -- allegedly -- a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign. It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States,” reported the BBC’s Paul Wood.Is it just a coincidence that Brennan got this tape recording from a Baltic State intelligence agency in April when officials in the Baltic States were up in arms over candidate Trump? Recall that in March of 2016 -- the month before Brennan allegedly got the recording from Baltic spies -- Trump made remarks about NATO that the press was hyping as hostile to the Baltic States. [snip]Hillary and her allies in the media seized on these remarks and ripped Trump on the false claim that, if elected, he would “pull out of NATO,” leaving Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to fend for themselves against Russia.Such fearmongering set off an anti-Trump panic in political circles within the Baltic States. Out of it came a steady stream of stories with headlines such as: “Baltic States Fearful of Trump’s Nato Views” and “Estonian Prez Appears to Push Back on Trump’s NATO Comments.”[Snip]Both Brennan and officials in the Baltic States had strong incentives to help Hillary and hurt Trump. That Brennan and some Baltic spies teamed up to inflate the significance of some half-baked intelligence from a recording isn’t surprising. Only in such a feverish partisan milieu would basic questions go unasked, such as: Is it really a good idea to investigate a political opponent on the basis of a lead provided by a country that wants to see him lose?
Flynn
Flynn was Obama’s head of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and served only days under Trump. Reports this week initially made it appear that he was under investigation for ties to Russia, but it is more obvious to me that he knows about skullduggery by the prior administration in the Middle East, most likely Iran, and wants protection against the sort of unwarranted prosecutions Ted Stevens and Lewis Libby suffered at the hands of vindictive Democrats and their minions. The charges against him are being leveled by former Obama aide Sally Yates, who has utterly discredited herself earlier by her demonstrably false claim that the White House blocked her from testifying to Congress when the documentation clearly shows she was not.
Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to just consider everything the Democrats say, directly or through the media, which just prints as truth handouts from the same Democratic sources, as a lie. You’d save a lot of time and most likely be right.
There’s so much in print and online about the House and Senate intelligence committees and Russian “collusion” with Trump that I can’t blame people with real lives to lead who just throw their hands up and garden or go hiking. Some will assume there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere, as Ronald Reagan used to joke about the kid digging through manure. I think there is, but it isn’t that Russia corrupted the 2016 election, it’s that Obama and his closest aides, including some at the highest level in the intelligence community, illegally intercepted one or more Republican candidates’ communications before the election, circulated them widely to their cohorts and then tried to use this information to defeat and later to hamstring Trump when Hillary -- to their surprise -- lost the election.
I also suspect that the attacks on Flynn have nothing to do with his Russian contacts which he disclosed, but, rather, to misdeeds respecting the Middle East, particularly Iran, the country he observed as Obama’s head of the DIA.
The Surveillance and “Unmasking” of Trump and his Associates
We learned this week that surveillance of Trump began long before he was the Republican nominee, and that the names in the intercepted communications were “unmasked” -- that is, identified by name or context -- by someone high up in the intelligence community.
In addition, citizens affiliated with Trump’s team who were unmasked were not associated with any intelligence about Russia or other foreign intelligence, sources confirmed. The initial unmasking led to other surveillance, which led to other private citizens being wrongly unmasked, sources said.
"Unmasking is not unprecedented, but unmasking for political purposes... specifically of Trump transition team members... is highly suspect and questionable,” an intelligence source told Fox News. “Opposition by some in the intelligence agencies who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton teams was strong. After Trump was elected, they decided they were going to ruin his presidency by picking them off one by one."
Nunes and Surveillance Reports
The best summation of this week’s distraction -- respecting chairman of the House intelligence committee, Devin Nunes -- is Victor Davis Hanson’s which I urge those of you interested to read in its entirety.
First, the central question remains who leaked what classified information for what reasons; second, since when is it improper or even unwise for an apprehensive intelligence official to bring information of some importance to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for external review -- in a climate of endemic distrust of all intelligence agencies?[snip] Nunes also said that the surveillance shown to him “was essentially a lot of information on the President-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.” Further, he suggested that the surveillance may have involved high-level Obama officials. When a reporter at Nunes’ second March 22 press conference asked, “Can you rule out the possibility that senior Obama-administration officials were involved in this?” Nunes replied, “No, we cannot.” Ipso facto these are startling disclosures of historical proportions -- if true, of an anti-constitutional magnitude comparable to Watergate. Given the stakes, we should expect hysteria to follow, and it has followed. [snip]Some notion of such intrigue, or rather the former nexus between Congress, the Obama administration, the intelligence agencies, and the monitoring of incoming Trump officials, was inadvertently disclosed recently by former Obama-administration Department of Defense deputy assistant secretary and current MSNBC commentator Evelyn Farkas. In an interview that originally aired on March 2 and that was reported on this week by Fox, Farkas seemed to brag on air about her own efforts scrambling to release information on the incoming Trump team’s purported talks with the Russians. Farkas’s revelation might put into context the eleventh-hour Obama effort to more widely disseminate intelligence findings among officials, one that followed even earlier attempts to broaden access to Obama-administration surveillance.
In any event, the White House invited the highest ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees to come view the documents themselves. Adam Schiff did, and reported he’d seen what Nunes had, after which he did not deny the intercepted communications contained nothing about Russia or Trump. They clearly were of no national intelligence significance, but rather, as Hanson noted, were evidence that the prior administration was snooping on political adversaries using the apparatus of the state to do so.
communications contained nothing about Russia or Trump. They clearly were of no national intelligence significance, but rather, as Hanson noted, were evidence that the prior administration was snooping on political adversaries using the apparatus of the state to do so.
We also learned this week that Hillary (despite her uncontested mishandling of classified information when she was Secretary of State), and her aides, including Farkas, were given access to classified information long after she left the Department of State which, with Farkas’ admission on MSNBC, underscores the apparent misuse of intelligence from her end.
FBI Director James Comey and former DNI James Clapper
As for Comey, Hanson notes:
There is no need to rehash the strange political career of FBI director James Comey during the 2016 election. As Andrew McCarthy has noted in his recent NRO analyses, news accounts alleged that Comey’s FBI investigations of supposed contacts between General Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador were shared with Obama-administration officials -- but why and how we are not sure. Comey himself was quick to note that his agency is investigating supposed collusion between Team Trump and Russia, but he refused to comment on whether or not the FBI is investigating possibly inappropriate or illegal intercepts of Trump officials and the surely illegal dissemination of intercepted info through leaks to favorable media.
But there’s much more to be said about him and his “investigation” which seems to be continuing only to cover his own backside.
The FBI was concerned that the ill-secured DNC internet communications were being hacked and sought to examine them. The DNC refused and engaged an outfit called Crowd Strike to do the job. Crowd Strike reported the Russia had likely tapped their server. There’s no explanation of why Crowd Strike was chosen, why the FBI allowed this, and why it apparently relied on that outfit’s findings. Recently Crowd Strike has walked back many of its claims after a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.
And then there’s the dossier compiled by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. If you recall, this dossier was commissioned through a DC firm, Fusion GPS, by Hillary to dig up opposition research on her opponents, and when she dropped it, unnamed Republicans followed up on the contract. At some point (accounts vary about how this occurred), dog in the manger John McCain got it and widely distributed it to the press and political figures. These Republicans, too, dropped the service, at which time the FBI picked it up, though they claim not to have paid GPS. Comey apparently has based his still ongoing “investigation” on it. The dossier is utter bunk. Ironically, it is Fusion GPS that is tied to Russian intelligence.
“It is highly troubling that Fusion GPS appears to have been working with someone with ties to Russian intelligence -- let alone someone alleged to have conducted political disinformation campaigns -- as part of a pro-Russia lobbying effort while also simultaneously overseeing the creation of the Trump/Russia dossier,” writes [Senator] Grassley.Akhmetshin hired Simpson and Fusion GPS last year to work on a campaign to roll back the Magnitsky Act, a law passed in 2012 which imposed sanctions against a handful of Russian criminals accused of human rights violations.The law was named in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was killed by jail guards in 2009. Magnitsky was working for Bill Browder, a London-based investor who once operated in Russia, when he uncovered a $230 million fraud being carried out by the Russian government.After Magnitsky’s death, Browder began lobbying U.S. lawmakers to enact sanctions against Russian criminals engaged in human rights abuses.In a FARA complaint submitted in July, Browder laid out the case that Akhmetshin conducted a covert lobbying campaign to hinder the Global Magnitsky Act, an expansion of the original law.
The report is not worthy of consideration, but the FBI and Rep. Adam Schiff did apparently rely on it, drawing into question the FBI’s “independence from politics” and Schiff’s credulity or venality:
Citing current and former government officials, the New Yorker reported the dossier prompted skepticism among intelligence community members, with the publication quoting one member as saying it was a “nutty” piece of evidence to submit to a U.S. president.Steele’s work has been questioned by former acting CIA director Morell, who currently works at the Hillary Clinton-tied Beacon Global Strategies LLC. Beacon was founded by Phillippe Reines, who served as Communications Adviser to Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state. From 2009-2013, Reines also served in Clinton’s State Department as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications. Reines is the managing director of Beacon...Morell, who was in line to become CIA director if Clinton won, said he had seen no evidence that Trump associates cooperated with Russians. He also raised questions about the dossier written by a former British intelligence officer, which alleged a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia…Morell pointed out that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Meet the Press on March 5 that he had seen no evidence of a conspiracy when he left office January 20.“That’s a pretty strong statement by General Clapper,” Morell said.Regarding Steele’s dossier, Morell stated, “Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can’t judge the information -- you just can’t.”Morell charged the dossier “doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think.”“I had two questions when I first read it. One was, How did Chris talk to these sources? I have subsequently learned that he used intermediaries.”Morell continued:And then I asked myself, why did these guys provide this information, what was their motivation? And I subsequently learned that he paid them. That the intermediaries paid the sources and the intermediaries got the money from Chris. And that kind of worries me a little bit because if you’re paying somebody, particularly former FSB officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they’re going to call you up and say, “Hey, let’s have another meeting, I have more information for you,” because they want to get paid some more.I think you’ve got to take all that into consideration when you consider the dossier.’
Maybe Comey is continuing the investigation to blur his own role in the Obama administration's improper and illegal snooping on his party’s opponents. He has not closed the investigation despite its apparently flimsy basis, perhaps to protect himself. He was supposed to report this investigation in a timely manner to the Congressional and Senate intelligence committees and did not.
As a correspondent with some knowledge of these matters related to me:
“When push comes to shove, no investigation gets opened, no FISA order is applied for, without James Comey's say-so. They can bluster, but it's damned hard to get rid of an FBI Director without a very, very public stink. He could have said no, but he didn't. That means the investigation is bound to focus on him. And count on it -- the decision to short circuit Congressional oversight was probably pushed on him by those same people, but once again, it was ultimately his decision. He could've gone to the Committee, but he didn't. His decision, his responsibility.”
His view is strengthened by Comey’s obfuscation at a Congressional hearing:
The counter-intel investigation, by his own admission, began in July 2016. Congress was not notified until March 2017. That’s an eight month period – Obviously obfuscating the quarterly claim moments earlier.The uncomfortable aspect to this line of inquiry is Comey’s transparent knowledge of the politicized Office of the DNI James Clapper by President Obama.The first and second questions from Stefanik were clear. Comey’s understanding of the questions was clear. However, Comey directly evaded truthful response to the second question. When you watch the video, you can see Comey quickly connecting the dots on where this inquiry was going.There is only one reasonable explanation for FBI Director James Comey to be launching a counter-intel investigation in July 2016, notifying the White House and Clapper, and keeping it under wraps from congress. Comey was a participant in the intelligence gathering for political purposes -- wittingly, or unwittingly.As a direct consequence of this mid-thought-stream Comey obfuscation, it is now clear -- at least to me -- that Director Comey was using his office as a facilitating conduit for the political purposes of the Obama White House.
John Brennan
It’s possible that the tissue-thin, incredible Steele “dossier” was not the only disinformation source. At the Spectator there’s a plausible account of how Obama’s CIA director John Brennan worked with Hillary and certain Baltic figures to discredit Trump with the charge of collusion with Russia.
Brennan pushed for a multi-agency investigation of the Trump campaign, using as his pretext alleged intelligence from an unnamed Baltic state. That “intelligence” was supplied at the very moment Baltic officials had their own political motivation to smear Trump.“Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was -- allegedly -- a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign. It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States,” reported the BBC’s Paul Wood.Is it just a coincidence that Brennan got this tape recording from a Baltic State intelligence agency in April when officials in the Baltic States were up in arms over candidate Trump? Recall that in March of 2016 -- the month before Brennan allegedly got the recording from Baltic spies -- Trump made remarks about NATO that the press was hyping as hostile to the Baltic States. [snip]Hillary and her allies in the media seized on these remarks and ripped Trump on the false claim that, if elected, he would “pull out of NATO,” leaving Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to fend for themselves against Russia.Such fearmongering set off an anti-Trump panic in political circles within the Baltic States. Out of it came a steady stream of stories with headlines such as: “Baltic States Fearful of Trump’s Nato Views” and “Estonian Prez Appears to Push Back on Trump’s NATO Comments.”[Snip]Both Brennan and officials in the Baltic States had strong incentives to help Hillary and hurt Trump. That Brennan and some Baltic spies teamed up to inflate the significance of some half-baked intelligence from a recording isn’t surprising. Only in such a feverish partisan milieu would basic questions go unasked, such as: Is it really a good idea to investigate a political opponent on the basis of a lead provided by a country that wants to see him lose?
Flynn
Flynn was Obama’s head of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and served only days under Trump. Reports this week initially made it appear that he was under investigation for ties to Russia, but it is more obvious to me that he knows about skullduggery by the prior administration in the Middle East, most likely Iran, and wants protection against the sort of unwarranted prosecutions Ted Stevens and Lewis Libby suffered at the hands of vindictive Democrats and their minions. The charges against him are being leveled by former Obama aide Sally Yates, who has utterly discredited herself earlier by her demonstrably false claim that the White House blocked her from testifying to Congress when the documentation clearly shows she was not.
Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to just consider everything the Democrats say, directly or through the media, which just prints as truth handouts from the same Democratic sources, as a lie. You’d save a lot of time and most likely be right.
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A senior Trump administration official says that Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's senior adviser and his son-in-law, has arrived in Iraq with the highest-ranking Pentagon general.
Trump's Son-in-Law Visits Iraqby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
A senior White House official says Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and senior adviser to President Donald Trump, is in Iraq. The official said Sunday Kushner is traveling with General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Details about Kushner's visit were not immediately available, however Iraq's fight against Islamic State jihadists is likely to be on the agenda.A U.S.-led international coalition has launched airstrikes against the insurgents to assist the Iraqi troops on the ground. Kushner, like his father-in-law, has no previous government experience, but has quickly become one of the most powerful men in Washington. He is married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka.
https://en.crimerussia.com/ |
Ivanov blessed himself when asked on rallies
https://en.crimerussia.com/ The special representative of the President on issues of environmental protection, ecology and transport Sergey Ivanov crossed himself after journalists asked him about the protest actions that took place in Russia, the correspondent of RBC reports. |
NEWS.com.au |
Russian region of Chechnya denies mass arrests of gay men
NEWS.com.au A respected Russian newspaper says it has uncovered information that police in the southernRussian republic of Chechnya have rounded up more than 100 men. But the Government of the region, where the vast majority of the population are adherents to ... Chechen Authorities Arresting and Killing Gay Men, Russian Paper SaysNew York Times all 41 news articles » |
Cereals such as wheat and barley are important food plants, grown almost everywhere in the world. But they are susceptible to diseases and one of the most damaging is a fungal pathogen that causes the dreaded "wheat head blight" or "wheat scab." Using modern gene editing technique scientists have discovered a new and effective way to fight the disease.
Local authorities in Chechnya are behind the disappearance of more than 100 gay men from across the Muslim majority republic, a Russian newspaper reported on Saturday.
The revelation came from Novaya Gazeta, a privately-owned newspaper known for its investigations. A broad range of men have been taken into custody, according to the newspaper, including two local television personalities. At least three have been killed, the paper claimed, though they were withholding the names of the victims.
The author of the article wrote that she confirmed the disappearances from sources in "the Interior Ministry of the Chechen Republic, inside the federal government, the FSB [domestic intelligence] Department for Chechnya, the Chechen prosecutor's office, and finally local LGBT activists."
An atmosphere of anti-gay feeling has been stewing in Chechnya since early March, Noveya Gazeta reported. It was then Moscow-based gay rights group, GayRussia.ru, launched an effort to apply for permits to stage gay rights rallies across Russia. The effort was doomed to fail, according to Nikolai Alexeyev, the project's organizer, but the denied permits were being collected for submission to the European Court of Human Rights as evidence that gay rights are being suppressed within Russia.
The decision to include Kabardino-Balkaria, another Muslim-majority republic in the northern Caucuses, in the effort drew protest after it was reported in the local media and sparked the current round of disappearances in Chechnya.
According to Noveya Gazeta, the Chechen police regards the operation as "preventive mopping up" of undesirable figures.
Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov operates Chechnya devoid of much constraint from the federal government provided he keeps the region, which attempted to gain its independence in the 1990s, loyal to Moscow. He's managed to do just that in three ways: using federal money to rebuild the mostly destroyed capital city, Grozny; embracing traditional local customs to help co-opt potential extremists — such as making wearing hijabs mandatory for women in public places; and engaging in accused human rights abuses to keep the population in line.
Following the publication of Novaya Gazeta's article, Chechnya's government has gone beyond denying that the men had gone missing — they've rebut the idea that there were gay men in Chechnya in the first place.
“You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” Kadyrov spokesman Alvi Karimov told Interfax. “If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.”
Karimov was alluding to the idea that in the deeply conservative republic, relatives of some of the gay men arrested would perform an "honor killing" to rid themselves of their shame. Novaya Gazeta speculated that some of the gay men detained were released not for lack of evidence, but on the hope that their families would do just that.
Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, Russia project director for the International Crisis Group, confirmed to the Guardian that she was aware of the reported disappearances. “I have heard about it happening in Grozny, outside Grozny, and among people of very different ages and professions,” she said. But, she warned, there hasn't been a fully verified case yet. “It’s next to impossible to get information from the victims or their families, but the number of signals I’m receiving from different people makes it hard not to believe detentions and violence are indeed happening.”
While the federal government is apparently not behind the arrests, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made opposition to gay rights a staple of his domestic and foreign policies. In 2013 legislation banning "gay propaganda." Presented as a means to protect Russia's children from learning about homosexuality, in practice it has become a broad term that has been used to persecute LGBT people since.
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The FBI is planning to create a special section based at its Washington headquarters to co-ordinate its investigation of Russian activities designed to influence the 2016 presidential election, according to a person familiar with the plan.
Sample the FT’s top stories for a week
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The move, a sign of how seriously the bureau is taking allegations of Russian meddling in American politics, is also aimed at giving FBI director James Comey greater visibility into the investigation’s granular details. “It’s meant to surge resources,” said one FBI agent.
Creation of the temporary unit mirrors the bureau’s approach to other sensitive investigations, including the WikiLeaks disclosure of classified US government documents and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.
The FBI generally prefers to run investigations from one of its 56 field offices, but the high-profile nature of the sprawling Russia inquiry is seen as requiring a central manager, according to current and former officials.
“It’s getting unwieldy,” said one person briefed on the plan. “It’s too big and it’s on the front page of the newspaper every day.”
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.
Related article
The bureau is expected to recall from the field an FBI counter-intelligence specialist to oversee the squad, which is to begin work next month. If the new team — with about 20 dedicated agents drawn from across the country — operates as similar units have in the past, its chief would brief Mr Comey on a weekly basis while providing daily updates for deputy director Andrew McCabe.
“We did it quite regularly,” said Robert Anderson of Navigant, a business consulting group, who was a former executive assistant director of the FBI. “Any time there’s a big case, a giant case, it becomes a huge resource drain across the organisation.”
Russian activities under investigation include alleged hacking into Democratic computer networks and reported contacts between Russians and representatives of the Trump campaign. Michael Flynn, the president’s national security adviser, was fired in February after allegedly lying to vice-president Mike Pence about conversations he had last year with Sergei Kislyak, Russian ambassador to the US.
“The FBI, as part of our counter-intelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any co-ordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts,” Mr Comey told the House Intelligence Committee earlier this month.
FBI investigators also will evaluate the potential for criminal charges in the Russia matter. But some investigators are pessimistic about the likelihood of making a case, given the difficulty of obtaining evidence from Russia.
It’s getting unwieldy. It’s too big and it’s on the front page of the newspaper every day
“Unlike the CIA, we have to bring things that go, potentially, in front of a jury,” said one agent. “We have to certify evidence. A place like Russia is such a black hole. It’s so hard to prove you’re bringing evidence that hasn’t been tampered with.”
As the FBI probe proceeds, both the Senate and House intelligence committees are pursuing their own Russia-related investigations. Republican Senator Richard Burr, who chairs the Senate panel, said on Wednesday that the committee was “looking anywhere intelligence suggests that there might have been any type of relationship of effort to influence US elections”.
In an appearance on Wednesday night before an industry group, Mr Comey declined to discuss the investigation. But he said the FBI would follow the facts without regard for potential political consequences. “We’re not on anybody’s side, ever,” he said. “We’re not considering whose ox will be gored. We just don’t care.”
Follow David J Lynch on Twitter: @davidjlynch
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Gay Men Are Being Rounded Up And Killed In Chechnya: Report
Huffington Post - 1 hour ago
A Chechen spokesman denied the report, saying, “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don't exist.” By Nina Golgowski. Yelena Afonina via Getty Images. Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, is seen being sworn into office in 2016 ...
Authorities Reportedly Detaining and Killing Gay Men in Chechnya
Slate Magazine (blog) - 18 hours ago
It has been a rumor for weeks but now a leading Russian opposition newspaper has actually confirmed the news and written about it, declaring that authorities in Chechnya are rounding up and killing gay men. More than 100 gay men have been detained “in ...
Report: Chechnya police arrest 100 alleged gays, 3 killed
Washington Post - 9 hours ago
MOSCOW — A respected Russian newspaper says it has uncovered information that police in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya have rounded up more than 100 men suspected of homosexuality and that at least three have been killed.
Gay Men Reportedly Being Arrested, Killed in Russian Republic of Chechnya
<a href="http://Advocate.com" rel="nofollow">Advocate.com</a> - 2 hours ago
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov (pictured) denies the accounts and claims there are no gay people in Chechnya. By Trudy Ring. April 02 2017 2:21 PM EDT. Share on Twitter · Share on Facebook. Authorities in the Russian-controlled republic of Chechnya ...
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- An inferno burned early Sunday in a high-rise tower complex being built alongside Dubai's largest mall, its thick black smoke shrouding the world's tallest building nearby in this desert metropolis where skyscraper blazes remain a worry....
Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) discusses the classified documents he reviewed at the White House, purported to be the same ones shown to House Intel Chair Devin Nunes. He adds that anything President Trump labels as "fake" should be met with skepticism.
Bob Dylan accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature at a private ceremony in Stockholm on April 1. The ceremony was attended by 12 academy members.
Middle East News
David's Sling, meant to counter medium-range missiles possessed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, officially became operational at the ceremony, the military said.
Stars and Stripes
Raw Story |
NYT's Maggie Haberman on Trump's Russia denials: 'He is punching at ghosts and hitting himself in the face'
Raw Story New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman asserted on Sunday that President DonaldTrump should blame himself for sabotaging his own agenda. On CNN's Inside Politics, host John King wondered if Trump was damaging his own “ability to get stuff ... and more » |
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning Israel’s enemies not to test the Jewish state at a ceremony inaugurating a joint U.S.-Israeli missile interceptor.
World
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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross discusses President Trump's executive order signing on trade with CNN's Jake Tapper.
Washington Examiner |
Putin seeking meeting with Trump
Washington Examiner Russian President Vladimir Putin extended an invitation to meet with President Trump on Sunday through a spokesman who emphasized the need to build a relationship between the two nations.Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told ABC's This Week with ... Quora: How Russia and Putin Benefit From a Trump PresidencyNewsweek Mark Cuban: Trump couldn't have pulled off Russia collusionThe Hill (blog) Our Politics Has Given Putin The Weapon To Create A Constitutional CrisisForbes Channel NewsAsia -Fordham Observer -The Daily Dot all 90 news articles » |
JARED KUSHNER tries to save the country, world, universe -- NEW WAVE of Kennedys make a mark in politics ...
Politico MICHAEL CROWLEY on Egypt -- “Trump to welcome Egypt's brutal dictator”: “Egypt's military ruler Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was never invited to the Obama White House, where he was viewed as a brutal tyrant with little regard for human rights and democracy ... and more » |
Daily Beast |
Report: Trump Planned to Meet with Putin Ally
Daily Beast A national security official reportedly found out that Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Bank of Russia who is close with Putin, was suspected of leading an “organized crime and money-laundering ring” in Spain, according to Yahoo News. and more » |
Daily Beast |
Report: Trump Planned to Meet with Putin Ally
Daily Beast President Donald Trump had planned to meet with a Russian bank executive and Vladimir Putinally in February, but the White House abruptly canceled the rendezvous after learning of his suspected mob ties, according to a report from Yahoo News. and more » |
Daily Beast |
Report: Trump Planned to Meet with Putin Ally
Daily Beast A national security official reportedly found out that Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Bank of Russia who is close with Putin, was suspected of leading an “organized crime and money-laundering ring” in Spain, according to Yahoo News. and more » |
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USA TODAY |
Schiff: Trump trying to shift attention from Russia probe
USA TODAY WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee said Sunday that President Trump's claims about illegal wiretapping and news leaks are an attempt to distract people from the overall investigation into possible collusion between the ... Meet the actors in the Russia dramaThe Hill Michael Flynn Initially Failed to Disclose Payments From Russia-Linked Firms, Docs ShowNBCNews.com McCain: Nunes 'killed' bipartisan Russia investigationPolitico New York Daily News -CNN -Huffington Post -New York Times all 1,870 news articles » |
April 2, 2017, 5:42 PM (IDT)
David’s Sling, jointly developed by Israel and the US to counter medium-range missiles, was ceremonially declared operational Sunday. It rounds off Israel’s three-tier missile defense system that includes the Arrow, designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles in the stratosphere, and the short-range Iron Dome interceptor.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu hailed this “important milestone” in defense cooperation between Israel and the United States. He also warned Israel’s enemies not to test the Jewish state. “Those who threaten our existence are putting their own lives at risk,” he said,
US Vice Admiral James Syring noted the "incredible team work and effort," put into the development of David's Sling by both countries. This is an impressive day in what has already been an impressive year for Israeli missile defense," Syring said. "Israel's defense systems have never been stronger and are poised to defend Israeli citizens against the myriad threats they face across the region."
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