Guess what shoe Mueller will drop next

[DrLove]

I'm partial to Don "Guido" Trump Junior. But Little Jared seems a bit more likely for all the lies, omissions and additions to his clearance forms. Both of them likely guilty of money laundering through Deutsche Bank and ties have probably been established between Jared's digital work on the campaign and the amazing coincidences as to where Russians dumped their fake news and when they started leaking emails.

So weigh in - there are many shoes remaining!

 

[Valerie]

The secret weapon of the Trump campaign: his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who created a stealth data machine...

Exclusive Interview: How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House

 

[Valerie]

How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House


Kushner almost never speaks publicly--his chats with FORBES mark the first time he has talked about the Trump campaign or his role in it--but interviews with him and a dozen people around him and the Trump camp lead to an inescapable fact: The quiet, enigmatic young mogul delivered the presidency to the most fame-hungry, bombastic candidate in American history.


"It's hard to overstate and hard to summarize Jared's role in the campaign," says billionaire Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to publicly back Trump. "If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer."


"Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election," adds Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who helped design the Clinton campaign's technology system. "Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources."

No resources at the beginning, perhaps. Underfunded throughout, for sure. But by running the Trump campaign--notably, its secret data operation--like a Silicon Valley startup, Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election.



Mueller Shows How Russians Sowed Discord With Dirty Tricks

 

[Tank]

When is the first shoe going to drop?

 

[Valerie]

The investigation into collusion is continuing... Grand jurors have already heard about others involved in the scheme, the indictment notes.

Mueller Shows How Russians Sowed Discord With Dirty Tricks

 

[BlackSand]

.​

Pineapple​

.​

 

[Valerie]

Did Jared Kushner’s Data Operation Help Select Facebook Targets for the Russians?

The Russians used social media to rile the electorate. Investigators wonder if they had inside help.

Did Jared Kushner’s Data Operation Help Select Facebook Targets for the Russians?

 

[dannyboys]

Hillary Clinton/Ben Rhodes/Loretta LURCH/Valeri Jaredd/Samantha Powers/Obama/Clapper/Comey/McCabe/Struck/Page...........just to name a few.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

 

[DrLove]

The secret weapon of the Trump campaign: his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who created a stealth data machine...

Exclusive Interview: How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House

Yep - Malcolm Nance opined the other day that the one thing Russians didn't understand was our electoral process. He suggested that it would have been near impossible to pick the states and specific target areas in those states without someone sharing data. That someone has to be none other than The Kush because nobody else had the access or the knowledge that he did.

So those 126 million views of fake news dumped by trolls and bots into specific areas eventually squeaked out an electoral win by 77,000 votes in only three states. Is it difficult to believe that 126 million views of such things as #Pizzagate swung the election? Not for me it isn't, though it's something we'll not likely ever know for sure.

 

[Valerie]

So We Find Out FBI Has Been Investigating Trump Since July



Full transcript: FBI Director James Comey testifies on Russian interference in 2016 election


"The Russian active measures campaign may have begun as early as 2015, when Russian intelligence services launched a series of spear fishing attacks designed to penetrate the computers of a broad array of Washington based Democratic and Republican party organizations, think tanks and other entities. This continued at least through the winter of 2016.

While at first the hacking may have been intended solely for the collection of foreign intelligence. In mid-2016 the Russians weapon eyes the stolen data and used platforms established by the Intel services, such as D.C. leaks in existing third-party channels like WikiLeaks to dump the documents. The stolen documents were almost uniformly damaging to the candidate Putin despised, Hillary Clinton. And by forcing her campaign to constantly respond to the daily drip of disclosures, the releases greatly benefited Donald Trump's campaign.

None of these facts is seriously in question. And they're reflected in the consensus conclusion of our intelligence agencies.

We will never know whether the Russian intervention was determinative in such a close election. Indeed, it is unknowable in a campaign to which so many small changes could have dictated a different result. More importantly, and for the purposes of our investigation, it simply does not matter.

What does matter is this, the Russians successfully meddled in our democracy and our intelligence agencies have concluded they will do so again. Ours is not the first democracy to be attacked by the Russians in this way. Russian intelligence has been simile interfering in the internal and political affairs of our European and other allies for decades.


What is striking here is the degree to which the Russians were willing to undertake such an audacious and risky action against the most powerful nation on Earth. That ought to be a warning to us that if we thought that the Russians would not dare to so blatantly interfere in our affairs, we were wrong.

And if we do not do our very best to understand how the Russians accomplished this unprecedented attack on our democracy and what we need to do to protect ourselves in the future, we will only have ourselves to blame.

We know a lot about the Russian operation, about the way they amplified the damage their hacking and dumping of stolen documents was causing through the use of slick propaganda like R.T., the Kremlin's media arm. But there is a lot we don't know.

Most important, we do not yet know whether the Russians have the help of U.S. citizens including people associated with the Trump campaign. Many of the Trump's campaign personnel, including the president himself, have ties to Russia and Russian interests. This is of course no crime. On the other hand, if the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it aided or abetted the Russians, it would not only be a serious crime, it would also represent one of the most shocking betrayals of democracy in history."

 

[Valerie]

Mysterious rash of Russian deaths casts suspicion on Vladimir Putin



The 2011 Exxon-Rosneft agreement was frozen when sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea and covert military intervention in eastern Ukraine. Exxon Mobil estimated the sanctions cost it $1bn and Tillerson has argued strenuously for the measures to be lifted.


In June, two years after sanctions were imposed and in an apparent show of support for Sechin, Tillerson reportedly turned up at a St Petersburg economic summit.



“Tillerson has a relationship with Putin and he opposed the sanctions imposed on Russia after the annexation of Crimea. This will alarm those worried about Russian intentions in Europe.”


“Trump’s choice of Rex Tillerson suggests he wants to make good on his promise to cut deals with Russia instead of containing it,” said Thomas Wright, who has written extensively on Trump’s foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

Rex Tillerson: an appointment that confirms Putin's US election win


“Reporting on Exxon was not only harder than reporting on the Bin Ladens, it was harder than reporting on the CIA by an order of magnitude,” said Steve Coll, who wrote about the company in a book, Private Empire.

“They have a culture of intimidation that they bring to bear in their external relations, and it is plenty understood inside the corporation too. They make people nervous, they make people afraid,” Coll, now a journalism professor at Columbia University, told Texas Monthly.

 

[Valerie]

Did Jared Kushner’s Data Operation Help Select Facebook Targets for the Russians?

Indeed: probers are intrigued by the role of Jared Kushner, the now-president’s son-in-law, who eagerly took credit for crafting the Trump campaign’s online efforts in a rare interview right after the 2016 election.

Kushner’s chat with Forbes has provided a veritable bakery’s worth of investigatory bread crumbs to follow.

 

[DrLove]

How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House

Kushner almost never speaks publicly--his chats with FORBES mark the first time he has talked about the Trump campaign or his role in it--but interviews with him and a dozen people around him and the Trump camp lead to an inescapable fact: The quiet, enigmatic young mogul delivered the presidency to the most fame-hungry, bombastic candidate in American history.

"It's hard to overstate and hard to summarize Jared's role in the campaign," says billionaire Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to publicly back Trump. "If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer."

"Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election," adds Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who helped design the Clinton campaign's technology system. "Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources."

No resources at the beginning, perhaps. Underfunded throughout, for sure. But by running the Trump campaign--notably, its secret data operation--like a Silicon Valley startup, Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election.

Mueller Shows How Russians Sowed Discord With Dirty Tricks

Hillary's campaign was a total failure when it came to data and communication on the level of that The Kush was able to accomplish.

You might remember Obama's guru Jim Messina (who grew up here in Boise) - I think he did a little bit of work for Hillary, but also don't think he cared for her a whole lot so never did the deep dive.

 

[Valerie]

Bannon claimed that Mueller's investigation is sure to lead back to money laundering.

"You realize where this is going. ... This is all about money laundering," Bannon is quoted as saying in Wolff's book. "Mueller chose (senior prosecutor Andrew) Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f***ing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner. ... It's as plain as a hair on your face."

Special counsel questioned Bannon this week

 

[Valerie]

Dark Money
In the age of Citizens United and unlimited campaign donations, the NRA has emerged as an important "dark money" hub in Republican politics. Under its tax code designation, the NRA is a "social welfare" organization, largely exempt from disclosing its donors. To skirt disclosure, other big-dollar political players – including a SuperPAC linked to Karl Rove and a "chamber of commerce" controlled by the Koch Brothers – have routinely steered money into the NRA, confident that the gun group's spending will advance the GOP cause.

It is illegal, however, for foreign money to be used to influence U.S. elections. According to McClatchy, the heart of the FBI investigation is whether the NRA became a conduit for Russian cash, linked to the Kremlin, that bolstered Trump.

The Banker and "Godfather"
The key figure in the NRA/Russia investigation, McClatchy reports, is Alexander Torshin. Torshin is a longtime Putin ally who previously served as a top Russian senator. He is now a deputy governor of Russia's central bank, where his purview includes cracking down on the outflow of dirty money.

That's ironic, because Torshin has been linked to money laundering. Bloomberg reported

 

[Penelope]

How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House


Kushner almost never speaks publicly--his chats with FORBES mark the first time he has talked about the Trump campaign or his role in it--but interviews with him and a dozen people around him and the Trump camp lead to an inescapable fact: The quiet, enigmatic young mogul delivered the presidency to the most fame-hungry, bombastic candidate in American history.


"It's hard to overstate and hard to summarize Jared's role in the campaign," says billionaire Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to publicly back Trump. "If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer."


"Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election," adds Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who helped design the Clinton campaign's technology system. "Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources."

No resources at the beginning, perhaps. Underfunded throughout, for sure. But by running the Trump campaign--notably, its secret data operation--like a Silicon Valley startup, Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election.



Mueller Shows How Russians Sowed Discord With Dirty Tricks

I doubt Kushner is telling the truth. I bet he went in a lot, longer than last Nov. Remember Trump was in Russia in 2013 and according to him he talked to a lot of oligarchs and elites. Since Trump has been wanting to run forever, I think he got a lot of "go for it" in 2013 and well he has or had a lot of Russian oligarchs in Trump Towers. He went for it and then they also targeted Cruz and Rubio (according to the Russian indictment) and it came down to Trump. Then the Mercers backed Trump. So I think Kushner was involved since the beginning and long before Trump announced he was going to run for Potus.

Or possibly the Putin has a lot on Trump and pushed him to go and now controls him, but something is awful fishy, his hiring Tillerson and not yet enforcing the sanctions that congress voted on.

 

[Valerie]

NRA Connections
Torshin helped establish a Russian gun group called Right to Bear Arms, whose president calls Torshin "a great gun lover." Torshin is also a life member of the NRA – and forged ties to its leadership after attending the NRA's national convention in 2013. McClatchy reports that, in 2015, Toshin hosted "a high-level NRA delegation" during a week-long Moscow trip "that included meetings with influential Russian government and business figures." An attendee describes a debauched week: "They were killing us with vodka and the best Russian food," he told McClatchy. "The trip exceeded my expectations by logarithmic levels."

Trump Connections
At the May 2016 NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky, where Donald Trump accepted the group's endorsement, Torshin shared a table at dinner with the candidate's son Donald Jr. According to Bloomberg, Torshin claimed to also have met now-president Trump at the convention, and that: "He keeps photos of the event on his computer tablet."

The 2016 NRA convention came off just as Russians were actively seeking contact with the Trump campaign – just weeks earlier, a Russian conduit told Trump staffer George Papadopoulos that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, including thousands of her emails. – and hoping to set up a meeting with Trump and Putin.

According to the New York Times, Torshin tried to set up a dinner meeting in Louisville at the time of the NRA convention with then-candidate Trump – with the aim of connecting Trump with Putin. The request was conveyed through a Trump ally in the Christian conservative world, who reportedly sent the campaign an email with the subject line: "Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite." (Trump did not attend that dinner.)

Separately, an NRA member, Paul Erickson – who had been part of the 2015 NRA delegation to Moscow – wrote an email titled, "Kremlin Connection," to Trump campaign adviser Rick Dearborn, according to the New York Times. Erickson reportedly told the campaign that Russia was "quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S." and would be seeking "first contact" at the NRA convention.

Weeks later, in early June 2016, the trio of Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner took a meeting with a Putin-connected lawyer who had offered incriminating material on Hillary Clinton. Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon has dubbed that meeting "treasonous."

A Potential Game Changer
The allegation that Russia funneled money into the NRA – to directly support Trump's presidential bid – is staggering. Until now, we've understood the Russian support of Trump to have been oblique, delivered by a cadre of Facebook and Twitter trolls, and by the release of hacked DNC and Clinton campaign emails through Wikileaks.

The notion that the Kremlin was supporting Trump's presidential bid financially – and through an organization that holds itself up as a paragon of American patriotism – is almost unreal.

The Trump-Russia-NRA Connection: Here’s What You Need to Know

 

[August West]

Hillary Clinton/Ben Rhodes/Loretta LURCH/Valeri Jaredd/Samantha Powers/Obama/Clapper/Comey/McCabe/Struck/Page...........just to name a few.

None of these people`s associates are under house arrest nor have they had to plead guilty. Try again.

 

[Valerie]

So KGB officers should “make bolder use of material incentives”: money. And use flattery, an important tool.

The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow

The Center, as KGB headquarters was known, was especially concerned about its lack of success in recruiting US citizens, according to Andrew and Gordievsky. The PR Line—that is, the Political Intelligence Department stationed in KGB residencies abroad—was given explicit instructions to find “U.S. targets to cultivate or, at the very least, official contacts.” “The main effort must be concentrated on acquiring valuable agents,” Kryuchkov said.


The memo—dated February 1, 1984—was to be destroyed as soon as its contents had been read. It said that despite improvements in “information gathering,” the KGB “has not had great success in operation against the main adversary [America].”

The KGB also distributed a secret personality questionnaire, advising case officers what to look for in a successful recruitment operation. In April 1985 this was updated for “prominent figures in the West.” The directorate’s aim was to draw the target “into some form of collaboration with us.” This could be “as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.”


The form demanded basic details—name, profession, family situation, and material circumstances. There were other questions, too: what was the likelihood that the “subject could come to power (occupy the post of president or prime minister)”? And an assessment of personality. For example: “Are pride, arrogance, egoism, ambition or vanity among subject’s natural characteristics?”


The most revealing section concerned kompromat. The document asked for: “Compromising information about subject, including illegal acts in financial and commercial affairs, intrigues, speculation, bribes, graft … and exploitation of his position to enrich himself.” Plus “any other information” that would compromise the subject before “the country’s authorities and the general public.” Naturally the KGB could exploit this by threatening “disclosure.”

...

According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan.

...

As Trump tells it, the idea for his first trip to Moscow came after he found himself seated next to the Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin. This was in autumn 1986; the event was a luncheon held by Leonard Lauder, the businessman son of Estée Lauder. Dubinin’s daughter Natalia “had read about Trump Tower and knew all about it,” Trump said in his 1987 bestseller, The Art of the Deal.

Trump continued: “One thing led to another, and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.”

Trump’s chatty version of events is incomplete. According to Natalia Dubinina, the actual story involved a more determined effort by the Soviet government to seek out Trump.