Guess what shoe Mueller will drop next

[Valerie]

"The mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners; and to ..."

Organization, Mission and Functions Manual: Federal Bureau of Investigation | DOJ | Department of Justice





"Trump's first visit to Soviet Moscow in 1987 looks, with hindsight, to be part of a pattern. The dossier by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele asserts that the Kremlin had been cultivating Trump for “at least five years” before his stunning victory in the 2016 US presidential election. This would take us back to around 2011 or 2012.


In fact, the Soviet Union was interested in him too, three decades earlier. The top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB. It took place while Kryuchkov was seeking to improve the KGB's operational techniques in one particular and sensitive area. The spy chief wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans."

The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow

 

[DrLove]

NRA Connections

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

I have no doubt at all that at at least 20 million of the 30 in blood money that the NRA spent on Trump came from Russia. Curious what came of that FBI investigation and whether it's something Mueller picked up?

Two things pretty much for sure - It would at least partially explain 1. Trump's undying love for all things Russia and 2. His total silence about guns following each incidence of the "American Carnage" he so successfully predicted on inauguration day.

 

[Aba Incieni]

No doubt Mueller will indict some Macedonians.

 

[Valerie]

Christopher Steele told the political research firm that hired him, Fusion GPS, that what he uncovered from Russian sources was serious enough to bring to the attention of U.S. law enforcement authorities, according to a transcript released on Tuesday.


The transcript, of an interview that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson gave the Senate Judiciary Committee, was released by the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

Steele went to the FBI with the initial reports that would later form the dossier on alleged Trump-Russia ties as early as June or July 2016, Simpson testified.


"Chris said he was very concerned about whether this represented a national security threat and said ... he thought we were obligated to tell someone in government," Simpson told the Senate Judiciary Committee.


"He thought from his perspective there was ... a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed."


Simpson said he neither encouraged nor discouraged Steele about going to the FBI.


"This was like, you know, you're driving to work and you see something happen and you call 911," Simpson told investigators. He likened the sense of responsibility he said Steele felt to the professional obligations that attorneys have in some cases to report a crime if they learn of one.

Fusion GPS Founder's Senate Judiciary Testimony Released

How Ex-Spy Christopher Steele Compiled His Explosive Trump-Russia Dossier

 

[Valerie]

"it describes a concerted effort by powerful Russians to cultivate a relationship with Trump and his camp. It also describes lascivious behavior that might embarrass Trump or could have been used as leverage to influence him.

Republicans have underscored the outrageous aspects of the dossier as evidence that it is misinformation at best and sought to emphasize that it is unproven. White House allies have pursued a strategy of trying to impeach the dossier to impeach the broader case that people in the Trump camp might have conspired with the Russians who attacked the election."





How Trump walked into Putin’s web

 

[Valerie]

The case that Trump obstructed justice just got stronger

January 2018


The New York Times’s blockbuster new report last night adds extensive new detail to our understanding of just how far President Trump and the White House went to try to derail the probe into Russian sabotage of our election and possible Trump campaign conspiracy with those efforts.


The new information also strengthens the obstruction-of-justice case against Trump and the White House...

 

[DrLove]

The case that Trump obstructed justice just got stronger

January 2018

The New York Times’s blockbuster new report last night adds extensive new detail to our understanding of just how far President Trump and the White House went to try to derail the probe into Russian sabotage of our election and possible Trump campaign conspiracy with those efforts.

The new information also strengthens the obstruction-of-justice case against Trump and the White House...

Everything Trump has said and done adds to the obstruction case - most recently his refusal to implement sanctions ordered by a 98-2 vote in the Senate and just about everything he says, does or tweets.

But this Rubio Van Hollen bill forcing sanctions bypasses the Orange Turd and looks promising.

The bill, if passed, codifies specific penalties for the Russians that must implemented within 10 days if the Director of National Intelligence determines that interference took place.

The penalties include “sanctions on major sectors of the Russian economy, including finance, energy, defense, and metals and mining” and blacklisting every senior Russian political figure or oligarch identified in the Russian sanctions bill that became law in 2017 over the initial objections of Trump.​

New Rubio bill would punish Russian meddling in future U.S. elections

 

[Nia88]

My money is on Hicks or Kushner.

 

[DrLove]

My money is on Hicks or Kushner.

Yeah, for me its Jared then Don Junior then Hope.

Seems highly unlikely that she didn't tell Mueller a few whoppers. Obstruction charge and/or lying under oath a distinct possibility.

Former Trump legal team spokesman plans to tell Mueller that Hope Hicks hinted at concealing explosive emails about the Trump Tower Russia meeting

 

[Valerie]

Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Because He Couldn’t Figure Out How to Convert PDFs to Word Files

Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Because He Couldn’t Figure Out How to Convert PDFs to Word Files

 

[Valerie]

Rick Gates, Trump Campaign Aide, Pleads Guilty in Mueller Inquiry and Will Cooperate

Rick Gates, Trump Campaign Aide, Pleads Guilty in Mueller Inquiry and Will Cooperate

 

[Valerie]

The adviser, Rick Gates, is a longtime political consultant who once served as Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman.

The plea deal could be a significant development in the investigation — a sign that Mr. Gates plans to offer incriminating information against his longtime associate and the former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and possibly other members of the campaign in exchange for a lighter punishment.

The deal came as the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has been raising pressure on Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort with dozens of new charges of money laundering and bank fraud unsealed on Thursday.

Mr. Gates who had made millions of dollars lobbying in Ukraine accepted the fate that may await him: a prison sentence for carrying out a financial conspiracy to hide the money he earned there.


He also admitted that he lied to investigators this month — while under indictment and negotiating with prosecutors — about the details of a 2013 meeting about Ukraine that Mr. Manafort had with a pro-Russian member of Congress.

What the dramatic courtroom scene might mean for President Trump depends on what Mr. Gates has to offer the special counsel, though at the least, the plea agreement is further evidence that the Trump campaign attracted a cast of advisers who overstepped legal and ethical boundaries.

 

[Valerie]

Mr. Gates was present for the most significant periods of the campaign, as Mr. Trump began forging policy positions and his digital campaign operation engaged with millions of voters on social media platforms such as Facebook.

Even after Mr. Manafort was fired by Mr. Trump in August 2016, Mr. Gates remained with the campaign at the request of Stephen K. Bannon, who took over as head of the campaign.

From there, Mr. Gates assumed a different role — as a liaison between the campaign and the Republican National Committee — and traveled aboard the Trump plane through Election Day.

In addition to offering visibility into the Trump campaign, Mr. Gates might be able to provide prosecutors with glimpses into decision-making in the months after Mr. Trump’s election victory. Mr. Gates was a consultant on the transition team...

 

[AvgGuyIA]

Hillary Clinton and Barrack Hussein Obama will be indicted. Keep fanticizing OP.

 

[Roudy]

Is this like one of these Leftwing jerkoff threads where they keep telling telling each other how Trump is about to get impeached?

 

[Valerie]

Court records detail a byzantine scheme he and Mr. Manafort employed from about 2006 to 2015 in which they funneled millions of dollars they earned from their work as political consultants in Ukraine into shell companies and foreign bank accounts.

The men worked in various capacities with Viktor F. Yanukovych, the onetime president of Ukraine and a longtime ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

They then hid the existence of the companies and accounts — set up in Cyprus, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the Seychelles — from American tax authorities.

“Gates helped maintain these accounts and arranged substantial transfers from the accounts to both Manafort and himself,” prosecutors argued in the charges against Mr. Gates made public on Friday. Acting on Mr. Manafort’s instructions, Mr. Gates classified the overseas payments as “loans” to avoid having to pay income taxes.


Mr. Mueller’s team found that more than $75 million passed through offshore accounts...

The work the two men did for their firm, Davis Manafort, connected them to numerous people with ties to the Kremlin. One was Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and an ally of Mr. Putin’s. Mr. Deripaska has been denied a visa to travel to the United States because of allegations that he is linked to organized crime operations, claims he has denied.

Court records unsealed Friday revealed other lobbying schemes, including how Mr. Manafort used offshore accounts to wire more than 2 million euros to pay a group of former senior European politicians to take pro-Ukraine positions and lobby in the United States. In an “Eyes Only” memo that Mr. Manafort wrote in 2012, the purpose of the “Super VIP” effort was to assemble a group of “politically credible friends who can act informally and without any visible relationship with the Government of Ukraine.”

After their Ukraine work was disclosed in news reports in August 2016, when Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates were working for the Trump campaign, they “developed a false and misleading cover story” to distance themselves from Ukraine, according Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors.

Then, they covered their tracks when reporting their income to the Internal Revenue Service. Two months after Mr. Manafort left the campaign, according to the court documents, his accountant emailed him a question about whether he had any foreign bank accounts.

“None,” he replied.

 

[Valerie]

When it comes to Manafort, Gates—who was also a Trump campaign and transition official—knows where the bodies are buried.

That only became more obvious on Thursday, when the special counsel unveiled a new set of charges against Manafort and Gates, a so-called superseding indictment that added more specifics to the money-laundering and bank fraud case brought against them in October. Coupled with the Gates plea, it’s clear that Manafort’s legal problems are likely to get much worse.

Indeed, Mueller's probe is accelerating. Yesterday's new indictment—together with Tuesday’s guilty plea by Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer associated with Gates, Manafort, and Ukraine; last Friday's bombshell indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian entities; and now the Gates plea—underscores that Mueller is applying the full strength of the US government’s resources to follow every thread of the investigation.

The indictments have astounded Washington with their level of specificity and detail, delivering a litany of facts that he’s confident he can prove in court beyond a reasonable doubt. Mueller's hammering of the Dutch lawyer for lying to investigators continues his consistent message that the special counsel’s office will treat seriously anyone who stands in their way.

But almost as intriguing are the threads that Mueller has left hanging, the questions that go unanswered in otherwise highly specific court documents—like the identity of “Person A” in the charges filed against van der Zwaan Tuesday, a veiled reference to someone else involved in the Gates/Manafort/Ukraine milieu who might now face legal jeopardy in the investigation.

Mueller clearly knows where this investigation is going and is methodically building it brick by brick: His first wave of charges, against Manafort, Gates, and George Papadopoulos, established that the Trump campaign had been lying about its contacts with Russians; his second wave—the guilty plea by Michael Flynn—established that those lies extended to figures inside the White House; his third wave of charges, against the Internet Research Agency, establishes that there was a criminal conspiracy to help Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton. Any Americans who knowingly participating in that conspiracy will also, presumably, be vulnerable to prosecution.

What Rick Gates' Guilty Plea Means For Mueller’s Probe

 

[Manonthestreet]

Unrolled thread from @_VachelLindsay_
Clinton????
41. Part of this will be confirmed by 'missing' emails, part by the transfer of funds between all parties.

Much by Gates, Van der Zwaan, these partners and of course, Podesta himself - who must be behind Mueller's indictment today.
42. Which will confirm what smart people in our remote corner of twitter already know - the Clintons and their small army of crooks were selling the USA to the highest bidder - and Hillary Clinton was using State as a sales department for the Clinton Foundation. Right?
43. And all this time, Obama did NOTHING to stop it. He was either a total idiot, fully involved himself - or the Clintons had leverage over him. Right now, I am leaning #1 & #3. The answer that riddle is for another thread.

 

[Valerie]

"Last summer, I outlined 15 “known unknowns” in the Trump/Russia investigation, unanswered but knowable threads that Mueller’s team could be expected to pull on. The answers to many of those questions are still not public.

Yes, we’ve received significant new information about how Dutch intelligence tipped off the US to Russia’s hacking efforts. But we’ve still not seen charges concerning active cyber intrusions—most notably, the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and the stealing of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s emails—one of at least five related probes Mueller is leading right now."

 

[Valerie]

Unrolled thread from @_VachelLindsay_
Clinton????
41. Part of this will be confirmed by 'missing' emails, part by the transfer of funds between all parties.

Much by Gates, Van der Zwaan, these partners and of course, Podesta himself - who must be behind Mueller's indictment today.
42. Which will confirm what smart people in our remote corner of twitter already know - the Clintons and their small army of crooks were selling the USA to the highest bidder - and Hillary Clinton was using State as a sales department for the Clinton Foundation. Right?
43. And all this time, Obama did NOTHING to stop it. He was either a total idiot, fully involved himself - or the Clintons had leverage over him. Right now, I am leaning #1 & #3. The answer that riddle is for another thread.

weird how all your imaginary facts never lead to any actual indictments.


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