Category: Russia

Mueller’s Testimony: A Rorschach Test for Americans

Mueller’s Testimony: A Rorschach Test for Americans

Democrats believed that bringing Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on July 24, 2019 was a way to allow a non-reading American public to finally hear the full story told in Mueller’s 448-page report: people could hear the testimony on TV or radio. Republicans saw the testimony as a stunt to resuscitate a non-issue, and an opportunity to prove some of their Deep State theories about the origins of the Trump-Russia story.

As a reluctant, and at times confused, Mueller testified, both sides got what they wanted, but their supporters likely heard – or willfully chose to overlook – uncomfortably contrary information in the process.

Democrats illuminated some major findings from Mueller’s Report:

  • The report did not exonerate the President on the charge of obstruction of justice
  • Some people interviewed by Mueller’s team lied, pled the 5th, destroyed evidence, and had communicated electronically in ways that could not be traced
  • These factors may have affected the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to prove coordination between the Trump Campaign and the Kremlin
  • Trump’s Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, gave a Russian operative named Konstantin Kilimnik internal Trump Campaign strategy information and internal campaign polling data, which may have helped with the Russians’ social media activities to interfere with the 2016 Presidential election
  • The Trump Campaign did not try to discourage Russia’s illegal interference efforts – including hacking Clinton and Democratic emails – and in fact embraced those efforts and planned their media strategy and campaign messaging around them
  • Russians made approximately 120 known contacts with the Trump Campaign
  • After Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference began, the President publicly and privately worked to discourage key people from cooperating with the investigation
  • The President also encouraged key people to “stay strong” and avoid cooperating with the investigation: the President and his legal staff even suggested pardons for some
  • The President made multiple efforts to stop Mueller’s investigation, including asking a number of associates to fire Mueller
  • White House Lawyer Don McGahn was so upset at being asked to do this that he prepared to resign
  • The President asked McGahn to deny being asked to fire Mueller, and asked McGahn to create a written document for the White House’s records falsely stating that the request had never taken place
  • The President also made many efforts to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “un-recuse” himself from the Mueller investigation, because he wanted Sessions to protect him from the investigation
  • The Office of Legal Counsel’s guidance that a sitting President cannot be indicted factored significantly into Mueller’s decision not to charge the President with obstruction of justice
  • A President who has committed illegal acts can be indicted after leaving office
  • Other investigations that were spun off from the Mueller investigation are still in progress, which may reveal further acts of criminality

But Republican questioning also brought some important facts to light which have not been given adequate attention:

  • Natalia Veselnitskaya – the Russian lawyer in the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting – had hired Fusion GPS (producer of the Steele Dossier) in 2014 on behalf of her client, a Russian firm called Prevezon Holdings
  • From June 8-10, 2016, Veselnitskaya spent more time with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson than she did with Trump Campaign officials
  • The “dirt on Hillary Clinton” that Veselnitskaya was offering was information that Simpson had uncovered while working for Veselnitskaya and Prevezon Holdings
  • The relationship between Veselnitskaya and Simpson (whose hiring of former British MI6 officer Christopher Steele ultimately provided some of the first indications of Russian election interference) was never examined by Mueller
  • It is possible that the Steele Dossier contained misinformation intentionally provided to Christopher Steele by his Russian sources
  • Konstantin Kilimnik, the Russian intelligence operative to whom Paul Manafort gave Trump Campaign polling data and strategy information, may also be an asset of the U.S. State Department
  • Joseph Mifsud, the alleged source for George Papadopoulos’ belief that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary, was interviewed by the FBI and lied to them three times, but remarkably was never charged
  • Mifsud, a professor, may be a Russian intelligence agent or a western intelligence agent
  • Several of the prosecutors hired by Mueller to investigate Trump had collectively given over $60,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign

Time will tell whether Mueller’s testimony moves the needle toward at least beginning an impeachment inquiry, but Mueller’s testimony makes clear that Donald Trump committed federal crimes that would be immediately prosecutable if he were not the President. It also makes clear that there is still more of the story that has not been uncovered. In the end, what Mueller’s testimony may most effectively prove is Americans’ ability to tune out information that they don’t want to hear.

– rob rünt

Full Transcript of Mueller’s House Judiciary Committee Testimony

Full Transcript of Mueller’s House Intelligence Committee Testimony

Why Can’t Democrats Let Go of Their “Collusion Delusion?”

Why Can’t Democrats Let Go of Their “Collusion Delusion?”

Why Can’t Democrats Let Go of Their “Collusion Delusion?”

On Sunday, March 24, 2019, U.S. Attorney General William Barr gave Congress a four-page summary of Robert Mueller’s key findings. The summary disappointed many who believed that the President or his campaign conspired with Russia to win the 2016 election. According to Barr, Mueller did not prove that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and “did not draw a conclusion – one way or the other” on whether Trump obstructed justice. Such conclusions clearly seem to vindicate the President. The obstruction question was left undecided because, Barr claimed, if the President did not commit the crime of conspiring with Russia, by definition he cannot be guilty of trying to obstruct an investigation of that crime. Nonetheless, many on the left find Barr’s summary difficult to believe. To Trump’s supporters, Democrats appear wildly delusional in a hysterical desire to avenge their 2016 electoral defeat. So do the facts that we know actually contradict the most straightforward interpretation of Barr’s letter? Below are some established facts related to Trump and/or Russia:

  • In Russia, government, business, and organized crime are all deeply interconnected. Violence or the threat of it are used in Russia to influence others in business and politics. Another tactic used widely in Russia is “kompromat” – using something compromising as leverage over another (sometimes extending as far as blackmail) including sexual indiscretions, business relationships, debt/financial obligations, chemical dependency, friendships, or knowledge of something embarrassing or illegal.
  • Trump defied decades of standard practice by refusing to release his tax returns, thus preventing the public from seeing what kind of financial obligations and relationships he might have.
  • Trump had worked for years with real estate development company Bayrock – a company believed to have ties to Russian organized crime – to develop the Trump Soho Hotel.
  • Bayrock was owned by Russian-American mobster Felix Sater (Sater was convicted in 1998 of a $40 million federal racketeering charge) and former Soviet official Tefvik Arif (Arif was well-connected in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, and Trump stated in a deposition that he was impressed by Arif’s ability to bring in wealthy Russian investors).
  • The other financier for Trump Soho was the Sapir family from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
  • Sater carried Trump Organization business cards, and had an office two floors below Trump’s in the Manhattan Trump Tower, but Trump claimed that he wouldn’t recognize Sater if he saw him.
  • Sater also worked with Michael Cohen to secure the Trump Tower Moscow project during the 2016 campaign, even though Trump repeatedly denied on the campaign trail that he had anything going on in Russia.
  • Sater is currently accused of seeking to use that project to launder money stolen from a large bank in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.
  • The Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama was used by Russian organized crime figures to launder money.
  • In 2005, Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort had proposed an influence campaign on behalf of Russia to “influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet Republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government.”
  • Manafort had worked to help pro-Putin politician Viktor Yanukovych get elected President of Ukraine – work for which Manafort was allegedly paid millions of dollars “off the books.” Yanukovych was later exiled and fled to Russia.
  • More recently, Manafort had worked for Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with alleged ties to organized crime as well as being a close friend of Vladimir Putin. Manafort had allegedly ripped off Deripaska to the tune of millions of dollars – a debt that no doubt could have been used as kompromat over Manafort.
  • Once he began working for the Trump Campaign, Manafort emailed Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian/Ukrainian friend of Deripaska believed to be a former GRU (Russian military intelligence agency) officer. Manafort asked of the headlines about his being Trump’s Campaign Manager “How do we use to get whole? Has OVD [Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska] operation seen?”
  • Manafort later told Kilimnik that he could arrange for “private briefings” between Deripaska and Trump.
  • Manafort also provided Kilimnik with the Trump Campaign’s internal polling data.
  • Special Counsel Mueller indicted 12 GRU agents for their hacking of the DNC, and indicted a company called the Internet Research Agency for waging a social media campaign to interfere with the 2016 election – an interference campaign for which polling data could provide valuable demographic information.
  • At the 2016 Republican National Convention, the Trump Campaign had only one requested modification to the Republican Party platform: weakening the amount of aid that the U.S. provides to Ukraine to defend itself against Russian military aggression.
  • Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen has had a history of associating with Russian organized crime figures from the time that he was a child, and reportedly once claimed that he was part of the Russian mafia.
  • Trump Foreign Policy Advisor Carter Page had come to the attention of the FBI in 2013 when he began meeting with a Russian operative.
  • While a Foreign Policy Advisor for Trump, Carter Page gave a pro-Russia speech in Moscow on July 7, 2016.
  • In 2014, Eric Trump told sports journalist James Dodson of the money that financed the Trump golf courses “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
  • In December of 2018, Trump’s architect Alan Lapidus said of Donald Trump, “he could not get anybody in the United States to lend him anything. It was all coming out of Russia. His involvement with Russia was deeper than he’s acknowledged.”
  • Lapidus also said “Trump could not get money here. He found Russia, and the Russians gave him a lot of money. He has got to be doing a quid pro quo. It’s just logical. It’s just too much money.”
  • Russians invested nearly $100 million in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in Florida.
  • In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. stated, “In terms of high-end product influx into the U.S., Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”
  • Numerous people associated with the Trump Campaign inexplicably did not tell the truth (sometimes under oath) regarding communications or connections with Russia, including:
    • Former Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions (spoke more than once with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak but denied it to the U.S. Senate)
    • Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (spoke with Kislyak about lifting sanctions before Trump was inaugurated, undermining Obama Administration policy, and then denied it to the FBI)
    • Former Foreign Policy Advisor George Papadopoulos (lied about having been told about Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton and seeking to form a connection between the Trump Campaign and Russian government)
    • Former Foreign Policy Advisor Carter Page (met with Russian officials in July 2016, but denied it publicly until questioned under oath by the House Intelligence Committee)
    • Donald Trump Jr. (repeatedly changed his story about meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton – a meeting also attended by Manafort and Kushner)
    • Jared Kushner (had to repeatedly revise his federal security clearance application as various Russia ties, initially not mentioned, were uncovered – including a meeting shortly after the 2016 election with a Russian state-owned bank to get a multi-million dollar loan).
    • Donald Trump (among many lies, on the campaign trail, claimed that he had “nothing to do with Russia” at the same time as he was pursuing a Trump Tower Moscow. He intended to give Putin the penthouse suite in the tower. Later, in response to allegations that Trump participated in a lewd act in a room at the Moscow Ritz Carlton in 2013 when he was there for the Miss Universe Pageant, Trump claimed that he had not spent the night in Russia on that trip. His flight records refuted that.)
    • Michael Cohen (prosecuted and going to prison for lying to Congress – allegedly at the President’s request – about the Trump Tower Moscow deal).
    • Why all the lies about Russia?
  • On June 3, 2016, Rob Goldstone, promoter for Russian pop singer Emin Agalarov, emailed Donald Trump Jr. to set up the Trump Tower meeting. In his email, Goldstone stated “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
  • Rather than reporting this to law enforcement, Trump Jr. responded to the email with “If it’s what you say it is, I love it,” and went on to set up the meeting.
  • Alexander Downer, a diplomat from Australia (an American ally), reported to his government that Trump Campaign aide George Papadopoulos had told him in May of 2016 that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. When the Russian hacking began during the 2016 election, the Australian government informed the U.S. intelligence community of the conversation.
  • Jared Kushner made attempts to set up a “back channel” of communications between the White House and the Kremlin through a Russian diplomatic facility that would bypass America’s national security agencies.
  • Trump had engaged in what appeared to be years of money laundering activities for wealthy Russians, like when he bought a Palm Beach mansion for $41 million and sold it to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev two years later with few improvements for $95 million. Putin keeps track of what Russia’s oligarchs do, and if he were aware of money laundering by Trump, he could use that knowledge to blackmail him.
  • Rybolovlev’s plane and yacht showed up a number of times near Trump Campaign events.
  • Interestingly, Rybolovlev’s plane and yacht also arrived in Dubrovnik, Croatia in mid August of 2016, and Ivanka and Jared suddenly appeared in Dubrovnik, Croatia in mid August of 2016.
  • On July 27, 2016, Donald Trump publicly called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 missing emails.
  • Immediately after that announcement by Trump, according to Mueller’s investigation, Russian hackers began an “after hours’ effort on July 27, 2016 to hack into Hillary Clinton’s private email account.
  • Russia’s interference with the 2016 election served generally to benefit Donald Trump.
  • During the 2016 campaign, U.S. intelligence detected a server at Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia, “pinging” a specific server at the Trump Organization thousands of times. The unusual activity remains unexplained to this day.
  • A pair of Russian operatives – banker Alexander Torshin and “student” Maria Butina – infiltrated the NRA, which spent $30 million to elect Trump. While the NRA has long supported Republican candidates, this was an unusually large amount for them, and some of that money appears to have been funneled into the NRA via Russia.
  • After Trump took office, acting Attorney General Sally Yates notified Trump that Michael Flynn was compromised by Russia, but Trump waited for over two weeks to fire Flynn.
  • Just before Trump nominated Wilbur Ross to be U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Ross had spent years as Co-Chair of the Bank of Cyprus. Cyprus, an island nation off the coast of Turkey, is known as a place where Russian oligarchs launder their illicit money.
  • Ross has significant financial ties to Russia.
  • Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank’s CEO from 2002-2012, was brought on as Chairman of Bank of Cyprus by Wilbur Ross in 2014.
  • Deutsche Bank, one of the only banks willing to loan money to Trump after his multiple bankruptcies, has a documented history of money laundering on a large scale for Russian oligarchs.
  • Wilbur Ross was also the person who initially connected Donald Trump and Dmitry Rybolovlev for the Palm Beach mansion purchase.
  • The day after firing James Comey, Russian Diplomat Sergey Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were Donald Trump’s guests in the Oval Office. No American reporters were allowed, but Russian journalists were.
  • During that meeting, Trump disclosed highly classified information to the two Russian officials, endangering the lives of U.S. intelligence assets and causing U.S. allies to question their own sharing of intelligence with the United States.
  • On July 8, 2017, the New York Times first broke the story of the existence of the Trump Tower meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, which had taken place on June 9, 2016.
  • On July 8, 2017, on the way back from the G20 Summit (at which Trump met with Putin for over 2 hours when they were only supposed to meet for 30-40 minutes), Trump felt the need to dictate his son’s cover story about the Trump Tower meeting.
  • The President’s misleading cover story for his son was that Veselnitskaya simply wanted to discuss “Russian adoption” – also the topic that the President claimed Putin wanted to talk with him about in a lengthy private discussion. The Magnitsky Act, which calls for the freezing of the U.S.-based assets of Putin and other wealthy Russian oligarchs as a consequence for their human rights violations, was put in place on December 14, 2012. Putin was outraged by this Act, and one of his retaliatory measures was to ban American adoption of Russian children.
  • During his time in office, Trump has had a pattern of taking actions favorable to Putin’s agenda and seemingly contrary to that of the United States, including:
    • Repeatedly making efforts to eliminate or weaken sanctions against wealthy and powerful Russians close to Putin
    • Questioning the legitimacy of and proposing to leave NATO, one of the biggest obstacles to Putin’s military expansion of Russian territory
    • Backing out of the Iran nuclear deal that America’s allies support, alienating us from our allies
    • Sowing division within the European Union
    • Backing out of the Paris Climate Accord that nearly every other country in the world has signed onto, further alienating us from our allies and making us less globally relevant
    • Legitimizing Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea and suggesting that Crimea should be considered part of Russia
    • Denying Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election despite the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community
    • Doing little since the 2016 election to protect future American elections from foreign interference, and actually weakening established efforts to defend our elections
    • Regularly telling easily disproven lies, which damages America’s international credibility and threatens our national security
    • Treating American allies (eg Britain, Germany and Australia) with disrespect, further alienating us from our allies
    • Treating American enemies (eg Russia) graciously, causing suspicion among our allies
    • Fueling and enhancing division within the United States
    • Weakening America’s institutions by appointing cabinet secretaries with backgrounds clearly antithetical to the missions of the institutions that they lead
  • With the exception of translators, Trump’s direct meetings with Putin have been without other aides present, and at times have been undisclosed until uncovered by the press. No detailed notes have been retained from any of these meetings. In fact, in the case of his meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Trump actually confiscated the translator’s notes afterward and told her that she could not tell anyone what had been discussed. Even Trump’s top staff do not know what he and have Putin talked about. All of this secrecy is even more baffling when one considers that Trump must know that everyone is paying attention to how he interacts with Putin.
  • Trump has repeatedly accepted Putin’s word over information from his own intelligence agencies.
  • After the 2017 G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, Trump floated the idea of partnering with Putin to help the United States develop its cybersecurity efforts (the equivalent of inviting a burglar back into your home to help find evidence against them and make your home more secure).
  • After his formal discussion with Putin at the 2018 Helsinki Summit, Trump floated an “interesting idea” and “incredible offer” that Putin had suggested: American investigators could come to Russia to work with Russian investigators to determine if the 12 indicted GRU officers had committed any crimes, in exchange for letting the Kremlin interrogate certain U.S. officials, including Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia who has been critical of Putin’s human rights record.

These established facts are in addition to what was laid out in the Steele Dossier (compiled by a former British intelligence agent with a track record of reliably passing on accurate, factual information to U.S. law enforcement), which Trump’s supporters claim is the only reason that the Mueller investigation began. The above facts are also completely consistent with the only “collusion”-related quote provided in Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report:

“[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

This quote does not necessarily mean that there was no conspiracy or coordination. It may well be a statement by Mueller that such a relationship simply could not be legally proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite all of the circumstantial evidence above.

And since Mueller’s report also “does not exonerate” the President on obstruction of justice, it is possible that coordination or conspiracy could not be proven because Trump was successful in obstructing justice, that witnesses were swayed by the President’s repeated public suggestions of pardons, that witnesses were afraid of retribution in prison by Trump’s supporters or by members of the Russian mafia, that evidence on the Russian side was successfully destroyed or silenced, or that witnesses were reluctant to willingly admit to outright treasonous acts which, regardless of plea deals, would result in lengthy prison time and lifelong branding of themselves and their families. And not definitively proving coordination with Russia does not mean that Donald Trump was not – and is not currently – compromised by the Kremlin in a way that causes him to act against America’s interests.

In other words, the public needs to see as much of the Mueller report as possible without jeopardizing national security or revealing sources and methods. It would also be very helpful to hear an account from Mueller himself on what is in his report and whether he believes that Barr’s representation of it is accurate. Republicans and Democrats should both be supportive of this, because it can help give the public a more commonly shared understanding of the investigation’s results – something which is not currently happening in the wake of Barr’s ambiguously worded four-page letter.

Lastly, the public needs to be reminded that, despite Barr’s assessment of inconclusive findings in the Mueller report, there are still numerous ongoing investigations into Trump yet to be completed, some of which were farmed out to other law enforcement agencies during the course of Mueller’s investigation.

Americans have witnessed a lot of smoke over the past three years, and many still find it difficult to believe that there is no fire.

– rob rünt

Trump Will Provide Classified Intelligence to Kremlin

Trump Will Provide Classified Intelligence to Kremlin

Trump Will Provide Classified Intelligence to Kremlin

This is what today’s headlines should read, because it conveys what will actually happen when the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of National Intelligence are forced to comply with the President’s reckless order to declassify and publicly release numerous classified documents in the name of “transparency.” According to a September 17, 2018 press release from the White House, the documents to be declassified will include:

  • Pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W. Page
  • All FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation
  • All FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications
  • All text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction [blacking out portions of text], of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr

WhiteHousePressRelease-Declassification

 

The backgrounds of the people in question are:

  • Carter Page:
    • American citizen who regularly does business in Russia
    • Lost a large amount of money if Russian investments
    • Came to the attention of the FBI in 2013 when the FBI believed that he was being actively recruited by Russian operatives
    • Became Trump Campaign Foreign Policy Adviser in March 2016
    • Gave pro-Russia speech in Moscow in July 2016
    • Went to Moscow again in December 2016
  • Bruce Ohr
    • High-ranking Department of Justice official with expertise in Russian organized crime
    • Long-time friend of highly regarded Russia expert/former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele; Steele had been contracted to begin investigating Trump’s activities in Russia in mid 2016 by research firm Fusion GPS (the company paid indirectly by the Clinton Campaign to do opposition research into Trump); Steele’s interviews with his trusted sources in Russia resulted in the “Steele dossier”
    • Bruce Ohr and Christopher Steele apparently had conversations after and possibly during the campaign about the information that Steele was uncovering
    • Bruce Ohr’s wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS on the different aspects of the same Trump project that Steele was hired to work on (see article of this coincidence)
  • James Comey
    • FBI Director during the 2016 Campaign and for the early months of the Trump Administration
    • Fired by President Trump in May 2017, triggering special counsel investigation into Trump for obstruction of justice
  • Andrew McCabe
    • Deputy Director of the FBI during the 2016 Campaign
    • Temporary acting Director of the FBI after James Comey was fired
    • Was found by the DOJ Inspector General’s office to have made unauthorized releases to the media and to have “lacked candor” when asked about it
  • Peter Strzok
    • Former FBI Chief of Counterespionage
    • Led FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server
    • Worked for first two months of Mueller investigation into Russian interference in 2016 election
    • Removed from Mueller investigation after Mueller learned of anti-Trump text messages between Strzok and an extramarital mistress, Lisa Page, sent between August 2015 and December 2016
    • Discussed a “media strategy” in texts with Page
  • Lisa Page
    • Former FBI lawyer
    • Briefly served on Mueller investigative team
    • Had affair with FBI officer Peter Strzok

 

There may be validity to initiating a deeper investigation into the actions of some of these individuals and determining whether their personal political biases crept into their professional activities. However, declassifying and releasing these documents to the public is not the appropriate way to do that. The information should instead be evaluated by a special counsel and/or by the courts. Releasing the information publicly will contribute to the legitimacy of an obstruction of justice case against the President and will jeopardize our national security.

When we hear that a government document is being released to the public, we typically envision the public as the average American citizen. In American culture, such transparency with the public is generally considered a good thing. Yet when the government assigns a “classified” label to certain information, there is a reason for that. That reason for classifying the information is usually important and should be bypassed only with thorough consideration of the unintended consequences.

The President’s public release of classified information about an active investigation into himself can provide otherwise unobtainable insights that enable witnesses and accomplices to shape their stories to match the known facts while concealing vital, still undiscovered information. This would be tantamount to obstruction of justice, similar to providing inside police information to a criminal about that criminal’s own case.

Far more alarmingly, however, are the national security implications of the President’s decision. Successful intelligence and law enforcement operations depend on the security of “sources and methods.” This is shorthand for maintaining confidentiality of how information was obtained (disclosure of which would tip off guilty parties and foreign adversaries about, for example, what modes of communication to avoid) and who the information was obtained from (disclosure of which could at best result in those informants and spies no longer being useful sources of information, or could at worst result in those individuals and their families being killed).

In Russia, the mafia and the Kremlin have a symbiotic relationship. What benefit can Russia gain from knowing about the communications between Russian organized crime expert Bruce Ohr and Christopher Steele, who relied on numerous individuals inside Russia to compile his dossier? Which of Steele’s sources might be revealed in the declassified documents? How valuable would the Kremlin find information about how Russia’s election interference activities were first uncovered and how the investigation proceeded from there?

Even if names are redacted, the descriptions of dates and locations can enable a foreign adversary to determine how their activities became compromised, and who compromised them. By rendering certain intelligence sources and methods less useful or even useless, the President is jeopardizing our national security, making it that much harder for our intelligence community to determine what hostile adversaries are up to. He also may be intentionally or unintentionally tipping off Putin on how to cover tracks of Russian election interference activities being investigated by Mueller.

Trump’s decision to publicize valuable, unredacted, classified information is not only a disclosure to the average American: it is a prized treasure trove of information for the Kremlin.

– rob rünt

Trump was a More Stealth 9/11

Trump was a More Stealth 9/11

Trump was a More Stealth 9/11

Most Americans over the age of 22 can remember where they were on September 11, 2001 when the planes hit the Twin Towers. It was a memorable spectacle, and was intended to be so.

I was getting ready for work, watching with mild fascination as one of the network morning shows reported the oddity of a small plane or a commercial airline – they were unsure – that had accidentally flown into the Twin Towers. As the TV cameras focused on the smoke pouring out of the building, the second airline hit, prompting news anchors to speculate that there might a problem with the air traffic control at JFK. It was still largely unthinkable that this might be an intentional, coordinated act.

Few of us can say where we were when we first experienced Russia’s 2016 cyber-attack on the United States. It was an attack that was not intended to be seen, and it was just as successful as 9/11. Indeed, there are those to this day who deny that the attack even happened.

The 9/11 attack killed over 3,000 people and left a smoldering hole in the ground in downtown Manhattan.

The Russian cyber-attack – still in progress – has killed our civility to one another and left a smoldering hole in our democracy. Many of us can still see the black smoke rising daily from the Oval Office, ignored by a Republican-led Congress that nervously whistles and looks the other way.

But we often fail to notice the smoke emanating from each of us.

Putin’s attack was meant to divide America, to sow chaos, and ultimately bring down the nation that he holds most responsible for the humiliating collapse of his own then-much-larger nation – the USSR – in 1991. To the degree that we turn on each other, shun friends, demonize and belittle those on the “other side” of the Trump divide, we are doing exactly what Putin would like to see.

For a brief time after 9/11, an America that had been in deep disagreement over Bush Administration policies came together against a common foe. Today, many of us see a portion of our fellow Americans as the common foe. Trump supporters view “snowflakes” as naïve, blissfully or willfully unaware of the hardships of many, and too brainwashed to see how the Deep State is trying to bring down one of the greatest Presidents in history. Those who oppose Trump view his supporters as ignorant, racist, and/or uninformed, and too brainwashed to see the imminent threat to our nation posed by a corrupt, lying, divisive, mentally unstable, and woefully incompetent President.

These views are solidified daily by our choices of news, social media, and interpersonal interactions, all of which reinforce one of two widespread but wildly different realities. Ongoing reinforcement of these realities makes mending the divide nearly impossible.

Today as we reflect on 9/11, we can honor those lost by reminding ourselves that we are all Americans, that our new attacker’s main goal is to see us divided and to watch our nation devour itself from the inside. A reconciliation between the two sides of our nation may not be realistic at the moment.

However, we can each commit to learning more about each other’s perspectives and “facts,” and trying to understand them – not agree with them, just understand them. This is a decision as personal and intimate as the Russian cyber-attack was. We can counter the effects of that ongoing attack by occasionally tuning in to news sources that we consider bogus and trying to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who believes what is being said there. Again, the goal is not to agree, but to understand. We can also commit to learning more about our common adversary, Vladimir Putin.

At some point, the Trump Presidency will be over. Then we will be left with ourselves.

– rob rünt

When the Right Wing Lunatic Fringe isn’t so Crazy

When the Right Wing Lunatic Fringe isn’t so Crazy

When the Right Wing Lunatic Fringe isn’t so Crazy

Many of us have become numb to the nonsensical right wing “Deep State” conspiracy theories being used by Trump and his most rabid supporters to discredit and prematurely end the Mueller investigation: Robert Mueller is a criminal; it was actually Hillary Clinton who colluded with Russia; James Comey was a “Clinton fixer.” So when legitimately questionable information surfaces, many on the left shrug and write it off as more of the same. There are two issues, however, which, if we are being intellectually honest, we need to acknowledge, discuss and come to terms with.

One of those is the role of Bruce and Nellie Ohr in the Trump-Russia case.

In late 2015, the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon, whose owner was believed to be a supporter of Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, hired research firm Fusion GPS to look into the background of then Presidential candidate Donald Trump. After Trump won the primary in mid 2016, the Beacon understandably stopped paying Fusion to research Trump. However, Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Clinton Campaign, soon began paying Fusion GPS to continue the research.

By that point, according to Fusion founder Glenn Simpson’s testimonies to the House and Senate, Fusion had compiled enough information to see that the most curious aspects of Trump’s background were related to his potential organized crime connections and his activities in Russia.

To help perform further research into these matters, in mid 2016, Fusion contracted former-British-spy-turned-consultant Christopher Steele, with whom Simpson had worked on previous research projects, who was a top expert on Russia with a reputation for producing accurate information, and who had a number of longtime trusted sources within Russia for gathering his information. Over the next several months, Steele talked with his sources and produced 17 memos for Fusion GPS about Trump-Russia that came to be known as “the Steele dossier.”

 

FlowChart-SimpsonVeselOhr-8x11

View as pdf

According to Simpson, Steele quickly became so alarmed by what he was uncovering – an active plot by Russia to put a Kremlin-compromised President in the Oval Office – that he told Simpson that he considered it his professional duty to contact U.S. law enforcement immediately. Simpson told Steele that he did not know anyone that he could contact. Steele said that he had connected in the past with law enforcement in the U.S. on other cases and would take care of the notification. Steele followed through on this in early July of 2016.

The part of the narrative that becomes questionable is that one person to whom Steele reached out – either in July or later on – appears to have been a longtime acquaintance, Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr. Allegedly without Steele’s awareness, Bruce Ohr’s wife Nellie coincidentally happened to be one of a tiny group of people (countable on one’s fingers) who was also being employed by Fusion GPS to investigate Donald Trump. And Bruce Ohr was allegedly unaware that his wife was doing this work. And Glenn Simpson was apparently unaware of who Nellie Ohr’s husband was. The coincidences and lack of awareness of others’ activities within this small group of people seems remarkable.

Tweet

Another issue that is grossly under-reported in the mainstream media is the connection between Fusion GPS and the Trump Tower meeting.

Around 2013, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya retained U.S. law firm Baker Hostetler to assist her with a money laundering case that the U.S. government had brought against her client, Prevezon Holdings, a company based on the island of Cyprus. (Cyprus is notorious as a place where wealthy Russians launder illegally-obtained money). In Spring of 2014, Baker hired Fusion GPS to do research for the Prevezon case. Fusion’s Prevezon research led to questions about financial dealings of a hedge fund manager named William Browder.

William Browder has a long adversarial history with Vladimir Putin. In the mid 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, an atmosphere of lawlessness pervaded Russia. Wealthy oligarchs took advantage of the situation to dramatically increase their wealth by grabbing up former state-owned assets, and ethically unrestrained entrepreneurs found ways to get rich quickly as well. Browder allegedly made his own fortune by creating a hedge fund, Hermitage Capital, that assured investors that the Russian companies it invested in were uniquely law abiding and therefore less likely to be prone to unpredictable plunges in value.

To offer this assurance, Browder would investigate the companies. If he found wrongdoing, he reported it to the Russian government. This was looked upon favorably by a rising Vladimir Putin, who saw Browder’s investigations as a way to ensure that Russian businesses and oligarchs were not cheating the Russian government out of the tax money that it deserved.

As Putin’s power grew, Putin’s view of Browder’s activities changed sharply. According to Browder, Putin had begun directly taking a percentage of all illicit money “earned” by the Russian mafia and oligarchs, and Browder’s exposure of corruption was getting in the way.

In 2005, Browder was arrested and deported from Russia as a “threat to national security.” Eighteen months later, the Russian Interior Ministry raided the Moscow office of Browder’s company, Hermitage Capital Management, and seized “all the corporate documents connected to the investment holding companies of the funds that [Browder] advised.”

Browder hired attorney Sergei Magnitsky to investigate. Magnitsky determined that the documents were being used to re-register Browder’s holding companies to a convicted murderer named Viktor Markelov, and $230 million in taxes allegedly paid to the Russian government by Browder’s companies had been diverted elsewhere.

When Magnitsky notified the Russian authorities of this crime, he was jailed, where he remained for over a year under increasingly terrible conditions. He was regularly pressured, unsuccessfully, by the Russian government to sign a statement that he had stolen the $230 million from Browder. On November 16, 2009, Magnitsky was chained in an isolated prison cell and beaten to death by eight guards.

To avenge the man who had died on his behalf, Browder pushed the U.S. legislature to enact what eventually became known as the Magnitsky Act, which passed the House and Senate and was signed into law by then President Obama in November of 2012. The Act froze the U.S.-based assets of all Russian oligarchs (and Putin) who were believed to have been responsible for Magnitsky’s death. Russian oligarchs tend to invest their illicit wealth in law-governed countries like the U.S. where the wealth is safer than it would be in Russia.

As part of his retaliation against the U.S. for passing the Magnitsky Act, Putin banned the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans. That is what is being referred to when a Trump claims to have been merely talking with a Russian about “adoption.” Putin wants the Magnitsky Act repealed or weakened so that he can regain access to a large chunk of his wealth.

Natalia Veselnitskaya’s client, Prevezon Holdings was accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of laundering millions of dollars in New York real estate, using money from a $230 million Russian tax fraud scheme. If that number sounds familiar, it is because it is the amount that Browder alleges that he had paid in taxes to the Russian government but which had instead been misappropriated by the Kremlin. Browder was the one who had tipped off the U.S. Department of Justice that Prevezon had laundered the money.

The situation appears to be that Browder’s $230 million in taxes was received by the Russian government, who then denied that he had paid them. The Kremlin proceeded to launder the money to legitimize it/make it usable, and one of the parties through whom the money was laundered was Prevezon Holdings. Another interpretation is that Browder had never actually paid the taxes, but had instead used one of his many overseas tax shelters to hide the money.

In the New York case, Prevezon settled out of court for $5.9 million without admitting guilt, leading one to believe that the first interpretation above is closer to the truth.

During Fusion’s research for the Prevezon case, information about Browder’s financial dealings raised questions in the mind of Fusion founder Glenn Simpson, and Browder was notably difficult to obtain testimony from: he ran when attempts were made to serve him with a subpoena to testify. This bizarre response would seem to indicate guilt on the part of the man who had tipped off the DOJ about Prevezon, until one realizes that Browder had very good reason to believe that Putin had put a price on his head: under such circumstances, running in response to two strange men approaching him in a parking lot seems entirely appropriate and reasonable. Assassination attempts had been made on prominent Magnitsky Act advocates as well as on Browder’s own mother.

Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya apparently believed that some of Fusion’s information about Browder and his associates could be useful as a stepping stone to improving her own standing in Russia. The information on Browder could be used in the U.S. to raise questions about the legitimacy of the Magnitsky Act’s founder, and possibly result in the repeal of the Act, which would bring Veselnitskaya into high esteem with the Kremlin.

Seeing this opportunity, Veselnitskaya reported the information to Russia’s Prosecutor General, Yuri Chaika, in October of 2015. On February 18, 2016, Veselnitskaya registered what appears to be a fake NGO, the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation (HRAGI), for the purpose of lobbying the U.S. Congress “on behalf of Russian orphans.”

On June 9, 2016, the  now infamous “Trump Tower meeting” took place. Veselnitskaya and an interpreter, along with a couple of other Russians, met with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton and to discuss “Russian adoptions.” The “dirt” on Hillary Clinton that Veselnitskaya appears to have offered was that the New York billionaire Ziff brothers – who were major Democratic donors – had invested with Browder. If the Ziff brothers had donated to the Clinton Campaign, Veselnitskaya reasoned, their donations would be tainted and possibly illegal because Browder had cheated the Russian government out of $230 million in taxes.

The part of this whole narrative that again seems highly coincidental is the relationship between Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS. Veselnitskaya appears to have had only a handful of direct interactions with Fusion’s Glenn Simpson: most of the communication seems to have been indirectly through Baker Hostetler. But on the morning of June 9, 2016 – right before the Trump Tower meeting – Veselnitskaya and Simpson were in court together for a hearing related to the Prevezon case.

Simpson testified that Veselnitskaya’s English is very limited, as is his Russian, so they did little more than exchange pleasantries.

Simpson also testified that on June 10, 2016 – the day after the Trump Tower meeting – he had attended a Washington DC dinner held by Baker Hostetler attorney Mark Cymrot for people working on the Prevezon case. Again, Veselnitskaya was in attendance, but according to Simpson, she was sitting at the other end of the table from him and his wife.

In his testimonies before the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judicial Committee, Glenn Simpson comes across as straightforward, extremely forthcoming, and highly credible. Yet the fact that he – the man who was paid by the Clinton Campaign’s law firm to investigate Donald Trump – also happened to know Natalia Veselnitskaya , and was even physically in the same room with her hours before the Trump Tower meeting (where she presented information gathered by Fusion GPS for the Prevezon case) and was again in the same room with her the evening afterward seems staggeringly coincidental.

We on the left can be blindly partisan and simply accept all that we are being told about Trump-Russia. After all, a wealth of evidence points to the possibility that Trump knowingly or unknowingly helped Russian oligarchs and mafia figures launder money via his real estate empire for decades – a felony – and that Vladimir Putin is holding knowledge of this activity over Trump’s head. A U.S. President being blackmailed in such a manner by a hostile foreign power is a profound danger to the security of our nation.

However, when we come across inconsistencies and bizarre coincidences like the Bruce and Nellie Ohr issue or the Veselnitskaya/Fusion GPS issue, we also owe it to ourselves, if we have any genuine loyalty to the truth, to stop and take a serious look. What could explain these connections? Are we really just seeing shocking coincidences, or something more?

The most reasonable explanations that I can find are as follows:

Bruce and Nellie Ohr:

  • Nellie Ohr was hired by Fusion to comb through Russian newspapers and other public record Russian documents for information about Trump because she was fluent in Russian.
  • Nellie Ohr did not know of Christopher Steele’s involvement with Fusion, nor did Steele know of hers,  because it was Simpson’s practice not to let his employees know who Fusion’s contractors were (and vice versa) unless absolutely necessary. This was done to avoid tainting information gathered from different sources. If two sources found differing information on a particular point, that could be helpful to narrow in on that point as a place where more questions needed to be asked to get an accurate picture.
  • Nellie Ohr did not tell her husband Bruce what she was working on for Fusion because she was under a confidentiality agreement, and as a professional, she took that agreement seriously.
  • The information that Steele was uncovering was not shared with any Fusion employees other than Simpson. Nellie Ohr was unaware of the content (or possibly even the existence) of Steele’s memos. Therefore there was no reason for Nellie Ohr to feel the need to tell her husband about her work: the information that she was uncovering was far less dramatic.
  • Nellie Ohr never told Glenn Simpson that her husband was a Department of Justice official because it was not relevant to her job at Fusion, and because DOJ and other high level law enforcement officials generally do not like their identities to be widely known, for security reasons.
  • Still inexplicable:
    • The coincidence that Nellie Ohr’s husband happened to be Steele’s contact in the U.S. Department of Justice.
    • The coincidence that Bruce Ohr didn’t put two and two together to then ask his wife more about the research work that she was doing at Fusion.

 

Veselnitskaya/Fusion GPS:

  • Veselnitskaya probably had no idea that she would discover something about Putin’s public enemy #1, Wililiam Browder, when she was first hired by Prevezon Holdings: Prevezon was simply another legal case to her.
  • She engaged Baker Hostetler to help with the case because of her poor English, likely unfamiliarity with the intricacies of U.S. law, and the need for her client to have quality representation in a U.S. court.
  • Baker Hostetler hired Fusion to do investigative research for the Prevezon case, because money laundering cases are complicated and require a level of quality research that needed to be outsourced.
  • When Browder’s name turned up in Fusion’s research, Veselnitskaya recognized the name (Browder is famously vilified in Russia – there are even movies about him) and saw an opportunity for herself. From then on, for her the Prevezon case became partially a case for her client, but also a means to collect information that she could use to curry favor with the Kremlin.
  • Simpson was unaware of how Veselnitskaya was using his research.
  • Simpson was handling the case for Baker Hostetler in the same way that he would for any other client: doing research, analyzing it and passing it to his client, Baker Hostetler.
  • Veselnitskaya’s visa to enter the U.S. had been previously revoked, but she was able to get into the U.S. because she was the primary attorney for a case that was being tried in a U.S. court. That is why the Trump Tower meeting had to be scheduled for the same day that she was in court for the Prevezon case.
  • Simpson was in the same courtroom as her that day because, as a researcher for the Prevezon case, he had the greatest wealth of detailed knowledge to reinforce Prevezon’s position.
  • Veselnitskaya and Simpson were at the same Washington DC party the next evening because they had both been important parts of the Prevezon case.
  • While Fusion GPS has a central role in both the Trump Tower meeting and the Steele dossier, and there was even a brief overlap in the timeframes of the Prevezon project and the Trump project, there was no bleed-over between the two projects within Fusion GPS itself: Simpson kept all of Fusion’s projects separate to avoid information from one project contaminating another.
  • Still inexplicable:
    • The coincidence that the Trump Tower meeting involved people and information connected to the same tiny research firm that had later been hired by the Clinton Campaign’s law firm to investigate Donald Trump.

While it is sane and reasonable to dismiss the wild conspiracy theories coming out of the extreme right in their efforts to defend an indefensible President, it is also important to look at factual inconsistencies in the narrative that many Americans believe to be true. While the issue of Bruce and Nellie Ohr and the connection of Fusion GPS to Natalia Veselnitskaya can be explained, they require acceptance of an uncomfortable amount of coincidence.

– rob rünt

The Coming Crisis – And A Realistic Solution To It

The Coming Crisis – And A Realistic Solution To It

Donald Trump’s July 16th press conference in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin should leave no doubt in the minds of objective observers that Putin holds a powerful sway over America’s President. Such bewildering influence by a hostile foreign adversary poses a major risk to our national security. At best, our President is woefully gullible. At worst – and given his body language, this seems a safe assumption – he is being blackmailed or otherwise compromised by the Russians.

President Trump’s Helsinki performance has left our nation – and our long-time allies – wondering: what was agreed to in that one-on-one meeting? Has a secure back channel now been established between the two leaders to enable ongoing real-time conversations, instructions and coercion that avoid detection by our national security agencies? Was the Helsinki meeting recorded by Putin to use to further blackmail the President? Has Trump been given a strategy to secretly help Putin and Russia’s oligarchs get at their money despite strong American sanctions like the Magnitsky Act (LINK)? What other instructions might have been given by this former Soviet intelligence officer, who would love to see the downfall of the U.S. and collapse of the West as retribution for the fall of the U.S.S.R.?

It seems increasingly possible that the person currently at the helm of our nation is not someone who should be trusted with our nation’s interests. Real but yet-unseen damage may already have been done since his inauguration. The danger to our country in a situation like this cannot be understated: Putin is not our friend.

Our Constitution thankfully provides a useful but flawed remedy to a corrupt, compromised, incapacitated, or mentally ill President: as we all know by now, the 25th Amendment allows Congress to remove the President from office as the ultimate check on his or her power. However, I believe that we may well be in a situation unforeseen by our great Constitution – one that can lead to a catastrophic crisis for America.

Most of us have watched Congress’s ongoing feeble or even enabling responses to President Trump through the lens of American politics. We believe that they are being blindly partisan, and that they are willfully putting their own re-election and the Republican Party over the wellbeing of the country. We should pray that this is all that we are seeing.

Glenn Simpson is a man who was hired by a DNC law firm to gather intelligence on Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential Campaign, and who hired former British spy Christopher Steele as part of his information gathering. Simpson was brought before the House Intelligence Committee on November 14, 2017and gave lengthy, detailed and credible testimony about his activities.

At one point, he described why he left his position as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. His beat of choice was Russian corruption and the possibility of Russian involvement in Washington DC. But the Wall Street Journal had lost interest in this topic: it was not as “sexy” and headline-grabbing as terrorism in the years immediately following 9/11.

Yet in talking to his sources in 2009, Glenn Simpson was hearing that “everyone said the Russians are back, and they are buying influence in Washington left and right, and they are trying to bribe all these Congressmen.”

This observation – paired in particular with the behavior of Congresspersons like Devin Nunes (R-CA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and French Hill (R-AR) – raises the question: what if our U.S. legislature is as compromised by Russia as our President appears to be? What if members of the branch of government entrusted to be a check on Presidential power would not only be disgraced, but possibly criminally prosecuted, if the extent of Russia’s activities were fully exposed? What if the “kompromat” that Russia has on them is at the very least the funneling of Kremlin money (through American collaborators) into their campaigns?

When Congress convened on January 2, 2017 for the first time after Trump’s election, the Republican leadership’s very first move – at night, behind closed doors, with no advance discussion – was to remove independent ethics oversight for Congress. Why was that? In the strong public backlash that followed the next day, they quickly reversed themselves, but the fact that that was their first agenda item is curious.

Since Trump’s inauguration, we have also seen a startling number of U.S. Congresspersons announce that they will not run for re-election. One of those – announced a day or two after news broke of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office being raided by the FBI – is House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).

I do not personally believe that Paul Ryan is directly compromised by Russia. However, I believe that he is aware of at least some of what is being held over his fellow Republican legislators. I believe that he, as Speaker of the House, has made the decision to remain silent and encourage the rest of his partisan lawmakers to do the same in order to avoid disgracing the GOP. I believe that he has decided not to seek re-election is because the weight of this is worrisome and uncomfortable for him, and he would prefer to just fade into the woodwork before the Trump indictments start rolling in.

In a way, this is complicity. If one were to watch the murder of a person, rather than a democracy, without notifying law enforcement of what they knew, one would be held legally responsible for that decision. And the longer that one held to that decision, the more legally culpable one would become. This may be the difficult position in which some or all Republican legislators who are not directly compromised by Russia find themselves. They all may have something to feel deeply uneasy about.

If Congress is compromised or complicit, it would be absolutely outrageous – a betrayal of our country by those whom we have most entrusted to protect it. There would be an impulse to see legislators punished severely for their actions, for selling out their country – our country – particularly as they spent years hypocritically branding people the left as spineless and soft on America’s foreign enemies.

Yet in venting our moral outrage, we are still stuck with the concrete legal problem: we need those same compromised or complicit Republican legislators – elected to a majority in both houses of Congress – to hold the executive branch in check. Depending on the outcome of the Mueller investigation, we may need them to not just be a check, but to actually remove Donald Trump from office. And if the President knows that the legislature is compromised, he could threaten to take them all down with him – his own form of kompromat. Which puts us in the silent stalemate between branches of government that I believe we have already been in for over a year.

Although our Constitution does not provide us with a legal remedy for this situation, we can be grateful to countries like South Africa who have provided us with a workable model for addressing and moving forward from horrific acts: amnesty.

My proposal is this.

If, as anticipated by many, Mueller’s investigation turns up evidence of impeachable acts by the President, all sitting members of the House and Senate – Republican and Democrat – should immediately be granted a short period (say, five days) during which they can confess to any ways that Russia has compromised them (including being silent about their knowledge of fellow compromised legislators) and any actions that they took because they were compromised – without fear of criminal prosecution.

These will not be detailed confessions, but merely public acknowledgments of how they have been compromised, so that the truth gets quickly out into the open. Anyone who is guilty but has not admitted so by the end of this short amnesty period can and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Congress should then be required to swiftly take the appropriate action to remove the President from office.

As part of their amnesty terms, those Congresspersons who have confessed must agree to step down from office at the end of their term, and to cooperate fully with law enforcement and U.S. intelligence to determine exactly how they became compromised and what they know of any Russian operations, so that those operations can be thwarted, neutralized or minimized by our national security community.

The advantages of this solution are many:

  • It enables our country to move through a dire and unforeseen crisis gracefully and with minimal disruption
  • It helps restore confidence in the functioning of our system going forward – at least in regard to Russian influence
  • It ensures that most or all of the compromised or complicit legislators – whom we might not otherwise know are compromised or complicit – will not continue to serve
  • It removes more bad (or unreliable) actors from the system than would other solutions
  • It avoids a lengthy, costly and ultimately less effective federal investigation of potentially hundreds of sitting Congresspersons
  • It makes the whole truth abundantly clear to all – including Trump supporters who may be in deep denial – and thereby reduces the domestic strife that may arise in the wake of President Trump being removed from office
  • It transparency reassures America’s allies that we can once again be trusted not to be pushing Russia’s agenda
  • It gives our intelligence community a clear and thorough understanding of what has been done and what to watch for in the future
  • By putting the truth out in the open for all to see, it sets the stage for a national conversation that may help heal and reunite a deeply divided nation

One thing seems certain: Donald Trump may be at times persuaded to say the right thing regarding Vladimir Putin, but waiting for him to do the right thing on the issue of Russia is a waste of time. Putin will always ultimately come out ahead of America with this President.

– rob rünt

“Finish It The Hell Up!”

“Finish It The Hell Up!”

Those words were spoken by U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC), expressing frustration over what he sees as the slow pace of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. Gowdy’s words reflect a perception among many on the right, fed and amplified by the likes of Fox News, that Mueller’s team is dawdling, and that a lack of charges against the President by now means unquestionably that there is nothing there. Because of the constant repetition of this misconception in some circles, some clarification is needed.

First, Gowdy’s statement is ironic, since the House Judiciary Committee, led by Trey Gowdy, spent 30 months investigating Hillary Clinton’s possible role in the Benghazi attack between May 8, 2014 and December 12, 2016. While Benghazi was a serious incident, it was far less consequential than a U.S. President being assisted by a hostile foreign adversary to get elected. We are currently in the 14th month of the Mueller investigation, which began on May 17, 2017. And as Special Counsel investigations go, this one has taken a relatively short length of time thus far. The chart below was published by the Washington Post.

a1cc60e49536bd317dda7cd0b3ebbff2-908-610-Length

It is also important to look at the types of crimes that Mueller is likely investigating. Steve Bannon reportedly said “this is all about money laundering.” I believe that Trump knowingly or unknowingly laundered money for Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime figures for decades. There is an abundance of evidence of Trump real estate deals with Russians in which Trump properties were purchased at an inflated price and quickly resold for a significantly lower price, and in which properties were paid for with all cash – telltale signs of money laundering. An example would be the sight-unseen sale of a Palm Beach mansion to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev (whose yacht and plane coincidentally appeared numerous times near Trump campaign events).

Money laundering is an intentionally complex and opaque crime. That’s the point of money laundering: the goal is to disguise the original illegitimate source of the money by processing it – often through multiple opaque transactions, shell companies, etc. – in a way that ultimately makes the money appear legitimate (even if at a loss – at least now it can be used). Money laundering is therefore an extremely time-consuming crime to investigate, and this case likely involves many multiple incidents of it.

In Russia, Putin demands a cut of all illicit money that the Russian mafia and oligarchs take in. If Trump were laundering money (a felony) for them, Putin would absolutely have a long and thorough awareness of that. Such knowledge – far more than any alleged salacious video from the Moscow Ritz Carlton – is likely the “kompromat” (compromising material) that Putin has on Trump, and with which Putin may in fact be blackmailing the President of the United States.

In addition to a lengthy history of money laundering – a clear motive for Trump to cooperate with Russia – Mueller’s team must also look into evidence of cooperation between the Trump Campaign / Trump Transition Team / White House and a foreign government run by a former KGB officer who knows how to cover his tracks. Potential witnesses and participants from Russia cannot be subpoenaed, and also know that they could potentially be murdered or jailed if they choose to offer evidence or testimony to Mueller. Those witnesses must therefore be presumed inaccessible.

Even so, you might say, if Trump has been involved in any criminal activity and/or collusion with Russia, Mueller must certainly have evidence of it by now – over a year into the investigation – so Mueller’s silence clearly indicates that he has found no such evidence. I believe that Mueller currently has a ton of evidence against a number of people from Trump’s campaign and possibly against the President himself. But consider what you do when playing poker. Do you pick up your hand and announce excitedly “Hey, I just got two pair! If I get another ace or king. I’ll have a full house!” Or do you keep your mouth shut, betray no emotion, and move calmly forward?

Mueller disclosing the evidence that he has collected at this point could compromise the rest of the investigation in multiple ways. It could tip off wrongdoers about who is providing information and what that information is. It could enable the President to know which facts not to lie about if he is ever interviewed by Mueller, and it could give him time to develop a plausible explanation for those particular facts. It could result in some witnesses being paid off, or if the participants involved are dangerous enough, it could result in witnesses being killed.

Some Republicans have stated the Mueller should let Congress know what evidence has been gathered so far, to prove to them, as part of their oversight responsibility, that the investigation is pursuing real issues and not simply wasting taxpayer money on, as the President calls it, a “witch hunt.” This is a legitimate argument.

Yet many of the same Republicans leading this charge, like U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) – a former member of the Trump Transition Team and currently Chair of the House Intelligence Committee (who should theoretically know better than anyone about the proper handling of sensitive information) – have proven repeatedly that they cannot treat the information with the care that it deserves. Upon getting key information, Nunes has instead chosen to run to tell the President what he has learned, or has called a press conference to be the first to put a spin on the information. Both of these activities jeopardize the investigation by informing potential suspects about an ongoing investigation.

I want to see the Meuller investigation completed as soon as possible – likely for a different reason than Trey Gowdy does. But I also know that what Mueller is likely investigating is extremely complex, involves years of activity long pre-dating the 2016 campaign, involves witnesses who can never be questioned, and involves a Congress whose members cannot all be relied upon to put justice above partisan or selfish interests. So I force myself to be patient and believe that justice will prevail.

Of all the people in this situation, I trust Robert Mueller the most. Until the President and Fox News began their slanderous drumbeat to tarnish his name and reputation, Mueller was known to Republicans and Democrats alike as a brilliant and solid law enforcement official of unwavering integrity. That was why he was approved for his current responsibilities by both parties in an otherwise deeply divided House and Senate. Mueller is still the same man that he was before the smear campaign began, and I will trust whatever outcome he and his team arrive at, even if that outcome is that there is no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing by the President.

– rob rünt

Thoughts on Independence Day, 2018

Thoughts on Independence Day, 2018

On this Fourth of July, 2018, a brief check-in on the state of our nation’s independence seems in order:

  • In March of 2016, Paul Manafort became Chairman of the Trump Campaign. Manafort’s most recent job was working for pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.
  • In May of 2016, a foreign policy advisor to the Trump Campaign boasted in a London bar to an Australian diplomat that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
  • In June of 2016, a respected former British intelligence agent, serving as a subcontractor doing opposition research on Donald Trump (which was ultimately paid for by the Clinton Campaign), uncovered an unthinkable plot by Russia to help elect Donald Trump, who the Kremlin believed they could blackmail. Out of a sense of responsibility to a British ally, he reported his findings to the FBI.
  • After hacked Clinton e-mails were made public leading into the July 2016 Democratic Convention, Australia told U.S. intelligence of the conversation between George Popadopoulos and their diplomat.
  • In 2017, the FBI, CIA, and NSA determined that Russia had in fact interfered in the 2016 election, with the goals of sowing discord and chaos, dismantling western alliances, and electing Donald Trump President.
  • On April 27, 2018, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee concluded its investigation into Trump-Russia, asserting that there was no evidence of cooperation between the Trump Campaign and the Kremlin. Democrats on the Committee issued a rebuttal, stating that no such conclusion could be drawn and that the committee leadership had avoided pursuing key evidence and witnesses.
  • Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Devin Nunes, are continuing to investigate the possibility of inappropriate or illegal behavior by the agencies investigating Trump-Russia.
  • The President has acted in ways that alienate our western allies, has urged that Russia be brought back into the G7, and has expressed little more than a lukewarm willingness to continue in NATO (after previously declaring it obsolete). The only time that NATO has taken military action was to help the U.S. after we were attacked on 9/11.
  • To date, President Trump has done little to solicit, require or authorize actions that could prevent Russia from meddling in the 2018 midterm elections.
  • As recently as June 28, 2018, the President tweeted “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election! “
  • President Trump regularly calls the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller a “witch hunt.” In a little over a year, the investigation has produced five guilty pleas and 17 indictments, including Paul Manafort.
  • Yesterday, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee announced its agreement with U.S. intelligence that Russia did interfere in the 2016 to help elect Donald Trump.
  • Fox News, Alex Jones, and numerous other right wing news sources use their freedom of speech/freedom of the press to put out a daily diet of “alternative facts” in which the President can do no wrong, and in which the FBI, the U.S. intelligence community, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are part of a “deep state” conspiracy to destroy the President – and along with him all hope of an American government that truly serves the people.
  • Our nation is deeply divided and misinformation is rampant.
  • Currently, seven Senators from the Appropriations Committee (responsible for allocating tax dollars to U.S. government agencies and departments) and one House Appropriations Committee member – all Republicans – are in Moscow. No Democrats have been invited. The extent to which these legislators have addressed election meddling has been a brief, passing, and milktoast “one should not interfere in elections.”
  • On July 16, 2018, President Trump will meet alone with Vladimir Putin.

Today, we Americans celebrate our independence.

– rob rünt

GOP Backing Roy Moore is About Keeping the Presidency, Not Just a Senate Seat

GOP Backing Roy Moore is About Keeping the Presidency, Not Just a Senate Seat

How low can Republicans go, some may ask. After months of looking the other way as Donald Trump toys with nuclear war, alienates our international allies, reaps millions in profits from his Presidency, and tweets falsehoods on a regular basis, many thought that the Republican Party had hit rock bottom. Until they endorsed accused pedophile Roy Moore for the US Senate.

Multiple women have alleged that Roy Moore dated them or engaged in sexual activity with them when they were teens. At the time, Moore was a District Attorney in his 30s in Alabama. In his defense, Moore recently asserted on Fox’s Sean Hannity’s show that he had never dated any girl without first getting “permission of her mother.”

Signature-Nelson

Signature-Gibson
Alleged messages written by Alabama District Attorney Roy Moore to Debbie Gibson and Beverly Nelson when they were teenagers.

How can the Republican Party, which for years had sanctimoniously proclaimed itself the party of God and morality, throw its endorsement behind someone who appears to have sexually preyed on children? Is keeping one Senate seat really so important to them that they are willing to throw aside all pretense of integrity? Yes and no.

Republicans currently hold a slim majority in the Senate, and they would no doubt like to maintain that majority. But there is an office that is far more important to them to hang onto: the Presidency.

The tie-in here requires a look at the immediate circumstances of the President, the Mueller investigation, and what kind of political process could prematurely end that investigation.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has recently subpoenaed and received Donald Trump’s financial records from Germany’s Deutsche Bank. Aside from being one of the few financial institutions willing to lend money to Mr. Trump after one of his bankruptcies, Deutsche Bank was also fined $630 million by the US government in January of this year for laundering over $10 billion for wealthy Russians in a stock fraud scheme. (Money laundering means running illegally obtained money through some process to make it appear legitimate). My personal suspicion is that, prior to his life as a political figure, Donald Trump engaged in real estate transactions that assisted others, including wealthy Russians like oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, to launder or hide their money. Such assertions have been made in the infamous “dossier” compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

Vladimir Putin would no doubt be aware of such illegal activity, and could use that knowledge to blackmail President Trump, which would explain the President’s baffling reluctance to criticize Putin while attacking virtually everyone else, including the US intelligence community.

As Mueller ”follows the money” and gets closer to areas that can bear fruit in his investigation, many Republicans, who initially supported the selection of Robert Mueller (a Republican with an excellent reputation within the legal community for his dogged investigative practices and impeccable integrity) have suddenly begun turning on the Special Prosecutor, now calling him “corrupt” and “the head of the snake.” The President has made no secret of his dislike of the Mueller probe, calling it a “witch hunt.”

Yet if Trump were seen as directly trying to remove Robert Mueller after already having fired FBI Director James Comey, it would be viewed as a blatant obstruction of justice. Republicans have discovered another way to get rid of Mueller, and it requires the election of Roy Moore to the Senate.

The Special Prosecutor would ordinarily be appointed by the US Attorney General. However, in the current situation, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions (former Alabama Senator) had recused himself from the Russia investigation, due to his potentially being considered a witness in that case. So instead, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was given the responsibility to appoint a Special Counsel. He chose former FBI Director Robert Mueller. Rosenstein would be the most appropriate person to remove Mueller from the case, but seems unlikely to do so, and Sessions cannot do so, because he has recused himself.

Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has been encouraging Alabamans to write in Jeff Sessions when they vote. He has also said that if Roy Moore is elected, the Senate will immediately begin an ethics investigation into the allegations of the various women against Moore. Such an investigation will likely find that these women are in fact telling the truth about their teenage encounters with Roy Moore, and such findings will likely result in the Senate expelling Moore or demanding his resignation.

When a Senator leaves office prematurely, that state’s Governor is empowered to appoint a replacement. Some Republican political operatives have advocated for Moore to be replaced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, essentially putting Sessions back in his old job as one of Alabama’s two Senators. It would seem a natural choice.

Yet the resulting absence in the US Attorney General’s office would allow the President a “mulligan” on appointing an Attorney General – enabling him to select a new Attorney General who would not need to recuse himself/herself from the Russia investigation and who would therefore have the authority to remove Robert Mueller and either replace him with a new Special Prosecutor or declare the investigation over.

MooreMeansEndingMuellerProbe

Currently, Roy Moore is ahead of his Democratic opponent Doug Jones in the Alabama polls. If Moore wins, the wheels can easily be put in motion for a premature end to the Russia probe, or for an investigation that avoids looking in the most meaningful and damning areas.

– rob rünt

July 9 – 31, 2017

Articles & Editorials:

Main Stories

Scaramucci

Scaramucci on Leaks: ‘I’m Going to Fire Everybody’
(New York Times – 7/25/17)

Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon
(The New Yorker – 7/27/17)

Scaramucci: ‘If Reince wants to explain that he’s not a leaker, let him do that’
(Washington Post – 7/27/17)

“The fish stinks from the head down. But I can tell you two fish that don’t stink, and that’s me and the president.”

– Anthony Scaramucci, White House Press Secretary

Is it a felony to leak a financial disclosure form, as Anthony Scaramucci said?
(Politifact – 7/27/17)

Reince Priebus Is Ousted Amid Stormy Days for White House
(New York Times – 7/28/17)

Anthony Scaramucci’s wife files for divorce
(Page Six – 7/28/17)

“There are people inside the administration that think it is their job to save America from this president. OK, that is not their job. Their job is to inject this president into America.”

– Anthony Scaramucci, White House Press Secretary
(CNN – 7/27/17)

Anthony Scaramucci removed as White House communications director
(Washington Post – 7/31/17)

Trump and Putin

Trump suggested a cybersecurity pact with Russia. Lawmakers say they were ‘dumbfounded.’
(Washington Post – 7/9/17)

Week-0027-170708-010

“This is like the guy who robbed your house proposing a working group on burglary.”

– Ash Carter, Former US Secretary of Defense
(Telegraph UK – 7/9/17)

 

Trump and Putin Held a Second, Undisclosed, Private Conversation
(New York Times – 7/18/17)

Trump Spins Putin Dinner Conversation
(FactCheck.org – 7/19/17)

Trump and Russia

All The Dots, Connected
(The American Interest – 7/25/17)

A Timeline: Russia and President Trump
(Moyers & Company – 7/17/17)

Bill Browder’s Testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee
(The Atlantic – 7/25/17)

Russian mob money helped build Trump business empire
(MSNBC – 7/17/17)

Paul Manafort Reportedly Owed Millions to Russian Oligarch Before Joining trump Campaign
(Vanity Fair – 7/20/17)

Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow
(Washington Post – 7/19/17)

Mueller has broader authority in his Russia investigation than Trump may realize
(Business Insider – 7/21/17)

This Is How the Russian Kleptocracy Operates
(Esquire – 7/27/17)

Russia Seizes 2 U.S. Properties and Orders Embassy to Cut Staff
(New York Times – 7/28/17)

Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer
(Washington Post – 7/31/17)

Maybe What Russia Wants From Trump Is Permission to Launder Its Dirty Money
(Slate – 7/20/17)

Congressional Testimonies

Manafort testifies to Senate Intelligence Committee, turns over notes from Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer
(Washington Post – 7/25/17)

How Jared Kushner Helped the Russians Get Inside Access to the Trump Campaign
(New Yorker – 7/25/16)

‘I Did Not Collude,’ Kushner Says After Meeting Senate Investigators
(New York Times – 7/24/17)

Mueller Investigation

Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions
(Bloomberg – 7/20/17)

Trump Trains His Sights on Mueller’s Investigation
The president’s lawyers are looking at multiple ways to undermine or curtail the Russia inquiry, including his issuing pardons
(The Atlantic – 7/20/17)

As Team Trump Lawyers Up, Who’s Paying The Attorney Fees?
(National Public Radio – 7/19/17)

Deutsche Bank is Turning Over Information on Trump
(Vanity Fair – 7/20/17)

Does Trump Have a Case Against Mueller?
(Politico – 7/21/17)

Trump Pardoning … Himself?!

Trump pushes his ‘complete power’ to pardon
(Politic – 7/22/17)

President Trump is considering pardoning himself. I asked 15 experts if that’s legal.
(Vox – 7/21/17)

Jared Kushner sealed real estate deal with oligarch’s firm cited in money-laundering case
(The Guardian – 7/24/17)

“He isn’t smart enough to do the job and isn’t man enough to own up to the fact.”

– Kevin Williamson, National Review – 7/30/17

Healthcare Reform

Frustrated in defeat, Trump threatens healthcare of voters — and lawmakers
(Los Angeles Times – 7/29/17)

Dems pivot to offering ObamaCare improvements
(The Hill – 7/29/17)

Other Stories That You Should Know About:

Interview with Donald Trump – Partial Transcript
(New York Times – 7/19/17)

Jeb Bush calls out Republicans silent on Trump’s Russia probe
(The Hill – 7/21/17)

My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump
(Senator Jeff Flake, Politico – 7/31/17)

Jared Kushner Discloses Dozens More Assets in Revised Financial Filing
(Wall Street Journal – 7/21/17)

Trump tells police not to worry about injuring suspects during arrests
(Washington Post – 7/28/17)

House Approves Spending Package, Border Wall and All
(New York Times – 7/27/17)

House Republicans call for a second special counsel — to investigate Clinton, Comey and Lynch
(CNBC – 7/27/17)

New poll offers deeper insight into what ails rural America
(Daily KOS –7/9/17)

Keeping Track of the Basics:

Editorials

Liberals can win again if they stop being so annoying and fix their ‘hamburger problem’
(Business Insider – 7/17/17)

Trump’s breathtaking surrender to Russia
(Washington Post – 7/20/17)
Note: Senator John McCain (R-AZ) recommends that every American read this piece written by a former Senior Policy Advisor for George W. Bush

The Democrats’ New Agenda Is Everything That’s Wrong With the Party
(In These Times – 7/27/17)

No, Trump can’t pardon himself. The Constitution tells us so.
(Washington Post – 7/21/17)

Trump’s Mistake at the Boy Scout Jamboree
(The Atlantic – 7/24/17)

Trump Is Woody Allen Without the Humor
(Peggy Noonan – Wall Street Journal – 7/27/17)

The Triumph of the Idiocracy: How Narcissism, Stupidity and the Internet Got Us Donald Trump, an Accidental President
(Alternet – 7/31/17)

Alternative Facts from an Alternative Universe

Self-selecting our news sources, a reluctance to hear opposing ideas, and the choice by many of us to surround ourselves only with like-minded individuals has resulted in many Americans becoming oblivious to the beliefs of those with whom they disagree. This bubble helped create the world of “alternative facts” in which Donald Trump could become President.

To counter this, each week I will present a little of what Trump’s supporters are thinking. Their reality may be very different from yours. Please listen/read to the end, and consider what respectful questions you could ask to better understand and have a conversation, rather than seeking to prove them wrong as quickly as possible and shut them down. We can’t change minds if we can’t talk to each other.

Posted on Facebook by An0maly, reposted here because it’s important to understand Trump supporters’ different perspectives so that we don’t have to go through this again.

Cartoons, Images & Videos

A video tweeted by Donald Trump about the G20 Summit – remarkably similar to the kind of video that one might expect the leader of North Korea to broadcast:

Posted on Facebook by “Union Thugs:”

TWIT-00003

Source: Unknown:

TWIT-00002

Source: Unknown:

TWIT-00001

Cartoon by Nate Beeler, Columbia Dispatch:

TWIT-00034-NateBeelerColumbusDispatch

Cartoon by Steve Sack, Star Tribune:

TWIT-00031-SteveSackStrib

Source: Unknown:

KushnerMalfunction-02

Source: Unknown:

TWIT-00006

Source: Unknown:

TWIT-00021

This Week’s Blog Entry

CoverImage-170722-01

The Mueller Investigation:
Why Trump’s Finances and Beauty Pageants are 100% Relevant to Russia

Events & Actions

Resources & Organizations

“People don’t realize he loves holding my hand. And that’s good, as far as that goes.”

President Donald Trump speaking about French President Emmanuel Macron
(New York Times interview – 7/19/17)