1. Rob Goldstone offered to arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.2. Another meeting attendee also heard that the Russian lawyer had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.3. Paul Manafort’s notes reveal conversation points from the meeting.4. Goldstone wanted to build Trump’s brand on Russian social media.5. Donald Trump Jr. made several calls to blocked phone numbers around the meeting but says he can’t remember to whom
Donald Trump Jr. made several mysterious phone calls to blocked numbers before and after the Trump Tower meeting with Russians promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. The phone calls were revealed in a report released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday (PDF)—part of a whirlwind day of revelations about the investigations into Trumpland. We learned, among other things, that the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign was deeper than previously known, and that there are millions of dollars more in suspicious financial dealings by Trump fixer Michael Cohen. But the newly revealed actions of Trump Jr. may prove the most significant discovery, even if at the moment those actions raise more questions than answers. On the day he arranged the meeting the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016, Trump Jr. placed two calls to blocked numbers. After the meeting ended without the promised dirt, Trump Jr. placed another call to a blocked number. When asked if his father used a blocked number on any phone, Trump Jr. told the committee: “I don’t know.” Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, on the other hand, testified that Trump’s “primary residence has a blocked [phone] line.”
The transcripts also raise serious questions about whether Trump, Jr., was telling the truth when he told the Judiciary Committee that he didn’t inform his father in advance about the Trump Tower meeting. At 4:04 p.m. on June 6, 2016, three days before the meeting, according to telephone records that the Committee obtained, Trump, Jr., spoke briefly with Emin Agalarov, who had just completed a show in Moscow. At 4:27 p.m., he had a four-minute call with someone whose number was blocked. At 4:31 p.m., immediately after that conversation, he called Emin again and spoke for three minutes. “Does your father use a blocked number on his cell phone or on any phones that you call him on?” Sawyer asked Trump, Jr. “I don’t know,” he replied.
It does look like attendees to the Trump Tower meeting tried to get their stories straight: trump-jr-lawyer-emailed-trump-
So where does this leave us? In short, there were multiple efforts to obtain dirt on Clinton in the context of a well-orchestrated campaign to defeat her — actually two campaigns, one run from Moscow and one from Trump Tower. The efforts to deny, hide and misstate key events (e.g., the purpose of the June 2016 meeting, the payment to Daniels) are not those of people confident the facts will exonerate them. I have zero doubt that, had the roles been reversed, Republicans would be drafting articles of impeachment. As things stand, however, both sides will wait for the full report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. One more thing — what we see in public is a fraction of what Mueller has. That report promises to be a doozy.
So the Bob Mueller investigation has not only dug up strong evidence of obstruction, it looks like their collusion case is mounting. Rubin also presents strong evidence of collusion by clicking on what-the-latest-russia-revelat
One final note: Whenever Trump shouts “No collusion,” the response to that should be: “There’s airtight evidence of attempted conspiracy by the highest levels in the Trump campaign to obtain foreign help.” As Bergmann puts it, “According to Donald Trump Jr.’s own testimony, he was disappointed by the meeting because the collusion the Russians were offering wasn’t good enough. So we know the Trump campaign wanted to collude and we know the Russians ran an aggressive campaign to help Trump. Given the mounting evidence it really isn’t a question anymore if they colluded, it’s a question of how deep the collusion went.” No wonder Trump is so freaked out about the Russia investigation.
Michael Cohen
The plot thickens & the walls are closing in on Cohen, & being “Trump’s fixer” we have to think Trump himself was aware of all this going on: the-key-detail-in-ronan-
Reporting by the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow answers that question. A law enforcement official leaked the documents, the official told Farrow, after becoming concerned that two reports on Cohen’s suspicious financial activity could not be found in a government database. Both of those reports, according to the New Yorker, detail even more substantial financial transactions — about $3 million, three times the amount of last week’s disclosures. This is an extraordinary allegation. This whistleblower is claiming the documents went missing from the database, the more sinister implication being that they were purposely being withheld. The documents this law enforcement official said they could not find are not easily misplaced bureaucratic paperwork. Suspicious activity reports, or SARs, are reports that banks and other financial institutions file if they have an inkling that someone might be engaging in money laundering or another illicit activity. They are filed with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which maintains a database for government and law enforcement officials. A suspicious activity report is not proof of any crime, just a red flag, and can help authorities establish patterns.
“I have never seen something pulled off the system. … That system is a safeguard for the bank,” the source told the New Yorker. “It’s a stockpile of information. When something’s not there that should be, I immediately became concerned.” Disclosing a suspicious activity report could violate federal law. The whistleblower said the personal risk was outweighed by the possibility that the reports were purposely hidden or removed. “Things that stand out as abnormal, like documents being removed from a system, are of grave concern to me,” the official said. Perhaps even more chilling is that there doesn’t seem to be an ordinary explanation for why those two reports have seemingly vanished from the searchable database. Some former government officials suggested to the New Yorker that it’s possible (though it would be extremely unusual) that access is restricted because of the extremely sensitive nature of the SARs, given that Cohen is under federal investigation by the Manhattan US attorney’s office. That investigation, while apparently separate from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, was referred to federal prosecutors in New York by Mueller’s office.
So it looks as though another pay-to-play scheme has been uncovered in the world of Trump fraught with corruption, with these excerpts from michael-cohen-scandal-
The Michael Cohen scandal began as a six-figure payment to a porn star, but on Wednesday it exploded into an international, multimillion-dollar financial scandal. President Donald Trump’s fixer took in more than $4 million in eyebrow-raising deposits to his shell company—much of it from foreign sources. That’s what a law-enforcement official told The New Yorker, saying the information Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti and then news outlets have been reporting on over the last week—about the money pouring into the same shell company Cohen used to funnel $130,000 to the adult actress—came from a “suspicious activity report” filed by a bank with the Treasury Department. The report detailed $1 million in deposits into the company that Cohen told the bank was for real-estate consulting. However, bank officers reported the deposits came from entities with “no apparent connection to real estate or apparent need to engage Cohen as a real estate consultant.” The official told The New Yorker that two other suspicious activity reports, not previously reported on, showed another $3 million in deposits to Cohen’s company. All three reports were sent by the bank to the Treasury Department’s criminal bureau, but the official said he was motivated to share the first report because the two other ones are not in the database of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Fearing a government cover-up, the official said he leaked the remaining report. A “significant portion” of deposits to Cohen’s company were “derived from foreign entities,” bank officers wrote.
Other Shady Players
The signs of foul play the Bob Mueller investigation is building a case for are everywhere! It seems anywhere we look, the Russians are coming: a-plane-linked-to-the-russian-
There’s also a Ukrainian politician who may be able to shed light on things: mueller-subpoenas-manafort-tie
Manafort & ex-Family
A DC judge ruled that the charges against Manafort do have merit & can proceed to trial, as seen in judge-rejects-manafort-moti
Citing Manafort’s years of work in Ukraine, his prominent role on the Trump campaign and his publicized connections to Russian figures, Jackson said it was “logical and appropriate” for Mueller’s team to scrutinize him as part of their investigation into Russian election meddling and possible coordination with Trump associates. “Given what was being said publicly, the Special Counsel would have been remiss to ignore such an obvious potential link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government,” Jackson wrote.
Cambridge Analytica
We see Cambridge Analytica is also coming under closer scrutiny in cambridge-analytica-investigat
Federal investigators are reportedly investigating Cambridge Analytica, the political firm implicated in a data privacy scandal. The Justice Department and the FBI have opened an inquiry into the now-defunct company, according to the New York Times, speaking to former employees and banks that worked with the company. Cambridge Analytica obtained Facebook profile information encompassing as many as 87 million users, a transfer that was not revealed until after the company had gone on to work for the Trump presidential campaign. An ensuing uproar has since led the company to cease operations amid an exodus of customers. But the data transfer’s aftermath is continuing to unfold. How the company came into possession of and then used personal information is of particular interest investigators, who were said to have reached out to Facebook.
Stormy & Other Women
It looks like more women are soon coming forward about hush money payments: michael-avenatti-im-working-wi
President Donald Trump’s failure last year to disclose that he repaid his lawyer Michael Cohen for Cohen’s pre-election payout to Stormy Daniels has been referred to the Department of Justice. The Office of Government Ethics determined Wednesdaythat Cohen’s payment to Daniels, which Trump repaid last year, constituted a loan that should have been reported on the president’s June 2017 financial disclosure form. Trump did disclose the liability in a footnote to the form he filed Tuesday. The note claimed he did not have to make the disclosure, but was doing so anyway “in the interest of transparency.” In a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting OGE Director David Apol wrote, “You may find the disclosure relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing regarding the president’s prior report that was signed on June 14, 2017.” Knowingly and willfully falsifying or omitting required information on the financial disclosure form can be prosecuted as a criminal offense, punishable by as long as a year in jail. Trump and his White House staff had for months denied knowing anything about Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels to buy her silence about the affair the porn star said she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump’s newest outside lawyer Rudy Giuliani finally admitted that Trump had repaid Cohen in a Fox News interview earlier this month.
In Summation on Russian Case
For good overviews of what we know of the Mueller probe so far, see politics/mueller-russia-pr
North Korean Talks On or Off?
Jong Un managed to put himself on the same level as the American President when Trump immediately jumped at the chance to hold talks with him. Then Jong Un might gain the upper hand by possibly pulling out of the scheduled talks: north-korea-threatens-t
Trump raised expectations so high, now he’s put in a position of weakness just to save the talks: trump-offers-kim-protections-
The Jong Un talks were the one thing Trump had going for him. Even if they do talk, it’s still a long shot if denuclearization can be achieved. Other pertinent articles on this topic from the week are kim-jong-un-john-bolton-do
North Korea says it is no longer interested in a highly anticipated summit with President Trump next month if it is required to fully abandon its nuclear program. In an abrupt departure from Pyongyang’s amicable rhetoric of the past several weeks, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan on Wednesday lashed out at the U.S., saying Trump will go down in history as “more tragic” than his predecessors if he keeps pushing for complete denuclearization. “We are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting,” Kim said in a statement released by the official KCNA news agency. He singled out John Bolton, Trump’s new national security adviser, for demanding the complete abandonment of nuclear weapons, calling it an “awfully sinister move to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq.” His remarks came just hours after Pyongyang unexpectedly pulled out of a high-profile meeting with Seoul planned for Wednesday over upcoming joint U.S.-South Korea military drills.
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