AP News: Trump campaign’s Russia contacts ‘grave’ threat, Senate says

CunningCanuk said:

Haven’t seen Corn Poop in a while. He must be on assignment.

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punchwhiterightside said:

smoothly worked

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hanimmal said:

@Choco8 This is the thread for the second Republican led Bi-partisan senate report on the Russian attack against our citizens and how deep the contacts between Trump and Russia were.

https://www.rollitup.org/t/what-are-bidens-foreign-policies.1048174/post-16196699

If you are so wrapped up in the crazy narratives Russia has been pushing hard and not just another of the endless lines of sock puppets pushing that narrative for them, I really would recommend sticking around. Just note that it will be very hard to have a conversation if people are convinced you are a troll, so remember you have the ignore feature if you feel under attack.

Best of luck.

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Fogdog said:

@Choco8 is so angry that he can only mutter a few words before losing it.

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Choco8 said:

lmao what are you like 12 years old dude? You say things like "sucking Putin's sack" and then are shocked when people react dismissively? Grow the fuck up. Try actually making an argument.

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Choco8 said:

lmao what are you like 12 years old dude? You say things like "sucking Putin's sack" and then are shocked when people react dismissively? Grow the fuck up. Try actually making an argument.

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From the first moments that the report on Russian interference in the 2016 election compiled by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team became public two years ago, it was obvious where it contained gaps. The report itself documented the places where questions were unhappily left unanswered, a function of reticence from relevant parties or of encrypted communications or, at times, of witnesses being unavailable for interview.

In that latter group was a man named Konstantin Kilimnik.

Kilimnik, who was indicted by Mueller’s team, sat at the center of one of the more obvious places where the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump might have intersected with Russia’s efforts to get Trump elected. Kilimnik had worked with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for years before Manafort joined the campaign effort despite (or perhaps because of) his sketchy connections to Russia. One of Manafort’s primary clients in the years before his volunteering to work for Trump without pay was a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Their mutual colleague Rick Gates told various people that he believed Kilimnik was a “spy,” according to Mueller’s report, but that didn’t keep the three from sharing information during the campaign — while both Gates and Manafort worked directly for Trump.

On Aug. 2, 2016, with Manafort running the Trump campaign and Gates serving as his deputy, the three met at a cigar club in midtown Manhattan. Beforehand, Manafort had asked Gates to print out campaign polling data, information that Manafort apparently gave Kilimnik that evening.

Mueller’s report describes the meeting:

“They also discussed the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort’s strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states. Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.”

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At another point, the report goes into more detail about that ongoing exchange of information.

“Manafort instructed Rick Gates, his deputy on the Campaign and a longtime employee, to provide Kilimnik with updates on the Trump Campaign — including internal polling data, although Manafort claims not to recall that specific instruction. Manafort expected Kilimnik to share that information with others in Ukraine and with Deripaska. Gates periodically sent such polling data to Kilimnik during the campaign.”

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The “Deripaska” referred to is Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a former client of Manafort’s whom the campaign chairman had been eager to impress with his position on the campaign. (Hours after the Aug. 2 meeting, a plane belonging to Deripaska landed in New Jersey; his team denies any link to the meeting.)

This was as close as Mueller got to demonstrating a connection between Trump’s campaign and the Russian effort to aid his candidacy, an effort that included both a bid to influence public opinion using social media and the release of data stolen from the Democratic Party and a senior staffer for Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent. It left unanswered two questions: How close was Kilimnik to Russian intelligence, and what did he do with the polling information he’d received?

The Mueller report acknowledged both uncertainties, writing that “Because of questions about Manafort’s credibility and our limited ability to gather evidence on what happened to the polling data after it was sent to Kilimnik, the [special counsel’s team] could not assess what Kilimnik (or others he may have given it to) did with it.”

Last year, one of those questions was answered. A bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee identified Kilimnik explicitly as an agent of the Russian government: “Kilimnik,” it read, “is a Russian intelligence officer.”

At another point, the report brushes up against the second question.

“The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU’s hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” it read. The GRU is the intelligence arm of the Russian military and has been identified as the group that stole the information from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman that was later released by WikiLeaks. The implication, then, is that there was not only a connection between Kilimnik and Russia broadly but specifically to the team directly involved in the interference effort.

On Thursday, the Treasury Department unveiled new sanctions against the Russian government linked to its apparent hack of U.S. government networks. But the news release also included a statement clearly answering our second question above.

“During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy. Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the statement read.

“Kilimnik has also sought to assist designated former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. At Yanukovych’s direction, Kilimnik sought to institute a plan that would return Yanukovych to power in Ukraine,” it read.

Yanukovych was a member of the pro-Russian party for which Manafort had worked, the Party of Regions.

That one sentence, though, appears to finally complete the long-speculated line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence. It goes like this, according to the aggregated information compiled by various parts of the government:

• Trump hires
• Manafort to run his campaign. Manafort then orders
• Gates, his deputy, to provide polling and strategy information to
• Kilimnik, their longtime colleague and, according to the Senate committee, a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik then shares that information with
• Russian intelligence agents.

It’s important to note that there is 1) no evidence at this point that Trump knew about the sharing of that information or 2) that Russia did much with the information it obtained. There were targeted ads from Russian actors during the campaign, but there remains no good evidence that those ads were targeted with insider information (much less well-targeted in general) nor that they had much of an effect.

What is instead revealed is that the government’s concern about the Trump campaign’s links to Russia — links that extended to other members of Trump’s team — was in this case probably warranted. Manafort’s presence in the campaign prompted head-scratching from the outset, given his ties to various international ne’er-do-wells. He had been on the radar of federal intelligence agencies for years. It’s not surprising, then, that this link should be demonstrated. It just took awhile for the line to be drawn as clearly as it was Thursday morning.

Among the reasons that Mueller’s team couldn’t draw that line clearly in the first place was that Manafort misled investigators (spurring false-statement charges) and otherwise refused to offer a detailed assessment of his time on the campaign.

Two days before Christmas last year, Trump, by then a lame duck, granted Manafort a pardon.

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TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albania’s president has accused the U.S. ambassador of intervening in the small European country’s internal affairs by supporting its prime minister in an upcoming parliamentary election.

President Ilir Meta spoke harshly about Ambassador Yuri Kim during a television talk show on Friday night and called on the American diplomat “to stop supporting (Prime Minister Edi) Rama, who is violating the election.”

While the show was airing on Syri Televizion, Kim sent a text message to Meta and also tweeted about Sunday’s election, responding to a warning Meta gave this week that Albanians would take up pitchforks and other tools if the prime minister attempts to manipulate voting or the results.

“It is unacceptable for anyone to threaten that citizens will take up “pitchforks” on April 25 or if they don’t like the result of elections,”′ the ambassador wrote. ”These threats deserve condemnation. Those who incite violence will be held responsible for the results of their words and actions. Stop.”

Albania’s two largest political parties are bitter election rivals. Confrontations between supporters of Rama’s government and of the opposition culminated Wednesday with the death of a leading supporter of the governing Socialist Party. Police have said the victim was shot, allegedly by a member of the opposition Democratic Party, during an argument involving members of the opposing camps.

Meta has denounced Rama for allegedly running a “kleptocratic regime” that concentrated all legislative, administrative and judicial powers in the prime minister’s. He also accused Rama of bungling Albania’s pandemic response and delaying the country’s integration into the European Union.

The president holds the post without a party affiliation. Meta previously led the left-wing Socialist Movement for Integration, which is now led by his wife.

During Friday night’s talk show, Meta called Rama a “gangster” and a “psychic ill person.” He also became visibly agitated after receiving Kim’s text and made extreme claims about the U.S. ambassador. At one point, the president hinted that Kim could be part of an international lobbying campaign against him led by Serbia.

“There are corrupt circles. There is lobbying paid by Serbia, there (in the U.S.) and in other countries, which use America’s representatives against Ilir Meta,” he said.

Meta alleged that Kim told him during one telephone call, “We know some things about you.”

“I have told (Washington) that if you have any issue with me, please let me know because I know that you may even kill me,” he said. Meta added that he would go to a nearby mountain and then “you may launch a missile on me, so that I don’t damage other people.”

The U.S. Embassy in Tirana did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Meta’s remarks.

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The FBI warned Rudolph W. Giuliani in late 2019 that he was the target of a Russian influence operation aimed at circulating falsehoods intended to damage President Biden politically ahead of last year’s election, according to people familiar with the matter.

The warning was part of an extensive effort by the bureau to alert members of Congress and at least one conservative media outlet, One America News, that they faced a risk of being used to further Russia’s attempt to influence the election’s outcome, said several current and former U.S. officials. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive.

Giuliani received the FBI’s warning while deeply involved with former president Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and related activities in Ukraine to surface unflattering or incriminating information about the Biden family. The revelation comes as the FBI this week seized Giuliani’s cellphone and other electronic devices as part of a long-running criminal investigation into whether the onetime New York mayor and personal attorney for Trump acted as an unregistered foreign agent.

(Washington Post didn't have video up to put youtube yet, they have a different video on their site)

The senators suspected that the younger Biden’s position with the Ukrainian firm posed a conflict of interest to his father’s role shaping U.S. policy toward Ukraine and created impediments for U.S.-backed anti-corruption efforts in that country. Their investigation ended last fall with a report concluding that Hunter Biden’s position with Burisma was “problematic” but did not influence his father’s work or Obama administration policy toward Ukraine.

GOP senators’ report calls Hunter Biden’s board position with Ukraine firm ‘problematic’ but doesn’t show it changed U.S. policy

Defensive briefings are given to people to alert them that they are being targeted by foreign governments for malign purposes, former officials said. But they’re also used “to see how they respond to that,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former senior FBI counterintelligence official. “They’re now on notice.”

Giuliani’s electronic devices were seized by authorities Wednesday in searches of his Manhattan home and office as part of the federal investigation into whether he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukraine.

The probe centers on Giuliani’s interactions with Ukrainian figures ahead of November’s election, as he sought information that might undermine Joe Biden and lobbied for the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine while also pressing Ukrainian officials to announce an inquiry into Biden. Trump abruptly removed the ambassador in May 2019, but Ukraine did not launch an investigation into the Bidens.

Giuliani, a former Manhattan U.S. attorney, has emphatically denied any wrongdoing, and his attorney on Wednesday accused federal investigators of ignoring “clear evidence” of what he alleged was Hunter Biden’s “failure to register as a foreign agent” and the Biden family taking “millions in bribes to sell [Biden’s] public offices.”

Costello also has said Giuliani never peddled disinformation on the Bidens.

During his December 2019 trip to Kyiv, Giuliani was accompanied by a team from One America News, which has described itself as one of Trump’s “greatest supporters.” The network later produced a documentary series based on the trip.

The network did not address questions about the FBI’s briefing. But it did provide a statement, attributed to an unidentified network spokesman, expressing pride in its investigation of the Bidens in Ukraine.

“We stand by our reporting highlighting Hunter Biden’s financial windfall relationship with Burisma and VP Joe Biden’s efforts to have a Prosecutor General fired to protect alleged wrongdoing by his son, Hunter,” the statement said, referring to unproven allegations made by some Ukrainian officials.

The statement acknowledged that the Treasury Department sanctioned a Ukrainian lawmaker interviewed by the network last year. But, the statement said, “OAN’s interviews were prior to the sanctions and the reasons for sanctions were unknown to OAN at the time of the interviews.”

U.S. sanctions Ukrainian lawmaker tied to Giuliani as ‘active Russian agent’

On his trip to Kyiv, Giuliani met with Andriy Derkach, a politician sanctioned by the United States in September and accused by the Treasury Department of having been an active Russian agent “for over a decade” and maintaining “close connections with Russian intelligence services.” Derkach, who attended a KGB academy in Moscow, has denied involvement with any foreign intelligence agency and any illegal activities.

In late 2019, before Giuliani’s trip to Kyiv, U.S. intelligence agencies warned the Trump White House that Giuliani was the target of a Russian influence operation, as The Post reported last year. Officials became concerned after obtaining evidence, including communications intercepts, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intelligence. The warnings led then-national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien to caution Trump that any information Giuliani brought back from Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia.

Despite the FBI warning, Giuliani met with Derkach again in New York in February 2020 when he hosted Derkach on a podcast. In the podcast, Derkach aired false allegations that billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Ukraine were misused or went missing while Joe Biden was handling the Obama administration’s Ukraine portfolio.

Costello has said Giuliani did not rely on Derkach for material.

Since Biden’s victory, the National Intelligence Council, an analytic arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials in Moscow sought to influence the 2020 election. They did so by spreading misleading information about Biden through prominent individuals, “including some” who were “close to former President Trump,” according to an ODNI report issued in March.

Putin targeted people close to Trump in bid to influence 2020 election, U.S. intelligence says



Johnson has said he never met or spoke with Derkach. But he and his staff met with another Ukrainian national, former diplomat Andriy Telizhenko, who pushed the unfounded allegation that it was Ukraine rather than Russia that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. Johnson has not discussed the meeting publicly.

Last year, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) alleged that Johnson was seeking to “give credibility” to disinformation advanced by Derkach and Telizhenko “for the sole purpose” of aiding Trump’s reelection. Johnson has said his staff vetted the reliability of Telizhenko’s information and rejected Wyden’s assertion.

As part of his committee’s investigation, Johnson and two Republican colleagues considered subpoenaing Telizhenko to testify. At Senate Democrats’ request, the FBI in March 2020 briefed Johnson’s panel and two other committees on Telizhenko’s background and motives. As a result, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers urged Johnson to refrain from issuing the subpoena.

Telizhenko also has met several times with Giuliani, appearing on his podcast and facilitating his December 2019 trip to Ukraine.

This past January, in the waning days of the Trump administration, the Treasury Department sanctioned Telizhenko as well for his role in trying to influence the 2020 election. He has denied any involvement in Russian interference or disinformation operations and denied working with Derkach.

This month, the Biden administration imposed economic sanctions on 32 entities and individuals for Russian government attempts to influence November’s election.

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hanimmal said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/rudy-giuliani-fbi-warning-russia/2021/04/29/5db90f96-a84e-11eb-bca5-048b2759a489_story.htmlView attachment 4890906

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DIY-HP-LED said:

That he, Trump and many republican members of congress are traitors and seditionists is beyond reasonable doubt. Rudy is gonna squeal like a pig on Trump and everybody else, there's gonna be a traffic jam at the prosecutors doorway soon. I sure as shit hope that his plea deal will include making several PSA TV ads on the big lie and the Russian help Trump received to mitigate his crimes. They are gonna pile on the indictments like Joel Greenberg until he cracks wide open. If he's got a pocket pardon, we will see it soon, but I doubt he does and even if he did, it wouldn't help Trump at all.

Rudy has a binary choice ahead, squeal and testify against Trump with a plea deal that will involve spilling about any other crimes he has knowledge about or go away forever. If he gives the government Donald's head on a silver platter for the insurrection along with other conspirators, that might even get him a walk. The fact he's in this position will cause other conspirators to come forward first though, everybody will want a deal, but few will get one.

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hanimmal said:

We will see.

Rudy already threw out a warning shot.

This is one reason the attack on Cuomo is pretty scary to me. Trump is safe in Florida to continue to run his scams and the next (or future) New York governor is going to be the one to not pardon Trump and his conspirators.

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DIY-HP-LED said:

Yep, it's starting to get interesting, the DOJ is getting staffed out and this is one of the results of a senor DOJ official who was on the job for just 10 days. I kinda thought the republicans wanted to get rid of Trump ASAP and would quickly pass Joe's DOJ nominees. They need to get this over quickly and the trials out of the way before the 2022 election season. Like Donald's tweets would drop his polls by 10 points, many were eager to forgive and forget though, so a few weeks later the numbers were back up again. I figure the same thing happened after Jan 6th, a drop with the shock, but then the deep conditioning took over again, for some at least.

I don't think there will be a republican governor of NY and Donald is also looking at federal charges, Rudy and others have something to sell Uncle Sam, Donald's head.

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hanimmal said:

My guess is that they are not sure who is going to end up going down with Trump.

I don't know anything about NY politics either really I just know enough to not trust anything election related anymore.

Who knows what happens if the Democrats get sucked into choosing someone that is super troll-able in a hyper sensitive situation.

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Fogdog said:

View attachment 4848814

Putin's palace, dubbed "the worlds largest bribe" has a strip joint, among other amenities. I'm pretty sure that Putin can find better partners than you.

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