Daily Check-In 11/27/2018

Daily Check-In

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

A lawyer for Paul Manafort, the president’s onetime campaign chairman, repeatedly briefed President Trump’s lawyers on his client’s discussions with federal investigators after Mr. Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, according to one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers and two other people familiar with the conversations.

The arrangement was highly unusual and inflamed tensions with Mr. Mueller’s office when prosecutors discovered it after Mr. Manafort began cooperating two months ago, the people said. Some legal experts speculated that it was a bid by Mr. Manafort for a presidential pardon even as he worked with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in hopes of a lighter sentence.

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told.

Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.

It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.

holy hell. Paul Manafort held secret talks w/ Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in late March 2016. The month before (2/29/2016), he reached out to Trump via Tom Barrack to pitch himself as campaign chair. He was hired in March. Unpaid.

2/29/2016: Manafort pitches himself to Trump via Tom Barrack, writing in a memo “I really need to get to Trump.” March 2016: -Manafort meets Barrack at Montage hotel in Beverly Hills; discussed joining Trump campaign -Manafort secretly meets w/Assange -Manafort hired (3/28/2016)

Roger Stone was the one who convinced Trump to hire Paul Manafort. The idea of hiring Manafort to work unpaid? That was Roger Stone’s idea. This took place at some point in March 2016. The same month Manafort met with Julian Assange.

March 2016: Manafort/Assange meet. Also: 3/6: Papadopoulos joins campaign 3/14: Papadopoulos meets Joseph Mifsud 3/21: Trump ID’s Carter Page & Papadopoulos as foreign policy advisers 3/24: Papadopoulos sends email w/ subject line: Meeting w/ Russian Leadership — Including Putin

Caroline Orr Retweeted Caroline Orr

March 2016 (cont) 3/29: Manafort (who is broke & in debt to a bunch of oligarchs) agrees to work unpaid for the Trump campaign 3/31: Trump meets w/ his foreign policy advisers April 2016: -1st unreported contacts between Trump campaign & Russian officials

Caroline Orr added,

March 2016: Manafort/Assange meet. Also: 3/6: Papadopoulos joins campaign 3/14: Papadopoulos meets Joseph Mifsud…

April 2016 (cont): -Early April: Papadopoulos goes to Israel to discuss Russia policy -4/11: Manafort emails Konstantin Kilimnik: “How do we use to get whole? Has OVD operation seen?” (OVD = Oleg Deripaska) -Mifsud intros Papadopoulos to Ivan Timofeev (direct Russia connect.)

 

Ohhhhh@JuddLegumhas a very good brain & an excellent memory Scenario A: Manafort “flipped” to be Trump’s inside eyes & ears Scenario B: Prosecutors had Manafort on the lies they blew up the cooperation agreement Scenario C: A + B = C Scenario D: Manafort hiding something big

Judd LegumVerified account @JuddLegum

News that Manafort lied to Mueller reminds me of this story from last month. Even after the plea, Manafort stayed in touch with…

 

Also alternative scenario: Don McGahn spent 30+ hours with Mueller and @realDonaldTrump -thought- McGahn was “his Roy Cohn” since Michael Cohen flipped too Either way I’m going with A-D Specifically D: Manafort hiding something BIG, all road lead back to Trump Tower

Tertiary scenario: SCO Mueller et al knew Manafort/Trump play. Manafort engaged in witness tampering while on home confinement, he was remanded. SCO purposely fed bad info to Manafort knowing it would go to Trump Trump submits his written answers to SCO = Manafort deal gone

Meaning none of us really know. Anyone who says they have a inside source in Mueller’s team – they are totally lying to you. Mueller doesn’t leak, ever. He only speaks in legal filings. Hence we will know shortly what Manafort lied about So stay skeptical & frosty

Turns out I’m not the only one who’s thinking about the different layers a foot. 1) Flynn & Gates terminated their joint defense agreement with Trump 2) Manafort never did 3) @AshaRangappa_is WAY smarter than I am, so don’t take my word for possible scenarios, listen to her

Ok, let’s take a deep breath.  There’s a lot to unpack with Paul Manafort today.

First, remember yesterday I talked about a rumor floating around about Manafort keeping the joint defense agreement in place and used this to coordinate answers? (Daily Check-In 11/26/2018)

Yeah, that fucking happened.

I’m amazed, actually.  I’m amazed that not only did this hypothesis work out, but that at no point in this process did Manafort, Trump, or any of their lawyers say “Gee, isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think?”  Of course, this isn’t irony, but peculiarity.  At some point, none of these people stopped to ask “Why would Mueller and his team of legal eagles let us keep the defense agreement in place?  They made Rick Gates and Mike Flynn drop out.  Don’t they know that Manafort’s team will brief Trump the first chance they get?  This is either a colossal fuckup or a trap.”  If nobody stopped and said that this whole deal smelled fishy, then they might just be the most self-centered, sociopathic, narcissitic…

Now that I think about it, this makes perfect sense.  It was a well-laid trap, and probably telegraphed from a mile away because of Manafort’s insistence that he be allowed to stay part of the joint defense agreement.  Mueller and his team saw a possible opening, and gave him four things.

  1. A plea deal with enough booby traps in it to make a D&D rogue go nuts.
  2. The false sense that Paulie had outsmarted Mueller.
  3. A canary.  False information that they gave only to Manafort, so they could identify it when it comes around from someone else.
  4. Enough rope to hang himself, Trump, and everyone else involved.

I’d put $10 on Mueller using a canary here.  They briefed Manafort on a specific action they were going to take, or question they needed answered, and suddenly Trump’s team has the exact same info.  Meanwhile, what they told him was an easily provable lie, and Trump puts it down in a sworn statement.

The fucked up thing is, that might not even be the biggest Manafort story of the day.  The Guardian releases a story that Manafort met repeatedly with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, including once in March 2016 AFTER he offered to join the campaign.  Remember, he was brought on at Roger Stone’s insistence.  March 2016 was also after the DNC and Podesta hacks, too.  The GRU had the mails at this point, and were looking for a way to use them.  I don’t know if Assange knew that GRU had them before this meeting with Manafort or not, but he definitely knew after.  Either Manafort told Assange of their existence, or Manafort confirmed their existence with him.

Manafort was neck deep in  Wikileaks and Russia throughout the campaign, but most of it was at a distance, through intermediaries.  This puts Paul in the same room as a cutout for Russian Intelligence.  The same cutout that later passed on stolen information.

This creates a direct line between the hacked emails and Trump knowing about their existence before the June 9 meeting.

Speaking of conspiring with the Russians, here’s Roger and Jerome.  They took over the coordination of releasing the mails when it got too hot for Paul Manafort to do it himself.  That’s the problem with being the campaign chairman for the President: everyone knows your name.

Also, I don’t trust that statement of offense from Corsi.  Something feels off about this.  I don’t trust anything Corsi releases, and this just feels like a plant.  It could be an early draft that somehow made it’s way to Jay Sekulow in a brown envelope, but there’s something fishy about this.

Spicy agrees in this thread.

Take everything coming from Corsi/Rudy/Roger with a salt lick.  We need more than a grain for this shitstorm.

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

KHASHOGGI & SAUDI ARABIA

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

LOOK AT THEIR NAMES. LOOK AT WHERE THEY WERE ARRESTED. 2 International Cybercriminal Rings Dismantled & 8 Defendants Indicted for Causing Tens of Millions of Dollars in Losses in Digital Advertising Fraud Global Botnets Shut Down Following Arrests 1/

Aleksandr Zhukov, Boris Timokhin, Mikhail Andreev, Denis Avdeev, Dmitry Novikov, Sergey Ovsyannikov, Aleksandr Isaev and Yevgeniy Timchenko “Ovsyannikov was arrested last month in Malaysia; Zhukov was arrested earlier this month in Bulgaria; and Timchenko was arrested… 2/

… earlier this month in Estonia, all pursuant to provisional arrest warrants issued at the request of the United States. They await extradition. The remaining defendants are at large.” 3/

WE HAVE LOTS OF FRIENDS WHO HELPED US WITH THIS CASE. 4/

5/ Here’s the indictment, my lovelies:

Shall we read it together? Let’s! ruh roy they used computers in Texas. that’s bad. cuz..even if none of the humans doing the criming are in the US, their crimes now ARE.

They hacked other people’s computers to use them, and some of those computers were in EDNY. That was dumb. because now they are being indicted by EDNY Now look at where they all lived/are from: Russian Federation, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria. Oooh a corporate entity in Scotland

DoJ literally have the instructions the bosses gave to the employees to make the bots more “humanlike” to fool the computers into thinking the traffic was real. .

Lol DoJ has everything on these idiots. . .

Note how the criminals responded to the publication of the paper: they tried to delete evidence of their crimes. ?

We now turn to look at the other scheme: thought they could get away with attacking >1M US computers? nice try, eejits.

. “it’s safe in the cloud” okay, sure Jan.

Read paragraph 41(a). yikes. be glad you’re not that idiot.

The sheer number of victims in this case is astounding. you should seriously read the whole indictment, but I particularly love Count Eight, because of the “Overt Acts” description 🙂

Now we get to see some of the domains they were using 😊 kiss kiss, silly criminals. 😘 you’re toast. 😛

Not certain this is them but… A Mikhail Andreev follows a Boris Timokkin on GitHub. You’re welcome.

🤷‍♀️

wrote about adw0rd and methbot in December 2016

Why include this?  It’s important to not lose faith in the justice system.  Also, bots generating false webtraffic to generate revenue is just one of the tools used by the bad guys in this drama.  They generated millions in fake revenue by having their bots go to their pages and click on their advertisements.  Each time they got a click, the ad company would pay them.

This is one of the big problems with the internet.  An ad based system for revenue can be gamed, and those clicks are also used by companies to sell themselves on how much traffic they get and how popular they are.  The more traffic, the more advertisers will pay for space.

I’m reminded of a story from late 2016 and early 2017, about how Breitbart was one of the 10 most visited sites on the web.  Including porn.  That didn’t make sense to me in the slightest.  How was a relatively obscure news site, barely known by most people, generating so much traffic?  Sure, they had a bunch of clickbait stories, but there’s no logical reason why an Alt-Right news site should get more traffic than PornHub.  A few months later, BB’s traffic dropped like rock.  They went from from a Top 10 site to somewhere in the mid 50’s.  Today, they’re not in the top 68.

Why? Bots.  They allegedly performed fraud by having bots click on stories and generated ad revenue.  This increased traffic which increased revenue which fed into itself.  When they no longer had a need for the increased traffic after the election, the bots stopped.

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

CONGRESS

 

ELECTIONS

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

1/ What did we learn today? We learned that mueller has evidence that Stone, who was communicating with Trump, asked Corsi to ask WikiLeaks what they had. We also know Corsi sent Malloch (@peterjukes and I were just talking about him) to find out what Wiki fotnfrom GRU.

2/ Then we learned that a week later, Corsi told Stone Wiki had dirt on HRC that they were releasing in October 2016. So we have a direct link between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and Mueller has proof. (He wouldn’t ask without it)

3/ Then we learned Manafort’s plea agreement blew up because he was feeding intel from the Mueller investigation to Trump. We were wondering why Manafort didn’t signal his plea agreement by ending his Joint Defense Agreement. This is why. Seems like obstruction.

4/ Now we wonder why Stone or Corsi haven’t been indicted. Is Whitaker blocking, or was Mueller delaying the Manafort sentencing filing to wait for Trump’s answers to come in to see if they match? I think both. And if we Stone indictments get blocked,

5/ We could get a full explanation in the Manafort sentencing document likely coming in December. Whitaker can’t block that. And we would eventually learn Whitaker blocked it. More obstruction…

6/ And finally, don’t forget! Was Manafort promised a pardon in exchange for the intel swap? It’s only Tuesday, folks. If you’re not listening, it’s a good time to start! #beans

 

That’s it for Tuesday.  Damn.   This was a bit busy.  I’m sure Wednesday will be a quiet day, right?

Oh, what’s that?  Trump was rage tweeting memes at 2AM about jailing all of his enemies, and a major report came out about how the current Labor Secretary Alex Acosta gave Trump’s pedophile buddy Jeffrey Epstein a sweet deal and screwed over dozens of his victims?  Don’t worry, I’m sure by 5PM we’ll get something even more outrageous.

Like Greg Olear said, this why we don’t get enough sleep and drink too much.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

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