Daily Check-In 01/14/2019

Daily Check-In

Monday, January 14, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

NATO

 

Nunes

The Special Counsel’s Office and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are scrutinizing a meeting involving former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, one-time National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and dozens of foreign officials, according to three sources familiar with the investigations.

The breakfast event, which was first reported by The Daily Sabah, a pro-government Turkish paper, took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. at 8.30 a.m. on Jan. 18, 2017—two days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. About 60 people were invited, including diplomats from governments around the world, according to those same sources.

The breakfast has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Manhattan as part of their probe into whether the Trump inaugural committee misspent fundsand if donors tried to buy influence in the White House. The existence of that probe was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Special Counsel’s Office is also looking at the breakfast as part of its investigation into whether foreigners contributed money to the Trump inaugural fund and PAC by possibly using American intermediaries, as first reported by The New York Times. Robert Mueller’s team has asked Flynn about the event, according to two sources familiar with the Special Counsel’s Office questioning.

…

Pluvious Group, a consultancy that raised money for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign, helped with the event’s organization, according to two sources with knowledge of the breakfast. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“If you’re a prosecutor, all of the right players are there,” said former federal prosecutor Paul Pelletier, referring to the breakfast. “In a lot of ways breakfasts like this are totally normal. It happens all the time in Washington. So, they wouldn’t be investigating it if they weren’t following the money. The big question would be who is paying for it? It’s got to be part of the broader scheme of who is trying to use money to influence the White House.”

…

It’s not surprising that Nunes and Flynn found themselves together in the days before the inauguration. Nunes’ links to Flynn are substantial. During the 24-day period when Flynn served as Trump’s national security adviser, Flynn brought one of Nunes’ senior aides, the former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Derek Harvey, onto the staff of the National Security Council. Another former aide to Nunes’ committee, Michael Ellis, went to the White House counsel’s office. Ellis and a third Flynn aide, the NSC intelligence director Ezra Cohen-Watnick, reportedly fed Nunes information that Nunes presented as deriving from intelligence whistleblowers worried about inappropriate “unmasking” of Americans’ names from surveillance intercepts, such as Flynn’s. (Cohen-Watnick denies involvement.)

In February of 2017, as the possibility arose of Trump firing Flynn for misleading Vice President Mike Pence, Nunes told a reporter that he expected Flynn to keep his job. “It just seems like there’s a lot of nothing there,” Nunes told Bloomberg News.

Trump fired Flynn the next day. And Nunes became a rare voice defending the retired Army lieutenant general. “Washington, D.C. can be a rough town for honorable people, and Flynn—who has always been a soldier, not a politician—deserves America’s gratitude and respect for dedicating so much of his life to strengthening our national security,” Nunes said on Feb. 14, 2017. Flynn would plead guilty to lying to the FBI that December.

 

Trump’s Pooty Calls

THREAD: Has anyone noticed the very disturbing overlap between Trump’s insistence on preventing his own staff from learning about discussions with Putin at the Hamburg G20 meeting in July 2017 and how he handled initial revelations about the infamous Trump Tower meeting? 1/

Greg MillerVerified account @gregpmiller

NEW: After closed door mtg with Putin, Trump took his interpreter’s notes, told linguist not to reveal what had transpired to other administration officials. Pattern of concealing communications with Putin. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-has-concealed-details-of-his-face-to-face-encounters-with-putin-from-senior-officials-in-administration/2019/01/12/65f6686c-1434-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html?utm_term=.866a342cc660&wpisrc=al_post_exclusive__alert-exclusive–alert-national&wpmk=1 …

Consider the following timeline: on July 7–8, 2017,Trump attends the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany the site of his first face to face encounter with Putin. 2/

On the morning of July 7, 2017, the New York Times informs the White House–for the first time–that it has learned about the Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer with Russian government connections, Natalya Veselnitskaya. 3/

The New York Times asks the White House to comment. 4/

On the afternoon of July 7, 2017, Trump and Putin, accompanied only by Rex Tillerson, Sergei Lavrov and their interpreters, meet for 2 and 1/2 hours. 5/

We now know from @gregpmiller that after the meeting Trump seizes the US interpreter’s notes and tells her not to brief senior NSC or State Department aides about the conversation with Putin. https://wapo.st/2Fyrqtt?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.2dec17269030 … 6/

Later that evening on July 7, 2017, during the formal G20 summit dinner, Trump seeks out Putin for another conversation. Putin’s interpreter is the only other participant. 7/

The fact of this meeting is not publicly revealed until more than a week later after @ianbremmerhears about it from other G20 attendees. (The White House doesn’t officially confirm it until July 18, 2017.)http://reut.rs/2vfTTwi @steveholland18/

As Bremmer points out, Trump oddly doesn’t even inform his own staff afterwards that he’s had this second conversation with Putin. https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1084583168152428545 …9/

On the AF1 flight back to Washington the next day on July 8, 2017, Trump dictates the text of the now infamous, misleading statement (for Don Jr. to release) about the Trump Tower meeting. http://wapo.st/2vh7dmA?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.c483e459eca7 …@AshleyRParker@CarolLeonnig@PhilipRucker@thamburger 10/

Don Jr.’s statement to @nytimesemphasizes: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” at the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya 11/

The @nytimes story about the Trump Tower meeting appears later that same day (July 8, 2017) https://nyti.ms/2uWPOMw @Jo_Becker@mattapuzzo@adamgoldmanNYT12/

On July 11, 2017 the same @nytimes team breaks the story that Don Jr was told in advance that Veselnitskaya intended to provide dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign at the behest of the Russian government. Don Jr. replies: “I love it.” https://nyti.ms/2u4Ly0W 13/

On July 19, 2017 Trump repeats the false assertion that he talked to Putin about adoption in a conversation with @peterbakernyt,@nytmike and @maggieNYThttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html?module=inline … 14/

In the same interview, Trump also floats the idea that there was nothing inappropriate about his senior-most campaign officials meeting with foreign emissaries who wanted to help his campaign. “Who wouldn’t have taken a meeting like that?” 15/

All of this begs the question: What did Trump and Putin actually discuss at that impromptu one-on-one dinner meeting at the Hamburg G20 on July 7, 2017? 16/

Moreover, why did they huddle together by themselves within hours of the White House learning that the at-that-point-still-secret Trump Tower meeting between Trump, Jr. and the Russians was about to become public? 17/

Put another way, shortly after the New York Times reached out to the White House to ask about a secret meeting with the Russians, Trump himself sought a secret meeting with the Russians. 18/

h/t Former federal prosecutor who helped compile this timeline and series of as-yet unanswered questions END

 

 

Barr

 

Manafort

 

Trump’s “I am not a crook” Moment

 

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

KHASHOGGI & SAUDI ARABIA

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

Clemson Dinner

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY

 

STUDENT ISSUES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

CONGRESS

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

In 1992, the Soviet Union broke up, melted down its Mob, spy services, and government and forged a single weapon. There was no historical precedent. It took us 25 years to catch up as they used Mob money to corrupt institutions at a lightning pace. But they’re busted.

Oh, and as climate change continued and clean energy tech advanced, Russia got extra help from Saudi, Qatar, Iran, Turkey, and its Cold War drug dealing partners in South America and Asia. It took a lot of effort to clean up.

Especially since NBC gave a TV show for ten years to a guy they knew was actually not a billionaire and gave him eight zillion dollars of free PR. Which then Russia took advantage of, since he laundered money for their Mob.

The US media was either incompetent or complicit, focused on a single email server from Hillary Clinton rather than all the Russian oligarch money EVERYWHERE and then the Mob front from Queens accidentally got elected. And then the media continued to massively screw up.

But 29 NATO intel agencies and global law enforcement had decades of files on the conspirators, and they were idiots who used consumer-grade electronics versus nation-states, giving prosecutors mountains of court-ready evidence. And now they go down. FIN.

 

 

That’s it for Monday.  It’s been a busy day, so I didn’t have as much time to go into all of the areas I wanted to. But, like I said in Daily Check-In 01/11/2019, we’re entering the “News for the Masses/Confirmation for the Junkies” phase.  Out of the three major stories that broke, we’ve seen on these pages before.

We’ve seen Trump’s threats to leave NATO multiple times, but we haven’t seen them in the same articles asking if he was a Russian spy.  We yelled from the rooftops that he was a Russian Agent when he did that before.  Now, it’s nice to see everyone else catching up and asking the same questions.

We’ve talked about Devin Nunes’s breakfast meeting with Michael Flynn and the Turks (2018 Retrospective), but it’s nice to see that Mueller’s looking into it.  If Mueller’s looking into it, then Dipshit Cowpoke is screwed.  Especially if Flynn flipped as hard as we suspect.

As far as Trump charging himself ridiculous prices, of course we saw this coming from a mile away.  We’ve talked about this a few times, and with as corrupt as he is, there wasn’t a chance that he wouldn’t take a chance at the largest potential pay day in his life.  He ordered his inauguration to book his hotel, then had his hotel charge above market rates for below market services.  His hotel would then pocket the difference.  It’s a classic corruption deal that Trump has pulled many times, and his evil crotchfruit engage in the same tricks.  They think it makes them smart.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Published by noneofthisisnormal

Published

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s