Tag: Politics

Daily Check-In 07/13/2018

Friday, July 13th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION: MUELLER INDICTS 12 RUSSIAN MILITARY OFFICERS THAT ARE MEMBERS OF GRU

On Friday afternoon, Special Counselor Robert Mueller filed a Grand Jury indictment against 12 members of Russia’s GRU, their elite military intelligence unit, for their actions against the United States during the 2016 Presidential Election.  These actions include spearphishing attacks against Hilary Clinton and members of her campaign, rerouting campaign funds, stealing their analytic data, and attacking the state voter registries in an attempt to update and modify voter data.

Indictment Against 12 Russians, for your reading pleasure.

The following men are named in the indictment.  As described in previous posts like Daily Check-In 04/10/2018, these men constitute Cozy Bear.

  • Viktor Borisovich Netyksho
  • Boris Alekseyevich Antonov
  • Dmitry Sergeyevich Badin
  • Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov
  • Aleksey Viktorovich Lukashev
  • Sergey Aleksandrovich Morgachev
  • Nikolay Yuryevich Kozachek
  • Pavel Vyacheslavovich Yershov
  • Artem Andreyevich Malyshev
  • Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk
  • Aleksey Aleksandrovich Potemkin
  • Anatoly Sergeyevich Kovalev

Dutch agencies provide crucial intel about Russia’s interference in US-elections (From the original Dutch).  We covered these breaches by the Dutch on Daily Check-In 01/26/2018 and Daily Check-In 01/25/2018, and how the Dutch pwned GRU.

Now, they are named as part of the conspiracy.

Among their activities, Cozy Bear used key loggers to get passwords for senior members of the campaign.  In April 2016, they spearphished a female employee using an email with a URL shortener (think Bit.ly links) and used that password info to get access.  Then, they followed that up with screenshots of her credentials, communications, and the like.  I’d put $20 on the female employee in this case being Huma Abedin.  (Ever wonder how HRC’s emails ended up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop AFTER it was inspected by the FBI and placed in their evidence locker?) Daily Check-In 03/06/2018.

The indictment also shows Cozy Bear accessing the DCCC Exchange server to steal their mails, and using access from the DCCC to access the Democratic National Committee.  They were also caught deleting logs and covering their tracks.

Cozy Bear also hacked into the DNC’s cloud service in September 2016.

The indictment also includes Cozy Bear, posing as Guccifer 2.0, delivering stolen information to an “online source of political views” and to a reporter in August 2016.  This is the WikiLeaks/Glenn Greenwald connection.

In paragraph 44 of the indictment, Guccifer 2.0 shared Twitter DM’s with a person close to the Trump Campaign.

44.
…On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, “thank u for writing back . . . do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted?” On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, “please tell me if i can help u anyhow . . . it would be a great pleasure to me.” On or about September 9, 2016, the Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0, referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person, “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.” The person responded, “[p]retty standard.”

Roger Stone.  We were on that back on Daily Check-In 11/3/2017, but for more proof, check out the RiotWomen post in the Rumor Mill section.  She links to a video of Roger Stone in an interview where the THESE MESSAGES ARE SHOWN WORD FOR WORD.

Finally, for anyone wondering why the GOP has been so anxious about this coming out, Paragraph 43 Section a shows that a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives reached out to Guccifer 2.0 and requested stolen documents.  Cozy Bear, posing as Guccifer 2.0, responded and sent the candidate what they wanted.  There’s speculation about who this candidate was, but Caroline Orr asked Matt Gaetz why he was trying so hard to get this investigation shut down.  The Matt Gaetz-Roger Stone connection was first reported on Daily Check-In 12/13/2017.

 

The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

—United States of America v. Internet Research Agency et. al.

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Goddamn them all.

Goddamn the hackers. Goddamn the journalists who laundered the pilfered material. Goddamn any of them who treated Roger Stone as a source, or as a cute prankster, instead of the nasty vandal he’s always been. Goddamn the pundits who chortled over the pilfered material. Goddamn the politicians who profited from the hacking. Goddamn the politicians who minimized the hacking. Goddamn the politicians who still stonewall about the hacking. Goddamn the “activists” who ranted about “McCarthyism” when anybody pointed out that the 2016 presidential election had been poisoned from afar. Goddamn them all as traitors, if not to the American nation, then to everything that ever made that nation worth the bother.

I’ve been saying for a while that things are gonna get crazy, but they truly are.  Historic levels of crazy.  We’ll be telling our grandchildren about this time type of crazy.

What else happened today in the Russian investigation?

Strzok

Fallout from Peter Strzok’s testimony continues to reverberate.  Anyone who watched knows the definition of a witch hunt.  These representatives showed that they were more interested and worried about chasing a narrative of bias or investigating an elderly woman’s handling of emails than they were in investigating an Act of War perpetrated against the United States of America.

 

Possible Rosenstein Impeachment

Well ain’t this rich.

Mark Meadows, the head of the Tea Party coalition called the Freedom Caucus tried to introduce an impeachment resolution against Rod Rosenstein.  I say tried because as Mark was making his way to the floor to introduce this measure, the Deputy Attorney General began his press conference.

Literally.  He pulled an about-face on his attempt cause he realized the optics would suck if he tried to have the DAG removed from office right after announcing charges against Russians who attacked this country.

 

Non-Traitorous Responses

If there isn’t an investigation into this candidate asking for information from the GRU by the end of next week, then everyone, EVERYONE involved in not pushing it forward is aiding and abetting treason.

 

30,000 Emails

So Trump’s call for Russia to hack his opponent during the election—which his defenders dismissed as a “joke”—was taken very seriously indeed by Russian hackers. He asked them to, and they did. If you are not yet convinced something went very, very wrong in the 2016 election, you might ask yourself whether at this point you’d be perfectly fine with the president shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.

Paragraph 22 describes the events of July 27th, 2016.  This was the day that Trump asked Russia during a press conference to find the missing emails.

THAT’S WHAT THEY FUCKING DID.

For the first time, Cozy Bear directly attacked Hilary’s emails.  Before that, they went after people around her, her campaign, and everyone related to this, but not Hilary Clinton directly.  Now, they went after her.

The funny thing is, the only email server that the Russians didn’t get in to was the one in her basement.

 

What’s Next, Who’s Next?

Paragraph 7

The Conspirators also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release additional stolen documents through a website maintained by an organization (“Organization 1”), that had previously posted documents stolen from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S. government. The Conspirators continued their U.S. election-interference operations through in or around November 2016.

Organization 1 is WikiLeaks.

Roger Stone is one of the U.S. persons that communicated with Guccifer 2.0.

Jill Stein coordinated her actions with Russian Intelligence.

Brad Parscale worked with them to scrub data.

Not to mention all of the connections between these Russians, Facebook, and the Cambridge Analytica crew.

 

Trump’s Reaction

Trump was told about these indictments early this week.  His immediate reaction was “Witch Hunt”, “Blame Obama”, and “No Americans”.

 

COHEN AND OTHER TRUMP CORRUPTION

The failing Toronto project has been in the news the last couple days, and rightfully so.  Expect it and the money laundering to come racing forward in the next few weeks.

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

United Kingdom

 

NATO

 

Foes

 

 

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

PENCE

 

SCOTUS

 

TRADE WAR

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

ELECTION 2018

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

RUMOR MILL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s it for Friday.  Things are gonna get crazy going forward.  Things are strange now.  They’re so strange, I need to use 9/11 as a comparison.

I’m old enough to remember where I was on September 11, 2001, and how the country reacted and came together.  Sure, there were a few people arguing for patience, prudence, and to take things slow, but almost everyone was on board with doing something.  The United States was attacked on our home soil.  Thousands of people died that morning.  The country galvanized behind our leadership, and within weeks we had troops on the ground in Afghanistan looking for the people responsible.

When I look at how we’ve responded to Russia attacking us, I’m disgusted.

Imagine if instead of organizing the military to attack, asking for NATO to invoke Article 5, or call up troops from reserves, President Bush instead decided to do nothing.  Imagine if he avoided going to New York to view the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center, and instead of blaming Al Qaeda, he insisted that the towers fell on their own, then said “Maybe it was some drunken pilot who got lost?” Imagine for a moment that reporters dug through the Bush family history to see all of the hidden business ties they had with Osama Bin Laden, and that Bush once visited him, and there was a rumored sex tape of him watching very young women pee on a bed that Bill Clinton slept on.

Imagine, for a moment, that George Bush fired the head of the FBI for the official reason that he was mean to Bill Clinton, but in reality because that director was looking into accusations that Bush’s children had been laundering money and working with terrorists for years.

Imagine if George W. Bush cozied up to Osama Bin Laden, and went out of his way to execute Bin Laden’s agenda for destroying the western world.

Imagine if every time a reporter called out Bush, he called it a lie, an untruth, or fake.

Imagine if Fox News played on a 24×7 loop damaging pieces on Bill and Hilary Clinton while rest of the news channels covered the various crimes he did.  Ok, that part actually happened.

Imagine if, instead of calling for hearings into the 9/11 attack, Congress instead decided to spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars prosecuting Bill Clinton’s affair with an intern, two years after he left office.

Imagine if the greatest attack on this country since World War II led to no actions, no talk of retribution, no talk of justice, and complete inaction from Washington.

Imagine how pissed off you’d be if you saw this happening.

Imagine how mad you’d be if you lost loved ones in the Towers, but this country did nothing to bring Bin Laden to justice.

Imagine how mad you’d be if you had to listen to your family members call you names and attack you for wondering what the terrorists had on Bush.

Imagine how furious you’d be at seeing Bush go out of his way to defend Al Qaeda, while Americans suffered here at home.

Imagine the righteous anger you’d justifiably feel every time you saw “President” George W. Bush walk through the Rose Garden, knowing that he’s refusing to do his job.

That’s how pissed off I am every day.

The only difference between 9/11 and Russia 2016 was that 9/11 was a physical attack that people can see.  2016 wasn’t.

It was worse.

2016 was a psychological attack.  It was an attack on the foundations of democracy and freedom itself.  It was an attack against our better angels, our better natures.

If Russia had launched physical attack with the same results, we would have been at war with them within a week.  NATO would have enacted Article 5, and we would be in the middle of World War 3.

The fact that Russia still exists pisses me off.  They should be broken into 15 separate states, their assets seized, and the bulk of their economy crippled.

But that’s all in good time.  The next steps include indicting the low-level Americans that worked with the Russians to pass information to and from Trump.  Roger Stone, Brad Parscale, and their ilk are next up.  I wouldn’t expect any members of the Trump family or politicians to get indicted yet.  Maybe some staffers of Congress or the Trump White House, but none of the principles yet.  Some of those low-level people will be given a choice; flip or go to prison.  Even Roger Stone would get that choice.  If he can hand deliver Donald Trump and Mike Pence, he might not get the death penalty.

Finally, I love the timing of these indictments.  On Monday, Trump is scheduled to meet one on one with Putin.  Before, that whole thing stunk like rotten fish.  Now, it smells like week-old diapers.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 07/12/2018

Thursday, July 12th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

manafortmugshot

 

Peter Strzok and Congress

This was a complete partisan shitshow, but Strzok delivered, including his own attacks on Gowdy, Jordan, and Goodlatte.  Watch the video of his dressing down Trey Gowdy.  It should go up there with “Have you no decency, sir?”

A Russian-American lobbyist who attended the infamous meeting with Trump campaign officials at Trump Tower in June 2016 has filed a libel suit against one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics.

Rinat Akhmetshin filed the civil case Thursday against investor Bill Browder in federal court in Washington, alleging that Browder repeatedly defamed him by labeling him as a Russian intelligence operative.

The suit cites a series of statements Browder made last July on Twitter and in interviews with news outlets, calling Akhmetshin a “Russian intelligence asset” and “a Russian GRU officer.” The GRU is Russia’s main military intelligence agency focused overseas.

Most of the disputed statements relate to allegations by Browder that when Akhmetshin and others met the Trump officials in 2016, the lobbyist and businessman was acting on behalf of Putin in some capacity.

“In my opinion you had a member of Putin’s secret police directly meeting with the son of the future next president of the United States asking to change U.S. sanctions policy crucial to Putin,” Browder told Business Insider, in one example noted in the suit.

The suit insists that Browder’s claims were false.

 

COHEN

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer who is under federal investigation, bought a $6.7 million apartment in April in a new Manhattan skyscraper that is being developed by two of Mr. Trump’s longtime friends, according to people familiar with the transaction.

Located at 111 Murray Street in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, the project is being developed by a partnership of real estate companies Fisher Brothers, Witkoff and New Valley. New Valley is headed by Howard Lorber, a real estate developer and longtime friend of Mr. Trump. Steve Witkoff, the founder of Witkoff, is also a longtime friend of Mr. Trump.

On the 19th floor, Mr. Cohen’s unit is about 2,697 square feet, with four bedrooms and 4½ bathrooms, according to listing website StreetEasy. It had been on the market for $7.475 million, according to the website. Amenities in the building include a Turkish bath, a private dining room, a 75-foot lap pool, a fitness center, an arcade and a concierge service that books private aircraft.

The glassy condominium project launched sales in the summer of 2015, and more than 70% of its 157 units were sold as of May, Lauren Witkoff, an executive vice president at Witkoff, said at the time.

The unit went into contract on November 2017, public records show, and the deal closed in early April 2018. Mr. Cohen’s purchase is the only closing in the building thus far, according to public records.

Mr. Cohen financed the purchase by securing a $3.5 million short-term mortgage from the developers, rather than getting financing from a bank, according to public records. While developers occasionally offer to finance purchases in their projects, such developer financing is unusual in Manhattan, real-estate attorneys say. People familiar with the deal said Mr. Cohen would have had trouble securing traditional financing because the unit did not yet meet the city’s legal requirements for occupancy.

People familiar with the transaction said Mr. Cohen had been in a rush to close due to an impending tax event. He’d sold a unit at New York’s Trump World Tower for roughly $3.3 million in October 2017, and needed to reinvest the profits within a fixed time frame to avoid incurring immediate taxes on the sale, they said. Mr. Cohen and his wife personally guaranteed the loan, according to people familiar with the deal. Mr. Cohen didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Cohen recently hired attorney Guy Petrillo to represent him in a federal investigation into his business dealings. Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating Mr. Cohen on suspicion of bank fraud, campaign-finance violations and other possible crimes, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported. Mr. Cohen hasn’t been charged with any crime.

A spokesman for the listing brokerage Douglas Elliman declined to comment.

 

STORMYGATE: IS THIS SOME KIND OF BUST?

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

NATO

 

Great Britain

 

Russia and North Korea

 

 

 

TRADE WAR

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

FACEBOOK AND FAKE NEWS

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE: THE SACHA BARON COHEN EDITION

Sacha Baron Cohen is seemingly breaking his silence on the controversy swirling around his Showtime prank series to fire back at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The comedian retweeted a new Twitter account that’s apparently his new “citizen journalist” character, “Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., PhD.” The character has a truther website called “truthbrary” that’s full of Alex Jones-like conspiracy theories (such as “Hillary is a satanist — Illuminati defector” and “The Military has been Implanting Mind Controlled Neural Dust to remotely control their victims” and “16 more reasons to question 9/11”).

On Twitter, Ruddick posted an open letter to Palin saying he never said he was a military veteran as Palin claimed, but rather “I was in the service — not military, but United Parcel, and I only fought for my country once — when I shot a Mexican who came onto my property.”

He also adds, “I have always admired you for TELLING THE TRUTH about Obama’s birth certificate and the location of Russia. But ma’am, I do believe you have been hit by a bulls–t grenade and are bleeding fake news.” He included the hashtags #MAGA, #buildthewall and #boycottsachacohen.

 

THE FCC

 

SCOTUS

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

JIM JORDAN

Before Jordan’s involvement in the story broke on July 3rd, one of Jordan’s accusers, Mike DiSabato interviewed Hellickson on videotape. The video has not been publicly released but it’s been shown to multiple news outlets, including CNN and USAToday. On that tape, Hellickson admits to precisely what Jordan is vociferously denying.

On the tape, Hellickson said that many of the wrestlers were “uncomfortable” with Dr. Strauss’s behavior and that he had confronted Strauss about it. There was Strauss’s lingering in the showers with wrestlers and fondling them during weigh-ins.

…

Nine wrestlers have come forward to say Jordan knew about the abuse. Two of them say they told him directly of specific instances in which Strauss has touched them inappropriately. Hellickson is basically trapped – because of what he said on the video before he realized Jordan would deny everything – into conceding that he knew about Strauss’s behavior and knew it was serious enough to confront him and bring his concerns to administrators. Given Hellickson’s admissions, Jordan’s claim that he was simply in the dark are absurd on their face.

 

#METOO

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

ENVIRONMENT

 

RUMOR MILL

 

 

That’s it for Thursday.  I don’t expect to have Friday posted until sometime Saturday morning.  I’m still getting used to this new schedule, new duties stuff.

Friday is big.  It’s 12:24 EST, and Mueller just indicted 12 Russian hackers for their attack on the DNC.  Right while Trump was meeting Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

Daily Check-In 07/11/2018

Wednesday, July 11th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Paul Manafort might just be legitimately mentally handicapped.  Most people in prison would assume that their phone calls are being monitored, because THEY ARE BEING MONITORED! How many people have been busted for ordering hits on witnesses from inside prison?  Many.  How did they get caught? Audio recordings of their phone calls.

By the way, the judge that ordered Manafort to another prison was the same one the Trump Cult was dry humping a couple months back for being tough on Mueller’s arguing lawyer Michael Dreeben (Daily Check-In 05/04/2018).

 

COHEN

 

IMMIGRATION

 

STORMYGATE

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Bechard sued Broidy and the two lawyers after he stopped making payments to her, purportedly because Davidson breached the non-disclosure agreement by telling Avenatti about it. Avenatti said outside the hearing Tuesday that he had done absolutely nothing wrong.

California Superior Court Judge Ernest Hiroshige left intact the 20-day conditional seal on the case that another judge ordered on June 6. Hiroshige ordered Bechard’s lawyer to provide a copy of the complaint to Avenatti and gave the parties three days to file briefs whether any additional requests to seal or unseal the case should be handled on an expedited basis.

The case is Bechard v. Broidy, BC712913, California Superior Court, Los Angeles County (Los Angeles).

Just rcvd word that my client @StormyDaniels was arrested in Columbus Ohio whole performing the same act she has performed across the nation at nearly a hundred strip clubs. This was a setup & politically motivated. It reeks of desperation. We will fight all bogus charges. #Basta

She was arrested for allegedly allowing a customer to touch her while on stage in a non sexual manner! Are you kidding me? They are devoting law enforcement resources to sting operations for this? There has to be higher priorities!!! #SetUp #Basta

 

COLD WAR 2.0

Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer issued this statement as President Trump began the NATO Summit and Putin meetings:

“President Trump’s brazen insults and denigration of one of America’s most steadfast allies, Germany, is an embarrassment.  His behavior this morning is another profoundly disturbing signal that the President is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies.

“If the President leaves the Putin meeting without ironclad assurances and concrete steps toward a full cessation of Russian attacks on our democracy, this meeting will not only be a failure – it will be a grave step backward for the future of the international order and global security.  A successful meeting means real action, now.

“The President needs to remember that, as Commander-in-Chief, his duty is to protect the American people from foreign threats, not to sell out our democracy to Putin.”

 

TRADE WAR

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA AND FACEBOOK

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

SCOTUS

 

PROTECT PROTESTS

 

NAME AND SHAME

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

JIM JORDAN

 

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

ASBESTOS?

 

RUMOR MILL

I’m looking for the original version of the FEATHERS chart.  Hopefully I won’t have to reverse engineer it.

 

That’s it for Wednesday.  Thursday, Trump makes his way to London after Brussels and Peter Strozk testifies publicly before the House Oversight Committee.  I expect those to be polite, evenhanded…

Wait, the head of the committee threatened Strozk with a contempt charge for refusing to answer a question about an ongoing investigation?

Nevermind.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Check-In 07/10/2018

Tuesday, July 10th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

 

COHEN

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

TRADE WAR

 

SCOTUS

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

JIM JORDAN

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

RACISM

 

NAME AND SHAME

 

TRUMP HATES WOMEN

 

AND HIS DRIVER, TOO…

 

ELECTION 2018

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

 

That’s it for Tuesday.  I’m posting this on Wednesday morning, because that’s when I got to it.

Mike Flynn has a court date, Paul Manafort gets transferred to a new jail, the BBC talks about Trump’s rapey past, and CNN is finally going after Rudy’s foreign ties.  It’s about damn time.

I’m not sure how this week is going to unfold, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see an uptick in stories about Trump metaphorically slobbering all over Putin’s dick while he’s in Europe for the NATO summit.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur