Tag: Politics

Daily Check-In 05/18/2018

Friday, May 18th and the weekend.  There were five major stories that broke since Friday, on top of the normal noise.

10 high school students murdered in yet another shooting.  This time in Houston.

Trump and Nunes try to expose an intelligence source to try to protect their asses.

Donnie Jr. met with Erik Prince and George Nader, representing the Saudis, who offered help during the 2016 election in order to kill the Iran Deal.

Trump calls for an “investigation” into the “informant”, and Rosenstein calls his bluff.

Prince Harry marries Meghan Markle, an American actress.

Oh, and Roger Stone’s time in the barrel is almost upon us.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION: CROSSFIRE HURRICANE

Burning the Source

F.B.I. officials concluded they had the legal authority to open the investigation after receiving information that Mr. Papadopoulos was told that Moscow had compromising information on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” months before WikiLeaks released stolen messages from Democratic officials. As part of the operation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, the F.B.I. also began investigating Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his future national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

A couple days back (Daily Check-In 05/16/2018), the New York Times mostly confirmed what I’ve described before; there was an FBI informant working with the Trump Campaign.  We’ve got some new details.

The Right Wing Media will run with the narrative that the FBI planted this informant to spy on the Trump Campaign.

Bullshit.

What really happened is the informant is a long time FBI, Counterintelligence, and MI6 source with known connections to the Russians involved.  They heard about the Russians offering dirt and assistance to the Trump Campaign, so he (I don’t know if it is a he, but I’m using that pronoun for this argument) looks into the Russians.  While investigating the Russians, he discovered that at least three members of the Trump Campaign were working with the Russians.  Actively.  Voluntarily.  And the work they were doing wasn’t just a small favor here or there.  What he saw shocked him.  There’s only one word to describe what he saw.

Treason.

The source was investigating the Russians, trying to slow them down and see what they knew, but he instead saw people like George Papadopoulos and Carter Page actively sharing sensitive information with the Russians.

Fast forward to this weekend, where Trump, along with Dipshit Cowpoke Devin Nunes, are trying to force the DOJ to identify the informant that spoke to at least three members of the campaign.  This is not only illegal (See Valerie Plame), but extremely dangerous to the source, anyone who knows them, national security, and our relationship with Great Britain.  All so Dotard can try to save his ass for a few more minutes.

Donnie Jr., Erik Prince, and the Saudis

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump Jr. met during the 2016 campaign with a private military contractor and an adviser to Middle Eastern leaders, both of whom have since become a focus of investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller, a lawyer for President Donald Trump’s eldest son said Saturday.

Erik Prince, an informal adviser to the Trump campaign and former head of Blackwater, and George Nader, a veteran operative who has advised the United Arab Emirates and helped American contractors secure business in the Middle East, met with Trump Jr. at Trump Tower to discuss a social media proposal, lawyer Alan Futerfas said in a statement.

As we’ve long suspected, it’s not just the Russians that the Trump’s accepted aid from during the campaign.  Time to throw the Saudis in the mix.  Their terms were in exchange for assisting Trump, if he became POTUS he would rescind the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Why?

The Saudis hate the Iranians.  Saudi Arabia, especially the ruling religious faction, is Hanafi Sunni, while Iran’s populace is mostly Ismaili Shiite, per this map.  There’s a time and a place for the breakdown of the differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but that is not now, and not here.  Short version, think of it like the Catholic/Protestant split, but earlier on in the history of Islam.

These countries hate each other for religious reasons, which makes their hatred “holy” and “sacred.”  In other words, intractable, stupid, and likely to cause collateral damage.

I’m wondering, if we lined up the timing of these meetings, along with when Trump started campaigning against the Iran Deal, how well does that line up?

What I’m not wondering about is how much Mueller knows about this.  Notice the second name in that text block.  That’s right, everyone’s 4th or 5th Cooperating Witness, George Nader.

Trump demands an “Investigation”

This could have been an ugly one, but once again Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein pulled an end-around.  He included this “investigation” in the scope of an ongoing investigation by the Office of the Inspector General, which is expected to wrap up after Mueller’s work wraps up.

Roger Stone

Mueller’s subpoenaing everyone and anyone who so much as texted Roger Stone.  If this pattern sounds familiar, he did the same thing with Paul Manafort before charging him.

Roger’s days of freedom are numbered.

Senate

Scope of the Corruption

What is Mueller Doing?

 

#NEVERAGAIN

I’m not sure what else can be said.  Another preventable tragedy, in the only country in the world where this happens.  Once again, everyone lines up for their battles.  The ammosexuals go apeshit and find every excuse possible as to why it’s not the easy access to guns that led to another group of parents burying their children.

There’s a phrase I heard a lot as a kid.  “You can’t have freedom without responsibility.”  They want the freedom to own arsenals, but none of the personal responsibility and societal responsibility needed to make sure they don’t fall in the wrong hands.

This must end.  If that means voting out each and every politician with an A-rating from the NRA, so be it.

 

ROYAL WEDDING

Yes, I admit it, I watched the Royal Wedding over the weekend.  I found it interesting, and entertaining.  They seem like they might actually be nice people.

What I found really cool during the buildup and coverage was that all of the questions about whether or not this was proper or acceptable all had to do with her being an American, and none about her race.  Aside from a few racist trolls online, it was a non-issue.

That makes feel … good.

 

COHEN/STORMYGATE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS:  TRUMP HATES WOMEN, AMAZON

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

“He’s the president of the United States,” the former mayor of New York City said earlier this month. “We can assert the same privileges other presidents have.”

But during a live interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo Friday, Giuliani was forced to confront remarks he made in 1998 that appear to undercut that very assertion. “You’ve got to do it,” Giuliani told Charlie Rose when asked about a presidential subpoena in 1998. “I mean, you don’t have a choice. There is a procedure for handling that.”

“That’s extremely unfair what you’re doing right now,” Giuliani complained as the clip played on a split screen. “This is the reason people don’t come on this show.” He later called the network “disgusting.”

One of the great things about comedy, and especially satire, is that one can say things that they could never get away with in regular conversation.

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

RUMOR MILL

Something that didn’t escape the attention of a few people was how quickly the NRA responds after a school shooting, and how overwhelming their “supporters” act.  Not just the speed, but it’s the coordination of the response that’s creepy.  Within minutes of the killer being identified, there were hundreds of fake accounts on Facebook pushing doctored photos of him wearing HRC swag.  Hundreds in just a few minutes.  Even with most of those accounts being deleted almost immediately, enough got through to reverberate this message through the echo chamber.  Then, on petitions for or against gun control, hundreds if not thousands of comments in favor of the NRA’s position are copypasta.  These actions don’t include the “official” rapid response measures from the likes of Oliver North and Dana Loesch spreading their lies and deceit.

One user creating a hoax is one thing.  Hundreds of accounts pushing the same hoax within minutes is coordination.

 

That’s it for today.  The last few days kicked my ass, so if I don’t have an article up for Monday, I needed to rest.  I’ll try to get something up if a big story breaks, but I might take it slow, and add a little extra to Tuesday’s article.

That being said, expect Monday to be a clusterfuck.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 05/17/2018

Thursday, May 17th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The former son-in-law of Paul Manafort, the one-time chairman of President Donald Trump’s campaign, has cut a plea deal with the Justice Department that requires him to cooperate with other criminal probes, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Jeffrey Yohai, COME ON DOWN!  YOU’RE THE NEXT CONTESTANT ON LET’S MAKE A DEAL!

Yohai is Paul Manafort’s former son-in-law, and was a business partner of his on some of Manafort’s real estate/money laundering deals.

Yohai has pled guilty to undisclosed charges that remain under seal.  This is part of the continuing effort to flip Manafort.  Not that I think they need him, but it will make taking down Trump easier, and won’t require burning Intel sources to do so.

$20 says it wasn’t Ghostbusters.

A Russian plane linked to the country’s government flew into the Seychelles the day prior to a 2017 meeting now under review by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, according to the airport flight data obtained by NJ Advance Media.

Mueller’s team is examining a series of meetings that took place in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, as part of its broader investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

 

COHEN:  FOLLOW THE MONEY & STORMYGATE

From the interview clip, Avenatti’s team has just about finished vetting two women’s stories that match Stormy’s to a T, and there are others in the preliminary stages.

President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen has reportedly confided in friends that he’s at his wit’s end with federal investigations into his business dealings, Vanity Fair reported Wednesday.

According to two people familiar with Cohen’s thinking who spoke to Vanity Fair, Cohen is “fuming” over Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti’s release of information about his bank records and has grown weary of all the news coverage surrounding his attempts to sell access to Trump after the 2016 election. Cohen has reportedly confided in friends that he “just can’t take this anymore” and is focused on protecting his family, whom he thinks is suffering because federal investigators want to get to Trump, a friend told Vanity Fair.

I only see two ways out for Cohen.  Either he flips on Trump, or swallows a bullet.

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

They’re more worried about leaks describing how terrible they are, then they are worried about not communicating with each other and solving the country’s problems.

#NEVERAGAIN

I have even worse news coming in the Friday post.  Looks like another school shooting just took place in Texas.  I’ll have more details on the next post.

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

Why, for the love of fuck, does anyone still give a flying rats ass what Rudy Giuliani says?  He’s either senile, a corrupted lying snake, on the take, secretly working to compromise Trump’s team, or a combination of the above.

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

BLUE WAVE

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for today. Well, yesterday. I was a little under the weather, and needed to catch up on sleep. Sometimes I need a whole 5 or 6 hours.

Friday’s update will likely be posted on Saturday morning. I also need to update some other pages, thanks to the news about Yohai.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 05/16/2018

Wednesday, May 16th.  Remember yesterday (Daily Check-In 05/15/2018 ) I said the following:

Tomorrow’s post will be pretty light.  At least, that’s the plan.  Watch tomorrow be the day that shit goes sideways with Ice Cube capping some fool from QIA and Mike Pence gets busted for having an underage black boyfriend.

If that does happen, I don’t know if I should apologize or not.

Dude, I’m sorry.  Today’s been a little crazy.  And by “a little crazy”, I mean a complete and total clusterfuck.  By 4PM EST, we’ve got Cohen asking Qatar for bribes, Senate Judiciary dropping transcripts and evidence pertaining to the June 9 meeting, Senate Intel coming out saying that the Russians helped Trump, the Kremlin used the NRA to get to Trump, Trump admitting to paying Cohen for Stormy, and Mueller subpoenaing Roger Stone’s social media adviser.

In the evening, the Office of Government Ethics referred Trump’s financial disclosure to the Department of Justice for investigation as to whether this constitutes a felony, Chris Wylie from Cambridge Analytica testified before the Senate today, and Ronan Farrow broke that Michael Avenatti got Cohen’s financial info from a whistleblower who leaked one SAR because two other SARs disappeared.

Oh, by the way, there was a mole in the Trump Campaign.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

The agents summarized their highly unusual interview and sent word to Washington on Aug. 2, 2016, two days after the investigation was opened. Their report helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation. But at the time, a small group of F.B.I. officials knew it by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane.

The name, a reference to the Rolling Stones lyric “I was born in a crossfire hurricane,” was an apt prediction of a political storm that continues to tear shingles off the bureau. Days after they closed their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, agents began scrutinizing the campaign of her Republican rival. The two cases have become inextricably linked in one of the most consequential periods in the history of the F.B.I.

Crossfire Hurricane?  It’s the opening line to Jumpin’ Jack Flash.  “I was born in a Crossfire Hurricane.”

The first thing the FBI did was interview the Australian Ambassador about George Papadopoulos.  That alone is highly unusual.  Everything about Crossfire Hurricane was unusual, but above board.  Due to the sensitive nature, they couldn’t move too fast.  They did what they could, but had to tread cautiously.

I haven’t had time to go through this whole article, but this next paragraph confirms something I wrote about a while back.

The F.B.I. obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters — a secret type of subpoena — officials said. And at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said. That has become a politically contentious point, with Mr. Trump’s allies questioning whether the F.B.I. was spying on the Trump campaign or trying to entrap campaign officials.

That’s right, there was an informant for the FBI inside of the campaign.  I could play the game of “Who’s the Mole?” (I think it was someone on the Foreign Policy team, approached after George met with the Aussies), but it’s more important that the FBI knew what was going on for a long time.

Also, Carter Page is a Russian Asset.

Crossfire Hurricane began with a focus on four campaign officials. But by mid-fall 2016, Mr. Page’s inquiry had progressed the furthest. Agents had known Mr. Page for years. Russian spies tried to recruit him in 2013, and he was dismissive when agents warned him about it, a half-dozen current and former officials said. That warning even made its way back to Russian intelligence, leaving agents suspecting that Mr. Page had reported their efforts to Moscow.

Even the warning made it’s way back to Russia.

The Senate Judiciary Committee released the transcripts of the testimony of everyone involved with the June 9 meeting.

Here’s a link to the Senate Documents

Here’s the notes from Paul Manafort’s iPhone.

Bill browder
Offshore – Cyprus
133m shares
Companies
Not invest – loan
Value in Cyprus as inter
Illici
Active sponsors of RNC
Browder hired Joanna Glover
Tied into Cheney
Russian adoption by American families

Some of this is still unknown, but let’s break it down point by point.

  • Bill Browder was the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act.  He worked with Juleanna Glover, a former staffer to Vice President Dick Cheney.
  • Putin responded to the Magnitsky Act by banning Americans from adopting Russian orphans.  However, the only children that were eligible for adoption were disabled, terminally ill, or both.
  • Cyprus is a money laundering haven, and they serve as an intermediary between the United States and Russian money.
  • Shell companies are used to hide illicit payments, such as political donations to groups like the Republican National Committee.
  • Loans are easier to use for money laundering and holding leverage.  Direct investments don’t offer long term extortion like a loan does.
  • 133m shares of what?  That’s the one piece of the notes I don’t understand.

There are two main foci of the inquiry into the June 9 meeting.  What happened at the meeting itself, and what happened when the news of the meeting broke.  The following covers that a little bit.

Shortly after his election, President Trump’s spokeswoman had said that no campaign officials had dealings with Russians during the campaign. Excerpts from the newly released testimony show that the president’s lawyers and associates were anxious about any reports on Trump Jr.’s meeting, which contradicted that claim.

“[Trump’s lawyers are] concerned because it links Don Jr. to officials from Russia, which he has always denied meeting,” Goldstone wrote in an email to Emin Agalarov on June 26, 2017, a few weeks before the New York Times first reported on the meeting.

Ultimately, lawyers working for the Trump Organization crafted statements they asked other participants in the meeting to distribute, a move that could draw scrutiny from Mueller if it involved communicating with witnesses or otherwise hiding the true purpose of the meeting from investigators. .

Trump himself contributed to an initial statement about the meeting and released by his son, Trump Jr. told the committee. It misleadingly stated said the meeting had been “primarily” about the adoption of Russian children by Americans. The Kremlin halted adoptions in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, the policy issue that appeared to be at the heart of Veselnitskaya’s presentation.

After Goldstone was interviewed by The Washington Post for the first time about his participation in the meeting in July 2017, the promoter tried to assure two Trump organization lawyers that he too had offered a similar account.

*“I said only that the meeting appeared to have been about adoption issues and was quickly terminated,” he wrote in an email at the time. Meanwhile, Goldstone secretly fretted about the scrutiny he predicted would follow.,

“I hope this favor was worth it for your dad,” he wrote to Emin Agalarov. “It could blow up.”

You’re goddamned right it blew up.

The Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that the Russian government apparently used the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

Documents suggest the Kremlin used the NRA to offer the campaign a back channel to Moscow—including a potential meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin—and might have secretly funded Trump’s campaign, the committee said. One of the Russians named in the report even bragged she was part of the Trump campaign’s communications with Russia, The Daily Beast reported last year.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has determined that the intelligence community was correct in assessing that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election with the aim of helping then-candidate Donald Trump, contradicting findings House Republicans reached last month.

“Our staff concluded that the [intelligence community’s] conclusions were accurate and on point,” the panel’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), said Wednesday in a joint statement with Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman. “The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton,” Warner continued.

Oh, that also happened today.  The Senate Intelligence Committee released part of their report.  Remember, when Trump goes to trial after impeachment, that trial happens in the Senate.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued two subpoenas to a social media expert who worked for longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

The subpoenas were delivered late last week to lawyers representing Jason Sullivan, a social media and Twitter specialist Stone hired to work for an independent political action committee he set up to support Trump, Knut Johnson, a lawyer for Sullivan, told Reuters on Tuesday.

The subpoenas suggest that Mueller, who is probing Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, is focusing in part on Stone and whether he might have had advance knowledge of material allegedly hacked by Russian intelligence and sent to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published it.

Soon, it’ll be Roger Stone’s time in the barrel.  I can’t wait to see him go down hard.

 

COHEN:  FOLLOW THE MONEY

Last week, Michael Avenatti supposedly had dinner with Ronan Farrow.  Now we know why.

Farrow interviewed the source of Cohen’s financial information; a law enforcement official with access to the FinCEN system.

That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation: the official had grown alarmed after being unable to find two important reports on Cohen’s financial activity in a government database. The official, worried that the information was being withheld from law enforcement, released the remaining documents.

First Republic Bank, where Essential Consultants banked through, filed 3 Suspicious Activity Reports on him, but only 1 remained in the FinCEN system.  The one that remained referred to the missing two.  It’s like if I link to a story that gets deleted after I post the article: it existed when I wrote it, but it’s gone.

SARs don’t disappear.  They don’t vanish, or walk away on their own.  While it’s possible in the fine print, in practice it just isn’t done.  This freaked the whistleblower out.  It scared them so much, they’re willing to risk 5 years in prison to make sure this sees the light of day.

There are two reasons these two SARs vanished; they were hidden by SDNY or Mueller’s office to keep from hurting the investigation, or someone removed them to keep them quiet for nefarious purposes.

Spicy says it better than I do.

There is an above zero percent chance these reports were hidden or removed to protect Cohen and Trump.  This isn’t done quickly, and database deletions leave a trail, especially in heavily audited government ones used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

If these were removed, three things can be inferred:

  1. It would leave a trail that would lead back to the perpetrators.
  2. The person making the order would have to be more loyal to Trump than to the United States, the Treasury Department, or the Rule of Law.
  3. This person doesn’t understand that the bank that filed the SAR keeps the original paperwork.

All of this leads to Steve Mnuchin, someone close to him, or another political appointee by Trump to the Treasury.  That’s a pretty short list.  Further, the change itself would likely require someone from IT making the change, and if this database has any auditing at all, then the tech that made the change left their fingerprints all over it.  Knowing IT people in government, they don’t scratch their asses without a form filled out in triplicate signed off by their superiors.

In other words, there’s a paper trail.

 

In financial disclosure documents filed this week, President Trump reported reimbursing his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for an expenditure over $100,000 last year — an apparent reference to the $130,000 that Cohen paid to ensure the silence of an adult-film actress who claimed she had an affair with Trump.

Trump had previously said he did not know about the 2016 payment to Stormy Daniels, which Cohen said he made through funds he obtained through his home-equity line of credit.

The Office of Government Ethics, which released the documents, also sent a letter to the Justice Department saying the payment should have been disclosed.

Whether or not this is a slap on the wrist crime, or a full-blown felony depends on intent.  At this point, “oops, I forgot”, doesn’t cut it.

 

BLUE WAVE

Congratulations to Sara Innamorato and Summer Lee on their victories last night.  They defeated the Costa cousins in two different races in very progressive parts of Pittsburgh.  No Republicans are running in either district in the General Election.

Here’s a clip of him from the Colbert Report a few years ago.  Braddock, PA, is a former steel town in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and he’s bent over backwards to make Braddock not a shithole.  It’s not great, but it’s come a long way.

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

From /u/Lady-vor

“This means that in addition to Facebook data being accessed in Russia, there are reasonable grounds to suspect that CA may have been an intelligence target of Russian security services…(and) that Russian security services may have been notified of the existence of CA’s Facebook data,” Wylie said in his written testimony. Wylie added that Cambridge Analytica “used Russian researchers to gather its data, (and) openly shared information on ‘rumour campaigns’ and ‘attitudinal inoculation’” with companies and executives linked to the Russian intelligence agency FSB.

What is “attitudinal inoculation”?

Attitude inoculation is a technique used to make people immune to attempts to change their attitudeby first exposing them to small arguments against their position. It is so named because it works just like medical inoculation, which exposes a person’s body to a weak version of a virus. Link

The inoculation effect in psychology (theory) is when one person tries to convince another (and/or themselves) to strengthen their particular belief(s) by warning them of the constant threats out there of them losing their belief. Thus putting the person on-guard to “attack”/”threats. Link

ETA:

Someone wrote, in 2016, an analysis of attitude inoculation and Trump voters:

https://socialpsyq.com/tag/attitude-inoculation/

So, while Russian trolls may have continued this…this is the The Brainwashing of Your Dad/Mom/Grandparents. It’s been going on a very long time. The innovation here is the targeting and attacking psychologically vulnerable candidates on social media, not the tactic itself.

 

FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is just the first step.  This bill still has to get past the House, then survive a likely veto, but it’s at least a start.

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for today.  We’re coming up on 1 year since Robert Mueller was named as the Special Counselor, and a ton of stuff drops all in one day.  It’s almost like we’re getting ready for something major to drop, like more indictments, or details on the bribes paid to Cohen.

I’m not sure what’s coming in the next few days, but I’m trying to take it easy the next couple days.

I’m sorry in advance for breaking the universe.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

Daily Check-In 05/15/2018

Tuesday, May 15th.

 

COHEN:  FOLLOW THE MONEY

“Mr. Al-Rumaihi was at Trump Tower on December 12, 2016. He was there in his then role as head of Qatar Investments, an internal division of QIA, to accompany the Qatari delegation that was meeting with Trump transition officials on that date,” said a spokesperson for Sport Trinity, a company that Al-Rumaihi co-owns. “He did not participate in any meetings with Michael Flynn, and his involvement in the meetings on that date was limited.”

This is confirmation.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Because investigators were relying on a foreign government to produce certain evidence, Mueller last June asked a magistrate judge in Virginia to suspend the statute of limitations on the charge that Manafort failed to to file a Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR), according to the filing. Mueller ultimately brought that charge against Manafort in February. The judge’s decision granting Mueller’s request to suspend the statute of limitations was previously under seal, but was included in Monday’s filings.

Think about the timing of this court order. June 26, 2017, three days before Statute of Limitations ran out. Also about 6 weeks after the Mueller Investigation began, and 4 months before Manafort was indicted.

Mueller’s team was months ahead of everyone else almost a year ago.

 

COLD WAR 2.0: THE JUDEO-SINO EDITION

Israel

China

Senator Richard Blumenthal, along with other members of Congress, have sued President Donald Trump for violating the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution.

North Korea

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

The federal investigation in the United States appears to focus on the company’s financial dealings — investigators have reached out to the company’s banks, for instance — and how it acquired and used personal data pulled from Facebook and other sources, according to the American official, who was briefed on the inquiry, and other people familiar with it.

In a sign of the inquiry’s scope, one of the prosecutors involved is the assistant chief of the Justice Department’s securities and financial fraud division, Brian Kidd. The effort is being assisted by at least one agent who investigates cybercrime for the F.B.I., those people said.

Mr. Kidd traveled to London earlier this month with another Justice Department prosecutor and an F.B.I. agent to interview Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee who has emerged as one of the firm’s fiercest critics.

Seeing this puts a smile on my face.  Check out the Rumor Mill for a little scoop.

I had no where else to put this last story, but the comment section was dripping with a bunch of misogynistic trolls.

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Joshua Adam Schulte, who worked for a CIA group that designs computer code to spy on foreign adversaries, is believed to have provided the agency’s top-secret information to WikiLeaks, federal prosecutors acknowledged in a hearing in January. The anti-secrecy group published the code under the label “Vault 7” in March 2017.

It was one of the most significant leaks in the CIA’s history, exposing secret cyberweapons and spying techniques that might be used against the United States, according to current and former intelligence officials. Some argued that the Vault 7 disclosures could cause more damage to American intelligence efforts than those by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. He revealed extraordinary details about the capabilities of the United States to spy on computers and phones around the world, but the Vault 7 leaks showed how such spying is actually done, the current and former officials argued.

If this fucker was behind Vault 7, then he deserves what comes.

The Vault 7 Project was masterminded by Wikileaks and Julian Assange, who openly works with Russian Intelligence.  He enticed Americans to betray their country under the guise of “accountability and transparency” to release these cybersecurity tools.  In reality, these were given to Russian Intelligence and handed off to Iran.  Within two months, these tools were used to design WannaCry and NotPetya.

 

BLUE WAVE

 

RUMOR MILL

Remember Tea Pain’s Alfa Bank research? (Daily Check-In 02/20/2018)  Here’s a link to an updated version of the story.  If what he has to say is accurate, shit’s about to get interesting.

Short version:  The Trump Tower Mystery Server (TTMS) had 99% of its communications where it served as the middle man between a server associated to an IP for Alfa Bank in Russia and one for Spectrum Health.  However, there were three other pings on that server.  (A ping is an attempt at communication from one computer to another, offend done through the command line prompt or a networking tool.  The ping sends a request for acknowledgment, and if successful gets a return message.  It’s named for the same process used by radar and sonar devices to locate targets.)

One ping belonged to an IT company in Kansas City, and only during the server set up.  This is likely from the company that set the server up.

The next came from, hell, I’ll let Tea Pain explain it…

The first ping Tea sleuthed out was Obit.RU.  The “RU” extension was the first dead giveaway.  Yep, that means “Russia.”  But wait, as Billy Mays used to say, there’s more! Obit.RU is a Russian telecommunications company whose website boasts of representin’ Concord Catering, the company owned by the notorious Russian troll farmer, Yevgeny Prigozhin.  That’s right, ol’ Putin’s Chef himself.  He’s the godfather of the Internet Research Agency that Bob Mueller has indicted for messin’ with our 2016 election.

So, we have a ping to an obscure server from a server owned by the Troll Farm’s ISP.  That’s a little bit more than suspect.

The final communication to the server came from NewsCorp/Cambridge Analytica.

Now hold on to your pantaloons, cause this next part might knock ’em off entirely.  “News.com.au” is owned by ol’ Rupert Murdoch’s “News Corp”, who’s American headquarters is located at 1211 Avenue of the America’s in New York City.  That’s interestin’ in and of itself, but Tea Pain just discovered that until October 2016, Cambridge Analytica’s New York office was in the very same building.

Here’s the thing that’s weird to me… There were only 5 contacts, and one of them was the tech setting up the server.  No random ping from a war walker, no contact from another server in Trump Org, not even a ping from an Infosec sweep.  That is suspicious AF.

This story’s gonna break big, and you read it here first.  Or second.

 

That’s it for today.  Nothing extra tonight.  Tomorrow’s post will be pretty light.  At least, that’s the plan.  Watch tomorrow be the day that shit goes sideways with Ice Cube capping some fool from QIA and Mike Pence gets busted for having an underage black boyfriend.

If that does happen, I don’t know if I should apologize or not.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur