General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Shadowy Operative at the Center of the Russia Scandal
Buried in a late-night court filing in Robert Muellers expansive probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was an explosive claim: An adviser to President Donald Trumps campaign and transition teams had knowingly been in contact with a former Russian intelligence officer as late as September 2016, prosecutors said. The revelation is the strongest connection to date between Trumps campaign and Russias intelligence services, which U.S. officials say were behind the cyberattacks on Democrats during the election.
The adviser, Rick Gates, was a deputy to Trumps campaign chairman Paul Manafort and stayed on as a liaison between Trumps transition team and the Republican National Committee after the election, well after Manafort was forced to step down over his alleged ties to dirty Ukrainian money. Manafort and Gatess arrival to the campaign team coincided with the most pivotal Russia-related episode of the election: the release of emails that had been stolen from the Democratic National Committee by hackers working for the GRU, Russias premier military-intelligence unit. The GRU remained at the center of the Russians interference campaign, using the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to publish the hacked material in droves before the election. Gates and Manafort, meanwhile, remained in touch with the former GRU officer who the special counsels office believes was still connected to Russian intelligence services during the electionraising new questions about what the campaign officials knew about Russias hack-and-dump scheme.
The former GRU officer was identified in Muellers latest filing only as Person A. But the descriptions allude to Konstantin Kilimnika Russian-Ukrainian dual citizen who attended a Soviet military school in Ukraine and later joined the Russian Army as a translator. Kilimnik left the army and eventually landed at the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute (IRI) in 1995, where he worked for over a decade.
Gates knew of Kilimniks background. He told Alex van der Zwaana lawyer he and Manafort worked with on a project to shore up support for Manaforts client at the time, ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovychabout the former intelligence officers past as a GRU officer, according to prosecutors. Gates was indicted last October on charges including money laundering and tax fraud, and is now cooperating with the special counsel.
An IRI spokeswoman told me that he was asked to leave because he violated IRIs code of ethics, and that, to her knowledge, no one had any reason to believe that he was affiliated with Russian intelligence. The spokeswoman would not elaborate on Kilimniks alleged ethics breach, but it may have had something to do with his overlapping work as a translator for Manafort in 2005. Kilimnik soon began working for Manaforts firms full time. The lawyer at the center of Tuesdays court filing, van der Zwaan, had grown too close to Manafort, Gates, and Person A, prosecutors alleged.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-shadowy-operative-at-the-center-of-the-russia-scandal/ar-AAvfZ0i?li=BBnb7Kz
BigmanPigman
(51,675 posts)My head is swimming!
erronis
(15,486 posts)While I expect that the dump is close to the least capable person that has ever served in an office above dog-catcher (and no disrespect to those important individuals!), keeping all of the lines untangled 24 hours a day, across the globe, across news channels, across spokes-things - this has to be a tough job!
Fortunately the RW aristocrats in the US and the empire-builders from around the world have plenty of computer savvy and can hire the best talent.
Remember when IBM's Deep Blue finally beat the chess top Grand Master? This technology is being brought to bear on wealth management (Mercers, etc.) as well as influencing decisions such as shopping or voting. You can actually run a lot of the algorithms on your home computer/phone (might make it burst into flames, however.)
The days of having notebooks of who's useful, who's untrustworthy, who's said something bad/good about us, who should be knocked off - those days are gone.
Of course the algorithms may not be perfect and some people may be offed that shouldn't be and some may get to work in the White House for 13.2 days. These calculations will be refined.
The gulag is waiting. Grab your bunk#!