Yorkie Mom
Yorkie Mom's JournalBurr & Warner furious about language added to CR that limits Senate Intel's ability
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/955515147279364097
***Bookmark this link*** The 270 people connected to the Russia probes
Bookmark this link to keep up with the list of characters. It is f*cking awesome.
The 270 people connected to the Russia probes
A POLITICO analysis of court documents, congressional letters, public testimony and media reports reveals that the investigations into the 2016 election and its aftermath now involve hundreds of people in Washington, Moscow and around the world.
Some names sound familiar, like Stephen Bannon and Donald Trump Jr., but most don’t. Taken together, they illuminate the way federal investigators are assembling the pieces of the Russia puzzle.
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2018/trump-russia-investigation-ties/
Committee discusses possibility Russian money was funneled through Trumps exclusive golf course in
Source: Independent Irish News
Committee discusses possibility Russian money was funneled through Trump’s exclusive golf course in Doonbeg
... snip
"But because the Irish courses and the Scottish courses are under UK, you know, Anglo corporate law, they have - they file financial statements. So we were able to get the financial statements. And they don’t, on their face, show Russian involvement, but what they do show is enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources and - or at least on paper it says it’s from The Trump Organisation, but it’s hundreds of millions of dollars.
"And these golf course are just, you know, they’re sinks. They don’t actually make any money. So, you know, if you’re familiar with Donald Trump’s finances and the litigation over whether he’s really a billionaire, you know, there’s good reason to believe he doesn’t have enough money to do this and that he would have had to have outside financial support for these things."
... snip
Alan Garten, the Trump Organisation’s chief counsel, told financial newswire Reuters that the deals Mr Simpson referenced primarily involve properties to which Mr Trump licensed his name, rather than owning, developing or selling them.
"These accusations are completely reckless and unsubstantiated," Mr Garten said. "These issues have nothing to do with the scope of the investigation" by the House intelligence committee, Mr Garten said.
Read more: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/committee-discusses-possibility-russian-money-was-funneled-through-trumps-exclusive-golf-course-in-doonbeg-36508989.html
Amid Trumps inaugural festivities, members of Russias elite anticipated a thaw between Moscow and
Source: Washington Post
... snip
Their presence caught the attention of counterintelligence officials at the FBI, according to former U.S. officials, although it is not clear which attendees drew U.S. government interest. FBI officials were concerned at the time because some of the figures had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the officials said.
An FBI spokesman declined to comment on security concerns related to the inauguration. White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The Washington Post identified at least half a dozen politically connected Russians who were in Washington on Inauguration Day — including some whose presence has not been previously reported. Among them was Viktor Vekselberg, a tycoon who is closely aligned with Putin’s government.
Another was Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer whose June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. has become a focus of the Russia investigation. She attended a black-tie inaugural party hosted by the campaign committee of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), according to an associate who accompanied her.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-trumps-inaugural-festivities-members-of-russias-elite-anticipated-a-thaw-between-moscow-and-washington/2018/01/20/0d767f46-fb9f-11e7-ad8c-ecbb62019393_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.ad37331dc6f1
And, it earns a baby canon Boom.
https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/954805919564615680
Jared Kushner has a BIG problem
How the President’s son-in-law, despite his inexperience in diplomacy and his lack of security clearance, became Beijing’s primary point of interest.
In early 2017, shortly after Jared Kushner moved into his new office in the West Wing of the White House, he began receiving guests. One visitor who came more than once was Cui Tiankai, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, a veteran diplomat with a postgraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University. When, during previous Administrations, Cui had visited the White House, his hosts received him with a retinue of China specialists and note-takers. Kushner, President Trump’s thirty-seven-year-old son-in-law and one of his senior advisers, preferred smaller gatherings.
Three months earlier, Cui had been in near-despair. Like many observers, he had incorrectly predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election; his botched forecast, he told a friend, was precisely the kind of error that dooms the careers of ambassadors in the Chinese diplomatic system. To make matters worse, Cui knew almost nobody in the incoming Administration. Donald Trump had won the election in part by singling out China for “raping” the United States.
In Kushner, Cui found a confident, attentive, and inexperienced counterpart. The former head of his family’s real-estate empire, which is worth more than a billion dollars, Kushner was intent on bringing a businessman’s sensibility to matters of state. He believed that fresh, confidential relationships could overcome the frustrations of traditional diplomatic bureaucracy. Henry Kissinger, who, in his role as a high-priced international consultant, maintains close relationships in the Chinese hierarchy, had introduced Kushner to Cui during the campaign, and the two met three more times during the transition. In the months after Trump was sworn in, they met more often than Kushner could recall. “Jared became Mr. China,” Michael Pillsbury, a former Pentagon aide on Trump’s transition team, said.
But Cui’s frequent encounters with Kushner made some people in the U.S. government uncomfortable. On at least one occasion, they met alone, which counterintelligence officials considered risky. “There’s nobody else there in the room to verify what was said and what wasn’t, so the Chinese can go back and claim anything,” a former senior U.S. official who was briefed on the meetings said. “I’m sorry, Jared—do you think your background is going to allow you to be able to outsmart the Chinese Ambassador?” Kushner, the official added, “is actually pretty smart. He just has limited life experiences. He was acting with naïveté.”
More: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/29/jared-kushner-is-chinas-trump-card
https://twitter.com/justinjm1/status/954536589161623552
https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/954535968287141888
https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/954537516454916096
From the Trump Russia Dossier
https://twitter.com/ampersine/status/954539294538063872
Spain's Robert Mueller takes on the Russian mob (USA related)
MADRID — Dawn’s first rays were streaming through the palm trees in Spain’s laid-back jet-setter paradise Marbella when the crashing of waves was drowned out by the whomp-whomp of hovering police helicopters and the wail of sirens. Roadblocks went up and streets were shut down all morning as more than 100 officers of the Guardia Civil, the Spanish military police, raced across the port city — storming villas, ritzy eateries, yachts, a golf course, the soccer stadium, a bank, even raiding a water-bottling plant deep in the dusty hills.
By lunchtime on that Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017, the police had confiscated 23 luxury autos and hundreds of thousands of euros. They also arrested 11 Russians, including the beloved owner of the local soccer team, Alexander Grinberg, charging him with, among other things, membership in a criminal group — specifically Russia’s most powerful mafia, Solntsevskaya Brotherhood, the world’s richest, said to pull in some $9 billion a year.
A Spanish police report obtained by Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff said the group was involved in “criminal activities including drugs, counterfeiting, extortion, car theft, human trafficking, fraud, fake ids, contract killing, and trafficking in jewels, art, and antiques. This was done on an international scale. Not just in Russia. Solntsevskaya has also demonstrated active cooperation with other international criminal organizations, like Mexican mafias, Colombian drug cartels, Italian criminal organizations (particularly with the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta and the Neapolitan Camorra), the Japanese yakuza, and Chinese triads, among others.”
But the “big fish” of that day’s catch was former Russian hotelier Arnold Tamm, aka Spivakovsky, alleged to be a trusted aide to the notorious Semion Mogilevich — a Ukraine-born economist known as “the Brainy Don” whose photo long resided on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. He was described as a “Global Con Artist and Ruthless Criminal,” accused of bilking U.S. investors out of $150 million in a stock fraud. But above all, Mogilevich is a mastermind of cleaning up dirty money — using financial transactions that make the cash generated from criminal enterprises appear legitimate, and park it in accessible and safe investments in Western countries such as Spain or the United States, valued precisely for their adherence to legal norms.
More: https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/spains-robert-mueller-takes-russian-mob-202248019.html?__twitter_impression=true
Keep reading for mentions of Robert Mueller, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Alexander Torshin, (who has been described by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., as “the conservatives’ favorite Russian.”), Alexander Litvinenko, Oleg Deripaska, & Dmytro Firtash.
Fusion GPS interview with House panel leaves huge pile of breadcrumbs for Trump-Russia investigators
Source: Business Insider
*The House Intelligence Committee released the transcript of its interview with Glenn Simpson, the cofounder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.
*The transcript left a massive pile of breadcrumbs for Trump-Russia investigators to sift through as they pursue their probe into Russia's election interference and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.
The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released the transcript of the panel's November interview with Glenn Simpson, the cofounder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.
The House investigators' line of questioning touched upon subjects that the Senate Judiciary Committee did not delve into, largely due to a shift in focus spearheaded by the committee's top Democrat, Adam Schiff.
Rather than home in on the nature of Simpson's relationship with Christopher Steele — the former British intelligence officer hired by Fusion to research Trump's Russia ties — Schiff and his Democratic colleagues asked Simpson pointed questions about Russian money laundering, Russian organized crime, and whether Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail.
The result was a long trail of breacrumbs for investigators probing Trump's relationship with Russia.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/read-fusion-gps-glenn-simpson-interview-with-house-intelligence-committee-2018-1
Trump Tower India: If you buy a flat, we'll fly you to the U.S. to meet Don Jr.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/954107504409137156
Trump lawyer Michael Cohen used private firm and pseudonyms to pay porn star Stormy Daniels
Michael Cohen created limited liability company just before $130,000 payment
By Joe Palazzolo and
Michael Rothfeld
Jan. 18, 2018 5:48 p.m. ET
President Donald Trump’s lawyer used a private Delaware company to pay a former adult-film star $130,000 in return for her agreeing to not publicly discuss an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to corporate records and people familiar with the matter.
The lawyer, Michael Cohen, established Essential Consultants LLC, on Oct. 17, 2016, just before the 2016 presidential election, corporate documents show. Mr. Cohen, who is based in New York, then used a bank account linked to the entity to send the payment to the client-trust account of a lawyer representing the woman, Stephanie Clifford, one of the people said.
Mr. Cohen’s decision to establish the company in Delaware offered him privacy and simplicity, hallmarks of a state that has attracted more than one million business entities. Unlike some states, Delaware doesn’t require companies to publicly disclose the names of their managers. In October 2016, the month Mr. Cohen created the entity used in the deal with Ms. Clifford, Delaware officials recorded 10,574 new limited liability companies.
Mr. Cohen’s connection to Essential Consultants LLC isn’t readily apparent in online searches of Delaware companies. However, on its formation documents, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Cohen listed himself as the “authorized person” for the company, rather than hiring a lawyer or an agent to serve in that role, which some company owners do to further obscure their identities.
Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-lawyer-used-private-company-pseudonyms-to-pay-porn-star-stormy-daniels-1516315731?mod=e2tw
Fusion GPS House testimony
http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180118/106796/HMTG-115-IG00-Transcript-20180118.pdf
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954095464265191424
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954097857036017664
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954098239002865664
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954098961526153216
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954099562079244289
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954100192281858054
Simpson: Well, Trump was basically a huge mobbed-up criminal from 2005 onward, especially with Russian deals.
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954100668566040577
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954101045990449153
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954102023426846722
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/954102666807963648
I'll continue thread in first reply.
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