PART I
There are parts of the political story unfolding today that are alarming. On their own they might not seem crucial, but in context the details of each piece of this puzzle can take on different meaning. It all started when I joined Twitter. A few threads were intriguing and drew me in. Since I’m a skeptic, I turned to other sources to learn more, to try to make sense of what I was reading. The problem I was having was that each fragment of the story often stood alone. It may be related to another that occurred months earlier that I knew nothing about. And though some of the fact-gatherers would try to put things in some semblance of order, it was never all in one place, right in front of me to read and consider. It was also impossible to share.
It was then that I thought I would attempt to organize this information, while checking the validity of these stories by comparing notes between various sources. It is a daunting job because there are a lot of players and some of the story goes back years. It’s sort of a work in progress, but I decided I would share what I have organized thus far, for others that are having difficulty keeping up with this complicated story that affects all of us, no matter what side of the aisle.
You can easily search and verify these things, using your own sources. I will include some of my sources as well but I think all of us need to get used to vetting the information we receive and decide for ourselves how to interpret it all.
Let start with some information about Michael Flynn, the National Security Advisor.
- He was a respected Intelligence Officer
- He was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under James Clapper during the Obama administration
- He was fired from that position in 2014 for, among other things, installing a secret, private internet connection in his office in the Pentagon
- His colleagues described him as “enraged” after his dismissal.
- Flynn has given paid speeches in Moscow. He sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin after such a speech, at the anniversary celebration for RT, the state-run Russian Television organization. Flynn has appeared on talk shows for RT on several occasions.
- On Jan 28th, President Trump signed an executive order, reshuffling the NSC and allowing Steven Bannon, White House Chief Strategist, to attend any meeting of the principal committee, led by National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.
- The order removed the nation's top military and intelligence advisers as regular attendees of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, the inter-agency forum that deals with policy issues affecting national security.
- The order states that the Director of National Intelligence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will only attend the meetings when “issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed,”
- In an August, 2016 interview with the Washington Post, Flynn made the following statement:
“I think we have such a political cesspool in this country right now. The Republican Party is no longer the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is no longer the Democratic Party. We have a centrist nationalist group of people in this country, lots of them, and we have a socialist group of people in this country, lots of them. And that’s not, to me, the American idea.”
Read more about Flynn:
www.washingtonpost.com/…
www.washingtonpost.com/…
www.washingtonpost.com/…
www.businessinsider.com/...
www.mediaite.com/...
Steve Bannon/White House Chief Advisor/Appointed Member National Security Council
- He started a non-profit, GAI, to investigate politicians and deliver findings to mainstream media outlets, like Newsweek and ABC News, according to Bloomberg.
- GAI’s president, Peter Schweizer, wrote Clinton Cash as well as the e-book, Bush Bucks.
- Bannon was in the Navy, then went on to pursue a master’s degree in national security studies. He then attended Harvard Business School before landing an investment banking job at Goldman Sachs' New York offices. He ran his own investment bank, and later directed movies. One was a documentary about Sarah Palin’s failed campaign bid as Vice President.
- He was raised in a Democratic household, has been critical of the Republican party and has wanted a shakeup of the party for years. In 2010 he said in an interview, “What we need to do is bitch slap the Republican party.”
- His ex-wife has accused him of being anti-Semitic. Regarding his children’s schooling, she reported, he objected to a school because of the number of Jewish students enrolled. "He said that he doesn't like the way they raise their kids to be 'whiny brats' and that he didn't want the girls going to school with Jews."
- Bannon is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a news outlet for the “Alt-Right”, movement, which espouses white nationalism. Bannon describes himself simply as a “nationalist”.
- Nov. 12, 2013, he stated he was a Leninist. “Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
- Bannon replaced Paul Manafort as Trump’s campaign advisor after press reported Manafort’s ties to Russia and the Ukraine, and a mysterious ledger that documents payments in excess of $12million to Manafort. Since the election, Bannon has been named the White House Chief Advisor and as of this week a sitting member of the National Security Council. At the same time, America’s top General and Director of National Intelligence were removed from the 400-person group.
- The National Security Council is the only group of people who directly advise the President on urgent matters of foreign affairs and terrorism, of war and of peace.
- Mr. Bannon is also widely reported to be responsible for drafting this week’s series of presidential executive orders including the EO regarding refugees and visa holders
- According the NBC, top counter-intelligence experts have said the executive order was incompetently drafted and executed and was not reviewed by DHS, the Justice Department, the State Department, or the Department of Defense, and that National Security Council lawyers were prevented from evaluating it. Moreover, the New York Times writes that Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the agencies tasked with carrying out the policy, were only given a briefing call while Trump was signing the order.
- Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He believes that the intention of the document was to cause hardship and misery for tens or hundreds of thousands of people, and to have the involvement of the ACLU and further divide the American people.
Read more about Bannon:
www.washingtonpost.com/…
www.cosmopolitan.com/…
www.thedailybeast.com/…
www.huffingtonpost.com/…
qz.com/…
www.newyorker.com/...
The Trump Dossier/Russian election hacking
- Retired British MI6 agent, Christopher Steele wrote in an intelligence report dated July 19, 2016, that he had a source close to Igor Sechin, who had disclosed alleged links between Mr. Trump’s supporters and Moscow. Sechin, is a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company. (remember this name as it comes up again later)
- The dossier was delivered to the FBI in July, 2016.
- By October, Steele was concerned because of the enormity of what he had found, yet nothing appeared to have been pursued. He stated that he feared a cover-up. He was persuaded to bring the dossier to the editor of Mother Jones, who first reported its existence on Oct 31.
- On Nov 18, at a security conference in Halifax, Sen John McCain was approached by a former western diplomat and informed of the document and the reliability of the source. McCain was sufficiently concerned that an emissary was dispatched to bring him a copy of the documents. Though reluctant to get involved at first, McCain eventually set up a meeting with FBI director James Comey and met with him privately on Dec 9th.
- At some point in December, Ruslan Stoyanov, a well-respected researcher with the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, a computer software company, and Sergei Mikhailov, head of the FSB's Center of information Security (cyber-security), were arrested by Russian police as part of what Russia's Kommersant newspaper described as a probe into possible treason. No date of arrest has been made public, though Kommersant reported that Stoyanov last logged into his private social media account on December 4, and Mikhailov on December 5.
- The Moscow-based Novaya Gazeta newspaper cited sources as saying Mikhailov was arrested during a meeting with other FSB officers in Moscow, and was taken from the room with a cloth sack over his head. Stoyanov’s previous jobs, include a position at the Cyber Crime Unit at the Russian interior ministry in the early 2000s.
- Another arrest at that time was Major Dmitry Dokuchaev, an infamous Russian hacker who went by the name of “Forb”. Dokuchaev was working for the Russian government in exchange for dropping charges of credit card fraud. A fourth person arrested has not yet been identified.
- Information about the dossier was presented to the U.S. president and president elect. We learned later that it included information regarding the Russian hacking, interference in the US election, and salacious video and audio recordings allegedly made during the president elect’s visits to Moscow
- On January 10, the leaked dossier was reported by CNN, and published by Buzz Feed News. Both Trump and Putin dismissed its contents as fabricated.
- Oleg Erovinkin, assistant to Igor Sechen, acted as a ‘go-between’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Sechin, head of the state-owned oil company Rosneft. Both men are known by Rex Tillerson, former Exxon chief and appointed to be the next U.S. Secretary of State.
- One of the allegations of the dossier included copies of memos between Trump’s then-advisor Carter Page and Sechin. Page also met with Sechin in Moscow for 3 days in August.
- Erovinkin, Sechin’s associate thought to have leaked the info in the dossier, said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered Page and his associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatized) stake in Rosneft. In return, Page had expressed interest, and confirmed that if Trump was elected US president, the sanctions on Russia would be lifted."
Read more about Russian connections:
www.the-american-interest.com/…
ig.ft.com/...
www.salon.com/…
time.com/…
www.nytimes.com/…
www.nytimes.com/…
blogs.wsj.com/…
www.msnbc.com/…
www.haaretz.com/...
There is so much more and in the coming days I will attempt to sift through all of the various news sources to organize what I have learned that I feel is important for everyone to know and share. It’s 2 am and time to sleep. If I have spelling or grammar errors I apologize and will fix them later. Stay tuned.