NBC recently reported that both the Trump and Clinton campaigns were briefed by the FBI and specifically warned to watch out for attempts to contact and infiltrate their campaigns by foreign entities.
WASHINGTON — In the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, 2016, Donald Trump was warned that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign, according to multiple government officials familiar with the matter.
The warning came in the form of a high-level counterintelligence briefing by senior FBI officials, the officials said. A similar briefing was given to Hillary Clinton, they added. They said the briefings, which are commonly provided to presidential nominees, were designed to educate the candidates and their top aides about potential threats from foreign spies.
The candidates were urged to alert the FBI about any suspicious overtures to their campaigns, the officials said.
But as it turned out, no one in the Trump campaign did alert the FBI about contacts or attempts to infiltrate their campaign by foreign entities, whether they be Russia, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
Instead, they lied about it. Repeatedly.
And yet amazingly, Trump seems to believe that the Mueller probe will be over by the end of the year and that perhaps as soon as this week he’ll receive a “exoneration letter.” Despite his deeply desperately delusions Mueller’s people say the investigation will last through most of 2018.
George Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about being in contact with several Russians including professor Joseph Mifsud who had already told him that Russia had “thousands of Hillary’s emails” and that he’d been allegedly told by Sergei Millian — who reportedly had connections to the Kremlin Foreign ministry — that “Putin would like a direct meeting with Trump.” They didn’t report that Papadopoulos had briefed Trump on this proposal directly only to have it shot down by Sessions, or that Manafort then plotted to “send someone lower-level” instead. Ultimately Carter Page was authorized to travel to Moscow by Corey Lowendowski, coincidently on the same exact day that Millian accepted the idea of sending someone besides Trump himself.
Michael Flynn didn’t mention taking $45,000 from Russian State television station RT, $11,250 from Russian cyber security firm Kaspersky Labs or $530,000 from Turkey to kidnap and extradite a cleric that President Erdogan didn’ t like and another $25,000 from Saudi Arabia to help build Nuclear Power plants with the Russian State Nuclear agency Rosatom. He also lied to the FBI about discussing Russian sanctions with Ambassador Kislyak.
Don Jr., Kushner and Manafort had already met with former Russian government lawyer Veselnitskaya and a lobbyist with connections to Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) Rinat Akhmetshin where they asked for help with curbing Magnitsky Act sanctions on Russia while — very likely in exchange — Don requested useful “dirt” on the Clinton campaign, and when they didn’t product documents proving allegations of illegal foreign donations to Clinton or the DNC — he shut the meeting down.
Jeff Sessions was briefed by Papadopoulos about his Russian contacts while sitting right at the same desk as Trump, he met ambassador Kislyak three times, including at the Mayflower Hotel along side Trump just before Trump’s first big foreign policy speech, at a Heritage Foundation event during the Republican convention along with Carter Page and JD Gordon and later in his own Senate offices where they reportedly discussed the Russian/Crimea sanctions then repeatedly lied about all of this before Congress under oath.
Manafort had already multiple conversations with his Russian associate Konstantine Kilimnik from Ukraine — who also has ties to the GRU — where they discussed providing reports and a personal briefing on the status of the Trump campaign to Russian Billionaire Oligarch Oleg Deripaska who is suspected of being a asset of Russian intelligence and Putin. Also Kilimnik took credit for the blocking of an RNC plank that would have supported Crimea over Russia by Trump deputy J.D. Gordon, which is significant because it wasn’t until after that, that the “dirt on Hillary” that Don Jr had demanded including the “thousands of Clinton emails” that Popadopoulos had been told about started to be released by Wikileaks and hyped by RT, Sputnik News, Breitbart, Newsmax, Daily Caller and Fox News — then retweeted incessantly by Russian bots and trolls targeting key swing districts.
Session’s staffer Rick Dearborn had already been contacted by Rick Erickson at the NRA about — yet again — a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin which was being proposed by a Russian Banker and propertied gangster named Aleksander Torshin with close ties to Putin. Rick had forwarded another similar request from a West Virginian name Rick Clay on this same topic to Kushner who shot the idea down. however Don Jr. did attend the NRA event and while there met with Torshin on his own.
Also both Don Jr and Trump pal Roger Stone were in contact with and coordinated with Wikileaks, which was a violation of FEC rules.
And yet none of them told any of this to the FBI when they were briefed specifically about this problem and were told specifically to report these contacts. They also didn’t report it on the SF-86 Security Forms and some of them even lied about it under oath to congress.
As Rachel Maddow points out below, that is highly problematic because they really can’t claim they weren’t told that things like this mattered — THEY. WERE. VERY. SPECIFICALLY. TOLD. THAT. IT. DID.
Even if they never made any formal agreement or direct deal with any Russians beyond the attempted Junior/Veselnitskaya trade of info on Clinton for help on sanctions — a point which remains to be seen — they still did ultimately get the negative info on Clinton and the Trump campaign and administration made multiple attempts to end sanctions on Russia, including Flynn suggesting sanctions would be “ripped up”, Trump campaign surrogate Jack Kingston who told Russian businessmen in December “Trump can look at sanctions, They’ve been in place long enough” and WH staffers contacting the State Dept asking for all sanctions to be dropped — which if it isn’t Quid Pro Quo is a whole lot of convenient coincidence.
In the early weeks of the Trump administration, former Obama administration officials and State Department staffers fought an intense, behind-the-scenes battle to head off efforts by incoming officials to normalize relations with Russia, according to multiple sources familiar with the events.
Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.
Russians were so intent on getting cozy with the Trump campaign that during the transition the FBI had to give Hope Hicks a defensive briefing in the situation room twice because she had been receiving dozens of false contacts via email by people who were in reality, Russians.
The agents were concerned about emails Hicks received from Russian government address shortly after Donald Trump won the election, and provided a “defensive briefing” to the longtime Trump aide. According to the Times, the FBI told Hicks the names of the Russian operatives who reached out to her, warning her that they were not telling the truth.
The outreach efforts indicate Russian operatives attempted to contact top Trump aides despite the United States publicly accusing the Kremlin of meddling in the 2016 election
So not only did the Trump aides fail to inform the FBI about all their foreign contacts, the FBI had tell them about it themselves. And if that isn’t collusion, it’s a big steaming pile of clueless. Or Both.
Trump supporters are hanging their hopes on the lack of a formal deal to accomplish common goals by both sides, but frankly — does it really matter if they wrote out a contract or made a verbal deal at some point? They clearly tried to establish contact and some type of deal or arrangement from BOTH SIDES several times. It’s like arguing that you only tried to rob the bank before you failed, and somehow it’s not your fault that the bank mysteriously dumped a bunch of their money on the sidewalk before you picked it up and ran away with your pockets full.
Conspiracy to aid, abet, procure and profit from a Cybercrime and wirefraud after the fact is still just as much of a crime as doing it with prior intent and malice aforethought. And frankly since they were warned by the FBI they really can’t even claim they are entirely in the former camp, rather than the latter.
Instead of owning up to all the above, the GOP has instead begun circling the wagons in their own witch-hunt of the Mueller investigation itself arguing that because one FBI Agent sent out some rude tweets about Trump — even though Mueller already dropped this agent months ago — the entire investigation is therefore corrupt and tainted.
The former top FBI official assigned to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election was taken off that job this summer after his bosses discovered he and another member of Mueller’s team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging President Trump and supporting Hillary Clinton, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
Peter Strzok, as deputy head of counterintelligence at the FBI, was a key player in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server to do government work as secretary of state, as well as the probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
During the Clinton investigation, Strzok was involved in a romantic relationship with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Some on Fox News have even suggested that Strzok’s tweets were signs that the FBI had an assassination plot against Trump. Yes, really.
Appearing on “Outnumbered,” guest Kevin Jackson said that Congressional Republicans need to get to the bottom of what FBI agent Peter Strzok meant when he said that there needed to be an “insurance policy” in the event that Trump got elected.
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“What was his intent, right?” Jackson asked. “Because that’s exactly what FBI Director, former FBI Director [James] Comey said when he was letting Hillary Clinton off the hook. And his intent, regardless of whether it was an assassination attempt or whatever, it was definitely something…”
This is besides that fact that we do know what Strzok’s intent was as the Wall Street Journal has reported, he was only talking about continuing the investigation of Trump and Russia even if Clinton won the Presidency “as insurance.”
[T ]he Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Strzok’s “insurance policy” quote referred to his sincere belief in the need to investigate Trump because he was possibly compromised by Russian intelligence services,
It’s also worth noting, as Rachel does in the above clip that Strzok didn’t just criticize Trump.
Politico reported that Agent Strzok’s text messages to Lisa Page also criticized Eric Holder, Julianne Assange, Jeff Sessions, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, CBS reported they also talked smack about Duck Dynasty Stars and Scott Baio. The WSJ noted that he said Chelsey Clinton was “entitled” and worried about what a Clinton Presidency might bring. At one point Strzok says he might actually vote for Trump, although that could have be sarcasm. Lastly the Wapo reported that Strzok claims to “loathe Congress" and he admits to being a conservative Democrat who generally favored John Kasich over Clinton.
So besides the fact there’s no evidence that his personal opinions had any impact on either the Clinton or the Trump investigations — his personal opinions are a lot more complex and conflicted than they appear to have been reported so far.
What’s most alarming is how Trump has seized on minor issues like Strzok’s texts and has allowed his general dunder-headedness to cause his national security briefing team to hide, duck and dodge directly addressing security issues with Russia with him because he tends to go off the rails into denial and delusion when they do.
But as aides persisted, Trump became agitated. He railed that the intelligence couldn’t be trusted and scoffed at the suggestion that his candidacy had been propelled by forces other than his own strategy, message and charisma.
Told that members of his incoming Cabinet had already publicly backed the intelligence report on Russia, Trump shot back, “So what?” Admitting that the Kremlin had hacked Democratic Party emails, he said, was a “trap.”
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Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House.
The result is without obvious parallel in U.S. history, a situation in which the personal insecurities of the president — and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality — have impaired the government’s response to a national security threat. The repercussions radiate across the government.
Rather than search for ways to deter Kremlin attacks or safeguard U.S. elections, Trump has waged his own campaign to discredit the case that Russia poses any threat and he has resisted or attempted to roll back efforts to hold Moscow to account.
This delusion, that Russia really didn’t hack the DNC and feed that information to Wikileaks, funnel it through RT and Sputnik to rightwing media such as Breitbart and Daily Caller, then get it to trend on Twitter and Facebook with bots and fake trolls — runs deep with this man.
The Russian information attack on the election did not stop with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails or the fire hose of stories, true, false and in between, that battered Mrs. Clinton on Russian outlets like RT and Sputnik. Far less splashy, and far more difficult to trace, was Russia’s experimentation on Facebook and Twitter, the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into engines of deception and propaganda.
An investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. On Wednesday, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign.
On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages. Many were automated Twitter accounts, called bots, that sometimes fired off identical messages seconds apart — and in the exact alphabetical order of their made-up names, according to the FireEye researchers. On Election Day, for instance, they found that one group of Twitter bots sent out the hashtag #WarAgainstDemocrats more than 1,700 times.
This was a significant effort. It was not done casually or as an after thought. Russia had to feel very motivated to go through all this trouble. Trump’s abject failure to address and respond to this continuing threat is a much larger problem than just how much he and his campaign directly coordinated with Russians to get out the dirt and pay them back by gutting sanctions.
It may even continue to impact our elections including next year’s 2018 midterms and various Governors races and beyond.
HIs ridiculous claim that the Mueller investigation is “nearly over” and he’ll be receiving “letter of exoneration” is equally deranged and deluded.
Until those next signs emerge, Trump is boasting to friends and advisers that he expects Mueller to clear him of wrongdoing in the coming weeks, according to sources familiar with the conversations. The President seems so convinced of his impending exoneration that he is telling associates Mueller will soon write a letter clearing him that Trump can brandish to Washington and the world in a bid to finally emerge from the cloud of suspicion that has loomed over the first chapter of his presidency, the sources said.,
That is quite seriously not gonna happen. If there’s any hint or indication that, for example, Hope Hicks passed on the information the Don Jr. was in contact with Wikileaks after Jared Kushner forwarded an email about it to her, or that Trump was made personally are by Hicks — who was informed by Don Jr. — that the Veselnitskaya meeting was about opposition research info on Hillary in exchange for easing Russian sanctions and not about “adoption” as the initial release which was reported dictated by Trump himself, then he’s been an active participant in the cover-up and obstruction basically from the beginning.
Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.”
Over the next three days, multiple accounts of the meeting were provided to the news media as public pressure mounted, with Trump Jr. ultimately acknowledging that he had accepted the meeting after receiving an email promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s campaign.
The extent of the president’s personal intervention in his son’s response, the details of which have not previously been reported, adds to a series of actions that Trump has taken that some advisers fear could place him and some members of his inner circle in legal jeopardy.
That issue alone puts Trump in direct legal jeopardy. He can’t currently be indicted, allegedly, but many of his staff beyond Papadopoulos, Flynn, Manafort and Gates are at risk including Don Jr., Kushner and Hope Hicks. When Mueller does complete his investigation he will deliver a report to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein is then likely to deliver that report to Congress and exactly what they’ll do with it is up to them, but if it shows clear criminal actions by Trump himself personally — regardless of their smear campaign on Mueller — they will have to Impeach him so that he can be indicted to stand trial.
I have no expectation that a Republican Congress would do that, and only a slightly less expectation that a potential Democratic Congress following the 2018 elections will do it either.
But if that’s how it ultimately turns out, that’s what the American people are going to have to ABSOLUTELY DEMAND happens and not let any silly diversions about text messages get in the way.
It doesn’t matter that this could make Mike Pence, or even Paul Ryan depending on how deep the charges go, the next person to sit behind the Resolute Desk.
If Mueller produces credible evidence that Trump was involved in a conspiracy and a cover-up — and frankly I think there’s a very strong likelihood that he will — America has to do the right thing, or we don’t have a functioning Republic anymore.
Hopefully…. we still do.