A former top Trump campaign official on Tuesday testified that President Donald Trump talked to political trickster Roger Stone about WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.
That testimony by Rick Gates at Stone’s trial contrasts with Trump’s claim last November that he did not recall speaking to Stone about WikiLeaks, the document disclosure group that during the 2016 campaign released emails stolen from the Democratic Party and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s own campaign chief.
Gates testified in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that less than a minute after finishing a July 2016 call from Stone, Trump indicated that “more information would be coming” from Wikileaks.
Later on when the Washington Post was about to publish the infamous “grab ‘em by the Pussy tape” — the Trump campaign through Steve Bannon contacted Roger Stone and had him tell Wikileaks to release the pending Podesta emails.
October 2016, during the fraught final weeks of the showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Roger Stone got word that a damning recording of his candidate was about to drop. That tape would become instantly infamous for Trump’s degrading remarks about women and his apparent boasts about committing sexual assault. “When you’re a star, they let you do it—you can do anything,” Trump told Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush in 2005, in audio published by the Washington Post. “Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Apparently sensing the cataclysmic damage the comments would wreak, Stone—self-styled dirty trickster and unofficial Trump adviser—spoke by phone to the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, directing him to get in touch with Julian Assange, whose organization, WikiLeaks, had obtained Russian-hacked emails from Democratic Party staffers, including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. “Drop the Podesta emails immediately,” Stone instructed, seeking to “balance the news cycle” after the release of the Access Hollywood tape. Thirty-two minutes later, WikiLeaks followed through.
Afterward the campaign messaged Stone and told him “Good job.” That people, is called “Collusion.” Most of this information was redacted from the original Mueller report because Stone’s trial was still pending at the time, now it’s over and this is all public knowledge from his trial transcripts.
Don Jr talked to Russian Lawyer Veselnitskaya and her GRU tag-along and agreed to drop Magnitsky Act sanctions in exchange for dirt about illegal contributions to the DNC — until it turned out the dirt was nothing but fairie dust — but also Alexander Torshin and convicted Russia Spy Maria Butina.
Hours after Donald Trump shocked the world by siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than his own intelligence agencies regarding Russia’s attempts to skew the 2016 election, the Justice Department announced that it had filed charges against yet another Russian. Maria Butina, a pro-gun activist and graduate student living in the D.C. area, was indicted for “infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.” Butina, 29, was arrested on Sunday in Washington, D.C.
If true, the indictment, which was unsealed Monday, paints a remarkable picture of Russian efforts to use the National Rifle Association to insinuate themselves into Republican politics and, ultimately, the 2016 presidential campaign. Butina and her former boss, Alexander Torshin—the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank and a former Russian senator who allegedly has ties to Russia’s criminal underground—became lifetime members of the N.R.A. and ran a Russian version of the group called the Right to Bear Arms. Over the years, both cultivated relationships with powerful members of the gun-rights group, particularly Republicans, who they allegedly believed would be friendlier to Russian interests. (Torshin is reportedly under investigation by the F.B.I. for channeling money to the N.R.A. to benefit the Trump campaign.) According to the indictment, Butina even had a “private meeting” with an unnamed “political candidate” in 2015, at the N.R.A.’s annual members’ meeting.
[...] There are additional points of contact, however. Torshin did meet with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., at a private dinner during an N.R.A. convention in Louisville, Kentucky, the following year. (Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Don Jr., said their conversation was restricted to “gun-related small talk.”) Butina also has ties to Paul Erickson, a G.O.P. operative who has reportedly bragged about advising Trump and whose background aligns with the description of “U.S. Person 1” in the indictment. Butina and Torshin allegedly used their gun-rights group as a way to connect with Republican officials in the United States; Erickson, former N.R.A. president David Keene, and former Wisconsin sheriff David Clarke attended a December 2015 trip to Moscow funded by the organization. (Erickson was not identified in court records and has not been charged.)
For the record, Butina also had ties — as in they used to date — to former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne who was part of the Oval Office meeting/argument with Trump and WH Counsel Pat Cippillone over election fraud. Barely an hour after that meeting ended, Trump tweeted out the call for a rally on January 6. Hmmm...
Flynn illegally took $45,000 from Russia without authorization from the Pentagon and sat right next to Putin at an RT Event, then later tried to broker a deal with Russia to provide Nuclear Power Plants for Saudi Arabia, [using a sanctioned Russian company for security] as well as lying about his conversations with former Russian ambassador Kislyak.
WASHINGTON — Whistleblowers from within President Donald Trump's National Security Council have told a congressional committee that efforts by former national security adviser Michael Flynn to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia may have violated the law, and investigators fear Trump is still considering it, according to a new report obtained by NBC News.
The House Oversight Committee has formally opened an investigation into the matter, releasing an interim staff report that adds new details to previous public accounts of how Flynn sought to push through the nuclear proposal on behalf of a group he had once advised. Tom Barrack, a prominent Trump backer with business ties to the Middle East, also became involved in the project, the report says.
Flynn was fired for lying to FBI agent Peter Strozk about discussing sanctions with Kislyak. After he left, his former staff on the NSC attempted to have the sanctions against Russia dropped at least three separate times, first trying to drop them just for “Russian Oil” which would have done wonders for the $500 Billion deal between Rosneft and Exxon for drilling in the Black Sea which had just been inked by fresh new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. These attempts alarmed the State Department so greatly they rushed to Congress to have the law changed so that sanctions couldn’t be dropped by Trump alone.
Carter Page was talking to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dvorkovich.
The testimony reveals new details about how Page kept people in the campaign informed about interactions he had with Russians, as well as more details about his Russian contacts beyond his encounter with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich during his July 2016 trip.
[...]
But an email Page sent to Trump campaign officials suggests he might have gone beyond simply giving the campaign a heads up, according to an excerpt read by Rep. Jackie Speier, D-California.
“Please let me know if you have any reservations or thoughts on how you’d prefer me to focus these remarks,” Page wrote in an email to Trump campaign officials.
And with Rosneft exec Baranov.
Page also testifies that he met with Andrey Baranov, Rosneft’s head of investor relations and a senior aide to Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin. Page claims that Baranov gave him “an investor relations presentation,” but their discussions involved “nothing more substantive than that.”
According to Page’s testimony Baranov told him about an upcoming sale of 19.5% of Rosneft’s stock (this is a point that was specifically noted in the Steele Dossier, except it says that Page was told about the 19.5% stock sale by Sechin) However, Rosneft is a sanctioned company and an American couldn’t possibly profit from such information. Unless *somebody* dropped the sanctions that is. Who would possibly do that?
Michael Cohen and Felix Sater were in contact with Dmitri Peskov over the Trump Tower Moscow project [which would have used a sanctioned Russian bank for financing. Am I sensing a pattern here?] all based on a letter of intent which had been signed personally by Trump. [“I have no deals in Russia!”]
A Trump Organization executive emailed a Kremlin aide during President Donald Trump’s run for the White House seeking help on a “stalled” Trump Tower Moscow plan, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Michael Cohen, a Trump lawyer who was then an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, reached out to Dmitry Peskov, the top spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower – Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote. “Without getting into lengthy specifics. the communication between our two sides has stalled.”
“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” he wrote.
Trump, Cohen and Peskov all lied about this communication until they were finally caught.
Cohen and Sater also tried to negotiate a “Peace Deal” between Russia and Ukraine — which would have required Ukraine to give Russia everything they wanted including Crimea— and which would have ultimately dropped sanctions against Russia. Funny how that subject keeps coming up, ain’t it?
Five of these guys — Cohen, Stone, Flynn, Papadopoulos, and Rick Gates associate Alex Van Der Zwaan — all went to prison for lying under oath about conversations with Russians. Why in the world would they be willing to risk prison by lying about talking to Russians? I wonder…
Jeff Sessions also lied under oath during his confirmation about not knowing “any members of the campaign reaching out to Russians” when he was in the room when Papadopoulos publicly announced that was exactly what he was doing and Sessions openly supported the idea, plus Sessions himself met with Kislyak three separate times during the campaign — at a Trump campaign event and during the RNC convention away from his own offices — however the FBI and DOJ decided to completely ignore this and didn’t seek perjury charges.