This week in Trump-Russia land we have quite a bit more information about how both Facebook and Twitter were used by Russian Internet Research Agency — whose building in St. Petersburg is apparently now occupied by a company called “Glasvet” — who spent $100,000 to generate 3,000 ads which may have reached as many as 10 Million people and some of which were specifically targeting the states of WIsconsin and Michigan where Trump squeaked out a victory by less than 1% of the vote.
Some of the Russian ads appeared highly sophisticated in their targeting of key demographic groups in areas of the states that turned out to be pivotal, two of the sources said. The ads employed a series of divisive messages aimed at breaking through the clutter of campaign ads online, including promoting anti-Muslim messages, sources said.
It has been unclear until now exactly which regions of the country were targeted by the ads. And while one source said that a large number of ads appeared in areas of the country that were not heavily contested in the elections, some clearly were geared at
swaying public opinion in the most heavily contested battlegrounds.
Michigan saw the closest presidential contest in the country -- Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by about 10,700 votes out of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast. Wisconsin was also one of the tightest states, and Trump won there by only about 22,700 votes. Both states, which Trump carried by less than 1%, were key to his victory in the Electoral College.
So it’s no longer out of the realm of reasonableness that these ad campaign may have shifted or deterred enough votes to make a difference in the final result when they were specifically targeting 2 out of the 3 crucial states.
Former Assistant Special Watergate Prosecutor Nick Akerman explained the legal liability to [Ari] Melber.
“What is really outrageous here is that…he does it after it comes the light that he is using the personal e-mail servers,” Akerman explained.
“So the obvious question is, why did they move it over to the Trump Organization?” Akerman wondered. “Did they take it over there so they could cleanse these emails and take certain emails out of what was in the server? We just don’t know what the ramifications are, but there’s huge potential for all kinds of criminal conduct that could be charged,” the former federal prosecutor concluded.
This potentially displays a “consciousness of guilt”, particularly since these accounts were established during the transition at a time where Kushner was setting up multiple meetings with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and the head of Russia’s VEB Bank which remains under international sanctions, to create a secret back-channel to the Kremlin away from the prying eyes of U.S. intelligence, and meet with King Abdullah of Jordon to support a project to build joint U.S.-Russian Nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia with yet another sanctioned Russian company Rosoboron..
All of that is on top of all of Trump’s NFL anthem nonsense, and revelations the Michael Cohen
had two more undisclosed contacts with Russia, even though he’s already spoken to the Senate Intel Staff. HHS Secretary Tom Price resigned because of his use of private charter plane while both EPA head Scott Pruit and Interior head Ryan Zinke also took multiple private & military flights. Meanwhile Zinke and Nikki Haley are both now under investigation for violating the Hatch Act.
Lastly Trump picked dumb fights with the Mayor of San Juan Puerto Rico over the Federal response to Hurrican Maria and the
WH used secret talking points to duck and dodge questions about gun control in the wake of 59 people being killed by a non-al Qaeda, non-ISIS, non-Mexican, non-Gang Banger who bought his guns and the “bump stocks” that allowed him to fire them in fully automatic mode completely and totally legally.
[This post is part of a larger series including my original Master Timeline which begins in 1986 when Trump first began talking about becoming a diplomat/negotiator with Russia so he could “end the Cold War in an hour” which has been split due to length into Master List Vol 2 beginning in Mid-June and then current Master List Vol 3 beginning in Late-August.
There are also previous incremental updates for Sept 27, Sept 22, Sept. 17, Sept. 11th, Sept 4th, August 24th, August 17th, August 4th,July 28th, July 14th, July 10th, July 9th, July 4th, June 21st, June 18th, June 14th, June 12th, June 9th, June 6th, andJune 2nd.]
Here’s a recent report from Rachel Maddow which goes fairly deep into how Russia has been messing with Ukraine and exploiting Facebook as one of their main tool in their information warfare operations.
And here’s the current timeline for the last week, lot of interesting tidbits in here.
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September 27th --
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September 28th—
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Reps from Twitter appear for a closed-door discussion with Senate Intel staff over Russia interference, while former Trump advisor Boris Ephsteyn is interviewed by House Intel staff.
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Far-Right Protestors plan another Tiki Rally for Charlotte, NC. but it descends into chaos due to infighting.
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Kushner’s attorney Abbie Lowell accidentally forwards an email to a prankster that shows that jared didn't disclose use of his private email for official business to the Senate Intel staff.
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Twitter reveals that RT spent $274,000 on ads and promoted tweets during 2016, and tells Congress that they found 200 false accounts linked to the 400 Facebook accounts that had been linked to Russian Troll Farms.
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Huckabee-Sanders claims the anthem protest scandal is “pretty black and white” [Yeah, no kidding. So far no one at Wh has explalned why alt-Righters like Milo, Richard Spencer and Unite the Right have Free Speech rights with the Confederate Flag, but NFL players don’t with U.S. flag.]
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Russian hacker Peter Leveshov is arrested while on vacation in Barcelona Spain and admits in court that he’s worked for Putin’s United Russia party for the last ten years.
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Rep. Steve Scalise returns to the House after 3 months recovery from being shot in the hip.
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Tom Price promises to pay back cost of “his seat” on the 26 private chartered flights amounting to $52,000, leaving the other estimated $350,000 of what he and his staff spent to U.S. Taxpayers. Then Politco reports that Price also took another $500k worth of flights to Geneva, Berlin, Beijing & Tokyo on Military aircraft authorized by the WH. Repubs argue “whataboutism” with Nancy Pelosi but she only used a Military plane as Speaker because GHBush required it for security reasons, and the House Sargent at Arms requested a larger one than Dennis Hastert’s so it wouldn’t need to refuel in order to reach San Francisco.
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CNN reports EPA head Scott Pruit has also been using private jets and military planes for travel as well has spending a another $25k for his own private soundproof booth. All of which is nothing like when Treasury Secretary Mnuchin requested a government plane to take him on his wedding & honeymoon, which was denied, then he used another to fly to Ft. Knox to “check on the gold” at the same time that the total solar eclipse was at 95% in the area.
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Politico reports that Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke used a private plane to fly from his home in Whitefish Montana to Las Vegas at a cost of $12,375. He took a chartered fly between Caribbean islands St. Croix and St. Thomas, he used military planes to fly to Norway, and then to Alaska and a military helicopter to fly from Fort Bliss to see the Organ Mountains monument in New Mexico in June. He then used a Bureau of Land Management helicopter to survey the Basin and Range National Monument at the end of July.
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Trump continues to blame the failure of healthcare on a phantom “Hospitalized Senator” when noone in the Senate is in a hospital despite the bill being pulled due to the opposition of Sens. McCain, Paul and Collins.
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The humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico grows critical as 10,000 containers of supplies sit on the docks without drivers or fuel undelivered to those in need. A 3 Star General is assigned to handle logistics, but it’s been almost a week and many deaths are imminent.
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Reports surface of a 2008 appearance by Trump on the Howard Stern Show where he talks about an 80 year-old man who had collapsed and hit his head during a Red Cross Benefit. All the rich donors, including Trump, turned away as his wife screamed and he slowly bled out on the floor until a set of Marines — who had seats back in the corner even as the guests of honor — rushed forward to provide the man aid and carried him out. Trump was focused on the blood, ‘Get that blood cleaned up, it’s disgusting.'” and neglected to call to check on the man afterward.
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Donald Trump Jr. ditched his secret service protection to “kill a big Moose” in Canada
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Arkansas Fire fighter loses his job for saying Anthem protestors should be “shot in the head.”.
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Trump waives shipping restrictions for Puerto Rico, finally.
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Trump’s new choice to head the DEA Joseph Fuentes following the departure of Chuck Rosenburg is a supporter of Racial Profiling and accused civil rights activists of being “professional race baiters” who "scapegoated" cops.
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Despite claiming he isn’t pre-occupied with the NFL Trump called Cowboy’s owner Jerry Jones four times to discuss “anthem stuff.” He also says the “Owners are afraid of their players, it's disgraceful.” [Because what, they should be keeping their players in dungeons between games so they show the proper “respect”?]
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WH advisor Stephen Miller pushed for the inclusion of Chad in the updated travel ban over the objections of the State Dept ahd Homeland Security.
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US slated to end the program to accept child refugees fleeing violence from Central America
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Former OSHA Chief says that Trump’s rollback of worker safety rules limiting the exposure to silica dust which tends to induce cancer and tuberculosis will prove deadly.
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Trumpsters claim Obama is being paid to stage a rebellion with the NFL anthem protests. “We didn’t have this kind of racial hatred before Obama. I’ve never seen this kind of racial hatred in my life — never. He poisoned our society and he did it deliberately to start a civil war. He’s just a paid thug. We need to know who he works for, but he’s a thug.”
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Senate Judiciary committee approves Trump choice to head Criminal Division of the DOJ, Brian A. Benczkowski, on a party-line vote despite the fact he has no courtroom experiences and has never worked as prosecutor after he had worked on the Trump campaign before working to defend Russia’s Alfa Bank from an investigation of their being linked to the Trump campaign.
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Tucker Carlson tries to debate Spike Lee’s reaction that Trump’s comments display a “plantation mentality” as being “racially inflammatory and untrue” and gets brutally punked by an African-American attorney Monique Pressley.
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September 29th —
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September 30th —
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October 1st —
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Leaked WH memo documents how National Security Advisor Tom (Dead Eyes) Bossert planned to avoid blame and responsibility for the slow response to Hurricane Maria.
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Pentagon releases assessment of Puerto Rico that denies things are “going well” as the WH likes to claim noting that power is out for 95% of the people and only 45% have access to drinking water.
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In an effort to gain certification to sell their cyber security solutions to the Russian pubic, Hewlet Packard Enterprise provided copies of the source for their ArcSight product, which is used by the Pentagon, to a Russian defense agency.
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Black Lives Matter protestors join the LA Chargers on the field during the National Anthem, half the Baltimore Raven’s kneel before the anthem and are still booed even though they stand for the song.
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Trump tweets to SecState Tillerson telling him not to bother trying to negotiate with “Little Rocket Man” saying “We’ll take care of it.” Axios reports that during a September Oval Office meeting Trump told his staff to describe him as an erratic and “crazy” and “unpredictable” — to foreign leaders so it’s all basically an act and negotiation strategy. Kinda.
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In Nevada where it’s legal to own and sell fully automatic assault weapons without a license a 64 year-old White man Stephen Paddack takes 10 rifles into the Mandalay Bay Hotel on the Las Vegas strip and begins firing fully automatic rounds using a “bump stock” through his 32nd floor windows down onto a crowd of 20,000 gathered for country artist Jason Aldean, 59 people are killed over 500 are wounded. He’s found dead in his room by police from a self-inflicted wound. ISIS claims credit, but no one believes that. The FBI says there are “No connections to international terrorism.”
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Head of Miami’s police union uses the Vegas shooting to bash the NFL protests arguing that police are brave and put their lives at risk every day and aren’t the deadly killers and thugs that many African-Americans proclaims [Although they definitely are, if not worse]. He texts to the NYTimes “While NFL players express a false perception of police officers by inciting hate and division by disrespecting the U.S. flag, the reality is law enforcement risks their lives every day for America.” [They also kill about 5 Americans per day.]
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OJ Simpson is released from Prison for his parole, but Trump told Howard Stern back in the 90’s that he was framed by the LAPD planting evidence.
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October 2nd —
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Huckabee-Sanders chokes up as she reads a statement about the Vegas shooting, she argues “it’s not the right time to talk about gun policy”, then switches and decides to talk about the how strong gun laws in Chicago haven’t slowed down all the shootings there. She also ignores that Trump didn’t pause to talk policy issues when the Orlando Pulse shooting occurred using it as a reason to justify is travel ban, even though that shooter was born in New Haven New York.
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CHIP expires, congress does nothing about it.
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Rep Robin Kelly (R-IL) whose district includes Chicago points out that most of the guns in her city come from Mike Pence’s Indiana and Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin because there is no effective Federal straw purchaser law to stop them from being imported and resold locally.
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Trump offers a muted response of condolences to the Las Vegas mass shooting in direct contrast to the bellicose blustering he offers whenever a Muslim is involved in a crime. In a public statement he calls it “an act of pure evil” and offers his “warmest condolences”
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Cleveland Cavaliers owner is bombarded with racists messages in retaliation for Lebron James calling Trump a “bum” because of his attack on Stephen Curry.
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The Atlantic reports on new emails that show that two weeks after joining the Trump campaign Paul Manafort was having his Ukrainian helper Kilminik sending information to Russian Oligarch and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska with the hope of “impressing him”, this may have been because of an outstanding $18 Million dispute and lawsuit between them over money Deripaska gave Manafort to invest into a Ukrainian telecom company.
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The WaPo reports that Michael Cohen even after his private interview with Senate Intel staff just a week ago had two more unreported contacts with Russian nationals during the campaign. Weeks before the RNC he had exchanged emails with a “business associate” to attend a conference that would have including a personal appearance by Putin. The other was in 2015 he received a proposal for a Trump branded residential project in Moscow from a billionaire who used to be a member of Russian Senate.
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Facebook admits that the 3,000 false ads paid for by Russia’s troll farm the Internet Research Agency for $100,000 may have been viewed by over 10 Million people.
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Sen. Burr (R) head of the Senate Select Intel Committee says he’s satisfied that Kushner didn’t deliberately lie to them about his private email server use [He just plain forgot then?] But then the WH announces their assessing hundreds of emails from yet another third private account on the Kushner server used by both Ivanka & Jared. [Face palm!]
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Hayes and Maddow unload on the media over the Vegas Shooting, “If this isn’t terrorism, what is?” The internet pretty much blows up over that very same question.
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Pat Robertson blames the Vegas shooting on “disrespect for Trump and the National Anthem.”
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Tom Petty suffers a massive heart attack and is placed on life support, but no brain activity is found. He passes away later that night.
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Interior Dept’s Inspector General starts an investigation into Sec. Zinke’s use of private and military aircraft to travel.
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Three Kansas men are held by federal authorities for allegedly plotting to blow up a Muslim mosque and an apartment building predominantly occupied by Somali refugees.
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October 3rd —
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October 4th —