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The Robert Mueller Investigation


Hugo Stiglitz

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13 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

Ok legal analysts, what should we make of two prosecutors leaving the Special Counsel?  Is this news, or just business as usual?

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Going by that article, it sounds like their part (Manafort) of the investigation is winding down/cooperating, and so they are going back to their old jobs (although they are on call basically, if Mueller needs them).

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10 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Mueller fantasy indictment potentials:

Roger Stone

Don Jr

Reince Pribus 

KT McFarland 

Papadopoulos (again)

Carter Page

Jared Kushner

Julian Assange 

Michael Caputo 

Paul Erickson 

Sam Clovis 

Jeff Sessions

Don McGahn

Erik Prince

Borris Epystein 

Hope Hicks

Roger and Don Jr. are for sure getting indicted.

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4 hours ago, Yuk said:

"Lichtblau, an experienced reporter on surveillance, data and national security, became increasingly convinced by computer scientists he spoke with that the data showed intentional and suspicious attempts to communicate — and not just random computer activity.

“Not only is there clearly something there but there’s clearly something that someone has gone to great lengths to conceal,” Lichblau told the magazine.

 

(not directed at you, Yuk)  

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/08/politics/trump-no-plans-to-fire-rosenstein/index.html

Quote

Trump says he has no plans to fire Rosenstein

So I saw this and then immediately thought:

1. Who can believe anything Trump says (hint: no one)?

2.  If Trump is going to fire Rosenstein, why would he say so (hint:  he wouldn't)?

3.  Why would he care if Roesnstein is fired now that he has a S.Ct. Justice that will shoot down any Fed (and possibly state) charges that could be brought against him?

Am I missing anything?

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I'm guessing he's still trying to salvage a story that he's innocent... 

If he can shut down the investigation through firing at last ol' Rod, and if he can get cover from the Supremes, then maybe he can shut it all down

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So much hinges on the outcome of the midterms.  Trump’s complicit enablers in the House and Senate have a chokehold on meaningful investigation and accountability to the truth.
 

Perhaps the entire nature of our democracy hangs in the balance AFAIC. We cannot stomach 2 more years of Trump and recognize our country or our discourse.
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I love this story so much.

Russian agents aren't the best and the brightest.  I love the first part:

-------------------------------------------------------

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

Dear Sirs:

This is to confirm that the law firm Mayer Brown Row and Maw LLP has been offered a legal internship to Ms Simona Mangiante.

-------------------------------------------------------

The law firm has been offered an internship to Simona?

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MSM is cranking these last several days.  Seth Abramson offers a condensed explanation drawing old and new news together:  Trump/Russia Alfa bank server comms/ Israeli psy-ops for hire / Prince.KSA.UAE

 


The full (long) thread.  It gets easier to understand in the second half. 

 

Spoiler

1/ *Everything in this thread is based on major media reporting*. Feel free to look any of it up. All of this is discussed—with bountiful endnotes and citations—in PROOF OF COLLUSION. This is about 2% of the fully fact-checked and major media-born narrative presented in the book. 

2/ George Nader was—for a long time—a recognized emissary for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (known as "MBS"wink.gif and the Crown Prince of the UAE (known as "MBZ"wink.gif. Nader is now a cooperating witness for Bob Mueller. Erik Prince is a very close friend of the Crown Prince of the UAE. 

3/ Erik Prince lives in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He falsely claimed under oath to have had no role in Trump's campaign, but admits meeting with members of Trump's National Security Advisory Committee—the Committee that coordinated collusion and is the beating heart of the collusion story. 

4/ He also admits feeding Donald Trump national security advice *directly through Trump's campaign CEO*, Steve Bannon. Erik Prince was invited by Trump to his election-night party and Trump awarded Prince's unqualified sister, Betsy DeVos, the position of Secretary of Education. 

5/ Prince was a shadow national security adviser during the campaign. Trump had two—the other was Mike Flynn, who Trump deliberately kept off any formal national security committee he created (there were multiple ones preelection). And that's exactly what he did with Erik Prince. 

6/ But Prince had eyes on Trump's National Security Advisory Committee—the equivalent, in the Russia scandal, of what "CREEP" was to Watergate—and those eyes were the eyes of Joseph Schmitz, one of the very first people Trump appointed to his National Security Advisory Committee. 

7/ It's not just that Schmitz is Prince's friend. It's not just that Prince was Schmitz's mentor. Schmitz *worked for Prince* as the COO for a company of which Prince was the CEO. And Prince *admits* meeting with Schmitz during the campaign. And who knows how often he called him. 

8/ So when Prince set up a meeting at Trump Tower between Joel Zamel—who runs the "business intelligence" firms Wikistrat and Psy Group, both of which have connections to the Israeli government via their former Israeli intel employees and Zamel himself—and Trump Jr., it was big. 

9/ "It was big" means Prince—a Trump shadow NatSec adviser with eyes on Trump's National Security Advisory Committee (which had, by August '16, been in direct communication with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs *repeatedly* via Papadopoulos)—Prince did so *very* advisedly. 

10/ Prince also invited Nader, the emissary for his (Prince's) pal MBZ and also for MBS, the man who later boasted of having "Jared Kushner in his back pocket." The four men met at Trump Tower. Did Donald Trump *Sr.* know his son was holding this meeting in his (Trump's) *house*? 

11/ The Trump campaign had a *pattern* of trying to insulate Trump from anyone saying he knew *anything*. *Ever*. If you wanted to get to Trump, you went to Rhona Graff. Or Hope Hicks. Or—as in June 2016—Donald Trump Jr. 

But the evidence suggests Trump *always* knew what was up. 

12/ So *any* investigator looking at this—including Mueller—would presume Trump Sr. was either at this meeting or knew about it beforehand. The *absolute minimum* is that he learned of it afterward, for reasons that I'll lay out now. It has to do with today's breaking news story. 

13/ According to the NYT today, Rick Gates was engaged in negotiations with Zamel to get Zamel's Psy Group to "create fake online identities, use social media manipulation, and gather intel to help defeat....Hillary Clinton, according to interviews and copies of the proposals." 

14/ First, let's take today's report on its own terms. Rick Gates was Trump's Deputy Campaign Manager. This means Trump's Deputy Campaign Manager was considering USING A DOMESTIC DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN ON AMERICAN VOTERS to help Trump win the presidential election. Process that. 

15/ No one is alleging—and no one believes—that Gates had "gone rogue" and was considering something that Paul Manafort (his immediate boss and Trump's Campaign Manager) didn't know he was considering. 

And keep in mind Manafort was speaking with the Russians (via Kilimnik) then. 

16/ Did Trump Sr. know what Manafort and Gates were doing? Again, who knows—he was insulated from anyone readily being able to say *what* he knew. But Gates and Manafort getting *formal proposals* from Zamel on this sort of massive campaign had to be known to *somebody* high up. 

17/ Far and away the most likely Trump family member to have known about the Gates-Zamel negotiations of Spring 2016 is Jared Kushner, as it was Kushner who ultimately hired Cambridge Analytica "instead"—I'll explain the scare-quotes in a moment. 

Kushner would've been consulted. 

18/ Indeed, today's NYT breaking news says that Gates ultimately decided the Trump campaign was "uninterested" in working with Zamel because the campaign was going with Cambridge Analytica instead. Impossible to see, therefore, how Kushner wasn't part of the deliberative process. 

19/ Kushner has a history of *passing off things that are too hot* to his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. Want proof? When Jared allegedly *nixed* anyone on the Trump campaign meeting with Russian mobster Alex Torshin, guess who ended up dining with Torshin days later? Trump Jr. 

20/ Trump Jr. invited Kushner to the June 2016 Trump-Russia meeting—and though one of the other meeting participants said Kushner was laser-focused in the meeting and "irate" when the Russians didn't hand over Clinton dirt, in the end the fall guy for the meeting was... Trump Jr. 

21/ Trump Jr. was a safer conduit to Trump Sr. than Kushner because Jr. had no official role in the campaign. He was "outside" the campaign and made a big deal of being so. So when Gates—and Kushner—nixed Zamel's illegal (fraudulent) domestic disinformation scheme, what happened? 

22/ Well, what happened is that weeks later—*consistent with a campaign pattern*—the shady person (Zamel) who Kushner had supposedly, per the NYT, "turned down" ended up meeting with Jr. *This time* with an emissary from Kushner's eventual pal MBS and Trump NatSec adviser Prince. 

23/ We know—as major-media reported it—what happened at that August 3, 2016 meeting. Zamel offered Trump Jr. the *same deal* that Gates (and likely Kushner) were "uninterested" in—confirming that they saw value in Zamel's offer but *couldn't let it get too close to the campaign*. 

24/ According to major media reporting Trump Jr. said he was "interested" in Zamel's offer. But that wasn't the only offer he got in the meeting. And this is, I believe, the single biggest fact in the entire *Trump-Russia* scandal—even though it involves the UAE and Saudi Arabia. 

25/ At Trump Tower on August 3, 2016—a week after Trump asked Russia to commit acts of cyber-terrorism in the U.S.—George Nader said to Trump Jr., as an emissary of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, that those two nations would do anything they could do to help Trump win the White House. 

26/ This is the first of two documents I wrote and published a week ago. Together they offer the story of Trump-Russia collusion in broad strokes (note: it should say "Black Sea, Kava Sea, Arctic Ocean" instead of "North Sea"; just a silly typo on my part that's not in the book): 

27/ And here's the second document I wrote and published a week ago—before today's breaking news that the Israeli government-linked Zamel was trying to collude with the Trump campaign in spring 2016. (Sort of suggests this "theory of the case" is on the right track, doesn't it.) 

28/ Both documents are derived from major media reports. They don't represent a guess—they're an investigative "theory of the case" based on all the available reliable evidence. I'm reasonably certain that this is the theory Mueller is working from, as it fits *all* the evidence. 

29/ OK—so you're Donald Trump Jr., and Zamel has just offered you a deal you're "interested" in but can't say "yes" to directly because Gates and Kushner don't want the campaign attached to it. 

And two *insanely rich countries* have *just told you* they'll do *anything* for you. 

30/ A "theory of the case"—an evolving investigative theory a professional develops to investigate a case—would have Trump Jr. saying "yes" to Zamel and asking the Saudis and the UAE to pay the tab to give Trump's campaign plausible deniability. 

Does other evidence support this? 

31/ Yes, only *all the evidence* supports this. 

32/ (1) MBZ—Trump NatSec adviser Prince's very good friend—*secretly enters the US in December '16* to meet with—wait for it—Bannon! and Kushner! and Flynn! (2) MBS *secretly* texts with Kushner using WhatsApp during that same month—making their communication impossible to track. 

33/ (3) Trump shocks the world by making Saudi Arabia his first foreign trip. (4) Trump shocks the world by being the first-ever president to consider allowing the Saudis to *develop nuclear weapons*. (Oh, and if he says yes to Saudi Arabia, an agreement lets the UAE do it, too.) 

34/ (5) A Saudi blockade of Qatar convinces the Qataris to "loan" Kushner *a billion dollars* months after Trump enters office. There's more, but for now I'll add the obvious one: (6) a *disinformation campaign in the United States did in fact happen in the 90 days pre-election*. 

35/ Now—if you're paying very close attention—you'll notice that a Saudi/UAE-funded, Israeli-executed disinformation campaign isn't the same thing as the Russia campaign we know about. And no, it's not. Either there was a concurrent campaign *or* Russia was involved in a bargain. 

36/ If only there was *any* evidence that someone who was present on August 3, 2016 in Trump Tower when Jr. said he was "interested" in the Israeli-Saudi-UAE offer *later met with the Russians and UAE* together... let's see... is it: 

(a) Trump Jr. 
(b) Prince 
(c) Nader 
(d) Zamel 

37/ That's right: Prince—who was at the meeting—ended up meeting with the Russians and the UAE in the Seychelles and lying to everyone he could about it (including *Congress, under oath, repeatedly*). But surely there's no one in the Trump campaign connected to Israel and Russia? 

38/ Well, there are *several* people—Kushner is a great example—but we might also note here that *Papadopoulos* was *also* lied about by the Trump campaign (repeatedly), was thought to be an Israeli spy by the feds, met w/ Israeli agents, made weird trips to Israel in-campaign... 

39/ But here's the big reveal: immediately after Election Day in 2016, Zamel's Psy Group announced *formally* a partnership with Trump's data firm, Cambridge Analytica. Which means those two entities were *in communication* between August 2016 and Election Day. So what happened? 

40/ There are *many* questions like this. Why was Papadopoulos in Israel the week of Trump's inauguration? Why was Erik Prince—who set up Zamel's "disinformation" offer to Trump Jr. on August 3—caught spreading Russian disinformation via Bannon's Breitbart 96 hours pre-election? 

41/ Over and over, the same names/nations pop up in Trump campaign lies: 

Russia 
UAE 
Saudi Arabia 
Israel 
Qatar 

And: 

Kushner 
Trump Jr. 
Gates* 
Manafort* 
Nader 
Flynn* 
Prince 
Papadopoulos* 
Zamel 
Bannon 

* = Caught by Mueller. 

The above's a *fairly* tight group for a conspiracy—10. 

42/ Of course everyone needs *help*: Flynn needed K.T. McFarland; Kushner needed MBS; Prince, Bannon, and Zamel needed MBZ; Trump Sr. needed Rhona Graff, Hope Hicks, and Trump Jr. to block for him. And Roger Stone was "going rogue" while in communication with Trump Sr.—per usual. 

43/ But the other piece of news we received today via an unlikely source—George Papadopoulos himself—is that Papadopoulos, Trump, and (almost certainly) Mike Flynn were together at a meeting (at least one) in September '16, just weeks after the August 3, 2016 Trump Tower meeting. 

44/ To make it simpler—Kushner says no to Zamel, sends him to Trump Jr.; Trump Jr. says yes to Zamel, sends him to UAE/Saudi Arabia for payment; Zamel coordinates with Cambridge Analytica, and UAE/Russia coordinate. Bannon, Flynn, Prince, Nader, and Trump Jr. all remain involved. 

45/ It's shocking to think the only link we don't have full proof of in the prior tweet is UAE/Saudi Arabia paying Zamel. However, they'd just said they'd do *anything* for Trump at a meeting at which Zamel offered a plan Trump Jr. wanted to say yes to but wanted deniability for. 

46/ Moreover, post-election Jared Kushner was the only top Trump adviser telling Trump to support the Saudi blockade of Qatar—and Trump *agreed* with Kushner for no reason anyone can tell. Plus—Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, potential gift of a freedom to develop nuclear weapons. 

47/ We also learned, today, that the chances Trump Tower communicating with a Russian bank was coincidental—during the exact timeframe we're discussing—is virtually zero. Within 48 hours of the NYT telling Alfa Bank it knew of the "pinging," the *Trump Tower* server went offline. 

48/ And—per the New Yorker today—that pinging was happening in August and September 2016. Moreover, even after Trump Tower switched to another location, Alfa Banker's server *immediately* found it—as though a human source at Alfa Bank had been told by a human source at Trump Org. 

49/ The noose is tightening on Trump-Russia collusion. 

Everything I've mentioned here is just a tiny fraction of what's in PROOF OF COLLUSION, and presumably what's in PROOF OF COLLUSION is only a piece of what Bob Mueller knows. Cambridge Analytica continues to appear key here. 

50/ What I urge media to do now is memorize the timeline—know its key events. We can't have a repeat of today's NYT underreporting—which implied events weren't connected when prior reporting established they would have been. And to readers: read those "Grand Bargain" images. /end 
 

 

It funny how he lays out how cunning Kushner is about handing off hot potatoes and staying clear of flywheels, letting others fall in.  Then he mentions Kushner getting texted using the encrypted WhatsApp making their communications impossible to track.  lol.

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11 hours ago, Yuk said:

I love this story so much.

Russian agents aren't the best and the brightest.  I love the first part:

-------------------------------------------------------

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

Dear Sirs:

This is to confirm that the law firm Mayer Brown Row and Maw LLP has been offered a legal internship to Ms Simona Mangiante.

-------------------------------------------------------

The law firm has been offered an internship to Simona?

In Soviet Russia, legal internship offers you.

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I am no expert on this stuff, but have some impressions:

- Most of the folks this Fraud person is going after are of doing some heavy lifting to define and expose kremlin active measures.  Those folks also do not define themselves as politically right or left, but they are generally conservative to my eye.

- I have witnessed folks like Mensch (who does appear to have a legitimate grasp of the RU/CA/social media operations) get uncomfortably paranoid and go off on people as being kremlin actors for basic, honest appearing, skepticism being expressed.  Doesn't make her wrong about everything, but this Fraud person is picking it up and really running with it for a broader purpose.

- Fraud goes to quite a length to discredit these fairly popular and recognized anti-Kremlin folks as a way to dismiss what 'could be' an example of a mob type transaction with the Manaforts.  It seems like a defensive overreaction to discredit attention to public funds being awarded to the Manaforts for a 1.3M demolition deal and the media daughter of a public official.  I mean, if it's a legit deal, why worry about twitter ?  

- then there's msnbc.  I've not yet wrapped my head around it, but some of the folks Fraud is discrediting have been critical of msnbc and certain individuals who appear on that network as acting as agents benefitting those who would try to undermine our public discourse and search for some clarity in all this.

-interesting stuff, but I don't have time to spend reading much Fraud in the future.

 

What have you got  ?

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3 hours ago, triplehorn said:

Fraud goes to quite a length to discredit these fairly popular and recognized anti-Kremlin folks as a way to dismiss what 'could be' an example of a mob type transaction with the Manaforts.  It seems like a defensive overreaction to discredit attention to public funds being awarded to the Manaforts for a 1.3M demolition deal and the media daughter of a public official.  I mean, if it's a legit deal, why worry about twitter ?  

Fraude is exposing the ludicrous “Sarah Kendizior is a Kremlin agent” theory which I always found absurd. Sarah Kendizior and Molly McKew are academics with degrees in the fields they speak about.  Are they above scrutiny? Hell no.  However, Jay McKenzie is just average joe who latched onto a group to run with and became a leader himself in a way.  Except he should have stayed away from attacking others that go after the Kremlin if he wanted to not get his own shit put on blast. 

To me, it looks like Fraude is trying to play Twitter umpire and keeping the “resistance” a bit more honest so they don’t go off into Alex Jones territory on the left.  

While she’s not wrong on everything, Mensch is good example of a persona that goes off the deep end too much, to a harmful level sometimes. Because she has an almost cult like following, she can character assassinate others better than most because her followers will start repeating the character assassination and that’s where the real damage is done.  The same works in reverse when Jay McKenzie makes a false accusation, then Mensch repeats it. 

 

DpGIyaWV4AEySM6?format=jpg&name=900x900

 

I’ve seen Fraude put other popular accounts on blast and it’s usually for a good reason.  

Remember AgentSmith?  Fraud brought that character down in glorious fashion. 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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23 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

Does anyone find this shocking?  I mean first of all it's coming from Trump's lawyers.  It's probably one of the more cogent arguments they have made in the last year or so.  Pentagon Papers?  New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)?

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5 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Fraude is exposing the ludicrous “Sarah Kendizior is a Kremlin agent” theory which I always found absurd. Sarah Kendizior and Molly McKew are academics with degrees in the fields they speak about.  Are they above scrutiny? Hell no.  However, Jay McKenzie is just average joe who latched onto a group to run with and became a leader himself in a way.  Except he should have stayed away from attacking others that go after the Kremlin if he wanted to not get his own shit put on blast. 

To me, it looks like Fraude is trying to play Twitter umpire and keeping the “resistance” a bit more honest so they don’t go off into Alex Jones territory on the left.  

While she’s not wrong on everything, Mensch is good example of a persona that goes off the deep end too much, to a harmful level sometimes. Because she has an almost cult like following, she can character assassinate others better than most because her followers will start repeating the character assassination and that’s where the real damage is done.  The same works in reverse when Jay McKenzie makes a false accusation, then Mensch repeats it. 

 

DpGIyaWV4AEySM6?format=jpg&name=900x900

 

I’ve seen Fraude put other popular accounts on blast and it’s usually for a good reason.  

Remember AgentSmith?  Fraud brought that character down in glorious fashion. 

I'm not registered with Twitter so I'm not exposed to, or organized within, the full twitter experience.  We're all too aware how subject to misinterpretation limited information is, especially the more abstract or emotional it becomes.  Via twitter, you really have to observe over a long period of time to get a sense of a 'person', and even then it doesn't come close to the impression you get having a face to face conversation with someone.  Again most people recognize this and understand that it makes one very vulnerable to all kinds of misunderstanding and manipulation.  I try to zero in on facts as opposed to opinion as much as possible.  Even though I regularly make some quick rounds to see what's on the surface, I don't spend enough time to really get caught up in the currents.  I gravitate as much as possible to people who do research and draw together factual information with some semblance of balance and realistic uncertainty.  Even accounts that I regard as more reliable and consistent can still make me cringe or leave me baffled.  Just the nature of the medium.

 

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12 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Does anyone find this shocking?  I mean first of all it's coming from Trump's lawyers.  It's probably one of the more cogent arguments they have made in the last year or so.  Pentagon Papers?  New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)?

I think what we'll find out is that is two parties conspiring to profit from stealing something that has value.  Mutual understanding and advance planning, coordination, quid pro quo, all that.  They are trying to compartmentalize the crime to an out of reach jurisdiction and wall off the co-conspirator in the relevant jurisdiction as someone who blindly had information appear out of thin air (like an honest journalist).  I fully expect that eventual indictments will offer extensive detailed evidence that will blow that narrative and argument away.

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1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Does anyone find this shocking?  I mean first of all it's coming from Trump's lawyers.  It's probably one of the more cogent arguments they have made in the last year or so.  Pentagon Papers?  New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)?

My first thought was "freedom of the press".  Are they arguing the press can release stolen information, or anybody?  Haven't had time to dig in.

EDIT:  Just read another post, which makes some sense.  It's the conspiracy to steal that's probably the bigger issue, not the release of the material itself.  (If I'm reading you right.)

Edited by jimmyjazz
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