As I had diaried last week based on report from David Corn in Mother Jones, and former MI6 operative had discovered information that Russian intelligence has been attempting to cultivate Donald Trump as an asset for the last five years and had gather compromising information with which to blackmail him with. This information was turned over to the FBI and what CNN has reported today is that the CIA and FBI have found this British agents sources credible enough to include them in a two page summary that was part of the classified briefing materials given the President-Elect Trump last friday as part of their report on the widespread and comprehensive Russian hacking and disinformation campaign intended to benefit Trump in the election.
Buzzfeed has posted the 35 page document summarizing the data that was provided to the FBI and some of the details of this memo are sizzling.
And we’ve learned so much more about the Kompromat-Elect today.
CNN has covered this story in depth.
There are many elements of this report that are literally eye-popping and I can see why at this date outlets like CNN have not yet reported on the more salacious details, but in point of fact those details besides being somewhat purient are also relatively illuminating considering the context.
The first thing is that Trump and his campaign have been fully aware and fully informed as to the Russian activities attacking the Clinton campaign and that they openly and regularly shared information for well over a year. To put it another way, Trump and his people not only knew that the Russians were hacking his opponents, they were directly receiving the information Russian intelligence had taken and also given to Wikileaks and the Kremlin’s propaganda arms, RT and Sputnik News.
Not all of this former British agents information came from Russia. Some of it came from and was confirmed by Trump associates inside the campaign. They knew Wikileaks was being used as a front to generate “plausible deniability.” Trump had his own moles inside the DNC. The information exchange went both ways with the Russians providing information on Clinton and Trump providing information on Russian oligarchs inside the U.S. to the Kremlin.
So Trump’s people were spying on behalf of Russia in exchange for inside info on Clinton.
And yet it gets worse.
An ethnic Russian source close to Trump admitted there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and Russian leadership, handled by former campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy advisor Carter Page due to Putin hatred and fear of Hillary Clinton. Others involved in clandestine meetings with the Russians included Trump attorney Michael Cohen.
The Russia-hack hysteria aided Trump in multiple ways, in addition to helping his campaign directly the hubbub of “Russia, Russia Russia” also distracted away from some of Trump more problematic business dealings in China.
Apparently all this Russia noise distracted from his businesses in China and elsewhere where a “substantial and involved payment of large bribes and kickbacks” had taken place.
One point of speculation: the memo says that the Russian counterparts who met with Manafort — until the revelation of his receiving kickback from the former President of the Ukraine had him side-lined, an allegation that is confirmed in the memo — Page and Cohen were through consular offices located in New York, DC and Miami.
Could these consular offices have been the same ones that were shuttered by the Obama Administration in retaliation for the Hacks?
Starting on Friday at noon, the White House said, Russia will be denied access to compounds in Maryland and New York that have been used for intelligence-related purposes
If so, then what Obama may have truly been doing by declaring 35 Russian diplomats “persona non grata” is deporting Trump’s handlers out of the country. Just a thought. If he didn’t do that, he should have.
Oh, and then there’s the prostitutes.
“Extensive sexual services?”
Hold onto your lunch folks, this next bit is going to get somewhat “Nasty.” Although Russian intelligence had attempted to compromise Trump with enticing real estate deals he had not be forthcoming in that area. They had heard rumors and allegations of Trump paying bribes and having “sex parties” during a visit to St. Petersburg but where unable — due to his use of intermediary companies — to confirm this or the party. Until….well… this. However, there were other aspects to TRUMP's engagement with the Russian authorities. One which had borne fruit for them was to exploit personal obsesslons and sexual perversion in order to obtain suitable 'kompromat' [compromising material] on him. According to Source D, where s/he had been present, (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA {whom he hated] had stayed on one to the official trips to Russia, defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSE control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.
Uh, eww…. That’s from page #2 btw, right up front. Doing something like that takes a real special kind of vindictive frackhole.
Apparently though they had managed to obtain their Kompromat FSB declined to use it because Trump and his people were being “so co-operative” voluntarily. Although they did begin to gain some “buyers remorse” and heartburn as they grew more concerned their efforts would be discover and wasn’t yet paying off. Eventually they shutdown the Romanian hacker project, although they continue using the “plausibly deniable” disclosures to Wikileaks and amazingly, it appears that Trump may have helped pay some of the hackers himself. [Highlighting mine]
So it seems Trump may have so much to say about who the hackers were because some of them were on his payroll. At this point I’ve literally lost track of the numbers of major and minor crimes that are being alleged to be specifically perpetrated by Trump.
Lastly, did Russia efforts effect the election? Well, it seems, that was exactly the plan.
They were betting that “Educated youth in America… could be persuaded to vote for [Trump] as a protest against the Washington establishment. … The hope was that even if she won, as a result of this Clinton in power would be bogged down working for internal reconciliation in the U.S.” They also hoped that disaffected Bernie supporters could be turned away from Hillary and toward Trump.
Well, when we had voters in the rust belt who felt ignored and short-changed by multi-national corporation and bad trade deals, who had voted twice for Obama and then turned away from Clinton following all the various scandals stovepiped into the public discourse by the FSB and Kremlin disinformation operation who ultimately stayed home or voted for Trump, I would say that worked.
Really well.
Now is it possible everything is these memos may not pan out perfectly? Sure. Michael Cohen is already claiming he’s never been to Prague to meet with Russia intelligence in his life. Fine. The FBI and the CIA are looking into this, but they have been able to confirm some of it or else they wouldn’t have felt enough confidence to including it in the briefing materials, and confirming any of this is certainly not good for Trump or for America.
Wednesday, Jan 11, 2017 · 10:05:47 AM JST · Frank Vyan Walton
Sen. Al Franken grilled AG nominee Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the 3rd about this subject during his confirmation hearing and asked, “If it’s true, what are you going to do?”
“These documents also allegedly stated, quote, there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries from the Russian government,” Franken said. “Now, again, I’m telling you this as it’s coming out, so, you know. But if it’s true, it’s obviously extremely serious and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?”
Sessions explained that he was unaware of the story and of the Russian activities, saying that he was unable to comment on it.
“Without divulging sensitive information, do you know about this or know what compromising personal and financial information the Russians claim to have?” Franken continued.
“Senator Franken, allegations get made about candidates all the time and they’ve been made about President-elect Trump lots of times,” Sessions said, dismissing the report. “Most of them, virtually all of them, have been proven to be exaggerated or untrue. I would just say to you that I have no information about this matter. I have not been in on the classified briefings and I’m not a member of the intelligence committee. I’m just not able to give you any information on it at this time.”
Note Sessions never actually answered the question about what he would do about this, even if only for the sake of clarity, “if it’s true.”
Wednesday, Jan 11, 2017 · 10:15:50 AM JST · Frank Vyan Walton
Sen Wyden slamed Comey for not confirming if they’re investigating these Russia-Trump connections. Now normally the FBI doesn’t comment on investigations unless it involves known crime or public event in order to protect the presumption innocence — except they pretty much blew that entire thing when it came to Weiner emails now didn’t they?
As you know, the Russian foreign minister was quoted in various news reports saying that the Russians had had contacts with people associated with the Trump campaign,” Wyden began. “Now that may or may not be true … My question to Director Comey is: Has the FBI investigated these reported relationships and, if so, what are the agencies finding?”
“I would never comment on investigation whether we have one or not in an open forum like this,” Comey said. “I really can’t answer one way or another.”
“Will you provide an unclassified response to these questions and release it to the American people prior to January 20?” Wyden pressed, referring to Trump’s inauguration date.
“Sir, I will answer any question you ask, but the answer will likely be the same as I just gave you. I can’t talk about it,” Comey replied.
Coincidently Wyden confirms one of the key allegations of the MI6 memos, that Russian ministers have been meeting the Trump surrogates for some time, according to the Russians themselves.
Keith Olbermann points out that at Trump’s last press conference, which was in July, he asked Russia to hack — or to release if they had already hacked — Clinton Emails. Now, technically that was never going to work because the hacking started in late 2015 and Clinton server had been in hands of the FBI before that, plus the emails in question were deleted in March of 2015 months prior to that.
There was no overlap between where and when the emails were still on her server and when the hacking project was in place. Now there were some previous attempts to hack Clinton’s server but there’s no evidence they were ever successful. The only way to get her work related emails after that point would be to hack them from the Servers at State.gov, which actually they did.
(CNN) Overlooked in the controversy over Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, is the fact that suspected Russian hackers have bedeviled State Department's email system for much of the past year and continue to pose problems for technicians trying to eradicate the intrusion.
Federal law enforcement, intelligence and congressional officials briefed on the investigation say the hack of the State email system is the "worst ever" cyberattack intrusion against a federal agency. The attackers who breached State are also believed to be behind hacks on the White House's email system, and against several other federal agencies, the officials say.
The issue is relevant because one criticism of the Clinton private email use is that it was likely less secure than emailing within the State Department's system. But the hack shows that State's system has major security issues. The State system, investigators believe, was compromised in the past year, likely after Clinton left the State Department.
Last November, the State Department shut down its email system over a weekend to try to improve security and block the intruders.
At the time, the agency tried to send a re-assuring message that "activity of concern" by possible hackers only affected its unclassified email system.
Wednesday, Jan 11, 2017 · 7:35:37 PM JST · Frank Vyan Walton I’m listening to Trump press conference and it’s really pathetic. He’s attacking Buzzfeed, he’s attacking CNN — he won’t take a question from CNN, and says they’re “Fake News” now — but all they did was report about the 2 pages added to the briefing, which well — happened. His performance is really sad. Full denial, all finger-pointing. This is Banana-Republic stuff people.
He claims yet again falsely that nothing was done in response to the Chinese hack of the OPM, but that’s not true. First of all it wasn’t the Chinese government who did that, and the people that did it were arrested and prosecuted by China at the request of the U.S. That’s more than we did the Russian hackers.
He claims that the RNC had stronger hacking defenses than the DNC, but that wasn’t in the briefing and isn't true. Other Republicans were hacked including Lyndsay Graham and the email from a former member of the RNC was indeed hacked, although he hadn’t used that account for some time.
Jake Tapper is now coming back on CNN pointing out that the former MI6 source was found trust worthy and credible and that the FBI & CIA have contacted his sources and also found them credible. No, other news agencies haven’t confirmed any of this, but then I wouldn’t expect sensitive and covert sources, some potentially inside the Kremlin, to talk to the American press about any of this — that’s what spies do, not reporters. Let me repeat that some of the hacking report in large focus does include independent sources inside the Kremlin, particularly where they report the Putin was in direct oversight of the hacking project and exactly what information would be leaked to their outlets. In short, CIA may be able to verify this with their own sources inside the Kremlin separate from those of ex-Mi6 guy.
The unclassified portion of the hacking report from the USIC confirms major portions of the buzzfeed memo concerning how intense Putin’s involvement in this project was.
The argument that there was a different Michael Cohen mentioned in the memo from the one we already know who is part Trump campaign doesn’t disprove that this other Michael Cohen exists or the report is still accurate on that point.
We still need to learn whether Trump has been lying this entire time about being in-the-loop with Putin on the hacking, that they were receiving the fruits of the hacking directly from Russian handlres in a “co-operative conspiracy” rather than just picking it up on reposts of Sputnik and whether Trump himself paid off some of the hackers. There’s a lot in here and went through it in details specifically because it all needs to be looked at, confirmed and/or rejected item by item.
For example Trump’s people have claimed they weren’t in contact with the Russians during the campaign, but the Russians have said they were which as I posted above was confirmed by Sen Wyden’s question to Director Comey. The allegation that Trump has been involved with bribes and kickbacks in his international business practices has been extensively reported by Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek. These items are confirmed.
A lot of this could still be true even without the golden shower scenario, and none of it is good. It’s all bad, all of it.
Is it possible this is confidence game? A double-blind end-run that is designed to discredit news sources, like Buzzfeed and CNN, in order to inoculate Trump from any media criticism in the future? Possibly, but also doubtful since the FBI and CIA have already found the former MI6 guy and his sources both credible. That doesn’t mean every story here will pan out, but it does mean the FBI & CIA trust these sources and as I’ve just shown, a lot of the important details have been independently confirmed already.
This is a thing now people, we’re beyond the looking glass.
