Michael McFaul
✔
@McFaul
No it is unusual for transition teams to have contact with foreign governments. # of calls to Kislyak during Obama transition: 0.
Flynn in excess of 14.....since DEC......
Republicans are willing to join JOIC but knowingly backpedal on what might damage the fella who secured them votes.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...-links-233621#
…
Michael McFaul
✔
@McFaul
No it is unusual for transition teams to have contact with foreign governments. # of calls to Kislyak during Obama transition: 0.
Flynn in excess of 14.....since DEC......
APPEARS the former JSOC intel chief has forgotten the single word..."perception" and it means a lot these days......Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
AND he did not know this as the former JSOC intel chief......and former DIA Director??????
BREAKING: RUSSIAN GEN SERGUN WHO RECRUITED FLYNN TO TEACH GRU WAS SANCTIONED BY US TREASURY
https://www.treasury.gov/press-cente...1.aspx#…
Maybe he was only in it for the money as was his Russia Today trip to Moscow and his Russia Today interviews.....
Flynn has never stated what he got for the GRU speech and his Russia today trips and interviews....
Russian GRU general who recruited FLYNN to teach GRU suddenly died in Moscow recently
Trump, who denied housing to POC in the 70's is slandering @repjohnlewis, civil rights hero who marched in Selma AND Trump is a verified four time VN draft dodger claiming he had a bone spur but does not remember which foot it was in.....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 5h
5 hours ago
Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 5h
5 hours ago
mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 01-14-2017 at 05:49 PM.
ABSOLUTELY NOT THE CASE....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 4h
4 hours ago
INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE TRUMP DOSSIER IS "A COMPLETE FRAUD!" @OANN
Trump keeps sidestepping his association with Russian money and Russian oligarchs especially Putin.....EVEN his own son admitted in 2008 that Russian money amounted to a heck a lot of their real estate business and then ask the UK about Russian black money flowing in to purchase real estate in UK.....
NOTICE he tweets "insiders" BUT fails to identify them...this is nothing but pure unadulterated disinformation using the Russian propaganda tactic called the SIX Ds.....
BLUF......
It would be so easy to make all the Kremlin dirty $ rumors go away by releasing his tax returns.
Why won't Trump?
Just as it would be easy form Flynn to tell us exactly how much he has received from Russia Today...the main Russian propaganda media outlet
While Trump screams about *a* dossier, intel agencies around the world are sharing *many* dossiers about his dirt:https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenk...L0#.sfdvvl1xL0
John Schindler
Verified account
@20committee
I've chatted with more than a half-dozen intel services about Trump. All have pieces of an ugly puzzle. Devastating.
More such releases are coming soon...real soon.....
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-14-2017 at 08:46 PM. Reason: Fix link
On 20 JAN Trump must repeat this....as many of us have done in the past an present....
"I'll support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic"
Enemies far and near...SO who does Trump actually defend us from....Putin and or his oligarchs......or Russian black money...he definitely is not defending the US....
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 01-14-2017 at 06:11 PM.
1. on the exact day of the US hacking sanctions against Russia Flynn calls the US Russian Ambassador FIVE times to "wish him a Merry Christmas"...which being ROC he did not celebrate exactly on that day....
2. USA has real friends. Like UK, Canada, Australia, Israel, Poland, Germany, Japan.
How many times has Mike Flynn called their ambassadors?
NOT a single time.......
So is Trump...Flynn and Spice trying to sell us a bridge in the middle of the Sahara????
Gosh, if only someone had the transcripts to those 5 calls....
APPEARS the former intel chief for JSOC in AFG and the former DIA Director totally forgot the US IC monitors and records all comms going into and out of the US Russia Embassy.....
Next leak will be those conversations and I bet they were not about Christmas......
Unlike the rest of Team Trump, Flynn was a career intel officer & Cold War vet. He knows EXACTLY what he's doing getting in bed with Putin.
With his background, Flynn knew this was out of bounds, but felt he could act without consequence.
And why is that?
1. He's not all that smart.
2. He's monumentally arrogant.
3. He hates Obama so much 4 firing him he doesn't care.
On the day the US issued sanctions against Russia for their hacking...Flynn calls the US Russian Ambassador FIVE times to "wish him a Merry Christmas"......
Michael McFaul @McFaul former US Ambassador to Russia
14 hours ago
I dealt w/ Kislyak all the time when I worked at WH. Never needed to call him 5 times in one day to make my point.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-14-2017 at 08:48 PM.
NSC is on 3d Trump transition "landing team" in 2 mos. Key jobs unfilled less than a week from start. One insider: Worst transition ever.
BUT WAIT...Trump during a presser stated "we have the smoothest transition ongoing right now...."
This kind of summarizes the current accelerating TrumPutin drama that is unfolding.....
Russian propaganda and disinformation works on their SIX Ds principle ...
DEFLECT.....DISTORT...DISMISS.....DISMAY ALL designed to create DOUBT and DISTRUST.....
Trump is a master of DEFECTING....DISTORTING.....DISMISSING in order to DIVERT the 24 hour news cycle away from the Russian hacking and deep Russian ties black money and compromising materials.....
Usual Trump MO in action: Kremlin wolves are circling. Create stupid fight -- civil rights icon on MLK WE? Perfect! Dodge with MSM frenzy.
NOW see how the Trump social media picks up on his tweets......
John Lewis is not a "legend"--he was a minor player in the civil rights movement who became a nasty, bitter old man
IT is all about controlling the US MSM news cycle to his advantage....
NOTE:
John Lewis was arrested 45 times, while Donald Trump dodged the draft FOUR TIMES with an alleged bone spur and he cannot recall now which foot.....
All talk, no action.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-14-2017 at 08:49 PM.
David Frum
✔
@davidfrum
Fox hiring RT headline writers to describe NATO missions. NB Except for enclave in what was East Prussia, Poland does not border Russia
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-14-2017 at 08:49 PM.
Russia's state media: "We decided to take a look at the rednecks and white trash that voted for Trump—they live in houses made of plywood."
Russia's state TV: America is afraid of the outside world, except Trump will be going not after Russians, but after the Chinese & Mexicans.
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 01-14-2017 at 07:20 PM.
David Frum
✔
@davidfrum
Putin sees the EU as his most dangerous adversary. Naturally therefore so do Trump and BannonBannon via Breitbart.com has established offices and businesses in UK....France...Germany
Outgoing US Ambassador to EU has stated he and others at the EU are concerned that Trump is planning the breakup of EU...his office received numerous calls from the Trump transition team wanting him and others to tell them what EU members would follow Brexit and they alluded to their feelings the EU was breaking up.....
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-14-2017 at 08:50 PM.
Steele's #GoldenShowersGate leak to public is a part of highly classified intelligence handed over to @SenJohnMcCainhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...a7526901.html#
Stop obsessing over ‘secrets’ about Trump and Russia. What we already know is bad enough.http://wpo.st/rwTR2
#
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-14-2017 at 08:50 PM.
Russia's state media: @BorisJohnson returned from meeting Trump's team with adjusted attitude, he is now ready to "stop demonizing Russia."
Under the rubric of the Russians are hitting the vodka to hard
A few tweets that former General Flynn has "liked" today.....
Azor...this journalist in Russia was at first dismissive of the Steele reports.....NOW a sudden and surprising shift....
https://cgrozev.wordpress.com/2017/0...-cards-part-1/
Tower of Cards (part#1)
Posted on
January 14, 2017
When Buzzfeed.com leaked ex-MI6 spook’s Trump Dossier last this past Wednesday, most critical thinkers’ initial reaction was wide-eyed skepticism. The combination of alphabetized sources, the improbable breadth of alleged access to top-secret information, and over-explicit details from the (not as improbable – more on this in a future post) alleged fetishes of a President-Elect, beggared belief.# Serious analysts like Mark Galeotti who cannot be accused of sympathy for Trump or Putin, challenged the dossier’s plausibility, arguing that the cited anonymous sources had suspiciously wide a network with access to diverse state secretes – and on top of that, were willing to share them via remote communication with a UK based handler.
My initial reaction was similarly dismissive. However, after playing devil’s advocate – and testing certain assumptions about how the dossier may have been compiled – I have shifted my position. We now know conclusively (against his will) that the report was written by an industry-respected former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. Is it probable that Steele would have invented, purposely conflated, or embellished details in the report in order to please his client – or to substantiate his own Russophobic precepts? (the theory has been posited in the UK press that he may have been emotionally blinded by his own experience in handling Litvinenko’s case on behalf of MI6).
I strongly doubt the embellishment theory. Steele’s only gainful asset of late has been his reputation, both among private clients but also – crucially – among state actors who have used him to investigate transnational corruption cases such as the FIFA scandal. There is no plausible hypothesis in which Steele would knowingly embellish his report and then proceed to not only furnish it to his private clients (who, one could argue, might be gullible enough to accept Ludlumesque fiction as fact), but also to the FBI and CIA – who he would know would never trust him again if he once served them red herrings.
Therefore, I believe# Steele provided a bona-fide report of what he thought was the objective truth at the time of writing, and (importantly) in doing so, drew on actual sources, alphabetized or not, that he trusted. He did communicate with his sources, via proxies as described, and yes, such communication would have had to be remote, most likely via tradecraft-standard apps such as Signal (which at least a year ago intelligence operatives were swearing by). Whether or not what his sources fed him was truthful, is a different matter.
Now let’s move to the main substantive criticism of the dossier: the plausibility of existence of sources with such broad scope of access to Kremlin insiders – including to head of Rosneft and former PM Igor Sechin, presidential adviser Sergei Ivanov, Foreign Ministry officials, and even to Putin himself.
Indeed, such ubiquitous access to sources is extremely hard to acquire, especially for a non-state actor such as Christopher Steele. But impossible it is not.
A complex power-wielding apparatus such as the Kremlin cannot function without an extensive human support system.# While decision-making is highly centralized, information dissipation is inevitable, often as result of the eventual complacency that any successful authoritarian system promotes among its insiders. (let’s just remember the several mail hacks of senior Kremlin aparatchiks over the last 3 years – with one exception the “hacks” were not the result of foreign signit or cyberattacks, but of rather primitive humint – literally of passwords being visually pilfered as they were typed-in by self-assured Kremlin staff working at their macs in trendy cafes near the Kremlin.
But more importantly: namely because of the# concentration of the most sensitive information at the top of the power pyramid, any potential source in the vicinity of the top# would have access to not one, but to a variety of information vectors, that all lead to the very peak.
Continued.
On July 19, 2016, Christopher Steele reports for the first time of# having a source close to# Rosneft President Sechin:
“A source close to Rosneft President, Putin close associate and US-sanctioned Igor SECHIN, confided details of a recent secret meeting between him and visiting Foreign Affairs Adviser to Donald TRUMP, Carter PAGE. According to Sechin’s associate, the Rosneft CEO had raised with PAGE issues of future bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for associated move to liet Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia. PAGE had reacted positively to this demarche by SECHIN but had been generally non-committal in response”
Three months later, in October 2016 Steele followed up with his alleged source to provide more details from the July 2016 meeting with Carter – arguably from the same source close to Sechin. In this more detailed section, it becomes clear that the original source – “a close associate of Sechin” – is confiding details to “a trusted compatriot”, and not directly to Steele. Here is the relevant section from the October 19 report:
Continued....
Sudden Death Syndrome
At 14:23 Moscow time, one of Russia’s most subservient news outlet with a# first-at-the crime-scene reputation –# Life.ru, ran the sensationalist headline: #“Sechin’s Chief of Staff Killed in Downtown Moscow”.# I caught a glimpse of this headline in real-time, as I have a browser alert for breaking news from Life.ru. I remember being particularly startled by the headline, as only a week earlier, a Russian mid-level diplomat had been found shot in the head, with two bullets, in his Moscow apartment.# The working hypothesis of the investigation was reported to be “accidental homicide or suicide”. Did I mention the two bullets?
I read quickly through the new story. The gentleman in question, Gen. Oleg Erovinkin, had been found dead, by his driver, in the back seat of his corporate Lexus which had been parked in a downtown alley in Moscow’s China Town district. Erovinkin, 61, was a KGB/FSB general, who had been head of the Department for Protection of State Secrets at the Kremlin under Yeltsin, and later under the early Putin. In 2008,# Putin (then a fresh Prime Minister) appointed him Chief of Staff of his deputy PM Igor Sechin. When Sechin was promoted to President of the state-owned oil giant Rosneft in 2012, Erovinkin followed him into the ominous-sounding, if fuzzily-defined position of “Chief of Special Supervision of the President’s Apparatus.”# Insiders have described Erovinkin to me alternately# as “Sechin’s treasurer” and “the go-between between Putin and Sechin”.# One thing that everyone seems to agree – both in public and private sources – is that Erovinkin was Sechin’s closest associate.
The initial Life.ru story reported that FSB investigators were at the scene and working on determining the cause of death, and that doctors on site had only confirmed that Erovinkin was indeed dead.
By the time I had tweeted my observation that this murder would be the first time that a FSB General had been violently killed in Russia, Life.ru had already changed the headline of the story.# It was now “The Chief of Staff of Rosneft’s President found dead in Moscow“. However, certain news aggregators managed to copy the story with the original headline. (Life.ru also appear to have neglected to delete a reader’s comment referencing the change of headline; the fact that the story headline in Russian media was altered was also noticed by this Ukrainian newspaper) .# The original story was also completely deleted from the popular Kremlin-funded news-tracker, Mediametrics.ru (Mediametrics has a history of removing stories deemed inconvenient to the regime.)
Subsequent coverage of Erovinkin’s death in Life.ru and other Russian media provided contradictory narratives of what exactly took place. It was universally reported that due to Erovinkin’s high position in a strategic state corporation, and his former government function, the investigation will be handled solely by FSB, including FSB forensic pathologists.
However, while some media reported that Erovinkin had been found dead in the back seat, others reported that he has been in the driver’s seat, and had managed to park the car after his heart failed. Yet other news sites reported he “caused a minor traffic accident after his death“. # There were reports that Erovinkin may# been “en route to or from the Kremlin where he had been delivering highly confidential documents”
Continued.
Since the initial flurry of contradictory media reports on December 26th , there has been zero coverage of Erovinkin’s death in Russian media. Needless to say, FSB has not pronounced a cause of death, and is unlikely to ever do.
Was Erovinkin a Steele Source?
Steele’s source for the alleged Carter Page/Sechin convo must have fulfilled three mandatory criteria:
#s/he must have been credible enough TO STEELE for him to risk including this bombshell – knowing it would result in heavy doses of skepticism, potentially detrimental to his reputation.
#s/he must have been trusted enough by Sechin to be able receive access to this uniquely sensitive information.
assuming a “strictly-need-to-know” principle, such information must have inevitable had to be shared with him/her, due to his/her function.
It seems safe to conclude that Erovinkin fulfills, probably uniquely, all three conditions. Does the sudden death add credibility to the dossier?
Continued....
In the next part: Who in fact paid for and who acquired the 19% in Rosneft; who the direct source may have been; and why “germophobe defense” has holes]
Trump and his transition team are so wrapped up in trying to not be connected to Russia even though they are deeply tied to Putin...
EXAMPLE
Former JSC chief of intel and former DIA Director Flynn gets caught calling the US Russian Ambassador FIVE times on the day of the US sanctions against Russia supposedly wishing him a "Merry Christmas"...BUT added in the Spice comment was "he was working to get a meeting between Putin and Trump scheduled" and from the tone of the comment ..that was to be ...soonest....
THEN it was said Flynn had been calling the Ambassador multiple other times as well.....HOPEFULLY Flynn has kept his SSO informed of those contacts as required with Russian counterparts?
THEN we now have this from late yesterday.....
NOW is the interesting point...Spice first indicated the calls to the Russian ambassador were of a harmless nature...Merry Christmas and oh by the way we would like to meet with Putin......Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday evening denied a report that President-elect Donald Trump would be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in his first foreign trip as president.
Spicer called the report in The Sunday Times highlighted by media outlets "100 percent false" in a tweet.
The U.K. newspaper reported Saturday that Trump and his team told British officials that their first foreign trip would be a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, with Putin within weeks of his Jan. 20 inauguration.
The report said Trump wanted to talk about nuclear disarmament with Putin and that the president-elect wanted to meet him outside Russia.
Trump has put a focus on pushing for warmer relations with Russia, and told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russia if satisfied by relations.
"If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody's doing some really great things?" Trump said, adding he would keep the sanctions announced by President Obama in place for "at least for a period of time."
Trump also indicated he would be open to meeting with Putin soon after his inauguration next week, saying, "I understand that they would like to meet, and that's absolutely fine with me."
The moves come amid continued congressional probes involving Russian intelligence activities leading up to Trump's electoral win.
The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Friday it would launch an inquiry into Russian intelligence activities, including whether Trump's allies were in contact with the Kremlin.
THEN the so called Trump transition leak to the UK press with actually solid planned details...UK press is under a strict libel law system thus they rarely leak without solid information.....
SO the very first FP meeting was to be with Putin AS it tied nicely back into the Trump press conference where he wanted to lift Russian sanctions if the Russians were of a "friendly nature" BUT notice Trump did not set the bar other than being "friendly and oh by the way help me fight IS"....
BUT Trump did not get the outgoing SecDef memo about Russia not contributing a single thing to the IS fight in Syria....
So Trump was expecting in Iceland a Putin vague verbal statement supporting him in the fight against IS and maybe a vague statement on nuclear weapons reductions THEN Trump would have lifted sanctions as he stated he would do in his press conference.....
WYSIWYG concept with Trump...I have said that from the beginning of this thread and we finally now see it coming together....naturally with Trump's very own help via Twitter...
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-15-2017 at 05:19 PM.
IMHO Trump was set to first met with Putin but it blew up in his face over the information concerning Flynn and his MULTIPLE calls just not Merry Christmas calls to the US Russian Ambassador AND the sudden turn by Republican Senators to investigate not only the Russian hacking BUT also the connections between first his own staff and Russia and then working up the chain directly to Trump and his now proven Russian financial connections potentially found in his own federal tax information...
NOW his own spokesperson is caught out treading water trying to divert from the planned visit and Flynn's calls..and the coming Senate investigation into Russian hacking ANd Russian connections which have been already proven beyond a doubt now....
THIS is exactly how Trump DEFLECTS/DISTORTS the US MSM 24 hour news cycle when the flames get to close to him.....
REMEMBER DEFLECT and DISTORT are two of the SIX Ds of Russian propaganda and disinformation tactics....
We had the Steele released of allegations which social media has at least actually closely linked to actual events inside Russia...THEN we get a massive Trump twitter storm on the actress Steep....the FBI...then Clinton....THEN blasting the Steele memos....ALL designed to create a massive storm of news cycles BUT not in the direction of Trump and Russia....
THEN the Flynn disaster.....meaning a TS/SCI clearance holder is off and telephoning on a monitored line with the Russian Ambassador a number of times not explained by the Trump transition team.........WITHOUT apparently informing his SSO......
THEN Congressman Lewis stated he views Trump as not legitimate due to the Russian assistance in the election ......NOW Trump gets into DEFLECT/DISTORT mode and unleashes a twitter broadside against Lewis causing a major dustup in the MSM......AND initially successfully DIVERTING attention from Flynn and the Russian calls....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 18h
18 hours ago
Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 17h
17 hours ago
mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!
BUT the MSM backlash was actually I think a wakeup call for Trump and his record of being a VN draft dodger FOUR times due to a bone spur in which foot he cannot recall today....VS a civil rights veteran of MLK who was arrested 45 times during the civil right movement days...
THEN this today....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 6h
6 hours ago
Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!
BUT WAIT...another Trump lie ..he repeatedly stated over and over at his rallies ...he and he alone had a plan for the inner cities that he was going to clean up...NOW he is walking those statements back because he has no plan to fix 70 odd years of inner city decay.....in a 4 year term and he knows he will be held to his statements so he wants others in the ship so hen it goes down he came blame others....AND that 1T USD infrastructure plan does nothing for the inner cities...
The NYTs carried an interesting article on how Trump uses an even bigger distraction to sidetrack pressure on him...and create a new news cycle....
BUT in the middle of the Lewis twitter broadside he sends this tweet out....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 17h
17 hours ago
INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE TRUMP DOSSIER IS "A COMPLETE FRAUD!" @OANN
NOTICE he refers to not a single person by name...just "insiders" raising the illusion he is home free and clear WHICH is the furthest from the truth...
THIS tweet was used to pass to his voters that all is well in Trumpland and all the stories around his close and deep connections to Putin and Russian balc money are fake reports....
BUT then he got caught out when the Senate suddenly shifted course and will include investigations into the Russian connections of his inner staff....WHICH are in fact proven already....plus his potential Russian black money flowing into his real estate business....
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