Quotes of the Week

"The Cozy Bear [Russian] hackers are in a space in a university building near the Red Square. The group's composition varies, usually about ten people are active. The entrance is in a curved hallway. A security camera records who enters and who exits the room. The AIVD hackers manage to gain access to that camera. Not only can the intelligence service now see what the Russians are doing, they can also see who's doing it. Pictures are taken of every visitor. In Zoetermeer, these pictures are analyzed and compared to known Russian spies. Again, they've acquired information that will later prove to be vital."  [De Volkskrant, on the subject of Russian interference in 2016 presidential election, 25 January 2018]

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"The separation of powers doctrine dictates that the judiciary should not be the subject of improper influence by the other branches of government – being the executive and legislature. Comments by Dutton and other Coalition ministers to the effect that members of the judiciary should be selected on the basis of their ideological leanings and ability to deliver "tough" sentences – rather than independently look at all factors and apply the law – seek to undermine this doctrine and unduly influence both the selection process and practices of the judiciary. Dutton's populist political grandstanding may have some members of the public "egging him on", but the reality is that such rhetoric seeks to undermine one of the central pillars of our democracy." 

[Sydney Criminal Lawyers, 23 January 2018]

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“No president in history has burned more public money to sustain his personal lifestyle than Donald Trump”  [former George W. Bush staffer David Frum in his book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic]

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“The events I’ve described in these pages are based on conversations that took place over a period of eighteen months with the president, with most members of his senior staff—some of whom talked to me dozens of times—and with many people who they in turn spoke to. The first interview occurred well before I could have imagined a Trump White House, much less a book about it, in late May 2016 at Trump’s home in Beverly Hills—the then candidate polishing off a pint of Häagen-Dazs vanilla as he happily and idly opined about a range of topics while his aides, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, and Jared Kushner, went in and out of the room.

Conversations with members of the campaign’s team continued through the Republican Convention in Cleveland, when it was still hardly possible to conceive of Trumps election. They moved on to Trump Tower with a voluble Steve Bannon—before the election, when he still seemed like an entertaining oddity, and later, after the election, when he seemed like a miracle worker.

Shortly after January 20, I took up something like a semipermanent seat on a couch in the West Wing. Since then I have conducted more than two hundred interviews.” [Author Michael Wolff from his book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” published 5 January 2018]

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U.S. Political Retrospective: those first investigations into presidential candidate Donald J Trump

Sometime in September or October 2015 Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS began a broad investigation of then Republican presidential candidate nominee Donald J Trump under contact for an unspecified client and later commenced another investigation of Trump as official Republican presidential candidate for a different client in the first half of 2016.

Simpson later confirmed the clients to be in the first instance The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor and in the second instance the Democratic National Committee and Clinton presidential campaign.

Excerpts from Christopher Steele’s 35-page ‘dossier’ created under contract for research company Fusion GPS:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html

U.S. SENATE, WASHINGTON, D.C., SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE, excerpts from a partial transcipt of INTERVIEW OF: GLENN SIMPSON, 22 August 2017 (released 9 January 2018 in response to his request) , in which he explains how and where he looked for initial information about Donald Trump:

“In the early -- the very first weekend that I

started boning up on Donald Trump, you know, I

found various references to him having connections

to Italian organized crime and later to a Russian

organized crime figure named Felix Sater,

S-A-T-E-R. It wasn't hard to find, it wasn't any

great achievement, it was in the New York Times,

but as someone who has done a lot of Russian

organized crime investigations as a journalist

originally that caught my attention and became

something that, you know, I focused on while other

people looked at other things.

So from the very beginning of this organized

crime was -- Russian organized crime was a focus of

interest. I guess I should just repeat, you know,

this is a subject that I covered extensively at the

Wall Street Journal. I wrote a series of front-

page articles about various corrupt politicians

from Russia, oligarchs, and one of the things that

I wrote about was the connections between western

politicians and Russian business figures. So, you

know, I was sort of an amateur student of the

subject and I had written about some of these same

Russian crime figures, you know, years earlier in

the U.S. and various frauds and things they were

involved in……

You know, we also conducted a much broader

sort of look at his entire career and his overseas

investments in places like Europe and Latin

America. You know, it wasn't really a Russia

focused investigation for the first half of it.

That was just one component of a broader look at

his business career, his finances. We spent a lot

of time trying to figure out whether he's really as

rich as he says he is because that was the subject

of a libel case that he filed against a journalist

named Tim O'Brien for which there was quite a lot

of discovery and litigation filings detailing

O'Brien's allegation that he was worth, you know,

maybe a fifth to a third of what he claims and

Trump's angry retort that he was worth far more

than that.

So we did things like we looked at the golf

courses and whether they actually ever made any

money and how much debt they had. We looked at the

bankruptcies, how could somebody go through so many

bankruptcies, you know, and still have a billion

dollars in personal assets. So those are the kinds

of things. We looked at a lot of things like his

tax bills. Tax bills are useful because you can

figure out how much money someone is making or how

much they're worth or how much their properties are

worth based on how much they have to pay in taxes.

One of the things we found out was that, you

know, when it comes to paying taxes, Donald Trump

claims to not have much stuff. At least the Trump

organization. So they would make filings with

various state and local authorities saying that

their buildings weren't worth much……

For instance, in the early stage of an

investigation, you know, particularly of Donald

Trump you want to get every lawsuit the guy's ever

been in. So, you know, we collected lawsuits from

around the country and the world. And I do

remember one of the earlier things we did was we

collected a lot of documents from Scotland because

he'd been in a big controversy there about land

use. There had been another one in Ireland. There

was a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests

and that sort of thing.

So in the early phases of something you're

collecting lots of paper on every subject

imaginable. So in the course of reading that

litigation we would follow up on things that were

interesting, such as a libel case against a

journalist that he settled, which, in other words,

he didn't prevail in his attempts to prove that he

was a billionaire.”……

It was, broadly speaking, a kind of

holistic examination of Donald Trump's business

record and his associations, his bankruptcies, his

suppliers, you know, offshore or third-world

suppliers of products that he was selling. You

know, it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of

his relationships to organized crime figures but,

you know, really the gamut of Donald Trump.

What we generally do at the beginning of a

case if it's possible is to order all the books

about the subject from Amazon so we're not

reinventing the wheel and we know what's been

written and said before. So this was typical. We

ordered every Donald Trump book and, to my

surprise, that's a lot of books. I was never very

interested in Donald Trump. He was not a serious

political figure that I'd ever had any exposure to.

He's a New York figure really.

So anyway, we read everything we could read

about Donald Trump. Those books cover his

divorces, his casinos, his early years dealings

with labor unions and mafia figures. I'm trying to

think what else. His taxes certainly have always

been a big issue. Again, it was sort of an

unlimited look at his -- you know, his business and

finances and that sort of thing……

That calls for a somewhat long answer. We

had done an enormous amount of work on Donald Trump

generally at this point in the project and we began

to drill down on specific areas. He [Christopher Steele] was not the

only subcontractor that we engaged. Other parts of

the world required other people. For example, we

were interested in the fact that the Trump family

was selling merchandise under the Trump brand in

the United States that was made in sweat shops in

Asia and South America -- or Latin America. So we

needed someone else for that. So there were other

things. We were not totally focused on Russia at

that time, but we were at a point where we were --

you know, we'd done a lot of reading and research

and we were drilling down on specific areas.

Scotland was another one

So that's the answer. What happens when you

get to this point in an investigation when you've

gathered all of the public record information and

you've begun to exhaust your open source, you know,

resources is that you tend to find specialists who

can take you further into a subject and I had known

Chris since I left the Wall Street Journal. He was

the lead Russianist at MI6 prior to leaving the

government and an extremely well-regarded

investigator, researcher, and, as I say, we're

friends and share interest in Russian kleptocracy

and organized crime issues. I would say that's

broadly why I asked him to see what he could find

out about Donald Trump's business activities in

Russia……

I mean, one of the key lines here in the

second paragraph says "However, he and his inner

circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence

from the Kremlin, including on his democratic and

other political rivals."

So the issue with the Trump Tower meeting, as

I understand it, is that the Trump people were

eager to accept intelligence from a foreign

government about their political rivals and that

is, you know, I would say, a form of interference.

If you're getting help from a foreign government

and your help is intelligence, then the foreign

government's interfering. I mean, you know, I

think that also -- of course, in retrospect we now

know this was pretty right on target in terms on

what it says. So anyway --

I mean, it clearly refers to, you know,

them being interested in and willing to -- it

depicts them as accepting information. What we

have seen to date with the disclosures this year is

they were at a minimum super interested in getting

Information……

We've seen hacking in politics before, but this

kind of, you know, mass theft of e-mail and then to

dump it all into, you know, the public sphere was

extraordinary and it was criminal.

So the question by now of whether this was

Russia and whether this might have something to do

with the other information that we'd received was,

you know, the immediate question, and I think this

is also -- by the time this memo was written Chris

had already met with the FBI about the first memo.

So he's -- if I can interpret a little bit here.

In his mind this is already a criminal matter,

there's already a potential national security

matter here.

I mean, this is basically about a month later

and there's a lot of events that occurred in

between. You know, after the first memo, you know,

Chris said he was very concerned about whether this

represented a national security threat and said he

wanted to -- he said he thought we were obligated

to tell someone in government, in our government

about this information. He thought from his

perspective there was an issue -- a security issue

about whether a presidential candidate was being

blackmailed. From my perspective there was a law

enforcement issue about whether there was an

illegal conspiracy to violate the campaign laws,

and then somewhere in this time the whole issue of

hacking has also surfaced.

So he proposed to -- he said we should tell

the FBI, it's a national security issue. I didn't

originally agree or disagree, I just put it off and

said I needed to think about it. Then he raised it

again with me. I don't remember the exact sequence

of these events, but my recollection is that I

questioned how we would do that because I don't

know anyone there that I could report something

like this to and be believed and I didn't really

think it was necessarily appropriate for me to do

that. In any event, he said don't worry about

that, I know the perfect person, I have a contact

there, they'll listen to me, they know who I am,

I'll take care of it. I said okay. You know, I

agreed, it's potentially a crime in progress. So,

you know, if we can do that in the most appropriate

way, I said it was okay for him to do that……

A second and complete interview transcript is available:

Glenn Simpson Testimony by Anonymous MS54FL on Scribd

Trump's wild and inappropriate response to the release of Glenn Simpson interview transcript:

Will Steve Bannon's predictions come true?

On 17 May 2017 Robert S. Mueller III was appointed by acting Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to serve as Special Counsel investigating any links and/or coordination bet ween the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,  any matters that arose or may arise directlyfrom the investigation and, any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. §600.4(a).

Thus far Mueller has indicted four individuals - Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.) (plead guilty), Paul J. Manafort, Jr., Richard W. Gates III and George Papadopoulos (plead guilty).

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon's predictions concerning this DOJ/FBI investigation and Donald J. Trump's future had remained semi-private until the release on 5 January 2018 of Michael Wolff's book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House".

Here are two examples.....

Here is the man Trump and his supporters have been calling a low-ranking volunteer, a coffee boy - since Papadopoulos' plea deal was revealed

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/715725628465680386/photo/1

Salon, 1 November 2017:

The credibility of Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been called into serious question after the Justice Department unsealed a plea deal taken by a former foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign.

The documents revealed that former adviser George Papadopoulos attended a "national security meeting in Washington D.C.," on March 31, 2016, along with Trump, Sessions and others. In that meeting, Papadopoulos "introduced himself," and explicitly stated "in sum and substance, that he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and [Russian] President Putin."

Trump tweeted a picture of the meeting the day it occurred, and he, as well as Sessions, sat at opposite heads of the table. Papadopoulos is pictured to the left of Sessions in the middle of the table.

Donald Trump continues to deny Trump presidential election campaign-Russia link as FBI indictments begin

If The Dummy Fits

US President Donald J. Trump continues to deny Trump presidential election campaign-Russia links as Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indictments begin.

CNN, 30 October 2017:

Washington (CNN) Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump campaign official Rick Gates surrendered Monday to Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.

Gates, 45, is a longtime business associate of Manafort, 68, having worked together since the mid-2000s, and served as his deputy on the campaign. The two were indicted under seal on Friday, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The indictment against the two men contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.

Manafort arrived at the FBI's Washington field office Monday morning. The two are being processed separately, according to a law enforcement official. They will later be transported to federal district court in Washington later Monday morning.

The two are scheduled to make their initial court appearances before US District Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson at 1:30 p.m. ET Monday…..

Manafort entered the Trump campaign orbit in early 2016, when he reached out to Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner and offered to work for free, according to The New York Times.

Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 to help with delegate counting ahead of the Republican National Convention, as some Republicans hoped to use arcane delegate procedures to wrest the nomination from Trump at the convention in Cleveland.

He soon was promoted to campaign chairman, and he became the top official on the campaign after then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was fired in June 2016.

His tenure didn't last long.

The Times reported in August 2016 that Ukrainian investigators found Manafort's name in an off-the-books, handwritten ledger detailing secret payments — including $12.7 million to Manafort from Yanukovych's Party of Regions.

Manafort denied he had received any such payment and claims the ledger was forged. But just days later, he resigned from the campaign as the accusations swirling around him became a major distraction for Trump.

Copy of FBI indictment dated 27 October 2017 here.

Grand Jury Investigation, Memorandum Opinion here.

Manafort and Gates now under house arrest.

@realDonaldTrump, 30 October 2017:

Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????....

....Also, there is NO COLLUSION!

On 3 October 2017 the FBI issued an indictment in United States of American v George Papadopoulos on one count of making false statements concerning his interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with Russian government officials. Papadopoulos appears to have joined the Trump campaign in March 2016.

He was part of Trump's six-man foreign policy team led by then Alabama senator and now US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions.

Copy of Papadopoulos Statement of Offence can be read here. Copy of Papadopoulos plea agreement here.

Los Angeles Times, 30 October 2017:

A former foreign policy advisor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians who claimed to have “thousands of emails” on Hillary Clinton, in the latest charges filed in the investigation of the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia. 

George Papadopoulos, 30, of Chicago, has agreed to cooperate with the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, according to a plea agreement unsealed on Monday.

He pleaded guilty on Oct. 5 to making false statements to disguise his contacts with Russians whom he thought had “dirt” on Clinton, according to court papers. He was arrested in July as he got off a plane at Dulles International Airport.

After he was contacted by an unnamed Russian professor in March, Papadopoulos exchanged emails with an official in the Russian foreign ministry, court papers say. Among the topics he discussed was a possible visit by Trump to Russia.

“As mentioned we are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” one Russian emailed him.

In April, after he had become an advisor to the campaign, Papadopoulos met with the Russian professor at a London hotel. The professor said he had just returned from a trip to Moscow, where he was told “the Russians had emails of Clinton.”

Papadopolous told other leaders in the Trump campaign that he was in contact with Russians, and said there were some “interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip.”

An unnamed campaign official, described as a campaign “supervisor,” encouraged him to make the trip, a document reads.

BACKGROUND

Paul Manafort joined the Trump election campaign and briefly served as campaign manager before resigning in August 2016.

Rick Gates was part of the early Trump campaign effort and later became deputy chair of Trump's Inaugural Committee.

ABC News, 20 July 2017:

Mr Trump Jr has been the focus of a string of revelations about a meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer in 2016, billed as a part of a Russian government effort to help the Republican's White House campaign.

Explosive emails, which Mr Trump Jr published on his own Twitter account, show that:

Donald Trump Jr (and others) knowingly had a meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer on June 9, 2016

The intermediary who arranged the meeting offered "information that would incriminate" Hillary Clinton and "her dealings with Russia" that would be "very useful" to the campaign

The intermediary described the information as "very high level and sensitive"

Most importantly, it was described as "part of Russia and its Government's support for Mr Trump"

The story has continued to evolve, with a former Soviet officer recently confirming he was as the meeting.

Mr Manafort and Mr Kushner were also reported to be at the meeting in question.

The Washington Post, 27 October 2017:

On Friday, Trump declared the investigations into any collusion between his campaign and the Russian government all-but-over….

“It is now commonly agreed, after many months of COSTLY looking, that there was NO collusion between Russia and Trump. Was collusion with HC!”.....

After his inauguration, the first time Trump mentioned collusion on Twitter was May 8.

“Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to former national intelligence director James R. Clapper Jr., “there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.”

“The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax,” he added, “when will this taxpayer funded charade end?”

At the moment Trump tweeted about how there wasn’t any collusion — the first and second times of 14 tweets in total — the investigations into collusion were limited to an FBI counterintelligence investigation and House and Senate committees digging into the matter. The next day, though, Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, triggering the chain of events that led to the appointment of Mueller and his investigation.

When Trump was interviewed by NBC’s Lester Holt shortly after the Comey firing, he was adamant.

“I think that looking into me and, the campaign … look, I have nothing to do [with it],” he said. “This was set up by the Democrats. There is no collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians. The other thing is the Russians did not affect the vote.” He also told Holt that “when I decided to just [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’ ”

Quartz, 29 October 2017:

However, Russia’s efforts to influence the US election have been repeatedly, unequivocally confirmed on the record by all top US intelligence officials, including those appointed by Trump.

A report (pdf) issued by US intelligence officials on Jan. 6 stated Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind a campaign to influence the 2016 election, “denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” and stated that Putin had “a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

During a public Senate Intelligence Committee hearing (pdf) this May, Virginia’s Mark Warner asked top intelligence officials if they agreed with the conclusions of this report that “Russian intelligence agencies were responsible for the hacking and leaking of information and using misinformation to influence our elections?”

Every intelligence official answered yes. Intelligence officials at the hearing included representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency, as well as Trump-appointed CIA director Mike Pompeo and Trump’s chosen director of national intelligence, Dan Coats. (See 42:30 mark on the video below, or at the 1:04 mark on the video on the Senate website).

Donald J. Trump: “Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!”

No matter how hard he tries US President Donald Trump just can't keep the Russia issue behind closed doors.

It keeps seeping out into the public domain via mainstream and social media.

Reuters, 5 October 2017:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The special counsel investigating whether Russia tried to sway the 2016 U.S. election has taken over FBI inquiries into a former British spy's dossier of allegations of Russian financial and personal links to President Donald Trump's campaign and associates, sources familiar with the inquiry told Reuters.

A report compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele identified Russian businessmen and others whom U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded are Russian intelligence officers or working on behalf of the Russian government.

A spokesman for special counsel Robert Mueller declined comment. The FBI also declined comment.

Three sources with knowledge of Mueller's probe said his investigators have assumed control of multiple inquiries into allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump, a Republican.

Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election.

Two officials familiar with the investigations said that both Mueller's team and the Senate Intelligence Committee are seeking any evidence that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort or others who had financial dealings with Russia might have helped Kremlin intelligence agencies target email hacking and social media postings undermining Trump's election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

On Wednesday, the Senate panel's chairman Richard Burr told reporters that the issue of whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia remains an open question.

Prof. Seth Abramson, University of New Hampshire, 4 October 2017:

FACT: the number of votes Russia needed to flip in Michigan and Wisconsin (out of 7.5 million votes total) to give BOTH to Trump was 16,900. pic.twitter.com/5RfAZGSIOx

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 4, 2017

Trump's response is typical……

MEDIA MATTERS for America, 5 October 2017:

President Donald Trump urged Congress to begin investigations into the U.S. media, which he baselessly claimed was fabricating stories in order to damage his presidency, in a Thursday morning tweet with authoritarian overtones.

"Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!," the president tweeted just before 7 a.m. EST.

Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump

Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!

9:59 PM - Oct 5, 2017

 28,38728,387 Replies  12,30112,301 Retweets 48,15748,157 likes

Trump's tweet came the morning after the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- which has been investigating what U.S. intelligence agencies have determined was a Russian propaganda effort aimed at disrupting the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor --confirmed those conclusions and warned that the Kremlin's effort to influence U.S. elections is ongoing. At a news conference detailing the progress of their investigation, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), the committee's chairman, said that the issue of whether Trump's associates had colluded with Russia "is still open."

Trump has long been defensive about the question of whether Russia aided his election, and has termed the special counsel's investigation into whether his associates participated in that effort a "witch hunt." And his constant attempts to undermine and delegitimize the press are one of the rare throughlines in his chaotic administration. Critics have noted that this effort parallels those made by authoritarian leaders…..