"The financial advice arms of Australia’s biggest banks have come under fire again, with the corporate watchdog finding their advisers failed to comply with the best interests of customers in 75% of advice files reviewed." [The Guardian, 24 January 2018]
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Wednesday 31 January 2018
ASIC reveals that AMP, ANZ, CBA, NAB & Westpac unlikely to act in customers' best interests
"The financial advice arms of Australia’s biggest banks have come under fire again, with the corporate watchdog finding their advisers failed to comply with the best interests of customers in 75% of advice files reviewed." [The Guardian, 24 January 2018]
Australian Securities and Investments
Commission (ASIC), media
release, 24 January 2018:
18-019MR ASIC reports on
how large financial institutions manage conflicts of interest in financial
advice
An Australian Securities
and Investments Commission (ASIC) review of financial advice provided by the
five biggest vertically integrated financial institutions has identified areas
where improvements are needed to the management of conflicts of interest.
The review looked at the
products that ANZ, CBA, NAB, Westpac and AMP financial advice licensees were
recommending and at the quality of the advice provided on in-house products.
The review was part of a
broader set of regulatory reviews of the wealth management and financial advice
businesses of the largest banking and financial services institutions as part
of ASIC's Wealth Management Project.
The review found that,
overall, 79% of the financial products on the firms' approved products lists
(APL) were external products and 21% were internal or 'in-house' products.
However, 68% of clients’ funds were invested in in-house products.
The split between
internal and external product sales varied across different licensees and
across different types of financial products. For example, it was more
pronounced for platforms compared to direct investments. However, in most cases
there was a clear weighting in the products recommended by advisers towards
in-house products.
ASIC noted that vertical
integration can provide economies of scale and other benefits to both the
customer and the financial institution. Consumers might choose advice from
large vertically integrated firms because they seek that firm's products due to
factors such as convenience and access, and recommendations of 'in-house'
products may be appropriate. Nonetheless, conflicts of interest are inherent in
vertically integrated firms, and these firms still need to properly manage
conflicts of interest in their advisory arms and ensure good quality advice.
ASIC will consult with
the financial advice industry (and other relevant groups) on a proposal to
introduce more transparent public reporting on approved product lists,
including where client funds are invested, for advice licensees that are part
of a vertically integrated business. ASIC noted that any such requirement is
likely to cover vertically integrated firms beyond those included in this
review. The introduction of reporting requirements would improve transparency
around management of the conflicts of interests that are inherent in these
businesses.
ASIC also examined a
sample of files to test whether advice to switch to in-house products satisfied
the 'best interests' requirements. ASIC found that in 75% of the advice files
reviewed the advisers did not demonstrate compliance with the duty to act in
the best interests of their clients. Further, 10% of the advice reviewed was
likely to leave the customer in a significantly worse financial
position. ASIC will ensure that appropriate customer remediation takes
place.
Acting ASIC Chair Peter
Kell said that ASIC is already working with the major financial institutions to
address the issues that have been identified in the report on quality of advice
and management of conflicts of interest.
'There is ongoing work
focusing on remediation where advice-related failures have led to poor customer
outcomes, and the results of this review will feed into that work,' said Mr
Kell.
ASIC is already working
with the institutions to improve compliance and advice quality through action
such as:
* improvements to
monitoring and supervision processes for financial advisers; and
* improvements to
adviser recruitment processes and checks.
ASIC will continue to
ban advisers with serious compliance failings.
ASIC highlighted that
the findings from this review should be carefully examined by other vertically
integrated firms. 'While this review focused on five major financial services
firms, the lessons should be considered by all vertically integrated firms in
the financial services sector.'
Background
The review took place
during 2015 to 2017.
The licensees included
as part of the review were:
* AMP: AMP Financial
Planning Pty Limited and Charter Financial Planning Limited;
* ANZ: Millennium 3
Financial Planning Pty Ltd and ANZ Financial Planning;
* CBA: Count Financial
Limited and Commonwealth Financial Planning Limited;
* NAB: GWM Adviser
Services Limited and NAB Financial Planning;
* Westpac: Securitor
Financial Group Ltd and Westpac Financial Planning.
Sunday 21 January 2018
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.
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:
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
Friday 19 January 2018
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.....
Labels:
corruption,
Donald Trump,
US politics,
US-Russia relations
Wednesday 17 January 2018
Rise in perception of corruption in public service
44 breaches involving conflict of interest; and
16 breaches involving failure to comply with all applicable Australian laws.
According to the Commission:
In the 2017 APS employee census, 5 per cent of respondents reported they had witnessed another employee engaging in behaviour they considered to be corrupt.
Of that 5 per cent:
Of that 5 per cent:
- Sixty-four per cent of those respondents reported that they had witnessed cronyism.
- Twenty-six reported that they had witnessed nepotism in the workplace.
- Twenty-one per cent reported that they had witnessed ‘green-lighting’, that is making official decisions that improperly favour a person or company, or disadvantage another.
The Australia Institute, 10 January 2018:
Corruption’s $72.3 billion hit to GDP
New research released today by the Australia Institute estimates the effects of rising perception of corruption in Australia since 2012 could have reduced Australia’s GDP by $72.3 billion, or 4%.
[Full report - see PDF below]
“Since 2012 Australia has slid from 7th to 13th on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), with index score declining from 85 to 79,” said Rod Campbell, Australia Institute Director of Research and co-author of the report.
“Economic analysis estimates each point decline in this score translates into a reduction in GDP per capita of $486. Extrapolating across Australia’s population, our GDP could have been $72.3 billion higher this year had we maintained our 2012 reputation for minimal corruption.
“This is in line with World Economic Forum estimates that corruption costs 5% of GDP worldwide.
“The economic impacts of corruption are well-known. Business costs increase, capital is not allocated efficiency and inequality worsens.
“Australia needs policies to address this threat to our economy.
“A federal ICAC with teeth is needed to increase public trust and tackle the perception of corruption in Australia.
“The perception of corruption is on the rise, the number of public servants who have witnessed corrupt behaviour is on the rise and public trust in federal parliament is at an all-time low.
As well as the obvious democratic cost, corruption and the perception of corruption also costs our economy.
“Not only does corruption cost business, businesses do not want to operate in countries where there is a perception of corruption.”
“This research shows that the business community also has a stake in perceptions of corruption and should be supporting calls for a federal ICAC,” Campbell said.
Type of Publication:
Section:
Download Publication:
Author:
The Australia Institute
Posted on:
10 January 2018
Labels:
corruption,
economy,
public service,
statistics
Sunday 12 November 2017
Here is the man Trump and his supporters have been calling a low-ranking volunteer, a coffee boy - since Papadopoulos' plea deal was revealed
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.
Labels:
corruption,
Donald Trump,
lies and lying,
US-Russia relations
Thursday 9 November 2017
ICAC investigating water theft and allegations of NSW government corruption involving party donors
Eventually full details of this investigation will become public, as it cannot seriously be thought to be in the public interest for the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) not to publish findings.
The Australian, 27 October 2017:
ICAC has begun a preliminary investigation into whether NSW public officials favoured Nationals donor and irrigator Peter Harris by not prosecuting him over alleged water theft.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is also investigating whether public officials made decisions in favour of western NSW irrigator and lobbyist Ian Cole by changing water sharing arrangements to benefit him.
A day after The Australian revealed that the corruption watchdog was investigating a case where Multicultural Affairs Minister Ray Williams wrote to Primary Industries Minister Niall Blair asking for prosecutorial action against constituent Garry Bugeja to be dropped, it has emerged that the NSW government is facing a series of inquiries over its water policies.
The Berejiklian government is facing the real spectre of a public ICAC inquiry potentially involving the two ministers and at least one former primary industries minister, Katrina Hodgkinson, just months out from the 2019 state election.
ICAC is investigating whether former deputy director-general of the Department of Primary Industry Gavin Hanlon disclosed confidential information to Barwon-Darling irrigators, allegations that have been the subject of a government inquiry and led to Mr Hanlon’s resignation.
The commission is also understood to be looking at whether any public official failed to properly investigate or prosecute Mr Harris, a cotton farmer from Moree, in northern NSW. ICAC is also understood to be investigating why the department’s strategic investigations unit was disbanded, leading to the abandonment of several water compliance operations.
There is also an investigation into whether any public official acted inappropriately in making changes to the Barwon-Darling Water Sharing Plan to benefit irrigator Mr Cole.
Another line of investigation is understood to be whether any person improperly gave access to departmental files and confidential material for the benefit of Mr Harris. Investigations into Mr Cole are understood to also involve whether pumps were attached to a property and were authorised by the department in breach of water laws…..
It was revealed earlier this year that Mr Blair sought law changes which may have benefited Mr Harris by retrospectively approving water-trading rights granted to him that appeared to not comply with the law. But Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton blocked the changes.
Mr Blair also legislated to allow past illegal works to be retrospectively approved — another piece of law which may have helped Mr Harris….
Mr Bugeja was not prosecuted for an alleged illegal dam in Sydney after Mr Williams wrote to Mr Blair
Tuesday 31 October 2017
Donald Trump continues to deny Trump presidential election campaign-Russia link as FBI indictments begin
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:
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.
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.
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.
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).
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