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real-human
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 Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2023 12:16 am Post subject: |
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and you wonder why Muellers team never got enough evidence.
The lead counter intelligence agent of the FBI for the trump investigation was covering up for his real employer Russia.
thttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-fbi-leader-involved-in-trump-russia-probe-may-change-plea-in-charges-for-working-with-russian-oligarch/ar-AA1eWtQG?cvid=d0e48d22e5c745289a25f7ca7f900846&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=30
Ex-FBI leader involved in Trump-Russia probe may change plea in charges for working with Russian oligarch
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Aformer FBI agent accused by U.S. prosecutors of working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch may now plead guilty to evading U.S. sanctions and money laundering after initially entering a not guilty plea.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rearden in Manhattan wrote in a brief order filed Monday that a change of plea hearing has been scheduled for August 15 for 54-year-old Charles McGonigal, Reuters reported.
McGonigal, who retired in 2018, was the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York and was involved in the probe into former President Trump's ties to Russia.
The former FBI official previously pleaded not guilty to conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions, money laundering, conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals in connection with his work for sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
RETIRED FBI COUNTERINTEL AGENT REPORTEDLY INVOLVED IN TRUMP-RUSSIA PROBE ARRESTED FOR TIES TO RUSSIA
Prosecutors arrested McGonigal in January for allegedly receiving concealed payments from Deripaska, the founder of Russian aluminum company Rusal, in exchange for investigating a rival oligarch and unsuccessfully pushing to lift U.S. sanctions on Deripaska in 2019. He has been free on a $500,000 bond since his arrest.
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
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| Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2023 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/key-fbi-agent-in-trump-russia-probe-set-to-plead-guilty-over-ties-with-sanctioned-russian-oligarch/ar-AA1fh1Vf?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=ffcd50db453d4077c7a673808aaf1fe2&ei=15
Key FBI Agent in Trump-Russia Probe Set to Plead Guilty Over Ties with Sanctioned Russian Oligarch
| Quote: | Former FBI agent Charles McGonigal is slated to plead guilty to money laundering and working with a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska despite U.S. sanctions.
The compromised 54-year-old federal agent was reportedly involved in the investigation of former president Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
McGonigal was the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York. (Poll: Is the Country Going In The Right Direction Under Biden? VOTE)
“According to reports, McGonigal was a key player in the inquiry of Trump’s 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia,” the report found.
McGonigal was among the original FBI officials who claimed former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos allegedly boasted that he knew Russians had information on then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The ex-FBI is accused of conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions, money laundering, conspiring to commit money laundering, and conspiring to violate federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals.
The case is being overseen by U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rearden in Manhattan. (Trending: Democrat Threatens To Leave Party In Scathing Statement)
McGonigal allegedly accepted covert payments from Deripaska, the owner of the Russian aluminum business Rusal.
In exchange, McGonigal provided favors by investigating a rival oligarch and attempt to lift Deripaska’s sanctions with the US.
Deripaska was one of two dozen Russian oligarchs and government officials who alleged meddled in the 2016 president election. (Poll: Do You Stand With Trump Despite Multiple Criminal Indictments? VOTE)
“The Kremlin and Deripaska have denied interfering in the election,” the report says. |
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real-human
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| Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2023 1:51 pm Post subject: |
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even russia could not break into Hillary's private emails...
But trump gave access to usa's most secret files to many countries with his unlocked bathroom where he was so stupid to think a lock on the door that only worked when the spy was in the bathroom working.
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real-human
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| Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 9:31 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bush-institute-exec-pushing-civility-pledge-leaked-steele-dossier-to-media-outlet-in-2016/ar-AA1gwnt1?cvid=b83f3409b9da4f95be9b34b29dae1254&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=30
Bush institute exec pushing 'civility' pledge leaked Steele dossier to media outlet in 2016
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he George W. Bush Institute executive who organized a joint statement by 13 presidential libraries pledging to unify to preserve democracy was previously revealed as the person who leaked the infamous Steele dossier to BuzzFeed after the 2016 election.
David Kramer, the executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, spearheaded a statement Thursday signed by 13 presidential libraries dating back to Herbert Hoover.
"By signing this statement, we reaffirm our commitment to the principles of democracy undergirding this great nation, protecting our freedom, and respecting our fellow citizens," the statement read, in part. "When united by these convictions, America is stronger as a country and an inspiration for others."
Kramer told C-SPAN last week that he had organized the statement in order to "remind fellow Americans that we are a great nation rooted in the ideals of freedom and democracy, and that we are best when we show compassion and tolerance, pluralism and respect for others, and that united we’re a much stronger country."
He told The Guardian that former President Bush "did see and signed off on this statement."
Kramer previously made headlines in March 2019 after his deposition on the debunked Steele dossier was unsealed by a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The 35-page dossier by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele – controversially published in its raw form in January 2017 by BuzzFeed – alleged that former President Trump had colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election over Hillary Clinton and claimed that the Kremlin had blackmail material on the former president, including a tape of prostitutes urinating on him in a Moscow hotel.
Kramer, a former State Department official and McCain associate, was working at the McCain Institute for International Leadership when he was deposed in December 2017 as part of a defamation suit by a Russian oligarch over BuzzFeed’s publication of the unverified dossier.
Kramer told the court at the time that he had met with Steele in London at the direction of the late Senator John McCain, R-Ariz. He said he later had given the dossier to multiple news outlets, including BuzzFeed, as well as to McCain, who had then given it to then-FBI Director James Comey in December 2016.
Comey separately briefed then-President Barack Obama and Trump on the dossier on January 6, 2017, just days before Trump’s inauguration.
The dossier served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page later that year, and it was later revealed that it originally had been commissioned by a research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
The dossier has since been repeatedly discredited and debunked, including by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation, which found no evidence of collusion.
The Bush Institute did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
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| Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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Sloppy journalism. The Steele dossier started as Republican op research for Marco Rubio. From the NYT:
| Quote: | Who paid for it?
During the Republican primaries, a research firm called Fusion GPS was hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, to unearth potentially damaging information about Mr. Trump. The Free Beacon — which was funded by a major donor supporting Mr. Trump’s rival for the party’s nomination, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — told Fusion GPS to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination.
After Mr. Trump secured the nomination, Fusion GPS was hired on behalf of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the D.N.C. by their law firm, Perkins Coie, to compile research about Mr. Trump, his businesses |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14892
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| Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2023 1:31 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_pl6bukapM
Trump’s MASSIVE Threats EXPOSED by Ex-CIA Agent who HAD ENOUGH | Burn The Boats
| Quote: | 206,436 views Oct 3, 2023 Burn the Boats Podcast
Alex Finley is a former officer within the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She is now a columnist and author who focuses on security and intelligence issues. In this episode, she discusses authoritarianism, the intelligence community, and how Donald Trump and other high-ranking officials in his administration were were susceptible to foreign influence. |
the entire podcast is worth listening to if you have the time, I work and listen .
It is very good.
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when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
Last edited by real-human on Thu Oct 05, 2023 10:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17750
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2023 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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You can read her stuff without listening to a 52 minute podcast.
| Quote: | WASHINGTON AND THE WORLD
The Recruitables: Why Trump’s Team Was Easy Prey for Putin
A former CIA officer looks at the personality traits that might have allowed Russian intelligence to manipulate key members of the president’s inner circle.
By ALEX FINLEY October 26, 2017
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THE FRIDAY COVER
The Friday Cover for Jan. 10, 2020
Read more
Alex Finley is the pen name of a former CIA officer and author of Victor in the Rubble, a satire of the CIA and the war on terror. Follow her on Twitter: @alexzfinley.
By now, it should be clear to anyone following the news that Russian intelligence made a formidable effort to approach the Trump campaign and assess the potential to manipulate its members. As a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, I can tell you that Russian security services would have been derelict not to evaluate the possibility of turning someone close to Trump. While the question of collusion remains open, it’s beyond dispute that Russia tried to get people around the president to cooperate. The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower is indication enough, but other encounters bolster the argument.
How do you get someone to do something they should not do?
Generally, an intelligence officer looks for a person’s vulnerabilities and explores ways to exploit them. It usually comes down to four things, which—in true government style—the CIA has encompassed in an acronym, MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. Want to get someone to betray his country? Figure out which of these four motivators drives the person and exploit the hell out of it.
It is important to note, too, that a person might not know he is doing something he shouldn’t do. As former CIA Director John Brennan testified in May, “Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.” Sometimes, such people make the best assets. They are so sure in their convictions that they are acting in their own best interest or in the best interest of their country that they have no idea they are being completely manipulated.
The Russians know all this, too.
From an intelligence point of view, the people surrounding Trump, and Trump himself, make easy targets for recruitment. This is not to say these people have definitely been recruited by Russian intelligence—and they’ve all denied it repeatedly—but you can be sure that Russia’s intelligence services took these factors into consideration when they approached the campaign.
So, what pressure points might Russian intelligence officers have used to get their desired outcome with Trump’s Recruitables?
Paul Manafort: Money
Anyone who has lobbied on behalf of leaders ranging from Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko to the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos to Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang likely has no set ideology or moral compass and is motivated primarily by making money. People like this make very good targets. There is no emotion involved. Getting the person to do something is a fairly straightforward transaction. For example, getting someone to buy real estate to help launder Russian funds, in return for a handsome fee, would be a pretty simple transaction. As soon as the person has done it one time, it is much easier to get them to do something else for you.
A real opportunity came when Manafort went to work on the campaign of Viktor Yanukovych for president of Ukraine. Yanukovych was close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin and was corrupt. By being willing to play in these circles, Manafort signaled his willingness to look the other way as long as the payoff was right. A ledger found in Yanukovych’s abandoned palace showed he was paid $12 million (Manafort denied taking such payments, but the AP has confirmed that two of his companies did indeed receive part of this money). Putin pal Oleg Deripaska reportedly paid him $10 million a year to push Putin’s agenda. Press reports also state he received loans of up to $60 million from Deripaska.
Was he in debt, which made him vulnerable to coercion? Or were these loans not actually loans, but payments that Manafort was never expected to pay back? Either way, money was clearly Manafort’s weakness, and Russian intelligence would have known that, given his demonstrated willingness to work for just about anyone with deep pockets.
Michael Flynn: Money, Ideology, Ego
Flynn was at the top of his game as director of intelligence at JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command. During his tenure, JSOC became a lean fighting machine, able to execute a hit on a target in a war zone and immediately process any actionable intelligence in order to hit the next target immediately, before the bad guys could move on. He moved up the intelligence ladder and landed the top spot at the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012. Here, the Peter Principle quickly set in. Castigated for his lack of vision for the agency, his inability to manage a large organization, his unconventional approach to counterterrorism, and his “Flynn facts,” it became evident in Washington circles that Flynn was over his head. President Barack Obama fired him.
Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
A top military figure, with a large ego, who felt slighted by Obama, the intelligence community and the military, Flynn was down. From the heights of JSOC to being fired—wrongly fired, no less, in his view—Flynn at this point would have made any foreign intelligence officer salivate. The man was vulnerable on several levels. His ego had taken a massive, public blow. He also firmly believed he was right, that he knew better than the president how to save the country from Islamic terrorists. Add to the mix that so many other military men had gone on to make millions in the private sector, cashing in on their military careers, their time in war zones, their connections to people both in government and in large defense companies. Flynn launched his own security consulting company and certainly might have thought: Where is mine?
This would have been a good moment for the Russians to send in a clever operative, stroke his ego, and tell Flynn how smart he was and how ridiculous Obama was for firing him. We’ve got a lot of people at RT who agree with you, the person might have added, while making it clear, “Our president agrees with you.” Payments, made through speaking fees and consulting contracts, would have helped smooth the deal.
Does this mean Flynn was recruited as a traditional asset, fully under Russian control? No. The Russians are concerned with being able to influence people only as much as they need to. And with Flynn, who reportedly developed an obsession with collaborating with the Russians against ISIS and even defended RT as no different than CNN, had readily demonstrated his willingness to follow and promote the Kremlin’s agenda in return for a certain amount of ego stroking (which, in turn, might have helped him actually believe what he was saying).
Felix Sater: Money, Coercion, Ego
In an article in the Atlantic, titled “Why Didn’t Trump Build Anything In Russia?” Julie Ioffe painted a picture of Trump’s former real estate partner as someone who really wanted to be part of the rich Moscow club but who lacked krysha, or “roof”—the political protection, Ioffe explains, to act as insurance should a deal go wrong—to be able to do it. “He tries to create the impression of someone who is extremely well-connected and very busy,” a source who had worked with Sater told Ioffe. Sater made a few forays into Moscow business circles but could never convert and was unable to win the trust of anyone who would have mattered. As Ioffe wrote, Sater was worried about his image. So worried, in fact, he looked into hiring a PR firm to help build up his reputation. He was, in the end, an outsider who really wanted to be an insider.
Give this person the chance to say he is wheeling and dealing with Very Important People, and he will bend to your will. Russian security services could offer at least the appearance of “roof,” even if they never intended to help Sater make money. His increased cachet would have been worth it to someone so image-conscious.
Jared Kushner: Money, Coercion
Kushner had a rocky entrée into Manhattan real estate. His purchase of 666 Fifth Ave. at $1.8 billion in 2007—that is, just before the market tanked—was perhaps not the strongest display of business acumen. And now, with payments due and business going badly, he was in a pickle. Perhaps the Russians had a great way for him to get out of that pickle. So they introduced him in December 2016 to Sergey Gorkov, the head of the Russian state investment bank Vnesheconombank, or VEB, who would have made it clear that he was in a position to help.
Donald Trump Jr.: Money, Ego
Junior is a lot like dad in his need to feel important. He was certainly a target because he manages access to his father, and his arrogance makes him easy to read. There is probably quite a bit of insecurity behind the smugness. Sure, he’s done a few international deals, but it’s going to take more than that to please daddy (Junior certainly could see that his dad never really pleased his father; Junior didn’t want to repeat that). Access to deals and money would certainly be a way to manipulate him, but mostly it would be stroking the Trump ego. The most important thing for Junior was that daddy win, at any cost. The perks and business deals would be a nice bonus, but I don’t think Junior even equated those perks with aid to his father’s campaign. Why wouldn’t he accept help for his father’s campaign? He likely didn’t even realize there was anything wrong with a foreign adversary lending a hand. As he wrote when approached with derogatory information on daddy’s opponent, “I love it.”
Donald Trump: Ego
A lot has been made of the possible existence of a peepee tape that Putin could lord over Trump to make him do Putin’s bidding. (Trump denies it.) But the president has been revealed time and again as a deadbeat who does not pay his bills, a serial philanderer and a confessed sexual predator. He has bragged about walking in on women at the Miss America contest and grabbing women “by the pussy” whenever he likes. Would anyone really be surprised or shocked by such a tape? This is not to say such a tape does not exist, only that its role as kompromat is limited.
Ego is clearly the best way to get Trump to do anything. The Saudis certainly understood this, feting him with gold and orbs and displaying his enormous portrait on the side of a hotel, right next to the king’s portrait. The Saudis had this man in the palm of their hands, hence Trump’s pro-Saudi stance since the trip, despite his campaign rhetoric shouting down the kingdom.
Trump’s ego wanted to win and, he figured, everyone else wanted him to win, too. He was under the impression that everyone loved him and appreciated his greatness. Of course everyone wanted to help him win. If he accepted help from Russia, it’s possible he didn’t realize there was anything wrong with doing so. Why wouldn’t they help him win, he might have thought, and why shouldn’t he accept that help? For an experienced chekist like Putin, manipulating his ego is almost too easy. |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
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| Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2023 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsdbCjlZ5cQ
Trump's Showdown (full documentary) | FRONTLINE
| Quote: | 8,670,895 views Oct 19, 2021 #Documentary
In this two-hour documentary, FRONTLINE goes inside President Trump’s fight against the investigation of his campaign and traces the dramatic events that led the White House and the nation to the brink of a Constitutional crisis. (Aired 2018)
This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Support your local PBS station here: http://www.pbs.org/donate.
In the 2018 documentary, Trump’s Showdown, filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team (America After 9/11, Bannon’s War) methodically reveal how an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election grew to threaten Donald Trump’s presidency.
The film draws on more than 60 in-depth interviews with former heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump insiders, attorneys, authors and journalists. Thousands of photographs and hundreds of hours of archival footage pull together the entire story – from the days just before Trump’s inauguration to the increasingly chaotic events that ensnared powerful members of Trump’s inner circle and threatened the president himself. |
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real-human
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| Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2023 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/russian-intelligence-binder-reportedly-went-missing-trump-white-house-rcna129946?
Binder with Russian intelligence reportedly went missing from Trump White House
| Quote: | and controversies surrounding classified information, there have long been two broad areas of concern. The first unfolded during and after the Republican’s presidency, with several instances in which Trump carelessly shared highly sensitive information for no apparent reason.
The second was Trump’s alleged decisions to take classified materials from the White House, bring them to his glorified country club in Florida, refuse to give them back, and obstruct the retrieval process, culminating in a felony indictment.
But as it turns out, those aren’t the only areas of concern. CNN published a new report about a binder that went missing from the Trump White House, which seems awfully important.
A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.
A U.S. official familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News that the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed two years ago that a binder containing on a highly classified information related to Russian election interference had gone missing in the waning days of the Trump administration, as first reported by CNN.
The binder contained highly classified raw intelligence, the official said.
The committee has not been briefed since, and the official is not in a position to confirm CNN’s reporting that the missing binder has never been found.
As for the underlying article, according to the reporting, at issue is a large binder that included sensitive intelligence on Russia, which was last seen in the Trump White House in the final days of the Republican’s term. The documents were apparently brought to the White House as part of the outgoing president’s declassification efforts, and they were under the care of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14892
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| Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2023 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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a ten inch thick folder....
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-fbi-official-raises-specter-missing-intel-file-under-trump-was-handed-to-russia/ar-AA1lDQzY?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=c1667c11281c4257d7ce49f20bc0fb7f&ei=8
Ex-FBI official raises specter missing intel file under Trump was handed to Russia
| Quote: | During an appearance on MSNBC on Sunday afternoon, a former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI suggested there is a real possibility that a Russian intelligence file that went missing near the end of Donald Trump's presidency could have ended up in Russian hands.
Speaking with host Alex Witt, a clearly distressed Frank Figliuzzi admitted he wants to know how exactly the Department of Justice is handling the investigation into the missing ten-inch binder that contained raw intelligence reports compiled by U.S and foreign intelligence members.
Figliuzzi noted that both White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and Donald Trump have both pointed the finger at former White House chief of staff Mark Maedaows, with the ex-FBI official suggesting a warrant needs to be approved to search Meadows' home. |
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