TPM: The CIA & FBI Knew There Were Problems w Trump Well Before 2016

[kpete]

Link to tweet

ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedMARCH 2, 2017, 4:41 PM EDT

As you've likely inferred from my recent posts I've spent a lot of time in recent days and weeks piecing together different elements of the Trump/Russia story. I've brought other colleagues into the work and plan to expand that once we have people hired for the three new investigative positions I discussed last month. Today everyone is talking about the inexplicable news about Jeff Sessions. But there's another dimension of the Trump/Russia story which has only become clear to me recently but which provides a critical backstory for understanding the background of this scandal and news story

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snippet:

It seems quite probable that as Trump moved closer to the presidency in the early months of 2016, alarm bells started to go off in the FBI and the CIA, as the relevance of business partnerships with Sater and reliance on capital out of the former Soviet Union suddenly became dramatically more relevant. Again, as I said, as long as Donald Trump was just Donald Trump this didn't matter that much. There's plenty of dirty money sloshing around the New York real estate world. But when it started to seem plausible that he might become the next President, this would start to be a matter of great concern.

This certainly also added to the concern when popped up in a meeting with Michael Cohen and a pro-Russian Ukrainian parliamentarian with a dossier he asked Cohen to hand deliver to Michael Flynn.

All of what I've said here would be an issue even if the Russian government had never inserted itself into the US election. It almost certainly predates any awareness within the US national security and law enforcement worlds that that was happening. But I suspect it is a critical backdrop for how this evidence was interpreted once it began to come to light. It quite possibly also informed and drove some of the scrutiny that was applied to Trump and his associates once it did.

HERE (LOTS):
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-the-cia-and-fbi-knew-about-trump-before-2016

[gopiscrap]

1. Both those departments need to be cleaned out

[BumRushDaShow]

2. The NY Times has documented 40+ years worth of crap on Drumpf

just covering him while he did business in NY.

[Blue_Tires]

3. Goddamnit I'm not even in the CIA/FBI yet *I* knew there were problems

The real question is why didn't everybody else?

[uponit7771]

4. FUCKIN BASTARDS !!!

[cbreezen]

5. K&R

Very succinct explanation and worth a read for someone, like me, who sometimes has difficulty keeping up with some of the players and storylines. It really is quite overwhelming at times.

[tblue37]

6. Maybe it's time for a new nickname for Cheato Benito: Mafia Don! nt

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

7. So basically, the executive branch is being run by the Russian Mafia? I mean

that might be an oversimplification. But what the fuck????!!!!!

[yardwork]

13. That's been obvious since the election, yes.

[tanyev]

8. Aha! This is probably why the Trump campaign vilified Loretta Lynch.

One notable, though perhaps distinct, detail is that we can be sure that the attorney general of the United States at the time, Loretta Lynch, knew a level of detail about Felix Sater and his father Mikhail that only would have been possible as the former US Attorney for the district in which Sater's trial was adjudicated.

[DK504]

9. Comey needs tone brought up on charges. Plain and simple.

Same with Brennen, they both knew we were being hacked, we were being manipulated by Putin and pay for play was occuring left, right and center.

I am pissed that the administration didn't splatter this all over the TV machine, before the GOPee primary.

[Erda]

10. I've been thinking about Comey's role in this.

I wonder if his Clinton email statement was part of a larger sting operation to get evidence on Trump and Trump's operatives. That is, to play along deliberately to catch the bigger fish. Of course, I don't know this, but I admired Comey when he protected an ailing John Ashcroft during the Bush administration. I don't know much about him but I respected him for standing up against Alberto Gonzales, et al.

[True Blue American]

11. I Too

Admired Comey for a long time.

Not any more,after Clinton was cleared of charges,Comey came out against all Protocal and went into his rant!

No, Comey is deep inside the cover up of Trump,his minions and the Russians.

The irony of this is, the media bringing on Gonzales to discuss this situation, of all people! That corrupt former AG?

[Cha]

12. And yet comey cheated to get him in the wh