BREAKING: Emails show that Arron Banks of @LeaveEUOfficial was intoduced to the Russian ambassador by Alexander Udod, a Russian spy who was kicked out of Britain after the Skripal poisoning. See Sunday Time

https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1005551029029605381

The British businessman who funded Brexit has admitted that he "handed over telephone numbers for members of Trump’s transition team to Russian officials."

https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1005515057713696768

Exclusive: Emails reveal Russian links of millionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks

Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who helped fund Brexit, had three meetings with the Russian ambassador to Britain — raising explosive questions about attempts by Moscow to influence the referendum result.

Emails by Banks and his sidekick Andy Wigmore, shown to The Sunday Times, reveal an extensive web of links between Banks’s Leave.EU campaign and Russian officials.

They show they made repeated contact with officials to discuss business opportunities and issues of mutual interest throughout the referendum campaign and its aftermath.

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More: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/exclusive-emails-reveal-russian-links-of-millionaire-brexit-backer-arron-banks-6lf5xdp6h

https://twitter.com/ImagineWorldas1/status/1004892647373209600


New Book: Trump Team, Not Deep State, Revealed Flynn’s Talks With Russians

Obama aide Ben Rhodes writes that he learned about Mike Flynn’s parley with the Russian ambassador not from ‘unmasked’ surveillance intercepts but from Trump’s own people.

The Trump transition team told Barack Obama’s White House about Mike Flynn’s fateful conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to a senior Obama aide’s new memoir. That account stands in contrast to oft-repeated claims that the Obama team unmasked Flynn’s name after learning of the Kislyak conversation from surveillance intercepts.

Ben Rhodes, an Obama deputy national security adviser and a long-time right-wing bete noire, often features prominently in accusations from Donald Trump’s allies that the outgoing White House improperly “unmasked” Flynn from surveillance intercepts and then leaked his name to discredit him In October, Rhodes testified behind closed doors to the House intelligence committee probe controlled by Trump ally Devin Nunes about unmasking.

But in his just-released book The World As It Is, the former senior National Security Council staffer writes that the Obama White House learned about the Flynn-Kislyak talks from the Trump team itself. If Rhodes’ claim is true, then Obama aides had no need to “unmask” any surveillance intercept of Kislyak’s phone calls to determine Flynn was the interlocutor.

Flynn “took a couple of weeks after his own appointment to accept Susan Rice’s invitation to meet,” Rhodes writes. “His own transition team volunteered to us that he’d met with Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, before meeting with the American official he was replacing.”

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-book-trump-team-not-deep-state-revealed-flynns-talks-with-russians?via=twitter_page

Ivanka Trump Was In Contact With A Russian Who Offered A Trump-Putin Meeting

Her contact, a Russian Olympic weightlifter, said a meeting between Trump and Putin could expedite a Trump tower in Moscow.
Posted on June 6, 2018, at 12:20 p.m.

By Anthony Cormier (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Jason Leopold (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Emma Loop (BuzzFeed News Reporter)

Amid intense scrutiny of contacts between Donald Trump's inner circle and representatives of Vladimir Putin, Ivanka Trump's name has barely come up. But during the campaign, she connected her father’s personal lawyer with a Russian athlete who offered to introduce Donald Trump to Putin to facilitate a 100-story Trump tower in Moscow, according to emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News and four sources with knowledge of the matter.

There is no evidence that Ivanka Trump’s contact with the athlete — the former Olympic weightlifter Dmitry Klokov — was illegal or that it had anything to do with the election. Nor is it clear that Klokov could even have introduced Trump to the Russian president. But congressional investigators have reviewed emails and questioned witnesses about the interaction, according to two of the sources, and so has special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, according to the other two.

The contacts reveal that even as her father was campaigning to become president of the United States, Ivanka Trump connected Michael Cohen with a Russian who offered to arrange a meeting with one of America’s adversaries — in order to help close a business deal that could have made the Trump family millions.

... snip

Ivanka Trump, who now works in her father’s administration, did not respond to questions sent to her personal email, chief of staff, and the White House. A spokesperson for her attorney wrote that Ivanka Trump did not know about the Trump Moscow project “until after a nonbinding letter of intent had been signed, never talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal, and, even internally, was only minimally involved. Her only role was limited to reminding Mr. Cohen that, should an actual deal come to fruition (which it did not) the project, like any other with the Trump name, conform with the highest design and architectural standards.”

More: https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycormier/ivanka-trump-putin-moscow-meeting-michael-cohen-tower?utm_term=.byYkL5eDr#.nroBrxVPA

Interview with Austrian ORF television channel

Ahead of his visit to Austria, the President of Russia answered questions from Austria’s ORF news presenter Armin Wolf.


Vladimir Putin: You should ask our colleagues in the United States. In my opinion, this is the result of the ongoing acute political struggle in the United States. Indeed, Donald Trump and I have, firstly, met more than once at various international venues and secondly, we regularly talk over the phone. Our foreign affairs departments and special services are working fairly well together in areas of mutual interest, above all in the fight against international terrorism. This work is ongoing.

As for personal meetings, I think that the possibility of these meetings depends to a large extent on the internal political situation in the United States. The congressional election campaign is getting under way and then there will be the next presidential election, and the President of the United States is coming under attack over various matters. I think this is the main reason.

In a recent telephone conversation, Donald said he was worried about the possibility of a new arms race. I fully agree with him. However, to prevent a possible arms race (we did not initiate such a course of events, we did not withdraw from the Anti-Missile Defence Treaty, we merely responded to the threats that arise for us from this, but I agree with the US President) we should think about it, we should do something about it, give corresponding instructions to our Foreign Ministry and the US State Department. The experts should start working in a concrete way. I hope that some day this work in the interests of the United States and Russia, indeed in the interests of the whole world will begin, including between us personally.

More: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57675#sel=27:29:LGW,27:51:y3x