Yorkie Mom
Yorkie Mom's JournalFormer FBI Director Louis Freeh was hired by Prevezon to help negotiate its $5.9 million settlement
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh was hired by the Russian-owned real-estate firm Prevezon earlier this year to help the company negotiate a settlement agreement with the US government over an alleged money-laundering operation that involved an elaborate Russian tax fraud scheme that implicated high-level Kremlin officials.
That detail was disclosed in a new court document released on Thursday by Acting US Attorney Joon Kim, who wrote a memorandum seeking to enforce the settlement agreement Prevezon struck with the government back in May for roughly $5.9 million.
Prevezon is also represented by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitsksya, who met with top Trump campaign officials last June at Trump Tower to lobby for a repeal of the Magnitsky Act. The Prevezon case garnered high-profile attention given its ties to an alleged $230 million Russian tax-fraud scheme and the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose suspicious death aroused international media attention and spurred the passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012.
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Freeh served as the director of the FBI between 1993 and 2001, and he has been known to take on controversial clients since entering the private sector in the early 2000s. In 2015, for instance, he represented an Israeli billionaire who was accused of bribing the government of Guinea for a stake in an iron mine.
More: http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-director-louis-freeh-russia-prevezon-money-laundering-2017-11
Buried Lede: Western SIGINT, not the Steele Dossier, sparked the US IC investigation of Trump's Krem
Buried Lede: Western SIGINT, not the Steele Dossier, sparked the US IC investigation of Trump's Kremlin ties.
https://twitter.com/20committee/status/930856693398933504
I posted this article in LBN and it had 39 votes for the Greatest, but was locked.
GD thread https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029846212
Source: The Guardian
... snip
The emissary was David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration. He was sufficiently troubled to get on a flight to London. Steele agreed to meet him at Heathrow airport. The rendezvous involved some old-fashioned spycraft. Kramer didn’t know what Steele looked like. He was told to look for a man with a copy of the Financial Times. After meeting Kramer, Steele drove him to his home in Surrey. They talked through the dossier: how Steele compiled it, what it said. Less than 24 hours later, Kramer returned to Washington. Glenn Simpson then shared a copy of the dossier confidentially with McCain, along with a final Steele memo on the Russian hacking operation, written in December.
McCain believed it was impossible to verify Steele’s claims without a proper investigation. He made a call and arranged a meeting with Comey. Their encounter on 8 December 2016 lasted five minutes. Not much was said. McCain gave Comey the dossier.
McCain’s intervention now made some kind of bureaucratic response inevitable. This was no longer just an FBI affair; it required co-ordination across the top levels of US intelligence. A highly classified two-page summary of Steele’s dossier was compiled. It was attached to a longer, restricted briefing note on Russian cyber interference in the 2016 election. The US’s most senior intelligence chiefs mulled what to do.
Their next task was an unenviable one. As former CIA director Michael Hayden put it to me, the situation was “off the map in terms of what intelligence is asked to do. I didn’t envy them”. Of the dossier, Hayden said: “My gestalt idea, when I saw it, was that this looks like our stuff.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke
How Trump walked into Putins web
Source: The Guardian
... snip
The emissary was David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration. He was sufficiently troubled to get on a flight to London. Steele agreed to meet him at Heathrow airport. The rendezvous involved some old-fashioned spycraft. Kramer didn’t know what Steele looked like. He was told to look for a man with a copy of the Financial Times. After meeting Kramer, Steele drove him to his home in Surrey. They talked through the dossier: how Steele compiled it, what it said. Less than 24 hours later, Kramer returned to Washington. Glenn Simpson then shared a copy of the dossier confidentially with McCain, along with a final Steele memo on the Russian hacking operation, written in December.
McCain believed it was impossible to verify Steele’s claims without a proper investigation. He made a call and arranged a meeting with Comey. Their encounter on 8 December 2016 lasted five minutes. Not much was said. McCain gave Comey the dossier.
McCain’s intervention now made some kind of bureaucratic response inevitable. This was no longer just an FBI affair; it required co-ordination across the top levels of US intelligence. A highly classified two-page summary of Steele’s dossier was compiled. It was attached to a longer, restricted briefing note on Russian cyber interference in the 2016 election. The US’s most senior intelligence chiefs mulled what to do.
Inside the Kremlin’s hall of mirrors
Read more
Their next task was an unenviable one. As former CIA director Michael Hayden put it to me, the situation was “off the map in terms of what intelligence is asked to do. I didn’t envy them”. Of the dossier, Hayden said: “My gestalt idea, when I saw it, was that this looks like our stuff.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke
This is The Guardian's "The long read". It is long, but well worth the time.
BOOM: Cambridge Analytica reached out to Russian intel front Wikileaks to acquire stolen Clinton
BOOM: Cambridge Analytica reached out to Russian intel front Wikileaks to acquire stolen Clinton emails for Trump campaign
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/929103532690722817
I'm out of views at WSJ, but the article is here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/data-firms-wikileaks-outreach-came-as-it-joined-trump-campaign-1510339346
If someone can snip the first 4 paragraphs, I'll update the OP.
Edit for more
Bannon and CA intended to use data stolen by Russian intel for use in the Trump Campaign.
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/929104142307643392
Cambridge Analytica says, despite requests from House and Senate Intel, that it's "not under investigation" ROFLMAO
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/929104715991961605
*Devin Nunes* attended a breakfast with Michael Flynn and Turkey's foreign minister just before the
*Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, attended a breakfast meeting at which Michael Flynn and Turkey's foreign minister were also present.
*The breakfast took place just before President Donald Trump's inauguration in January.
*A Wall Street Journal report published Friday indicated the special counsel Robert Mueller was scrutinizing Flynn's dealings with the Turkish government.
Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, attended a breakfast meeting in January that Michael Flynn, then the incoming national security adviser, and Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, also attended.
The breakfast event, held on Wednesday, January 18, was closed to the press, and it is still unclear what exactly was discussed.
The Washington correspondent for the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, which tends to be pro-government, reported at the time that an aide to Cavusoglu said he "was the only foreign leader at the breakfast and the topics on the US-Turkish agenda were discussed by the attendees."
The invitation, obtained by the newspaper, said the breakfast would "be a small event for about 50-60 guests" and that the incoming White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, "might join the meeting," Daily Sabah reported.
More: http://www.businessinsider.com/devin-nunes-michael-flynn-turkey-russia-2017-11
JUST IN: Former advisor to President Trump, Carl Icahn, has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney's
JUST IN: Former advisor to President Trump, Carl Icahn, has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, NBC News confirms
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/928342460304166913
I'm sure this is a big ole nothingburger.
***Important thread/info on what's coming & scope***
from John Schindler. If you don't know who he is, a brief summary of job here.
https://twitter.com/20committee/status/926607583808512000
Since Big News in #KremlinGate is looming, it's time for a brief tweetstorm on what's really going on behind scenes with Team Mueller. /1
If you're surprised that #MoscowMisha is cooked, you've not been paying attention. Sr & Jr are both going down on a bunch of charges. /2
Flynn, like Manafort, desperately wanted a deal from Mueller, but they had 0 to offer that DoJ didn't already have. So, they're screwed. /3
The Team Mueller + FBI/IC joint investigation here is truly massive; a CI inquiry this expansive hasn't been seen in DC since VENONA. /4
Together, they're investigating HUNDREDS of targets for poss ties to Russian spies & mobsters. Public will be shocked when it comes out. /5
These CI targets include WH officials; Trump associates, friends & family; journalists and lobbyists; even bloggers. It's a wide net. /6
It will take years for this CI inquiry to be concluded -- VENONA ran from 1943 to 1980, folks -- but the answers will stun the public. /7
Anticipate a bunch of indictments in the next year or 2, perhaps many more in the long run; it depends how indictments rounds 1-5 go. /8
The Russian conspiracy in DC took years to metastasize, it will take years to unravel it all. Marathon not sprint, as I say. Patience. /End
Edit: Click the first post to read the thread on twitter.
I posted the unrolled version here: https://tttthreads.com/thread/927549721488568320
Another edit to add info about Venona. (I didn't know, either.)
Venona project wiki
List of Americans
Included on the list is Ethel Rosenberg who was executed for role in Rosenberg ring based on testimony of her brother, David Greenglass.
CBS: Source who is being examined by special counsel: "It's every man for himself"
Less than a week after two top former Trump campaign officials were indicted and another adviser to the campaign had already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, the pressure on others under scrutiny appears to be growing. One source whose actions during the 2016 election are being examined by the special counsel's office and who is reluctant to talk publicly tells CBS News, "It's every man for himself."
That remark suggests that some of the former campaign officials and associates in legal jeopardy may be rushing to offer their cooperation in an effort to get a better deal from prosecutors. The source maintains that he is innocent and is frustrated that he has so far failed to clear his name in the ongoing probe. Over the last few months the source seems to have evolved in his thinking about Russian involvement in the presidential election.
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Washington is bracing for the next indictment to be unsealed, but it is unclear when that will happen. There are several people under scrutiny at risk. Even those close to President Trump are speculating. A source familiar with the inner workings of the Trump business and White House operation says, "I think everyone in the entire circle is potentially a target." Among the names the source mentioned were former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; his son, Michael Flynn Jr.; Felix Sater, a former Trump business associate; Carter Page – a former foreign policy adviser for the campaign; Sam Clovis a former top campaign official; Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney; and Jared Kushner who is the president's son-in-law and one of his top advisers.
Link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/source-who-is-being-examined-by-special-counsel-its-every-man-for-himself/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=44291130
Bloomberg: Manafort and Gates had at least 15 accounts on the island with Bank of Cyprus and a bank
Bloomberg: Manafort and Gates “had at least 15 accounts on the island with Bank of Cyprus and a bank it took over in 2013.”
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/926513317027504129
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/926511963177472001
Cyprus Gave Manafort’s Bank Records to Mueller Team, Sources Say
Authorities in Cyprus handed over bank and company records to U.S. investigators late last week related to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates, just before they were indicted in the U.S., according to people familiar with the probe.
The Cypriot government was responding to a June 7 request from U.S. investigators for records related to Manafort, Gates and companies they set up in Cyprus and the Seychelles, the people said. The pair of U.S. consultants had at least 15 accounts on the island with Bank of Cyprus and a bank it took over in 2013, Cyprus Popular Bank, one of the people said.
Only a small part of the request from the investigative team headed by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller hasn’t been answered yet, the people said. A Bank of Cyprus spokesman declined to comment.
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In all, prosecutors allege that more than $75 million flowed through the offshore accounts set up by Manafort and Gates, the bulk of which were in Cyprus. The indictment detailed $12 million of payments from those accounts for Manafort’s personal real estate purchases and goods and services in the U.S.
More: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/cyprus-is-said-to-give-manafort-s-bank-records-to-mueller-team?utm_content=politics&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-politics
Wilbur Ross. Paging Wilbur Ross...
Manafort's phone WAS wiretapped during Mayflower hotel mtg & we may have SIGINT on Jeff Sessions
meeting with the Russians.
Re-read the timeline Manafort's phone WAS wiretapped during this meeting and now puts @JeffSession in BIGLY trouble. And now we groot dance
https://twitter.com/Alt_Spicerlies/status/910196522398167040
https://twitter.com/Alt_Spicerlies/status/910196967208341504
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