Whoa: this @peterbakernyt story reveals that Trump called a Times reporter shortly after meeting Putin in July 2017 "and argued that the Russians were falsely accused of election interference"

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1085401986382602240

Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia

WASHINGTON — There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

... snip

“Even discussing the idea of leaving NATO — let alone actually doing so — would be the gift of the century for Putin,” Admiral Stavridis said.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html

Mueller Probes an Event With Nunes, Flynn, and Foreign Officials at Trump’s D.C. Hotel

[b]Devin Nunes has been a pitbull for the president, growling at the prosecutors investigating Trumpworld. Now an event that Nunes himself attended is under Mueller’s microscope.

The Special Counsel’s Office and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are scrutinizing a meeting involving former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, one-time National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and dozens of foreign officials, according to three sources familiar with the investigations.

The breakfast event, which was first reported by The Daily Sabah, a pro-government Turkish paper, took place at 8:30 a.m. at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, 2017—days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. About 60 people were invited, including diplomats from governments around the world, according to those same sources.

The breakfast has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Manhattan as part of their probe into whether the Trump inaugural committee misspent funds and if donors tried to buy influence in the White House. The existence of that probe was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Special Counsel’s Office is also looking at the breakfast as part of its investigation into whether foreigners contributed money to the Trump inaugural fund and PAC by possibly using American intermediaries, as first reported by The New York Times. Robert Mueller’s team has asked Flynn about the event, according to two sources familiar with the Special Counsel’s Office questioning.

Nunes, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, has been perhaps Trump’s most important congressional ally over the last two years. After serving on Trump’s transition team, Nunes became a vigorous defender of the president against federal and congressional inquiries. The California Republican pushed a misleading memo alleging misconduct in the FBI investigation of Trump’s associates that the bureau said contained “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-probes-an-event-with-nunes-flynn-and-foreign-officials-at-trumps-dc-hotel?via=twitter_page

NEW: A report produced by a US intel agency, which I reviewed, assessing that Alexander Torshin read in the Kremlin and Ministry of Foreign Affairs on his outreach to the NRA
https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status/1084633840579162112

Kremlin Blessed Russia’s NRA Operation, U.S. Intel Report Says

When Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin’s brought NRA bigwigs to Moscow, it wasn’t a rogue mission. It was okayed from the very top, according to a report reviewed by The Beast.

... snip

“This reporting indicates that Alexander Torshin was working with the blessing of the Kremlin, at a minimum,” one European intelligence official told The Daily Beast. The official added that this reporting is consistent with his group’s understanding of how the Kremlin operates.

“The NRA is quite powerful, so when you look to influence U.S. politics, you should consider them as a convenient target,” the official added.

The report, published last year, is based on conversations that happened in 2015, before NRA leaders visited Moscow on a trip arranged by Torshin and Butina. The document does not specifically name the NRA or the Republican Party, but its context makes clear it is discussing those two American organizations. (American intelligence reports generally do not name U.S. persons or organizations for privacy and legal reasons.)

According to the report, Torshin suggested that Russian officials use the NRA to reach out to politically active Americans. Torshin, then a deputy governor at Russia’s central bank, noted the gun rights group’s influence in U.S. politics. He told the Kremlin about his contacts in the NRA, including conversations and meetings in the United States, and suggested that Kremlin officials scrutinize how some people affiliated with the group viewed relations between the U.S. and Russia.

... snip

Kremlin officials at the highest levels have tried to distance themselves from Torshin’s outreach to the NRA. Last month, Putin denied that he or his security chiefs were aware of the undertaking.

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-blessed-russias-nra-operation-us-intel-report-says

F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia

WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/politics/fbi-trump-russia-inquiry.html

h/t @stacysloan25, look who else Ukraine-pollster for Trump worked for. 🤔🤔🤔🖕http://fabriziolee.com
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1083513975210418181

Russians Indicted by Mueller Linked to Murder of Journalists in Central African Republic

A pair of Russians indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for meddling in the U.S. elections of 2016 were involved in a plot that led to the murder of three Russian journalists in Africa, according to a private investigation funded by the journalists’ former employer, the exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Data revealed by Khodorkovsky at a briefing in London on Thursday suggests that several Russians linked to Evgeny Prigozhin, a powerful ally of President Vladimir Putin, conspired to lure the murdered journalists into an ambush on a country road in the Central African Republic, where they were shot dead on the night of July 30. Among those implicated in the investigation was Mikhail Burchik, who was indicted alongside Prigozhin last year for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential elections.

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With funding from Khodorkovsky, the journalists focused in particular on the mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group, which has been identified in Russian and Western media as part of Prigozhin’s business empire. In June 2017, the U.S. government imposed sanctions against the Wagner Group, alleging that it had “recruited and sent soldiers to fight alongside separatists in eastern Ukraine.” Prigozhin has denied having any links to private military contractors.

The office of the special counsel, which is investigating Russian involvement in the U.S. elections of 2016, indicted Prigozhin and a dozen of his associates in February of last year. The indictment accused Prigozhin of running an elaborate scheme to manipulate American voters through fake social media and political advertisements, many of which sought to promote the candidacy of Donald Trump.

More: http://time.com/5499459/russia-murder-central-african-republic-khodorkovsky-prigozhin/

On the left: #Russia's state TV. On the right: Trump's state TV, @FoxNews. Don't get confused.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1083456721346088961