 Paul Manafort’s spokesperson, Jason Maloni, spent nearly two hours testifying before a federal grand jury in the investigation into the 2016 presidential election. Reuters reports: “Mueller is investigating Manafort’s financial and real estate dealings and his prior work for the Party of Regions, a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, that backed former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich.” The Reuters report can be found here. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-probe/ex-trump-aide-manaforts-spokesman-testifies-to-russia-probe-grand-jury-idUSKCN1BQ1YH Manafort made millions working to further pro-Kremlin interests in Ukraine. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-22/paul-manafort-s-lucrative-ukraine-years-are-central-to-the-russia-probe http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/manafort-firm-made-usd17-million-for-ukraine-lobbying.html When asked why there has been a delay in getting Paul Manafort to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Feinstein suggested that the committee needs to “up its game” before interviewing him, according to Rachel Maddow on The Rachel Maddow Show. Feinstein’s committee recently hired two new staffers to concentrate on financial issues and to “follow the money.” The September 15 episode can be found here. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show  Photos: Business Insider / The Rachel Maddow Show
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Photo: Buzzfeed News  Three members of the Trump transition team - Michael, Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Jared Kushner - met January 5, 2017 with Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. At the time, soon-to-be national Security Advisor Flynn was promoting a $400 billion deal to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East, including Jordan.
According to Buzzfeed, they greeted the king at the hotel and then took off with him in a fleet of SUVs for an undisclosed location. This part of the article is particularly interesting: “People close to the three Trump advisers say that the nuclear deal was not discussed. But a federal official with access to a document created by a law enforcement agency about the meeting said that the nuclear proposal, known as the Marshall Plan, was one of the topics the group talked about.” This means that the group was under surveillance by U.S. law enforcement at the time of the meeting. The plan included using a Russian firm currently under U.S. sanctions to run security at the plants. The Buzzfeed article can be found here. https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/trump-advisors-secretly-met-with-jordans-king-while-one-was?utm_term=.prXq9rVNNx#.bi3ae57OOY  During the 2016 campaign season, Michael G. Flynn, son of Trump supporter General Michael Flynn, was a tireless Tweeter, sharing outlandish conspiracy theories. Now NBC News has reported that the son of the former National Security Advisor is under investigation in the investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
During the campaign the elder Michael Flynn led shouts of “Lock her up!” at Trump campaigns. Michael G. Flynn, his son, shared false stories about a supposed pedolphile ring that ran out of a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. (known as the Pizzagate conspiracy), and other propaganda pushed by Russian and right-wing extremist media outlets. He also served as his father’s chief of staff in his company Flynn Intel Group. The younger Flynn continues to share propaganda on Twitter, and maintains a social media relationship with Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec, two extremist media personalities who have been awarded White House press credentials. The Rachel Maddow Show reported tonight that the younger Flynn has an associate’s degree in golf course management, unusual preparation for a career in national security. The younger Flynn also accompanied his father on his trip in December 2015 to Moscow, where the elder Flynn sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a celebration for RT, the Russian government-sponsored English language media company. (Yesterday it was announced by Yahoo News that RT is under investigation by the FBI, and that RT must register as a foreign agent in the U.S., under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.) Experts agree both Flynn’s are in a great deal of legal jeopardy. Some of the legal issues for the elder Flynn include:
While Vice President Pence has asserted that he did not know about Flynn’s dealings with the Russians, he did receive a letter in November 2016, as head of the transition team, from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, detailing Flynn’s actions representing the Turkish government. Information from NBC News about the special prosecutor’s focus on Michael G. Flynn can be found here. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mike-flynn-s-son-subject-federal-russia-probe-n800741 An article in Daily Kos, with more information about Flynn’s interest in conspiracies, can be found here. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/13/1698247/-Michael-Flynn-s-son-under-investigation-by-Special-Counsel-Robert-Mueller An article about the spread of extremist propaganda during the campaign can be found here. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/13/1698187/-While-Russia-was-buying-ads-on-Facebook-right-wing-web-sites-gave-propaganda-a-free-ride An article about RT being ordered to register as the agent of a foreign government can be found here. http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/350226-russian-network-rt-must-register-as-foreign-agent-in A Newsweek article about Sputnik, another English-language Russian government-funded media outlet, now under FBI investigation, can be found here. http://www.newsweek.com/russian-network-sputnik-under-fbi-investigation-possible-kremlin-propaganda-662844 An NPR story about the nuclear deal the elder Flynn worked on in the White House can be found here. http://www.npr.org/2017/09/13/550679417/house-dems-michael-flynn-may-have-lobbied-for-nuclear-deal-inside-white-house A New York Times article detailing some of the elder Michael Flynn’s legal problems can be found here. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/us/politics/michael-flynn-russia.html?_r=0 Photo credit: NBC News Donald Trump, Jr. spoke before staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee today in closed session. Several members of the committee attended. An article about the session can be found here. http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/07/politics/donald-trump-jr-congress-meeting-nyt/index.html Trump Jr.'s opening statement can be found here. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3988416-September-7-2017-Statement-of-Donald-Trump-Jr.html The opening statement can be read here as well. Facebook Sold Ads to Company Linked to Russian Troll Farm during U.S. Presidential Campaign9/6/2017  As Rachel Maddow stated September 6 on MSNBC:
“You can’t spend foreign money on anything in an American election.” In fact, doing so is a crime. Today, Facebook admitted that the company “found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May of 2017 — associated with roughly 3,000 ads — that was connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts and Pages in violation of our policies. Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia.” Speaking to the Washington Post, a company spokesman admitted that the ad spending was connected to the troll farm in St. Petersburg, which is financed by a Russian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Facebook’s admission is quite a bombshell. Accepting foreign money in any U.S. campaign is a criminal act. Given all the other apparent connections among members of the Trump campaign and the Trump administration, Facebook’s involvement seems unlikely to be merely careless. It may be that there were additional payments made by other members of the Russian government to influence advertising in social media. Past stories may shed some light on the situation. In November 10, 2016, two days after Donald Trump won the presidential election with a margin of 70,000 votes in key states, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the concerns of many Americans, that Facebook had influenced the election, by insisting that it was a “pretty crazy idea.” https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemlee/zuckerberg-techonomy-fake-news-election?utm_term=.jkx84L3RRq#.xbowzA3WWk In January 2017, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released an unclassified report that stated with confidence that Russian intelligence had interfered in the U.S. election. The report specifically cited fake news, bots and trolls. The report stated that: “Russia used trolls as well as RT as part of its influence efforts to denigrate Secretary Clinton. This effort amplified stories on scandals about Secretary Clinton and the role of WikiLeaks in the election campaign. The likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence. A journalist who is a leading expert on the Internet Research Agency claimed that some social media accounts that appear to be tied to Russia’s professional trolls—because they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine—started to advocate for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015.” https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf In May 2017, Time magazine reported that Russian interference in the election had been more widespread than previously reported. http://time.com/magazine/us/4783906/may-29th-2017-vol-189-no-20-u-s/ Also in May, Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub told CNN that she was concerned about "the potential for foreign money creeping into our system" and said that Facebook ads fell under the agency's purview. http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/24/technology/fec-facebook-ads/index.html A Wired article from November of 2016 about the Trump campaign’s use of Facebook can be found here. This article contains an important quote from Brad Parscale, who ran Trump’s social media advertising: “Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing.” https://www.wired.com/2016/11/facebook-won-trump-election-not-just-fake-news/ Today’s Washington Post article about Facebook’s admission can be found here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/facebook-says-it-sold-political-ads-to-russian-company-during-2016-election/2017/09/06/32f01fd2-931e-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html?utm_term=.bca93f53364f A detailed article about the troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, from June of 2015, can be found here. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0 A Business Insider article about bots and trolls (not behind a paywall) from July of 2016 can be found here. http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-internet-trolls-and-donald-trump-2016-7 The white paper published by Facebook in April 2017 can be found here. https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/facebook-and-information-operations-v1.pdf |
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