Reason and Justice
  • Seek the Truth
  • Who We Are
  • Get In Touch
  • Contribute
  • Seek the Truth
  • Who We Are
  • Get In Touch
  • Contribute



Background on the stories that make national news

​
   

Why has government been instituted at all? ​Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.
   ~ ​Alexander Hamilton









​
Photo by Andrew Horne

Manafort Spokesperson Testifies to Grand Jury

9/16/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
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

Picture
Photos: Business Insider / The Rachel Maddow Show
0 Comments

Members of Trump Transition Team Met with King of Jordan in January before Inauguration

9/16/2017

0 Comments

 
Photo: Buzzfeed News
Picture
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



0 Comments

Michael Flynn, Jr. Is Target of Russia Probe

9/13/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
​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:
  • He failed to register as an agent of the Turkish government in 2016. Under FARA, failure to register is a felony.
  • He failed to get permission from the Department of Defense for his travel to Russia in 2015.
  • He failed to disclose contacts with representatives of the Russian government during the transition period between the election and Inauguration.
  • He secretly worked on a joint Russia-U.S. plan to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East, both before and after accepting the position of National Security Advisor. Newsweek reported on this in June; today, House Oversight received information that Flynn was warned by lawyers of the National Security Council not to pursue this project. In spite of that, he ordered employees of his office to work on the plan.
  • He may have made false statements to federal investigators in January of 2017, not long after the Inauguration. Flynn’s interview with FBI investigators appears to have been alarming enough that Sally Yates, acting Attorney General, made two visits to speak with Don McGahn, White House counsel. Days later Sally Yates was fired by the president, ostensibly for refusing to uphold the first travel ban executive order. Less than two weeks later Flynn himself was fired from his position as National Security Advisor, ostensibly for failing to tell Vice President Mike Pence about his dealings with representatives of the Russian government.

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

0 Comments

Donald Trump, Jr.'s Opening Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee

9/7/2017

0 Comments

 
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.

0 Comments

Facebook Sold Ads to Company Linked to Russian Troll Farm during U.S. Presidential Campaign

9/6/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
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.
h
ttps://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


0 Comments
    Truth is a real thing.

    Archives

    November 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016

    Categories

    All
    2016 Election
    Aleksander Kogan
    Alpha Omega Winery
    Backchannel
    Bots
    Breitbart
    Cambridge Analytica
    Charlottesville
    Cozy Bear
    Department Of Justice
    Devin Nunes
    Donald Trump
    Don McGahn
    Dutch Intelligence
    Facebook
    Fact-checking Trump
    Fancy Bear
    FISA
    Fusion GPS
    Gates
    Glenn Simpson
    Global Warminig
    Gregory Kennedy
    GRU
    Gun Rights Rally
    Haiti
    Hate Groups
    Helskinki
    House Intelligence
    House Of Representatives
    Hurricane Maria
    Indicment
    Internet Research Agency
    James Comey
    Jared Kushner
    Jefferson Beauregard Sessions
    Justice Kennedy
    Justin Kennedy
    King Abdullah II
    Magnitsky Act
    Manafort
    Mariia Butina
    Mark Zuckerberg
    Mercer
    Michael Avenatti
    Michael Cohen
    Michael Flynn
    Mogilevich
    Money Laundering
    Mueller Investigation
    National Rifle Association
    Nuclear Deal
    Obstruction Of Justice
    Oleg Deripaska
    Organized Crime
    Papadopoulos
    President Trump
    Puerto Rico
    Reince Priebus
    Renaissance Technologies
    Rod Rosenstein
    Russian Interference
    Russian Trolls
    Ryan Zinke
    Senate Intelligence
    Senate Judiciary
    Senator Feinstein
    Social Media
    Steve Bannon
    Stormy Daniels
    Supreme Court
    Torshin
    Treasury Department
    Trolls
    Trump Jupiter National Golf Club
    Trump Lawsuit
    Trump Organization
    Trump-Putin
    Trump Transition
    Turkey
    Twitter
    U.S. Treasury Department
    Whitefish
    White Supremacy

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly