 This morning Special Counsel Robert Mueller III revealed charges against three Trump campaign operatives. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business partner and fellow campaign operative Richard Gates surrendered to the FBI this morning and registered pleas of not guilty in federal court this afternoon. They are under home confinement and have surrendered their passports. The pair have been charged with 12 separate felony counts, including money laundering and conspiracy against the United States. Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony count of lying to the FBI on October 5. The indictment was unsealed today in a surprising twist. Papadopoulos was arrested July 27 and agreed to cooperate with the FBI. Manafort is a longtime Republican operative whose lobbying firm with Roger Stone, Charles Black, Jr., and Peter Kelly has worked for some of the world’s most notorious dictators. He offered his services to the Trump campaign and reportedly worked for free as campaign manager from March to August 2016. He resigned two days after news reports revealed that he may have received more than $12 million from Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Putin Ukrainian dictator who fled Ukraine in 2014. The 12 felony counts for Manafort and Gates have been annotated by The Washington Post and can be found here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/30/the-paul-manafort-and-rick-gates-indictment-annotated/?utm_term=.0cb118129c80 A timeline of events related to Paul Manafort’s political career can be found here. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/30/who-is-paul-manafort-a-brief-timeline-of-his-political-career.html A profile of Rick Gates from June 2017 can be found here. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/politics/rick-gates-russia.html A timeline of events related to the Papadopoulos charges can be found here. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-timeline-george-papadopoulos-indictment-20171030-htmlstory.html The Papadopoulos indictment and the Manafort/Gates indictment can be found below.
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 Photo: Puerto Rico, September 25, 2017. Joe Raedle/Getty Images A large contract for rebuilding Puerto Rico’s power infrastructure went to a company with close ties to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and Congress is asking questions about the procurement process. Salon reports that the House Oversight Committee made a bipartisan request of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to provide documents related to preparation for the recent hurricanes actions taken in the recovery. “Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Salon: "’When a tiny company from a small town in Montana that just so happens to be the same home town as the secretary of the interior happens to get a massive $300 million contract in Puerto Rico, you have to ask questions about what the process was in the case.’" The Salon article can be found here. https://www.salon.com/2017/10/25/congress-is-starting-to-look-into-the-shady-puerto-rico-infrastructure-deal/ An article in Bloomberg can be found here. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-26/no-bid-puerto-rico-contract-spotlights-troubled-fema-grants The contract between the government of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and Whitefish Energy Holdings, LLC can be found here. (Thanks to Ken Klippenstein of The Daily Beast for sharing the document.)  Businessman William Browder has fearlessly traveled the world to fight for sanctions against the corrupt Russian officials responsible for the death of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. Browder and Magnitsky uncovered corruption in Russian government, and Magnitsky was imprisoned, tortured, and finally murdered in an attempt to cover it up. Browder’s eloquent testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in July tells the story eloquently. It can be found here. This weekend Putin’s government in Russia accused Browder of the murder of Magnitsky (who had been in prison more than a year at the time of his death), and put out an Interpol warrant for his arrest. Browder, who was born in the U.S. and is a British citizen, found out that his U.S. Visa had been revoked at the same time. http://thehill.com/policy/international/356674-state-dept-revokes-visa-of-top-putin-critic-report That issue has since been resolved, and Browder’s U.S. Visa has been reinstated. Senator McCain has demanded an immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the revocation and reinstatement of the visa. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/356725-lawmakers-want-immediate-review-of-travel-restriction-on-putin The U.S. Magnitsky Act has been a thorn in the side of Russia’s dictator, since its passage in 2012. The meeting in Trump Tower between representatives of the Trump campaign and representatives of the Russian government in June of 2016 revolved around the Act, under the guise of discussing “adoptions.” (Russia stopped all adoptions of Russian children by U.S. families in retaliation for passage of the Act.) It is clear to experts in Russian corruption and retaliation that the warrant was payback for Canada’s recent passage of its own Magntsky Act, sanctioning those responsible for Magnitsky’s death. Canada’s public safety minister, ralph Goodale, announced today that “Canada will decide admissibility to Canada, not the Kremlin.” http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/canada-wont-enforce-russian-warrant-against-magnitsky-advocate-goodale Browder was interviewed by Rachel Martin this morning on National Public Radio. The interview can be found here. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/24/559691021/russia-accuses-putin-critic-of-murdering-his-lawyer-u-s-revokes-visa Photo: James Hill for The New York Times Photo source: Richard Drew/AP  Donald Trump’s lawyer has a lot of explaining to do.
Michael Cohen, 51, now listed on Wikipedia as “personal lawyer for Donald Trump,” previously served as executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Donald Trump. His name keeps popping up in issues of interest to House, Senate, and FBI investigations into the Trump campaign and possible dealings with representatives of the Russian government. He will speak privately to the house Intelligence Committee Tuesday, and to the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday. He had been scheduled to speak to the Senate committee last week, but the meeting was postponed. He had been scheduled to speak to the House September 5, but that was also postpones. As reported in the Huffington Post in August: "Cohen (and President Donald Trump) have insisted for more than a year that the Trump Organization has had no business dealings in Russia. Cohen has been one of the president’s most dogged defenders in the media on that point, taking his case to TV, Twitter ― anywhere, basically. Speaking to the Financial Times in December, he dismissed the idea of ‘any connection with Russia’ as 'yet another example of the press’s liberal bias towards Mr. Trump.'” However, The New York Times reported on August 28 that a planned business deal was in the works in 2015, and that work continued on the deal during the campaign, while Trump and Cohen were insisting that suggestion of such a thing was a liberal plot. From the NYT article: “Felix Sater ... wrote a series of emails to Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, in which he boasted about his ties to Mr. Putin. He predicted that building a Trump Tower in Moscow would highlight Mr. Trump’s savvy negotiating skills and be a political boon to his candidacy. “‘Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,’ Mr. Sater wrote in an email. ‘I will get all of Putins [sic] team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.’” Mr. Sater is an ex-felon and Russian immigrant who, while Trump has denied an association with him, worked for the Trump Organization at the time. The NYT article on the Moscow deal can be found here. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-tower-putin-felix-sater.html?_r=0 The Huffington Post article can be found here. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/?icid=hjx004 The Washington Post article about the Moscow deal can be found here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-trump-organization-executive-reached-out-to-putin-aide-for-help-on-business-deal/2017/08/28/095aebac-8c16-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html?utm_term=.7ecf8c57df3d NBC News reported today that “Cohen had written an email to Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, seeking help in getting the Moscow tower built. But Peskov said he never responded to the email.” The NBC News story can be found here. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-appear-house-intel-panel-tuesday-n813521 Cohen and Sater also partnered on a back-channel plan, crafted with the help of a pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker, designed to bring peace to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict in Crimea. The plan was delivered by Cohen in a sealed envelope to the desk of soon-to-be-fired National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in February, according to The New York Times. The NYT article about the back-channel plan can be found here. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-russia.html Cohen’s relationship with Trump appears to have begun while he and his family were buying up numerous Trump apartment units in New York, New Jersey, and Florida, according to a March 1 article by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo. By 2006 or 2007, when Cohen entered the Trump orbit, he had already made a fortune: “The one common thread connecting these partnerships in businesses ranging from taxis to gambling to energy is that each involved a partnership with immigrants from Ukraine.” The article from Talking Points Memo can be found here. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/says-who-piecing-together-the-michael-cohen-story A Vanity Fair article about Michael Cohen from September can be found here. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/michael-cohen-interview-donald-trump  Source: Vox Agents of the Russian government contacted Americans to organize events in the U.S. designed to divide and confuse the U.S. public during the 2016 presidential campaign. Friday on NPR's All Things Considered, Ari Shapiro interviewed Conrad James, who was contacted by a group run by Russian trolls and asked to organize a protest. James asserts that he had no idea the group was operating from St. Petersburg, Russia. http://www.npr.org/2017/10/20/559113232/russian-operatives-secretly-ran-websites-to-emphasize-divisive-issues-in-u-s An investigation by the Russian media organization RBC identified numerous social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that were run by government operatives within Russia. The article is in Russian, but several graphics from the investigation are included at the end of this article. Russian news outlet Meduza published an article with details about the St. Petersburg toll factory previously reported on by the New York Times and The Atlantic. Molly McKew, a lobbyist who has worked extensively in former Soviet countries and is familiar with techniques used by the Russian government to influence public opinion, warns that we are likely only seeing what the Kremlin wants us to see, and that there are many more operatives who worked and are still working to influence current events in the U.S. She posted on Twitter regarding the Meduza article: "Read this for tools/tactics. But keep in mind what PURPOSE info has. 90 paid interns not whole effort. There's more." The Meduza article can be found here. https://meduza.io/en/news/2017/10/17/russian-journalists-publish-massive-investigation-into-st-petersburg-troll-factory-s-u-s-operations More articles delving into Russian activity designed to push the American presidential election in the direction of Trump can be found here. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-campaign-staffers-pushed-russian-propaganda-days-before-the-election?source=twitter&via=desktop http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/18/media/black-fist-russia-self-defense-classes/index.html https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincollier/twitter-was-warned-repeatedly-about-this-fake-account-run?utm_term=.xtgDxVJee4#.gornxv1KKQ https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincollier/twitter-was-warned-repeatedly-about-this-fake-account-run?utm_term=.xtgDxVJee4#.gornxv1KKQ https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/19/16504510/ten-gop-twitter-russia Graphics from the RBC article are included below. They show some of the accounts that have been traced to Russian operatives in St. Petersburg. The bright blue circles represent Facebook accounts, the lighter blue represent Twitter accounts, and the red circles represent Instagram. The size of the circle indicates the level of activity of the account.    Victim of White Supremacist Beating Charged in Charlottesville Attack, Using a Trick of Virginia Law10/12/2017  Photo source: NBC News From Talking Points Memo:
“One of the most enduring and shocking moments from the white nationalist march on Charlottesville this summer was the parking garage beating of counter-protester DeAndre Harris by a crowd of khaki-clad white nationalists, who swarmed around the 20-year-old with flagpoles and shields. “One of the hate group leaders involved in that clash successfully persuaded a local magistrate on Monday to issue an arrest warrant for Harris on a felony charge of 'unlawful wounding,' complicating an ongoing police investigation into the men who attacked the counter-protester. Both Harris’ lawyer and the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization, say Harold Ray Crews, the group’s North Carolina chairman, pursued the warrant. In order to do so, he took advantage of a quirk in the judicial system, according to a Charlottesville police detective and Harris’ lawyer. "After trying to file a complaint with police, Crews apparently went to the magistrate’s office, which requires only a police report based on the complainant’s testimony and the determination of probable cause to issue a warrant. In a statement, S. Lee Merritt, Harris’ attorney, Merritt attributed the charge to a 'successful campaign' by the League of the South to 'manipulate the Charlottesville judiciary and further victimize Mr. Harris.' He denied that his client was involved in causing the head injuries Crews sustained. Charlottesville police detectives and Merritt have expressed surprise that local authorities issued the warrant at all. The Talking Points Memo article can be found here. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/harold-ray-crews-league-of-the-south-deandre-harris-warrant A Los Angeles Times article about the charges can be found here. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-deandre-harris-arrest-20171012-story.html A Washington Post article can be found here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-brutal-beating-of-black-man-by-white-supremacists-still-roils-charlottesville/2017/10/10/e5994132-a515-11e7-8cfe-d5b912fabc99_story.html?utm_term=.fd9996ff6e72 Several articles at the Southern Poverty Law Center website can be found here. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/league-south https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/17/florida-league-south-involved-arrest-beating-charlottesville-rally-update Propaganda created by Russian agents on the game Pokémon Go. Source: CNN  Evidence is mounting that agents of the Russian government bought advertisements on social media platforms with the intention of pushing the U.S. presidential election toward Donald Trump and away from Hillary Clinton. Facebook has agreed to turn over more than 3,000 Russian-linked advertisements to Congress. The ads were to be turned in Monday, according to the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/technology/facebook-russia-ads.html CNN reported today that Russian agents used the game Pokémon Go in an attempt to inflame racial tensions in the U.S. http://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2017/10/12/russian-meddling-extended-to-pokemon-go-byers-bts.cnn From The Verge: “A Tumblr page linked to Russia’s now-notorious Internet Research Agency promoted a contest encouraging people sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement to play the game near famous sites of police brutality. Players were told to change their characters’ names to the victims of those incidents — an apparent effort to inflame racial tensions. “The Tumblr page was linked to Do Not Shoot Us, a multi-platform campaign designed to mimic aspects of Black Lives Matter.” https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/12/16466418/russia-pokemon-go-election-meddling-black-lives-matter https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/smartphone-app-pokemon-go-racial-tensions/2017/10/12/id/819374/ In mid-September of this year, a petition on the White House website appeared that pushed a Russian agent-created Facebook page called blackmattersus.mvmnt. This page has been deleted. The petition was created after Facebook had admitted that Russian agents bought ads on their platform, and were continuing to interfere by posting on social media with manufactured American personas. https://thinkprogress.org/black-matters-us-site-90625b18f262/ Pinterest admitted this week that Russian ads pushing a Trump political agenda appeared on their site. http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/355022-pinterest-acknowledges-russians-used-site-as-repository-for-political https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/10/11/how-russian-content-ended-up-on-pinterest/?utm_term=.e9e15e781511 Twitter had an integral role in dividing and confusing American voters during the campaign, and it is still refusing to filter out bots, which are accounts created by an algorithm, not a real person. The platform acted as a conduit for extremist political memes (photos and artwork designed to elicit a strong emotional response) on both sides of many divisive issues. The aim appears to have been to create a chaotic, contentious, combative climate in our social interactions. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/what-twitter-going-do-about-disinformation-campaigns/ From Recode: “Sources have said the Russian-backed ads even took both sides of contentious issues, like Black Lives Matter or gun control, in a bid to intensify public debate and foment discord. Sources speaking with Recode, along with a series of reports from other outlets like CNN, have suggested these ads and other forms of Russia-supplied content explicitly targeted crucial election swing states.” https://www.recode.net/2017/10/6/16419388/facebook-google-twitter-russia-ads-2016-election-president-donald-trump  Sources: Above, New York Times; below, Twitter (note the date - May 30, 2017 - is after the election)  January 29, 2017, a little over a week after the Inauguration, I made a list of issues I saw as problematic to the legitimacy of the Trump administration. I updated my list with some of the information that has come to light since January. Text from January is in black. Update is in red. “Give him a chance. We're all in this together." The first line was a plea heard frequently by worried Republicans in the days before and after the Inauguration. They feared that Democrats would oppose any policies by the Trump administration on purely partisan grounds, presumably out of hurt feelings that Clinton did not win the election. That will be a great sentiment to have once the investigation is complete. President Obama ordered an investigation into election-related hacking on December 9, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/12/obama-orders-full-review-of-election-related-hacking/510149/ Since January 29 Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and FBI Director James Comey. On May 17, 2017, Robert Mueller III was appointed Special Counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. He has been given broad authority to investigate, including delving into the financial history of the Trump businesses and associates. On May 11, three days after firing Comey, Trump admitted to Lester Holt of NBC News that he did fire Comey because of “this Russia thing.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-reveals-he-asked-comey-whether-he-was-under-investigation-n757821 1) Russian money in the Trump campaign; An August 3 opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News detailed extensive contributions from Leonid “Len” Blavatnik, a Ukrainian-born businessman with business ties to two Russian oligarchs. Russian tycoon Yuri Milner, founder of Digital Sky Technologies, owns large numbers of shares of both Facebook and Twitter, which are now under Congressional investigation for their help to the Trump campaign. https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/03/tangled-web-connects-russian-oligarch-money-gop-campaigns http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2013/09/13/twitter-who-gets-rich/5.html https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/may/26/dst-facebook-zuckerberg-microsoft-milner This pre-Inauguration article explains what we knew before Congressional investigations and Mueller’s team began digging. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article127231799.html 2) 6 million Twitter bots created to uptrend Trump (connected to Trump advisor Dan Scavino); As of this morning (Octber 8), Trump’s Twitter followers are 59 percent real (see screen capture), with 16 million fake (bot, meaning algorithm-generated). At times in previous months, the count has been as low as 47 percent real (see second screen capture). Dan Scavino was found in violation of the Hatch Act and issued a warning that another violation could result in further actions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/06/09/white-house-social-media-director-dan-scavino-violated-hatch-act-with-tweet-targeting-gop-congressman/?utm_term=.b3aa47bdd66d 3) CNN and Fox news complicity in free publicity during the primary season; This problem has not gotten better or, to my knowledge, been investigated. Since Inauguration the two networks have featured Trump “surrogates” to explain, sometimes laughably, policies put forth by the administration. For a time Kellyanne Conway was not invited to speak on CNN because she had lied so frequently. She has recently been a frequent guest on both networks. Vice President Mike Pence may be sorry that he spoke on Fox, March 9, about the firing of Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser. Pence asserted that he did not know Flynn had been a lobbyist for Turkey during and after the campaign; however, Representative Elijah Cummings sent Pence a letter dated November 18 explaining Flynn’s conflicts of interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gbapJrFmhk Additionally, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had briefed the White House on FBI concerns about Flynn and his ties to foreign governments, specifically regarding potential for blackmail, on January 26 and 27. Trump fired Yates January 30. 4) Michael Cohen's travel to Europe in August; Michael Cohen, currently Trump’s personal lawyer, was scheduled to speak in closed session with the Senate Intelligence Committee September 19. The Committee canceled his hearing abruptly after he released a statement to the press the morning of his scheduled hearing. His statement can be read in the link below. https://www.justsecurity.org/45169/federal-prosecutor-dissects-trump-lawyer-michael-cohens-statement-senate/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/19/senate-intel-panel-cancels-interview-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen/680778001/ 5) Payments made to hackers in the U.S. through a pension system used to pay retired Russian Americans; McClatchy DC reported that two sources asserted that an informal working group of intelligence agencies are scrutinizing the pension system as part of the election plot. The Steele dossier, released to the public in January 2017, suggested that the pension system was used by Russian diplomat Mikhail Kalugin while he served at the Russian Embassy in Washington. He was recalled to Moscow in August 2016. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article133879684.html 6) Shell companies in Russia owned by Trump, Tillerson, Giuliani, and DeVos; I am still waiting for more news on these companies. 7) Putin bank financing of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant; Trump’s business partner in the pageant was Aras Agalarov. A timeline of events can be found here. http://www.npr.org/2017/07/17/536714404/timeline-of-events-the-2013-miss-universe-pageant Aras’s son, Emin, has been identified as instrumental in setting up a meeting between Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort with representatives of the Russian government on June 9, 2016. The meeting was described by the White House as a discussion of adoptions by Americans of Russian orphans. However, the real subject of the meeting was the lifting of sanctions on Russian individuals due to the invasion of Crimea. Questions remain about whether there was an offer of help by the Russians to the Trump campaign in exchange for lifting of sanctions, should Trump be elected. The meeting is under investigation by the Mueller team and the Senate Judiciary Committee. 8) Carter Page's role as Trump spokesperson in Russia. The March 2 interview with Chris Hayes raises additional questions about Page. http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/carter-page-i-don-t-deny-meeting-with-russian-ambassador-889043011736 Until then, I support the Intelligence Community investigation, and the joint investigation of 6 U.S. enforcement agencies. The Mueller team has broad authority to investigate. He has assembled a team of experts in financial fraud, corruption, money laundering, foreign bribery, and organized crime. http://www.businessinsider.com/lawyers-robert-mueller-hired-for-the-trump-russia-investigation-2017-6 https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-robert-muellers-army Mueller met with the lead judge of the D.C. federal court Friday, according to Michael del Moro, producer for the ABC show “Good Morning America.” Del Moro Tweeted Friday: “ABC News: Robert Mueller's team met behind closed doors today w an unknown group of attorneys & chief judge of US District Court in DC.” Mueller’s team does not leak information, so the public must wait for more information. Note: There are two separate investigations. There are a lot more investigations now. A list will take a separate post. In addition, a defamation lawsuit was filed this week, and a $25 million wire transfer was made this week to pay the judgment in the Trump University case. Len Blavatnik, prominent GOP donor mentioned above, is contributing to the president’s defense fund. In addition, campaign funds from the 2020 campaign – which the president filed papers to begin on January 20, Inauguration Day – have been used to pay Donald Jr.’s legal fees.  Top: October 8, 2017 Twitter Audit Report; Bottom: July 1, 2017 Source: Twitter Audit  |
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