04/13/17

FBI Obtained FISA Warrant for Trump’s Adviser Carter Page for His Connections to the Russians

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

Carter Page is in hot water and it’s about to boil it would seem. This is a man I wrote on and warned about long ago. Trump’s team is claiming he was never connected to them, but that just isn’t true. He was an adviser to the Trump campaign early on. To be fair, Trump cut the guy off early on as well. And it would seem with good reason. It turns out the FBI did have a FISA warrant against Page. Why? Because he was approached in 2013 by the Russians to spy for them. He claims he turned them down… but he did meet with them. Please note that Page has not been charged with any crime, which indicates to me that they have nothing on him or he would have already been behind bars.

The FBI still strongly suspects that Page was acting as an agent for the Russians. I do too, just for the record. Page is heavy into investments in Russia… especially oil and gas. If I had to guess, I would bet he approached an intermediary for Trump’s team to ‘help’ them out. I also seriously suspect that Paul Manafort, who took millions every year from the Russians, was also compromised. This doesn’t make President Trump guilty of collusion with the Russians, but it does show his camp was vulnerable to penetration by the Russkies. I think it is pretty evident that Trump is not in bed with the Russians… but the Russians were definitely trying to crawl between the sheets with him.

From The Daily Caller:

The FBI gained approval from a secret federal court last summer to conduct communications surveillance against Carter Page, a former adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, The Washington Post is reporting.

The revelation confirms for the first time that a federal surveillance warrant, known as a FISA warrant, was issued for a member of the Trump campaign as part of a federal investigation of potential ties between the Republican’s associates and the Russian government.

In the application for the warrant, federal officials laid out what they said was evidence that there was probable cause showing that Page was acting as an agent of the Russian government, officials told The Post.

That evidence included contacts in 2013 with Russian spies who tried to recruit Page in New York City. The details of that recruitment attempt were laid out in a sealed FBI complaint filed in Jan. 2015. BuzzFeed News published the complaint earlier this month. Page denied that he was successfully recruited or that he shared any sensitive information with the agents.

I have written for years that you cannot trust the Russians. Just because we moronically cut back on our spies, it doesn’t mean they did. In fact, they have stepped up their intelligence. Individuals like Carter Page who have financial ties to Russia are prime candidates to be flipped to become spies for the Kremlin. Federal officials cited other contacts between Page and Russian operatives in the FISA application. Those contacts have not been made public… yet.

Page is an energy consultant who runs the Manhattan-based firm Global Energy Capital and he was brought on to the campaign in March as a foreign policy adviser. He served in a low-level role and is said to have never met Trump. The Democrats are trying to insinuate this means that Trump was doing the bidding of the Russians. I don’t believe so and there is no evidence of that. Page, whose offices are in a building adjacent to Trump Tower, drew national attention in July after he traveled to Moscow to give a speech at a university commencement ceremony. While in Moscow, Page met Arkady Dvorkovich, Russia’s deputy prime minister. Page officially left the Trump campaign in September.

Page is the only one who was actually surveilled it would seem. There’s nothing on Paul Manafort, Roger Stone or Michael Flynn. All of these men have had iffy contacts with the Russians at one point or another. All of them have been paid by the Russians as well. That doesn’t mean much… all have been under scrutiny and more will come out on them. Page is denying all wrong doing and says he will be proven innocent of connections to Putin. He cites false information on him in that cooked up dossier on Trump. We’ll see. The truth will eventually come out and this doesn’t make the Trump administration look good. But there has been no charges of wrong doing so far. Innocent until proven guilty… the media should remember that. And guilt by association won’t hold up here.

UPDATE: The Daily Caller is now reporting that Corey Lewandowski was the one who introduced Carter Page to President Trump, which I find very interesting because I heard him myself on Fox News when he claimed that he had never met Page and he’d never been part of Trump’s campaign. Obviously, that was a fib. Lewandowski told The Daily Caller he did not remember ever meeting Page. Right. “I’ve never met or spoken to Carter Page in my life,” Lewandowski insisted during a Fox News interview with Jeanine Pirro last month. “I was on the campaign for 18 months, I never met the guy, and for anybody to say otherwise is factually inaccurate. I don’t know who Carter Page is, I never had a conversation with Carter Page, I never met Carter Page, and anybody who says otherwise is not being truthful,” insisted Lewandowski, who was fired from the campaign on June 20th.

Sources are saying that Lewandowski introduced Page to Trump campaign policy director Sam Clovis sometime in late 2015 or early 2016. During the brief encounter, which occurred in New York City, Lewandowski suggested that the two get to know each other. Page, the managing partner of Global Energy Partners, an energy consulting firm, would join the campaign as an adviser several months later. They are reporting that Clovis brought Page onto the campaign team. Lewandowski has had at least one other documented interaction with Page. He was the campaign official who gave final approval to Page’s visit to Moscow.

08/20/16

Rick Gates, Paul Manafort and the ‘European Center for a Modern Ukraine’

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

Putin with Yanukovich1

Viktor Yanukovych with Vladimir Putin

“Political consultants are generally leery of registering under it [the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act], because their reputations can suffer once they are on record as accepting money to advocate the interests of foreign governments — especially if those interests conflict with America’s.” Associated Press, August 18, 2016

Trump surrogates Rick Gates and Paul Manafort (The Count of Monte Cristo) both worked to promote the pro-Russia, anti-Western communist: Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych even after he fled Ukraine in 2014 though an organization called the “European Center for a Modern Ukraine.”

Manafort is no longer working for the Trump campaign, but Rick Gates “will be taking over as the campaign’s liaison to the RNC based in Washington.”

If one was to devise a textbook example of what a front group’s name should look like, the ‘European Center for a Modern Ukraine’ fits the bill in all of it’s vague, euphemistic glory. The name struck this author as indicative of the type of flowery name often assigned to communist front groups such as “Peace Action,” or “Grassroots Global Justice Alliance,” or “Causa Justa.”

Read more here…

08/17/16

Manafort Caught Secretly Routing at Least $2.2 Million in Payments to Lobbyists

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Trump

After documents surfaced implicating Paul Manafort in corrupt dealings in the Ukraine with ties to not only Vladimir Putin, but the Russian mob, now comes a new bombshell. It turns out that Manafort probably broke the law, secretly routing at least $2.2 million to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012 from the pro-Russian governing party in the Ukraine. He did it in a way that hid those connections to influence foreign policy. Bad Russian plant… bad, bad.

Per the AP, under federal law, US lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Manafort has some ‘splainin’ to do and federal charges may be forthcoming.

Trump3

The Trump campaign, now in panic mode, shuffled the deck quickly last night, saying that Trump doesn’t like to be ‘constrained’. I guess he’s not into handcuffs much. Go figure. Manafort is still on his team as campaign manager… wouldn’t want to sever that life or death connection to Putin, now would we?

Look carefully at who Trump brought up the ranks. Kellyanne Conway joined the Donald Trump campaign three weeks ago and she has appeared on television an average of three times daily, projecting titanic optimism: Trump will win over America’s women as his new campaign manager. That’s just laughable. But even more hilarious is the selection of Breitbart’s Steve Bannon as CEO… a vicious and predatory media hit man with leanings toward racist nationalism. He’s literally turned Breitbart into Pravda for Donald Trump. Which is apropos considering that BuzzFeed put out that he was accepting $500 per story at Breitbart in 2014 to favor Russia over the Ukraine. Think about that and then think about all of Trump’s nefarious Russian connections. Once again, Bannon sought Trump out just as Manafort did. Last but not least, former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes has been hired to prepare Trump for the debates. Yeah, that ought to be great for PR and women love men who have sexually accosted other women. What a winner.

And don’t forget Donald Trump’s daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, who spent some time on billionaire Democrat David Geffen’s yacht off the coast of Croatia on Friday. The couple were photographed jet skiing and sunbathing on the $200 million boat, named the Rising Sun. Geffen, a Hollywood executive and close friend of President Barack Obama, donated large sums of money to both Bernie Sanders’ and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns during the primaries, according to the Daily Mail.

Ivanka is said to be vacationing with Wendi Deng Murdoch – Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife and Vladimir Putin’s current rumored girlfriend. Cozy with Russia AND Progressive Marxists. It’s a twofer and all in the elite family, don’t ya know.

Wendi Deng Murdoch, left, is shown with Ivanka Trump in Dubrovnik, Croatia. (Ivanka Trump / Instagram)

Wendi Deng Murdoch, left, is shown with Ivanka Trump in Dubrovnik, Croatia. (Ivanka Trump / Instagram)

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are seen riding jet skis and sunbathing while enjoying a vacation on the Rising Sun yacht with a friend on the Adriatic Coast in Croatia. Featuring: Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner Where: Adriatic Coast, Croatia When: 12 Aug 2016 Credit: WENN.com **Only available for publication in UK, USA, Germany, Austria, Switzerland**

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are seen riding jet skis and sunbathing while enjoying a vacation on the Rising Sun yacht with a friend on the Adriatic Coast in Croatia.
Featuring: Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner
Where: Adriatic Coast, Croatia
When: 12 Aug 2016
Credit: WENN.com
**Only available for publication in UK, USA, Germany, Austria, Switzerland**

And we come back to Manafort, because he is key in all this. Manafort and business associate Rick Gates, another top strategist in Trump’s campaign, were working in 2012 on behalf of the political party of Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych. During the period when Gates and Manafort were consultants to the Ukraine president’s political party, Gates was also helping steer the advocacy work done by a pro-Yanukovych nonprofit that hired a pair of Washington lobbying firms, Podesta Group Inc. and Mercury LLC. That’s right… the freaking Podesta Group.

From the AP:

Gates told the AP that he and Manafort introduced the lobbying firms to the European Centre nonprofit and occasionally consulted with the firms on Ukrainian politics. He called the actions lawful, and said there was no attempt to circumvent the reporting requirements of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The heads of both lobbying firms told AP they concluded there was no obligation to disclose their activities to the Justice Department. Manafort did not directly respond to AP’s requests to discuss the work, but he was copied on the AP’s questions and Gates said he spoke to Manafort before providing answers to them.

Political consultants are generally leery of registering under the foreign agents law, because their reputations can suffer once they are on record as accepting money to advocate the interests of foreign governments — especially if those interests conflict with America’s.

Ironically, one of the lobbying firms Manafort and Gates worked with has strong Democratic ties.

The founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, Tony Podesta, is the brother of longtime Democratic strategist John Podesta, who now is campaign chairman for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The head of Mercury, Vin Weber, is an influential Republican, former congressman and former special policy adviser to Mitt Romney. Weber announced earlier this month that he will not support Trump.

Whether Manafort and Gates will be prosecuted for this is unclear, but it would not surprise me. Prosecutions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act are generally rare, but they do happen. This looks extremely corrupt to me and it appears that Manafort was covering up where the money was coming from and why.

Then you add Carter Paige, who is heavily invested with Gazprom and living in Putin’s lap and Michael Flynn ― a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was paid by a Russian state-funded television network to speak at its 10th-anniversary gala ― who Trump brought to his first national security briefing on Wednesday. Flynn is strongly connected to Russia. And did I mention he’s a Democrat? All of these people might as well be living in the Kremlin and if they tried harder they couldn’t more obviously be plants.

They are all certainly national security threats, but here we go… bringing our biggest enemy into our election and possibly into the White House. SMH. With Hillary Clinton you get the Middle Eastern Islamists, the Russians and the Chinese. With Trump, you get the same, only more Russian seasoning with a hint of mob. #WorstElectionEver #NeitherOne2016

08/15/16

Paul Manafort Gets Caught With His Paw In The Russian Till

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Hat Tip: Renee Nal – New Zeal

Paul Manafort

If anyone dares to tell me they are shocked by this, I may have to trout smack them into oblivion. Just sayin’.

Donald Trump’s #1 guy, Paul Manafort seems to have got caught with his paw in the Russian till. Secret ledgers have been discovered that show him receiving millions of bucks from the Russkies. Wonder if corruption was a prerequisite for being Trump’s campaign manager?

And you know who tweeted this first? Corey Lewandowski.

I would have sworn that Lewandowski was a plant for Trump, but this wasn’t very Trumpesque. Unless of course the point was to get back at Manafort and create an opening so he could return to the fold and give Paul the boot. Who knows?

From The National Review:

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials…

Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.

Gee, Manafort denied that any of this happened. Imagine that. Looks like he lied… so not surprised. It also appears that he was not only taking legitimate payments from political parties in the Ukraine, he was getting paid under the table clandestinely. One wonders why Manafort would be getting paid off the books… exactly what did he do to warrant this secretive payment of funds?

He came unglued over The New York Times exposing his income streams: “I have never received a single ‘off-the-books cash payment’ as falsely ‘reported’ by The New York Times, nor have I ever done work for the governments of Ukraine or Russia.” Right. I have seen far more than enough evidence to know that denial is utter bullcrap. This guy is a political consultant and a lobbyist. He’s parsing his words there. Notice how he chose them carefully… that doesn’t mean he didn’t work for an oligarch or a political party… or even Putin himself. It means he didn’t ‘directly’ work for one of those governments. Words matter, especially when dealing with sleazy shadowy political figures.

As previously noted at National Review:

Manafort’s friends describe his relationship with Yanukovych as a political love connection, born out of Yanukovych’s first downfall when he was driven from power by the 2004 Orange Revolution. Feeling that his domestic political advisers had failed him, Yanukovych turned to a foreign company, Davis Manafort, which was already doing work for the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. The former Ukrainian PM and Manafort, the Georgetown-educated son of a Connecticut politician, hit it off.

Manafort’s firm had a set of international clients and produced an analysis of the Orange Revolution that Yanukovych found instructive, according to one operative involved in Yanukovych’s political rehabilitation. Manafort became, in effect, a general consultant to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, shaping big-picture messaging, coaching Yanukovych to speak in punchy, American-style sound bites and managing teams of consultants and attorneys in both Ukraine and the United States ahead of an anticipated Yanukovych comeback. While it’s difficult to track payments in foreign elections, a former associate familiar with Manafort’s earnings say they ran into the seven figures over several years.

After Yanukovych’s 2010 victory, Manafort stayed on as an adviser to the Russia-friendly president and became involved in other business projects in Eastern Europe.

Russian-friendly doesn’t quite get it here. It went much deeper than that and I’m sure that Manafort was well aware of that fact. Manafort claims: “My work in Ukraine ceased following the country’s parliamentary elections in October 2014.” Well duh. Yanukovych was overthrown and that tends to put a damper on your corrupt connections. In February 2014, Yanukovych was whisked away by Russian special forces to a safe haven in Russia. And I sincerely believe the relationship with Manafort did not end there.

Ukraine

Criminal prosecutors are also looking into a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin. Very, very interesting.

As for Manafort saying that he quit working for Yanukovych in 2014, I find it curious that he had an office in Kiev until May of this year with furniture and personal items that were still there. Tie to that the documents just uncovered that suggest he was involved in looting Ukrainian assets and influencing elections and Manafort starts to look like a thug, if not an asset for the Russians.

The US has always viewed Russia as a threat and an enemy. Especially during the Reagan Administration. And they still should be viewed as such. But during the Republican Convention this year, things went sideways in an alarming way. Donald Trump and Paul Manafort did not oppose anything in the GOP plank… except for one item. They changed the platform to not call for arming the Ukrainians against the Russians. What does that tell you? Does it speak of Russian interests when the one thing that Trump focused on was a plank that supports the Russians directly? Hmmm? His campaign manager worked for those against the Ukraine and for Russia. Gee… usually the answer is the most obvious one and that one puts Trump and Manafort squarely in Putin’s camp. Since the convention there have been statements by Trump saying that he actually favors Russia annexing Crimea.

The Ukrainians are bluntly stating that Manafort had to know of the corruption. I’m sure he did… in fact, I’m certain he was in the middle of it waist deep. More and more of this will be uncovered as time goes by trust me. Manafort has his attorneys aggressively denying any of this, but it looks to me like they have found concrete proof of corruption.

I’m just wondering if Trump approached Manafort, or did Manafort approach Trump? That’s important. Manafort’s biggest clients have been Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Yanukovych… both deposed in popular uprisings. Exactly what does that tell you about Donald Trump?

What has surfaced now is the “black ledger.” Basically a book that has about 400 pages of scribbled entries that are combined from books once kept at the Party of Regions headquarters in Kiev. In that headquarters were two safes that were stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a “wad of cash” for a trip to Europe.

“This was our cash,” he said, adding that he had left the party in part over concerns about off-the-books activity. “They had it on the table, stacks of money, and they had lists of who to pay.”

Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in those documents over a five year period. He allegedly received $12.7 million in payments. Since the entries are pretty much chicken scratch, there is no way to tie them to a bank. He covered his tracks very well. There’s also no way to know what he did to earn that money. Not yet anyway. These accounting records just surfaced this year. Bad timing for Manafort.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, whose government funding is mandated under American and European Union aid programs and which has an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI, has investigatory powers, but cannot indict suspects. No documents have been sent to prosecutors on Manafort, so he’s not part of a criminal case just yet. Make no mistake… this is corruption and that money is dirty.

Manafort also benefited and profited from business deals and connections through political consulting. One of those involved a network of offshore companies that government investigators and independent journalists in the Ukraine have said was used to launder public money and assets purportedly stolen by cronies of the government. These shell companies had owners who were shielded by the secrecy laws of the offshore jurisdictions where they were registered, including the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles.

Manafort is tied to a now defunct investment fund called Pericles Emerging Markets. He started the fund with several partners back in 2007. Here’s the kicker. The major backer was Deripaska, a Russian mogul who has supposed ties to organized crime… the Russian mob. See where this is going?

Deripaska agreed to commit as much as $100 million to Pericles, so it could buy assets in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, including a regional cable television and communications company called Black Sea Cable. But corporate records and court filings show that it was hardly a straightforward transaction. The Black Sea Cable assets were controlled by offshore companies that led back to the Yanukovych network, including, at various times, Milltown Corporate Services and two other companies well known to law enforcement officials, Monohold A.G. and Intrahold A.G.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Deripaska would later say he invested $18.9 million in Pericles in 2008 to complete the acquisition of Black Sea Cable. But the planned purchase — including the question of who ended up with the Black Sea assets — has since become the subject of a dispute between Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Manafort.

In 2014, Mr. Deripaska filed a legal action in a Cayman Islands court seeking to recover his investment in Pericles, which is now defunct. He also said he had paid about $7.3 million in management fees to the fund over two years. Mr. Deripaska did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Manafort’s lawyer, Mr. Hibey, disputed the account of the Black Sea Cable deal contained in Mr. Deripaska’s Cayman filings, and said the Russian oligarch had overseen details of the final transaction involving the acquisition. He denied that Mr. Manafort had received management fees from Pericles during its operation, but said that one of Mr. Manafort’s partners, Rick Gates, who is also working on the Trump campaign, had received a “nominal” sum.

Court papers indicate that Pericles’ only deal involved Black Sea Cable.

Manafort has not dissolved his company in the Ukraine and his aids have been there this year. Does that sound like he is not involved with the Russians anymore? Nyet.

There is far too much Russian influence around Donald Trump and Paul Manafort is the most prominent one and closest to him. His actions speak of a close relationship with Russian interests no matter what they claim. Does it matter if Manafort took dirty money from the Russians? Hell yeah, it does. And does it matter who Trump surrounds himself with? Even more so.

07/23/16

WikiLeaks, Trump, Manafort, Kremlin, Oligarchs, DNC

By: Denise Simon | FoundersCode.com

Today, July 22, 1016, WikiLeaks published 50,000 files from the DNC. For background, Julian Assange, the known manager of the entire WikiLeaks program appears to have some Belarus and Russia loyalties. Furthermore, Paul Manafort and Donald Trump have relationships as well. Could it be that Assange and the Kremlin have colluded in the U.S. elections and the DNC is waiting for the moment to destroy the general election process?

 

Julian Assange and Europe’s Last Dictator

The former WikiLeaks chief will moderate a public discussion about Belarus, more here.

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Related reading:   Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump

Related reading: Donald Trump and the Siberian Candidate

Manafort didn’t just represent oligarchs tight with the Kremlin. He became business partners with them. He ran a private equity fund in which the aluminum magnate (and Putin pal) Oleg Deripaska invested millions. As the Washington Post has shown, this fund didn’t exactly do much investing. In fact, Manafort struggled to account for the cash he received. And rather than pay back Deripaska, he apparently went underground. In 2014, Deripaska’s lawyers noted, “It appears that Paul Manafort and [his business partner] Rick Gates have simply disappeared”: Manafort’s vanishing became a joke in certain Republican circles. So why has Manafort suddenly felt comfortable re-emerging into public view? How did he square his debts with Putin’s ally? Another question for the campaign chairman: What are his dealings with the Kremlin? It’s clear that he has advanced its interests in Ukraine, where he managed the political rehabilitation of its favored candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. He also went into business with one of the Kremlin’s primary natural gas middlemen, Dmitry Firtash. To what extent did these relationships bring him into the inner sanctum of Russian power?  More here from Slate.

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Trump himself and Russian oligarchs:

Trump On His Meeting In Moscow About A Potential Hotel Development: “The Russian Market Is Attracted To Me. I Have A Great Relationship With Many Russians, And Almost All Of The Oligarchs Were In The Room.” “A replica of Bayrock/Sapir’s Trump Soho hotel may be Moscow’s first big new hotel in ten years. Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen of the Sapir Organization, co-developers on the Soho hotel at 246 Spring Street, met with Russian developer Aras Agalarov and Donald Trump over the weekend to discuss plans for the new project – Trump’s first in Russia. ‘The Russian market is attracted to me,’ Trump told Real Estate Weekly. ‘I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.’ Trump told REW that he is in talks with Agalarov and three other groups, and that there is no rush on a timeline for the project. He also did not disclose the hotel’s planned height or square footage, saying only that ‘it has to be a large development, big enough to justify the travel.’” [Real Estate Weekly, 11/12/13<http://therealdeal.com/2013/11/12/the-donald-sapir-execs-mull-bringing-trump-soho-to-moscow/>] More here.

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Taking this a step further due to known business relationships between Paul Manafort and the Kremlin, the cable below demonstrates one such item of evidence.

Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s top campaign chief has had previous business interactions with the Kremlin and events regarding Ukraine. As noted by this cable:

(U) Sensitive but unclassified, please handle accordingly. Not for internet distribution. 1. (SBU) Summary: Party of Regions’ U.S. campaign consultants Paul Manafort, Phil Griffin, and Catherine Barnes called on DCM and poloff March 10 to share Regions’ concerns about election organizational problems that they feared could call the legitimacy of the March 26 election into question. Manafort complained about the indifferent attitude of OSCE/ODIHR. He also claimed that the identified inadequacies were not mere oversights, but were intentional on the part of those in power, specifically Yushchenko and Our Ukraine; he said that Regions’ past experience allowed them to “see what was coming around the corner.” If these shortcomings were not fixed by March 14, the day the Rada would consider technical amendments to address problems, warned Manafort, they could call into question the integrity of the March 26 vote. Manafort acknowledged that the 2006 election cycle was considerably better than in 2004 but stressed that the U.S., ODIHR, and other western countries and institutions needed to be as supportive of the democratic process in 2006 as they had been in 2004, lest the impression be given that there were two sets of standards depending on who was in power. Manafort added that the people who felt that the 2004 elections had been stolen from them — and since he was not in Ukraine in 2004, he could not judge what had happened — would feel that it was happening to them again. End Summary. Regions concerns about voter lists, precinct committees ——————————————— ———- 2. (SBU) Manafort stated that “massive inaccuracies” in voter lists and the lack of formation of polling station committees (PSC) made it impossible for some voters to check the lists and seek administrative remedies. We noted that Ukrainian NGOs had identified the same concerns (reftel). In response to a question, Manafort suggested that the inadequacies were not mere oversights but were intentional on the part of those in power, specifically Yushchenko and Our Ukraine, and said that Regions’ past experience allowed them to “see what was coming around the corner.” If these shortcomings were not fixed, warned Manafort, they could call into question the integrity of the March 26 vote, and an “explosion” could result. We asked if he thought the problems he had cited resulted from acts of commission or omission. He replied that those in power had the ability to correct the problems. 3. (SBU) Regions had delivered specific information on their concerns to the prosecutors’ office, the Central Election Commission, OSCE/ODIHR, and now to the Embassy. Manafort complained that the ODIHR deputy head of Mission, Robert Cherreli, had met with a Regions delegation including an MP earlier March 10 dressed completely inappropriately (jeans, hiking boots, shirt hanging out). He also characterized ODIHR’s response to Regions’ concerns as “indifferent; they didn’t seem to be bothered about the allegations and did not plan on taking any action.” We pointed out that ODIHR’s mandate was as an observer mission, not a lobbying participant, and that OSCE member-state Russia in particular had been highly critical of ODIHR, accusing it in the past of exceeding its observer mandate. 4. (SBU) Manafort disputed this line of argument, which ODIHR itself had used in response to the Regions’ concerns, claiming: “everyone knows what OSCE does in these sorts of situations.” Manafort warned that western countries like the U.S. and institutions like OSCE/ODIHR were risking the appearance of not pushing as hard for high standards of democratic process in 2006 as they had in 2004, and that there could be negative consequences in the eyes of people who saw the “West made certain demands on the one hand when one group was in power but reacted differently, or stayed silent, when another group was in power.” We made clear that the U.S. position on the importance of free and fair elections was unchanged from 2004 to 2006. Manafort replied that the “perception” nevertheless was “out there.” 5. (SBU) Manafort added that the people who felt that the 2004 elections had been stolen from them — rightly or wrongly, that was how they felt — would feel that it was happening to them again. In apparent anticipation of our next statement, Manafort offered that he was not in Ukraine in 2004 and could not make a judgment of what had happened. What was past was past; he was concerned about the present. 6. (SBU) Manafort’s associate Catherine Barnes opened a folder with documents she said supported the Regions’ complaints. The most specific example cited was a Luhansk precinct (Oktyabr district) in which 10,000 eligible voters were supposedly missing from the list, including entire apartment blocks; 16,000 were listed incorrectly, mainly due to mistakes in translating from Russian into Ukrainian. Barnes said that the possible remedy in the works was a series of technical amendments the parliament (Rada) could pass March 14 to address the problems. There was consensus among Rada factions about certain corrections, but disagreement on others. 7. (SBU) Manafort claimed that CEC Chair Davydovych supported all the amendments under consideration and had characterized the condition of the voters’ lists as being worse than in 2004. In contrast, according to Manafort, President Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine representative had rejected a mechanism to allow voters recourse on election day to have the PSC add their names, vowing that Yushchenko would veto it, either with a direct veto or fail to sign the legislation, which would have the same effect, since the election would be less than two weeks away after the March 14 vote. He also said that, except for Our Ukraine, there was broad agreement among all political forces including Tymoshenko’s Bloc that the amendments were needed. We observed in reply that in the 2004 election, a district court or the territorial election commission could add someone to the voter list, but not the PSC itself. Our understanding of the proposed legislative fix under consideration in the Rada was that it would allow a local court to authorize same-day additions to the voter list, not PSCs. 8. (SBU) Manafort suggested that on March 14, two sets of amendments could be put to a vote in the Rada, one with consensus support, and the other including fixes supported by Regions and other parties, “including some orange parties,” but likely to be rejected by Yushchenko/Our Ukraine. This rejection could cause a “major problem” for perceptions of the elections’ legitimacy. Even though “it would not change the result, it could change the magnitude.” 9. (SBU) Catherine Barnes, Project Manager for the “Ukraine Election Integrity Project,” a Manafort sub-project to train Regions’ poll watchers in the standards of the code of conduct adopted by the Party for the 2006 election cycle, briefly mentioned her efforts, which have trained over 1200 Regions’ members. The materials she handed to the embassy about the integrity issues brief notes that while Regions expects to win handily, it “has serious concerns about the political will of the current government to conduct free and fair elections, concerns that are increasingly shared by the CEC and other political parties in the Verkhovna Rada.” 10. (SBU) We noted the great differences between the 2006 and 2004 election cycles. On the streets of Zaporizhzhya, there were nearly a dozen political party tents representing the entire political spectrum lined up right next to each other, without incident or problem; on the same street in 2004, only one color was allowed to be seen. Manafort, Griffin, and Barnes nodded in agreement, with Manafort adding: “and that’s why we have to ensure this opportunity to cement gains made isn’t lost.” 11. (SBU) DCM raised the case of Black Sea TV, a Tymoshenko bloc-affiliated station which had been subject to a court ruling to shut it down, based on a petition from a local Party of Regions branch citing a clause in the election law universally condemned by free media advocates. Manafort said that the action had not come at the request of the national Party of Regions, claimed that the petitioning party was not a local Regions branch per se but were supporters of Yanukovych, and suggested that in fact Yushchenko-affiliated forces had inspired the shut down action in a “Black PR” effort to besmirch Party of Regions’ reputation. DCM asked if Yanukovych had or planned to distance himself from these actions. Manafort replied that this was deemed unnecessary, because “the courts would take care of this.” 12. (SBU) We also raised the March 9 statement of Regions’ Campaign Chief Kushnariov, who had attacked US policy towards Ukraine, accused it of meddling in the election process by passing the repeal Jackson-Vanik amendment, granting Market Economy Status, and signing a bilateral WTO accession agreement to keep in power an “orange” government willing to “take instructions” from across the Atlantic. Kusnariov’s statement was posted on the Regions’ website. Manafort said that he would talk to Kushnariov, who had not mentioned it to him in their daily morning meeting; the statement was in Russian, but had not been posted on the English version of the site, Manafort added. 13. (U) Note: In comments to the media in Uzhhorod March 9 picked up by the UNIAN wire service, Ambassador underscored concerns over the voters’ lists and sufficient staffing of precinct commissions. Other views ———– 14. (SBU) Our Ukraine’s Anton Klymenko held a press conference March 10 alleging that Regions, not Our Ukraine, was involved in voter list manipulation in eastern Ukraine, and that the “new” voter lists for some precincts in Donetsk which had stripped off many “dead souls” on the 2004 rolls had been replaced by the voter lists used in 2004, when fraud in the East was prevalent. Yarema Bachinsky, who runs a USAID-funded election-related education project, said that at this point there is no way to confirm the mutual accusations, which echo the charges and counter charges made in the 2004 election cycle. Since the Central Election Commission has not officially indicated how many PSCs are not fully functional, it is difficult to assess the extent of concerns about voter lack of access to a mechanism to check and possibly correct their names. 15. (SBU) This perspective was echoed by ODIHR’s Political analyst Beata Martin-Rozumilowicz, who told us that Regions, NeTak and Communists are making an issue of the transliteration of names, alleging that either their voters won’t be able to vote or there is a possibility of double listing/voting. ODIHR doesn’t have any way of verifying the lack of access to non-functional PSCs, though they cited a report that the CEC deputy Chair told the Rada in mid-February that 7000 PSCs lacked enough commissioners to function. CEC members are supposed to go out to the provinces over the weekend of March 11-12 to assess the current state of readiness. Regarding the Rada consideration of amendments, Martin-Rozumilowicz added that the CEC has proposed one set of technical amendments, and the Party of Regions has proposed its own. 16. (SBU) Note: Following is the original text of memo handed to DCM only at the conclusion of the meeting. The consultants did not voice the appeal in the final paragraph preceding the note. Begin text: MEMORANDUM To: Sheila Gwaltny, Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy in Ukraine From: Paul Manafort, Davis Manafort Re: Meeting with OSCE-ODIHR Date: 10 March 2006 This morning, there was a meeting between the Party of Regions and OSCE-ODIHR to discuss the party’s grave concerns about massive inaccuracies in the Voters’ List and the problems in the formation and functioning of PECs which makes is impossible for voters in some areas to check the Voters’ List and seek administrative remedies. These meeting was not positively assessed by the Party of Regions, which interpreted the OSCE-ODIRH response as indifferent. During the meeting, POR representatives made a presentation on the massive problems with the Voters’ List that they have identified in there core regions in the South and East and provided extensive documentation on the magnitude of these problems. In once district in Lugansk, for example, 10,000 eligible voters are missing from the list and 16,000 are entered incorrectly. They also indicated that some 7,000 precinct election commissions have yet to be properly formed, which impedes the ability to check and correct the lists as envisioned by the law. POR sees these issues as potentially leading to the complete unraveling of elections in Ukraine if not dealt with before Election Day. It is working in consultation with other political parties in the Verhovna Rada and with the Chairman of the CEC to propose a series of technical amendments to the parliamentary election law to address these problems. These include steps to ensure the proper functioning of PECs, reducing the quorum required for PECs to make decisions, and providing for the addition of eligible voters to the Voters’ List at the polling stations on Election Day. There is broad consensus on the problems and on the technical remedies. The main hurdle to adoption of these technical amendments is the party of power, Our Ukraine. During the meeting with OSCE-ODIHR, the severity of the problems was established and documented. They indicated that there is a multi-party process underway in parliament to provide technical solutions was elaborated upon and that the key amendment, additions to the Voters’ List on Election Day is being opposed by Our Ukraine. POR asked for assistance from OSCE-ODIHR in urging the Government to join with other political parties to support the technical amendments to the law in order to avert a disaster on Election Day. These technical amendments must be adopted at the Verhovna Rada session that begins on 14 March and the President must immediately sign the amendments into law to ensure their implementation. OSCE-ODHIR indicated that it was aware of the problems and appreciated the documentation provided by POR. It promised to look into the problems and indicated that its long term observers were already in contact with POR representatives in the regions. It indicated, OSCE-ODIHR indicated however that as an observer mission that it cannot intercede in the political process. PbR impressions of the meeting where that OSCE-ODIHR, while cognizant of the problems and increasingly willing to investigate and report on them, appears to have no political will to prevent the impending disaster by encouraging the President to take the necessary and broadly supported steps to fix the problems that his Administration created. In order to stop this ticking time bomb, the intervention of the international community is needed. Without the leadership of the United States, it would appear that the time bomb is set to explode. Note: The meeting was attended by Elena Lukash, POR representative on the CEC and Victor Slauta, an MP representing POR and who serves on the parliamentary working group considering technical amendments to the parliamentary election law attended as did Catherine Barnes, election integrity advisor for Davis Manafort. OSCE-ODIHR was represented by the Deputy Head of Mission, Roberto Cherreli, the elections advisor Kamel Ivanov, and the legal advisor Hans Birchler. The Deputy Head of Mission showed up in casual attire (jeans, hiking boots, shirt hanging out), to meet a member of parliament, which suggests the seriousness with which the meeting was taken. End text. 14. (U) Visit Embassy Kiev’s classified website at: www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev. HERBST

07/12/16

Trump: The Russian Connection

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Carter1

America has now boxed herself into a corner and doesn’t even realize it. If Hillary Clinton is elected, you will retain the Muslim Brotherhood in the White House. If Trump is elected, you will have the Russians and the Chinese in the White House. Trump’s advisers are very connected to Vladimir Putin and Russia. Trump himself has many ties as well and is friends with Putin. This is why Putin will try to sabotage Clinton with leaked emails etc. He’s got WikiLeaks and Assange doing his dirty work, with Edward Snowden as backup.

Trump has surrounded himself with people connected in one way or another to Russia and mobsters.

Carter

Carter Page

Donald Trump’s foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, has deep ties to Russia and the Kremlin’s Gazprom. Page is a globe-trotting investment banker who has built his creds on deals with Russia and its state-run gas company. It would do George Soros proud. Page’s business suffered a major hit when sanctions were imposed on Russia because of the Ukraine encroachment. When Trump selected him as a foreign policy adviser, he was inundated by his Russian contacts who were thrilled. That should be your first warning sign.

Trump has been putting forth the Russian idea to reduce NATO or do away with them altogether. He does not support the Ukraine either. He has called Putin a ‘strong leader’ and both have talk glowingly about each other. Flexible doesn’t quite cover it this time around. Page portrays US policymakers as stuck in an outdated Cold War mindset, which is really laughable as the Cold War never ended… it shifted.

Page is a self-serving business shark. He has no political experience, but he’s killer when it comes to negotiating a deal. Trump calls it “real world” experience. I call it corruption. Page has a lifelong fascination with Russia and Central Asia, and a determination to drum up business there even in the face of political headwinds. He has no loyalty to America or her constitution… his loyalty lies in business and profits. In that, Trump and Page share a common viewpoint. After all, even if it smacks of mob tactics, it’s just business.

Page traveled to Moscow last week and criticized the United States and other Western powers for their “hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change” in other countries. He praised Russia and China for being ‘progressive’ and forward thinking, while nailing the US as interventionist and two-faced. Gee, he sounds more like Putin’s man than Trump’s. He praised Russia and China for embracing foreign policies built on “non-interference,” “tolerance” and “respect.” Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah! Barack Obama, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

From The Washington Free Beacon:

“The United States and other developed powers, including in the EU, have often criticized [China, Russia, and Central Asian nations] for continuing methods which were prevalent during the Cold War period,” Page said. “Yet ironically, Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change.”

He also accused Western powers of approaching Russia and Central Asian nations with a “nearly universally critical tone” despite their “advancements.” This he said, may “understandably advance a certain level of insecurity.

The remarks, delivered at an event hosted by the New Economic School, were hardly out of character for Page, who has a history of criticizing US foreign policy and portraying Russia in a favorable light. In online writings, Page has defended Moscow’s involvement in the takeover of government buildings in Ukraine by pro-Russian forces in 2014 as “minor,” attributed the crisis in Ukraine to US policy, and accused NATO of “meddling in the affairs of Eastern Europe.”

Page has criticized NATO as “obsolete” and disparaged them for what he terms “illegal torture techniques.” He has long criticized US foreign policy.

He spent three years living in Moscow in the early 2000s, where he worked as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch and as an adviser on transactions for Gazprom and RAO UES, a Russian electric power company.

On Friday, Page also delivered remarks at the graduation for the New Economic School, whose board of directors includes Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and Economic Minister Alexei Ulyukayev. Page blamed the United States for “mistakes” that have damaged US-Russian relations during that speech.

Back in 2014, Page criticized Obama’s decision to deny a visa application to Hamid Aboutalebi, who is an Iranian diplomat and a UN ambassador. He was a translator for Iranian militants who seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, where American hostages were held for over a year until Ronald Reagan came along. It was one of the few things that Obama has made the right call on. Ted Cruz even praised Obama over the move. Yet, Trump’s man was all for that visa. “Avoiding the punishment of a distinguished diplomat whose most heinous charge is previous service as a translator would be an excellent step toward not remaining trapped in the past,” Page wrote in a blog post.

Just one month after that, Carter Page vigorously defended Russia’s military encroachment in the Ukraine. He compared it to the United States’ support for the ouster of Ukraine’s Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. “While US officials have protested the Russian government’s influence in current events, Moscow’s impact remains minor when compared to Washington’s fundamentally important encouragement at the national level which started the crisis in the first place,” Page asserted. He even went so far as accusing the US of instigating the crisis in the first place.

More from the Free Beacon:

In September 2014, during a NATO summit where the alliance agreed to increase its presence in Eastern Europe after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Page accused Western powers of “meddling in the affairs of Eastern Europe” and characterized Russia’s actions as “defensive.” He suggested that NATO was “banging on Russia’s door” and, like Trump, characterized the alliance as unnecessary.

“As most vividly seen in Ukraine, recent results of the North Atlantic Alliance’s unsuccessful interventionist strategy may largely speak for themselves. But another benefit of reconsidering past precedents from the end of the first Cold War is that this historic context helps highlight the extent to which elements of the legacy NATO framework have become severely antiquated,” he wrote.

In February 2015, Page likened Western nations to “football team bullies” for their “condescending mistreatment” of Russia, Iran, China, and other emerging nations. He also compared their actions to slave owners’ treatment of slaves. Page asserted that Western policies had spurred “economic disaster” in Russia and Ukraine.

“From US policies toward Russia to Iran to China, sanctimonious expressions of moral superiority stand at the root of many problems seen worldwide today,” Page wrote.

Does that sound like someone who has our national security at heart? Does it even sound like someone who believes in American exceptionalism?

Page is infuriated over sanctions imposed and views it as the US bullying Russia. Not as a consequence of aggressiveness by the Russians and their land-grabbing, country seizing tactics. He has compared US policy to American slavery and high-profile police shootings.

Not even kidding here:

He has also compared US policy towards Russia to high-profile police killings of unarmed black men. “The deaths triggered by US government officials in both the former Soviet Union and the streets of America in 2014 share a range of close similarities,” he wrote.

“While the loss of Michael Brown and Eric Garner has received intense media coverage and perfunctory federal government investigations, the economic injustice unleashed upon the millions of people residing in Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union by misguided Western policies has met limited recognition.”

Page also has a soft spot for the communist Chinese. He favorably quoted a propaganda arm of the People’s Republic of China, which wrote “After examining America’s staggering racial disparity, one cannot help wondering whether the US accusation of the Chinese government this time was another political tactic of shunning criticism at itself.”

Bluntly put… Carter Page is a Russian agent in my viewpoint:

Page’s appointment drew fire from experts who said his work sounded more like Internet conspiracy theories or foreign government propaganda than the counsel one would expect of a US president’s top aides.

“The very fact that a senior adviser to the leading Republican candidate for president seems to truly believe that a few individuals in the US government are responsible for certain international events puts him firmly in the realm of conspiracy theorists,” said Hannah Thoburn, a Russia policy expert with the Hudson Institute.

“Many of [Page’s] public remarks on Russia and Ukraine seem as though they have been lifted directly from the broadcast scripts of Russia Today,” the Kremlin’s US propaganda arm, Thoburn said in an email.

Page has also been highly supportive of international climate talks in Paris this last year, despite Republican concerns about international agreements that they say could hike energy prices and force American taxpayers to foot the bill for fossil fuel restrictions abroad.

“The political gathering has substantially raised attention to climate, environmental and future energy issues while leveraging the growing levels of concern amongst societies worldwide,” Page wrote. “But for both citizens and leaders alike, real action in the future will be a far more essential driver to the future direction of progress in comparison to the many words which will be spoken and to a lesser extent heard over the coming weeks.”

He wants the US to more fully collaborate with Russia… sharing more technology and capital market access. His speeches given this last week are being used as propaganda on Russian media. Russia Today loves him… just as they love those such as Alex Jones, Edward Snowden and others who are less than stellar in the credibility department.

Page’s remarks come at a time of heightened tension between the United States and Russia. NATO members agreed on Friday to send four multinational battalions to the Baltic states and Poland on a rotational basis in the face of increased Russian provocations. As American diplomats are being beaten in Russia, in front of our embassy no less, and America is expelling Russian diplomats in return… Carter Page has nothing but praise for the Russkies and condemnation for his own country. I’m sure Trump will fix all that – he’s even more flexible than Barack Obama. FSB/KGB tactics/attacks on a US diplomat were employed – they broke his shoulder. They have also broke into homes of embassy staff, rearranged furniture and even killed a family pet. Is this Russian aggression that Page approves of? Where is Trump on this? Crickets, that’s where.

Manafort

Paul Manafort

Trump’s top adviser, Paul Manafort, has spent much of his recent career working for pro-Russian forces in the Ukraine and has negotiated complex deals for an oligarch with close ties to Putin. And while one senator has already charged Trump is not responsible enough to receive secret information, Manafort’s deep relationships with top pro-Russian figures raise special concerns.

Manafort managed the 2010 campaign of Viktor Yanukovych… you know, the Ukrainian politician who was ousted as president when Putin proceeded to invade the Ukraine. He has, according to court documents, managed tens of millions of dollars for Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch denied entry to the US reportedly for ties to organized crime, but so close to Vladimir Putin that top Russian officials fought (unsuccessfully) to get him a visa. Don’t you just love Russian mob ties?

None of these people with Trump have been subjected to background checks. And after Trump’s selection of advisers and cronies, it’s obvious he should be subjected to one as well. One former Republican national security official put it bluntly: “He’s an intelligence classification vetting nightmare scenario.”

I find it beyond convenient that Manafort has tied himself to Trump considering who his clients are. Once again, I would say that Manafort is a Russian agent. Sometimes, the simplest explanation is the correct one.

“We joke in Ukraine that it is a bad sign for Trump that he hired Manafort. Because his client Yanukovych was ousted and fled to Russia, to the city of Rostov. So Trump could also end up in Rostov. It is almost like an anecdote.” — Ukrainian political expert Oleg Kravchenko

Manafort was hired more than a decade ago by the Ukraine’s wealthiest businessman, Rinat Akhmetov. He’s a steel and iron ore magnate and is worth an estimated $2.8 billion, according to Forbes. Manafort was a protege of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian businessman with an estimated net worth of $3.5 billion.

Experts say Manafort was unofficially invited to consult on Yanukovych’s first presidential campaign in December 2004, in the days of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Yanukovych was competing with pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who was poisoned by dioxin during the campaign. Manafort was asked to save Yanukovych’s campaign.

He was kept around to help improve Yanukovych’s image and get him close to Obama. Manafort described his role in Ukraine as helping align Yanukovych and his administration with Western interests. “The role that I played in that administration was to help bring Ukraine into Europe, and we did,” Manafort said. “We succeeded.” Manafort worked in Ukraine under the umbrella of his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort & Freeman, Inc. He worked with a group of American political advisers in Ukraine, including expat Philip Griffin, top John McCain adviser Richard H. Davis, and former Ronald Reagan advance man Rick Ahearn. “I am not here just for the election,” Manafort said in 2007 in Ukraine. “I am trying to play a constructive role in developing a democracy. I am helping to build a political party.”

Flynn

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn

Now we come to Trump’s latest favorite, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Rumors were swirling that he would be the VP pick, but that looks unlikely now. People started digging into his background and that didn’t go well.

First off, he’s a Democrat. On the good side, he was fired because he spoke out against radical Islam. But other than that, this guy is bad news.

Flynn, who is a former Defense Intelligence Agency chief, also favors Russia heavily and is advising Trump on foreign policy. Can I just ask, is there anyone that Trump has selected that isn’t pro-Russian? He’s not a supporter of Israel… he’s leaning pro-abortion and for same-sex marriage as well. Last time I looked, these were not conservative stances.

From FoundersCode.com:

Flynn raised eyebrows among some US foreign policy veterans when he was pictured sitting at the head table with Putin at a banquet in Moscow late last year celebrating Russia Today, an international broadcasting network funded by the Russian government. Flynn told Russia Today in an interview published on Dec. 10 that the United States and Russia should work together to resolve the Syrian civil war and defeat Islamic State.

The Obama administration has protested Russia’s military intervention on behalf of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, accusing Moscow of hitting opposition forces rather than ISIS.

Flynn has been advising Trump on foreign policy issues since at least February and has previously hinted that he’d be open to taking the No. 2 job. And an early July Politico piece described him as “Trump’s favorite general.”

Flynn has an odd affection for Russia and its authoritarian government. He has spent much of his time since retirement cozying up to the Putin regime and he’s a frequent guest on its English-language propaganda channel, RT.

Flynn’s argument supporting Russia takes their claim that it is fighting “terrorists” in Syria at face value, when in reality Russia’s intervention is aimed at propping up dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Russian bombs have actually targeted US-aligned Syrian rebels and have directed a relatively small percentage of munitions toward ISIS.

From RT:

Americans must understand that Russia also has a foreign policy and a national security strategy, and that Moscow launched the campaign against ISIS in Syria after its “unstated red lines were crossed,” retired US Lieutenant General Michael Flynn told RT.

Russia and the US have to work together in their fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), and an international coalition needs to be brought together to facilitate this, said Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

In reality, what is going on here is that Russia is using ISIS to do its dirty work and the US is being used and played for a fool.

From Cliff Kincaid:

The term “military intelligence” is mostly a reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), whose former director, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, has come under fire for his close relationship with the Russia Today (RT) propaganda channel.

AIM was the first to report that Flynn, after stepping down from DIA, went to Moscow to participate in the 10th anniversary celebration of the Moscow-funded and English-language channel known to its critics as KGB-TV. He sat at a dinner table with Putin and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

In a major embarrassment for Flynn, a recent article in Politico by Michael Crowley cited Flynn’s relationship with RT as “the most intriguing example of how the Russians have gone about recruiting disaffected members” of the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment.

The term “recruiting” suggests using Flynn for anti-American propaganda purposes.

Crowley, senior foreign policy writer at Politico, said that Flynn’s attendance at the RT gala, which also included remarks on world affairs, “appeared to inaugurate a relationship with the network—presumably a paid one, though neither Flynn nor RT answered queries on the subject. Flynn now makes semi-regular appearances on RT as an analyst, in which he often argues that the U.S. and Russia should be working more closely together on issues like fighting ISIL and ending Syria’s civil war.”

In addition to his relationship with RT, Flynn has described himself as an informal adviser to Trump, who already has several pro-Russian aides and advisers.

“We weren’t focused on Russia when I came in three years ago because we were still trying to cast a paradigm that brought Russia into the fold of Western values,” said Breedlove, in an attempt to explain why the Pentagon was caught off-guard by Russia. He said, “Russia chose a different path or they were on that path and we didn’t recognize it.”

What he is describing is a massive intelligence failure that could stem from the work of agents of influence for Russia, or actual Russian spies.

Trump, however, continues to preach cooperation with Russia.

The scope of the intelligence failure regarding Russia was addressed recently by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who admitted to CNN’s Jake Tapper on April 12 that the U.S. government has badly “misjudged” the intentions of Putin “for many, many years.” He declared, “The biggest intelligence failure that we have had since 9/11 has been the inability to predict the leadership plans and intentions of the Putin regime in Russia.”

After the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, Rep. Nunes noted, the U.S. continued to engage diplomatically with the Russians, and “we continued to talk to the Russians, and then they invaded Eastern Ukraine.” “We missed that,” he said. “And then we completely missed entirely when they put a new base, a new base with aircraft into the Mediterranean, into Syria. We just missed it. We were blind.”

While Trump’s speech was given to an audience of foreign policy experts, including Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak — who was sitting in the front row — the former DIA director’s pro-Moscow actions and statements are also generating controversy. The Politico article on Flynn’s visit to Moscow said, “At a moment of semi-hostility between the U.S. and Russia, the presence of such an important figure at Putin’s table startled current and former members of the Obama administration. “

Politico’s Michael Crowley quoted a former Pentagon official as saying about Flynn, “It was extremely odd that he showed up in a tuxedo to the Russian government propaganda arm’s party.”

Flynn is a strongman that Trump would use for law and order, not only abroad, but here at home. Not good.

Conclusion

In closing, I will just ask Americans this… do you really think someone so deeply tied to Russia, a stone-cold enemy, should be president? For eight years we have been led by an enemy within. With the choices we have from both parties currently, we are poised to elect an even greater enemy from within… and many so-called conservatives are cheering it.

All you have to do is connect the dots. Look at Trump’s connections. Putin is not our friend. He wants to bring us down. If he can do it from within the US, that would be his ideal scene. If he has to weaken us to the point of invasion, he’ll go for that as well. Trump’s Russian connections are beyond alarming… they are existential in nature. The failures in the intelligence community regarding Russia and the alleged penetration of the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment by Russian agents seem like topics that need to be addressed by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. They certainly should be addressed when selecting a candidate for the highest office in the land. Unless of course, you relish learning Russian or Chinese.

04/24/16

TRUMP CAMPAIGN CHIEF/LOBBYIST MANAFORT: Yeah, We’re Secretly Working with Mitch McConnell

Doug Ross @ Journal

Paul Manafort is the new head of Donald Trump’s campaign. A longtime Washington insider and heavy duty lobbyist for third world dictators, Manafort appeared this morning on Fox News Sunday and inadvertently let slip some revealing truths.

MANAFORT: …What we’re trying to do right now is work with the Mitch McConnells who we didn’t depose in Kentucky even though he won the election and we worked with him to put a unity slate together. We’re trying to bring the party together. That’s what —

WALLACE: Wait, because I think this is interesting. You’re saying that you’re working with the Senate majority leader, who to a lot of the grassroots is a symbol of the problem?

MANAFORT: We’re working with party officials and that was an example on Saturday where we could have — we won the state. We could have gone in there and tried to be disruptive as Cruz does in these states.

Manafort’s lobbying firm has been termed “the torturer’s lobby”, having represented Filipino dictator Marcos, Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi, ousted Ukrainian president and Putin ally Victor Yanukovych, to name but a few.

Yes, Donald Trump would be vastly superior to Hillary Clinton, because a malfunctioning pencil sharpener would be vastly superior to Hillary Clinton.

But anyone expecting Trump to fight the McConnells and Ryans and the Chamber of Commerce is going to sorely disappointed. Trump has surrounded himself with Beltway cronies, lobbyists and insiders. He is a longtime Democrat and liberal.

That is what he is and will always be. Caveat emptor.

Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News.