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Reuters: Jared Kushner Had Undisclosed Contact With Russian Envoy, Say Sources

by AngelikFosbery Posted on May 27, 2017

Mother Jones

By Ned Parker and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, seven current and former U.S. officials told Reuters.

Those contacts included two phone calls between April and November last year, two of the sources said. By early this year, Kushner had become a focus of the FBI investigation into whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, said two other sources – one current and one former law enforcement official.

Kushner initially had come to the attention of FBI investigators last year as they began scrutinizing former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s connections with Russian officials, the two sources said.

While the FBI is investigating Kushner’s contacts with Russia, he is not currently a target of that investigation, the current law enforcement official said.

The new information about the two calls as well as other details uncovered by Reuters shed light on when and why Kushner first attracted FBI attention and show that his contacts with Russian envoy Sergei Kislyak were more extensive than the White House has acknowledged.

NBC News reported on Thursday that Kushner was under scrutiny by the FBI, in the first sign that the investigation, which began last July, has reached the president’s inner circle.

The FBI declined to comment, while the Russian embassy said it was policy not to comment on individual diplomatic contacts. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Multiple attempts to obtain comment from Kushner or his representatives were unsuccessful.

In March, the White House said that Kushner and Flynn had met Kislyak at Trump Tower in December to establish “a line of communication.” Kislyak also attended a Trump campaign speech in Washington in April 2016 that Kushner attended. The White House did not acknowledge any other contacts between Kushner and Russian officials.

BACK CHANNEL

Before the election, Kislyak’s undisclosed discussions with Kushner and Flynn focused on fighting terrorism and improving U.S.-Russian economic relations, six of the sources said. Former President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia after it seized Crimea and started supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

After the Nov. 8 election, Kushner and Flynn also discussed with Kislyak the idea of creating a back channel between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could have bypassed diplomats and intelligence agencies, two of the sources said. Reuters was unable to determine how those discussions were conducted or exactly when they took place.

Reuters was first to report last week that a proposal for a back channel was discussed between Flynn and Kislyak as Trump prepared to take office. The Washington Post was first to report on Friday that Kushner participated in that conversation.

Separately, there were at least 18 undisclosed calls and emails between Trump associates and Kremlin-linked people in the seven months before the Nov. 8 presidential election, including six calls with Kislyak, sources told Reuters earlier this month. . Two people familiar with those 18 contacts said Flynn and Kushner were among the Trump associates who spoke to the ambassador by telephone. Reuters previously reported only Flynn’s involvement in those discussions.

Six of the sources said there were multiple contacts between Kushner and Kislyak but declined to give details beyond the two phone calls between April and November and the post-election conversation about setting up a back channel. It is also not clear whether Kushner engaged with Kislyak on his own or with other Trump aides.

HOW KUSHNER CAME UNDER SCRUTINY

FBI scrutiny of Kushner began when intelligence reports of Flynn’s contacts with Russians included mentions of U.S. citizens, whose names were redacted because of U.S. privacy laws. This prompted investigators to ask U.S. intelligence agencies to reveal the names of the Americans, the current U.S. law enforcement official said.

Kushner’s was one of the names that was revealed, the official said, prompting a closer look at the president’s son-in-law’s dealings with Kislyak and other Russians.

FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official.

The head of Russian state-owned Vnesheconombank, Sergei Nikolaevich Gorkov, a trained intelligence officer whom Putin appointed, met Kushner at Trump Tower in December. The bank is under U.S. sanctions and was implicated in a 2015 espionage case in which one of its New York executives pleaded guilty to spying and was jailed.

The bank said in a statement in March that it had met with Kushner along with other representatives of U.S. banks and business as part of preparing a new corporate strategy.

Officials familiar with intelligence on contacts between the Russians and Trump advisers said that so far they have not seen evidence of any wrongdoing or collusion between the Trump camp and the Kremlin. Moreover, they said, nothing found so far indicates that Trump authorized, or was even aware of, the contacts.

There may not have been anything improper about the contacts, the current law enforcement official stressed.

Kushner offered in March to be interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating Russia’s attempts to interfere in last year’s election.

The contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials during the presidential campaign coincided with what U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was a Kremlin effort through computer hacking, fake news and propaganda to boost Trump’s chances of winning the White House and damage his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

(Reporting by Ned Parker and Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by John Walcott, Warren Strobel and Phil Stewart in Washington; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Ross Colvin)

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Reuters: Jared Kushner Had Undisclosed Contact With Russian Envoy, Say Sources

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The Mystery Behind the Half-Million Dollars Michael Flynn Received as a Foreign Agent

by BlaineR36kbgn Posted on May 26, 2017

Mother Jones

It is hard to keep track of all the Michael Flynn scandals. The former national security adviser for President Donald Trump—who lasted only 22 days in the job—is at the center of various investigations. He has drawn scrutiny for his contacts with the Russian government (and for lying about those contacts), for his pocketing of $45,000 from Kremlin-backed RT (and his failure to disclose the payment), for his lobbying for Turkish interests (and his failure to disclose that as well), and for attending a meeting with Turkish officials during which a plan reportedly was discussed for abducting a US-based foe of that country’s president. But one Flynn mystery has received little attention: What was the original source of the $530,000 he was paid last summer and fall—when he was Trump’s top national security aide—to be an agent for Turkish interests?

In March, Flynn, who weeks earlier had been fired from the White House job for lying about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, retroactively filed with the Justice Department as a foreign agent. (It’s illegal to lobby for foreign interests and not register with the Justice Department, and Flynn is reportedly under investigation for not registering at the time he did this work.) Flynn’s retroactive disclosure noted that he had been hired in August 2016 by Inovo BV, a Dutch consulting company run by Ekim Alptekin, the chairman of the Turkey-US Business Council.

The paperwork Flynn filed with the government is confusing. Some of the records note that his company, the Flynn Intel Group, was hired to compile opposition research on Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania whom the Turkish government claims helped orchestrate an unsuccessful coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last summer, and to prepare material on Gulen—presumably derogatory material—that could be publicly disseminated. But an attachment to the filing, citing an American law firm representing Alptekin, says that “Inovo represented a private sector company in Israel that sought to export natural gas to Turkey, and it was for support of its consulting work for this client that Inovo engaged Flynn Intel Group, specifically to understand the tumultuous political climate at the time between the United States and Turkey so that Inovo could advise its client regarding its business opportunities and investment in Turkey.” In March, Alptekin told one reporter that he had hired Flynn “principally to produce geopolitical analysis on Turkey and the region” for a “regional energy company that is considering an investment in Turkey.”

It’s unclear why there are conflicting accounts about Flynn’s work for Inovo and Alptekin. And though Alptekin has asserted that his firm had no official or financial connections to the Turkish government, Flynn’s retroactive registration—his company shut down in November—stated, “Flynn Intel Group’s work for Inovo could be construed to have principally benefitted the Republic of Turkey.” It was through his contract with Inovo that Flynn ended up in a September 19 meeting set up by Alptekin at the Essex House hotel in New York City with Turkish government officials, where reportedly the participants considered kidnapping Gulen. (A Flynn spokesman insisted Flynn had not discussed any illegal actions, and Alptekin has denied there was any talk of abducting Gulen at this gathering.)

Much is hazy about Flynn’s work for Alptekin, including, most notably, the source of the funding for the project. According to Flynn’s disclosure filing, Alptekin’s Inovo made three payments to him from September 9 to November 14 totaling $530,000. None of the money came from Turkey, according to Alptekin’s American attorneys. In an interview with a Dutch newspaper in April, Alptekin said the funds for the Flynn project came from a loan from his wife and payments from Ratio Oil Exploration, an Israeli natural gas company.

Here’s where the story gets curious. An Israeli news station in March contacted Ratio Oil Exploration, and the firm said it had no relationship with Alptekin.

A day after disclosing that news, the Israeli station reported that Alptekin had told it, “I have never stated, confirmed, or denied that I acted for Ratio Oil.”

Yet weeks later, Alptekin was telling the Dutch newspaper that some of the money for Flynn had indeed come from Ratio Oil Exploration. Was Ratio Oil part of the Flynn deal? It would seem not, given that the company denied any connection to Alptekin. For his part, Alptekin had initially been dodgy about its possible involvement before stating that Ratio Oil had helped to finance the Flynn project. (Ratio Oil did not respond to a request for comment.)

As for his wife, Nigar Alptekin, she is an Azerbaijani fashion model who once was in a Turkish pop group with two other models that was called Adrenalin. Neither Nigar Alptekin (also known as Nigar Talibova or Nigar Talibzade) nor the music group have a prominent online presence. A music video from the group posted on YouTube in 2012 had only been viewed 4,387 times as of Thursday. Nigar Alptekin’s Twitter feed has 155 followers.

Ekim Alptekin this week was in Washington for the 36th Annual Conference on US-Turkey Relations. When a reporter for Mother Jones, looking to ask about the source of the money and his wife’s role, approached Alptekin, he declined to be interviewed. Alptekin did not respond to multiple email requests for comment. And a lawyer for Flynn also did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s possible that Alptekin used money from a fashion model and an Israeli energy company to pay for Flynn’s secret lobbying for Turkish interests. But confirming the source of these funds could well be on the to-do list of FBI investigators working the Flynn case, a list that seems to be rather long.

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The Mystery Behind the Half-Million Dollars Michael Flynn Received as a Foreign Agent

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How the Trump White House Has Tried to Interfere With the Russia Investigations

by awfegcimo Posted on May 26, 2017

Mother Jones

The pattern is increasingly clear: As investigations into the Trump campaign’s ties to and possible collusion with Russia have intensified, so too have efforts by the president and his staff to quash those probes or put pressure on US officials to publicly deny the validity of the swirling allegations.

For his part, President Donald Trump has long insisted there is nothing to the investigations: “The entire thing has been a witch hunt,” he said during a recent press conference at the White House. “There’s no collusion between, certainly, myself and my campaign—but I can only speak for myself—and the Russians. Zero.”

But behind the scenes, Trump and his team appear to have worked assiduously to get FBI investigators to either stop their digging, or to lean on congressional and intelligence officials to get them to back Trump by saying there is nothing there. Here are the US officials who have reportedly been the subject of White House pressure:

Daniel Coats and Admiral Michael Rogers: The Washington Post reported on Monday that Trump asked each of these two top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against the FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russia. Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, refused to comply with the requests, which they believed were inappropriate, according to the Post. In congressional testimony Tuesday, Coats declined to discuss whether the president leaned on him.

James Comey: As the New York Times reported in mid-May, Trump asked the FBI director during an Oval Office meeting in February to shut down the federal investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. “I hope you can let this go,” the president told Comey, according to a contemporaneous memo Comey wrote. Trump fired Comey on May 9, giving conflicting reasons for his action. Trump has since denied that he asked Comey to stop his investigation of Flynn, responding to a question at a news conference by cutting off the reporter and saying only, “No, no—next question.”

Sen. Richard Burr and Rep. Devin Nunes: In February, the Post reported that the White House asked senior members of Congress to contact news organizations to try to counter news stories about the growing Russia scandal, including Burr and Nunes—the two Republican chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees investigating Trump. A spokesman for Nunes confirmed that he spoke to reporters and delivered the requested message. In an interview, Burr acknowledged that he had conversations about Russia-related news reports with the White House and engaged with news organizations to dispute articles by the New York Times and CNN that alleged repeated contact between Trump campaign members and Russian intelligence operatives. Nunes later stepped down from the House investigation, after revelations about him working closely with the White House to instead focus attention on alleged surveillance activities by the Obama administration.

Andrew McCabe: Also in February, according to the Guardian, Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, asked the FBI to deny media reports that campaign advisers were frequently in touch with Russians during the election. Priebus’ reported discussion with McCabe, the FBI’s deputy director—who took over as acting director after Comey was fired—prompted sharp criticism from Democrats, who said Priebus violated policies intended to insulate FBI investigations from politics.

These are the examples known so far, but other instances of White House pressure or meddling in the investigations may well come to light: As the Post also reported this week with its scoop on Coats and Rogers, Trump White House officials “sounded out” with other “top intelligence officials” the possibility of intervening directly with Comey to encourage the FBI to drop the investigation into Flynn.

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How the Trump White House Has Tried to Interfere With the Russia Investigations

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Jared Kushner Is Reportedly Under FBI Scrutiny for Meetings With Russians

by SamLandseer9259 Posted on May 25, 2017

Mother Jones

Jared Kusher, the husband of President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and one of the president’s top advisers in the White House, is “now a focus in the FBI’s Russia investigation,” according to a Washington Post report published Thursday evening. And NBC News reported, “Investigators believe Kushner has significant information relevant to their inquiry, officials said. That does not mean they suspect him of a crime or intend to charge him.”

Kushner’s December meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the head of a Russian bank from Moscow are being looked at by investigators probing Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and examining possible ties between Trump associates and Russia, according to the Post. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort have also been under scrutiny for their contacts with Russians or pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians.

From the Post:

In early December, Kushner met in New York with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and he later sent a deputy to meet with Kislyak again. Flynn was also present at the early December meeting, and later that month, Flynn held a call with Kislyak to discuss U.S.-imposed sanctions against Russia. Flynn initially mischaracterized the conversation even to the vice president — which ultimately prompted his ouster from the White House.

Kushner also met in December with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, which has been the subject of U.S. sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In addition to the December meetings, a former senior intelligence official said FBI agents had been looking closely at earlier exchanges between Trump associates and the Russians dating back to the spring of 2016, including one at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Kushner and Kislyak — along with close Trump adviser and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions — were present at an April 2016 event at the Mayflower where then-candidate Trump promised in a speech to seek better relations with Russia. It is unclear whether Kushner and Kislyak interacted there.

As reported by the New York Times in April, Kushner failed to disclose several meetings with Russian officials, an omission Kushner’s lawyers have characterized as a mistake. Jamie Gorelick, one of Kushner’s attorneys and a former deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, told the Post Thursday that Kushner volunteered to share information about his contacts with the Russians with investigators.

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Jared Kushner Is Reportedly Under FBI Scrutiny for Meetings With Russians

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The Michael Flynn Scandal Descends on Trump’s DC Hotel

by JoeannSloan Posted on May 25, 2017

Mother Jones

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Ekim Alptekin, a well-connected Turkish businessman at the center of one of the many scandals swirling around President Donald Trump and his White House, stood before a crowd of several hundred people in downtown Washington and sought to clear up a few things. “There’s been a lot of media attention on it,” he later told a reporter, “so I just wanted to address the issue.”

The “issue” in question was no small matter. Last year, Alptekin paid $530,000 to retired Lt. General Michael Flynn to lobby on behalf of Turkish interests. At the time, Flynn was a top adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign, and after Trump’s shock victory, the president-elect rewarded Flynn with the job of national security adviser. But it later emerged that Flynn had failed to register as a foreign lobbyist for this work, as required by law, and that he was under federal investigation for his secret lobbying for Alptekin. (Flynn was fired in February, after only 22 days on the job, amid reports that he had communicated with the Russian ambassador and lied about it.)

So it was a bit awkward when Alptekin appeared in Washington this week for the 36th Annual Conference on US-Turkey Relations. (He chairs one of the conference’s two main organizers, the Turkey-US Business Council.) In a speech on Monday, Alptekin addressed the Flynn controversy directly. “As many of you have read in the media,” he said, “I hired the Flynn Intel Group in 2016 before the election with a mandate to help me understand where the Turkish-American relationship is and where it’s going and what the obstacles are to the relationship.” His willingness to confront such a thorny issue—legally and politically—caught some in attendance by surprise. Yet there was also a surreal quality to Alptekin’s remarks, if only for this reason: He delivered them at the Trump International Hotel, owned by the president himself.

International intrigue notwithstanding, the 36th Annual Conference on US-Turkey Relations was typical of the glitzy conventions and forums hosted in Washington. There were panels on e-commerce, NATO, and cybersecurity, all with the theme of encouraging greater cooperation between the governments and industries of the United States and Turkey. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and now a Zelig of Washington’s paid-speaking and overseas-junket circuit, spoke at a luncheon sponsored by several major Turkish conglomerates, where he poked fun at the president and plugged his forthcoming book, Understanding Trump.

For his part, Alptekin pointed out that the venue had been chosen well before Trump was elected president. In October 2016, the American-Turkish Council, a group devoted to building up business connections between the two countries (and the conference’s other organizer), booked the Trump hotel in downtown DC, a short walk from the White House. According to Alptekin, the Turkish interest groups had first toured the hotel even earlier, in 2015, before Trump had declared his candidacy. Howard Beasey, president of the American-Turkish Council, told NPR, “Unfortunately, in our contract with the hotel, there is no I-became-president-so-you-get-to-break-your-contract-with-us clause.”

And so it was that Alptekin, whose hiring of Flynn helped plunge the Trump White House into turmoil, spent several days this week roaming the marble lobbies and conference rooms of Trump’s DC hotel. He schmoozed with attendees, posed for photos, and sat for interviews with largely international news outlets, all the while surrounded by the name TRUMP.

Aside from his opening remarks, however, Alptekin had little to say about Flynn. He denied to ABC News that he and his company had represented the government of Turkey. (In his retroactive filing, Flynn noted that his work for Alptekin “could be construed to have principally benefitted the Republic of Turkey.”) Alptekin blamed the “highly politicized situation” in the United States for the “misunderstanding and misperceptions” around his company and hiring of Flynn.

There are many lingering questions about Alptekin’s role in the Flynn controversy: Why did Alptekin hire Flynn in the first place? Did Flynn tell Alptekin he wasn’t going to register as a foreign lobbyist? Had Alptekin ever spoken with Trump himself? If Alptekin were subpoenaed by Congress or law enforcement as part of the Flynn investigation, would he cooperate and provide documents? Alptekin addressed none of these. He refused to comment to ABC News when asked whether he had been questioned or served a subpoena as part of the Flynn investigation.

In the main lobby of the Trump hotel, I tracked down an assistant of Alptekin’s and asked for an interview. She said Alptekin was no longer giving interviews. At that moment, Alptekin stood a few feet away, speaking on camera with a small TV crew. After he finished, he and his entourage sped past me in the direction of the hotel’s ballrooms, presumably to rejoin the guests for a final panel on Turkey’s shipbuilding industry.

So it goes in Donald Trump’s Washington.

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The Michael Flynn Scandal Descends on Trump’s DC Hotel

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Chris Christie Warned Trump Against Hiring Michael Flynn Last Fall

by GenevaBarringer Posted on May 22, 2017

Mother Jones

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie advised Donald Trump against hiring Michael Flynn, both before the November election and afterward, Christie said on Monday. This warnings came when Christie served as chairman of Trump’s transition team and before the team was made aware that Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, was under federal investigation.

“I didn’t think that he was someone who would bring benefit to the president or to the administration,” Christie said at a news conference. “And I made that very clear to candidate Trump, and I made it very clear to President-elect Trump. That was my opinion, my view.”

Christie made clear that he did not believe Flynn was a suitable choice. “If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn in the White House, let alone give him a job,” he said.

Shortly after the election, Vice President Mike Pence took over the transition team from Christie. Christie was recently named the head of a White House commission to combat drug addiction, and he has been mentioned as a potential addition to the White House staff. Flynn was forced to resign in February after it became public that he had lied to Pence about his contact with the Russian ambassador.

Christie reportedly clashed with Flynn, who was an adviser to Trump during the campaign last year. According to NBC News, both men were present at Trump’s first intelligence briefing last August.

Meanwhile, four people with knowledge of the matter told NBC News that one of the advisers Trump brought to the briefing, retired general Mike Flynn, repeatedly interrupted the briefing with pointed questions.

Two sources said Christie, the New Jersey governor and Trump adviser, verbally restrained Flynn—one saying Christie told Flynn to shut up, the other reporting he said, “Calm down.” Two other sources said Christie touched Flynn’s arm in an effort get him to calm down and let the officials continue.

Both Christie and Flynn denied this at the time. But if it’s true, it would help explain why Christie on Monday said that Flynn was “not my cup of tea” and that they “didn’t see eye to eye.”

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Chris Christie Warned Trump Against Hiring Michael Flynn Last Fall

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Russians Bragged That They Could Use Michael Flynn to Influence Trump, CNN Reports

by EzraY71ypnpc Posted on May 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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Russian officials believed that Michael Flynn was an ally whom they could use to influence President Donald Trump, CNN reported Friday night. The network cites “multiple government officials” who were aware of conversations within the Russian government that were intercepted during the 2016 campaign.

“This was a five-alarm fire from early on,” one former Obama administration official said, “the way the Russians were talking about him.” Another former administration official said Flynn was viewed as a potential national security problem.

The conversations picked up by US intelligence officials indicated the Russians regarded Flynn as an ally, sources said. That relationship developed throughout 2016, months before Flynn was caught on an intercepted call in December speaking with Russia’s ambassador in Washington, Sergey Kislyak. That call, and Flynn’s changing story about it, ultimately led to his firing as Trump’s first national security adviser.

Flynn resigned from the position of National Security Adviser in February, 18 days after then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his contact with the Russian ambassador and, as a result, could be a target of blackmail.

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Russians Bragged That They Could Use Michael Flynn to Influence Trump, CNN Reports

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Yet More Shoes Drop in the Flynn Scandal

by Penelope8003 Posted on May 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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Another hour, another Trump scandal. I can’t keep up. Here’s the latest timeline on Mike Flynn. The three items in italics are new:

August 9: Flynn is hired by the Turkey-U.S. Business Council for $600,000 to help repair Turkey’s image in the US. However, Flynn chooses not to register as a foreign agent on the pretext that he’s just lobbying for a business group that has nothing to do with the Turkish government.

November 18: Trump names Flynn as his National Security Advisor.

November 30: The Justice Department opens an investigation into Flynn’s lobbying activities. Flynn keeps this news to himself for over a month.

December: Flynn has repeated contacts with various Russian officials but doesn’t tell anybody.

January 4: Flynn tells the incoming White House counsel that he is under investigation. Nothing happens.

January 10: In a meeting with Susan Rice, Flynn puts the kibosh on an Obama plan to use Kurdish help to take the ISIS-occupied town of Raqqa—something that his erstwhile client Turkey is opposed to. McClatchy reports: “Members of Congress, musing about the tangle of legal difficulties Flynn faces, cite that exchange with Rice as perhaps the most serious: acting on behalf of a foreign nation — from which he had received considerable cash — when making a military decision. Some members of Congress, in private conversations, have even used the word “treason” to describe Flynn’s intervention, though experts doubt that his actions qualify.” Still nothing happens.

January 26: Acting attorney general Sally Yates warns the White House that Flynn has lied about his contacts with Russian officials, which may have compromised him. Still nothing happens.

February 9: The Washington Post reveals Flynn’s lies about his Russian contacts. Everything is now public.

February 13: Finally something happens. Trump fires Flynn.

February 14: Trump meets with FBI director James Comey and asks him to kill the investigation into Flynn.

March-April: Comey continues the investigation.

May 9: Trump fires Comey.

The new news here is that Trump knew about the FBI investigation far earlier than anyone has reported before. By the time Sally Yates alerted the White House to Flynn’s lying, they had already been warned off Flynn by President Obama and they’d known about the FBI investigation for three weeks. Nonetheless, they did nothing until it all became public.

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Yet More Shoes Drop in the Flynn Scandal

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Another Trump Bombshell Hits: New York Times Reports He Asked FBI Chief to Drop Flynn Investigation

by Santos0894 Posted on May 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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President Donald Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to drop the FBI’s investigation of former national security adviser Mike Flynn, according to a bombshell report published by the New York Times that was based on a memo Comey wrote following the conversation.

“I hope you can let this go,” Trump told Comey in a private one-on-one meeting at the White House in February, the day after Flynn was fired for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the Times reports. Comey supposedly felt uncomfortable with the exchange and wrote a memo detailing the discussion. From the Times:

The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, only replying: “I agree he is a good guy.”

The Times included a denial from the White House:

While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn. The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.

After the Times published the story late Tuesday afternoon, the White House sent the same statement to members of the White House press corps.

The Times notes that Andrew McCabe, Comey’s deputy and the current acting director of the FBI, told a Senate panel last week that there hadn’t been any interference in the FBI’s investigation so far.

The story also reported that Trump had asked Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to leave the room so he could speak to Comey by himself. In this private conversation, Trump also reportedly pressed Comey to prosecute reporters for publishing classified information.

The Times‘ explosive story came at the end of a day that was already full of White House chaos, with Flynn’s successor, retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster trying to defend Trump in the face of the previous day’s Washington Post‘s report that Trump had disclosed highly sensitive classified information during his Oval Office meeting with Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

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Another Trump Bombshell Hits: New York Times Reports He Asked FBI Chief to Drop Flynn Investigation

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With Nunes Out, the New Guys Running the Trump-Russia Probe Ain’t Much Better

by GiseleDRTxuhaxi Posted on April 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Thursday morning, the inevitable happened: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, announced he was yielding the reins on his panel’s derailed investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Nunes claims the reason for his retreat is that the House ethics committee is investigating whether he publicly revealed classified information—a charge he insists is “baseless.” Whatever happens with this ethics inquiry, his departure does not guarantee the investigation will fare any better than it has.

In his statement, Nunes curiously said nothing about Vladimir Putin’s secret political attack on the United States. Nor did he mention the question of contacts between Trump associates and Moscow. He only discussed one aspect of the committee’s probe: the leaking of classified information (mainly about Michael Flynn, who was fired from the national security adviser post after news reports showed he had lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the transition). “The charges…are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of US citizens and other abuses of power,” Nunes declared. So even as he said bye-bye to the probe, the congressman—who served on the Trump transition team and who delegitimized himself while trying to provide cover to President Donald Trump for his fact-free charge that Barack Obama had wiretapped him—was still promoting Trump’s distraction of choice: The big story is what happened when Trump and his team were possibly picked up by “incidental” intelligence collection, not Putin’s attempt to subvert an American election or the FBI’s investigation of Trump associates for possibly coordinating with Russia.

And the committee members Nunes designated as his heirs have been champions of the same diversionary tactic.

Nunes, who is retaining his post of committee chairman, assigned the task of running the Russia investigation to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas). He also noted that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) will assist Conaway. At the committee’s first hearing for its Russia probe—before Nunes ran the investigation into a ditch—his three designees, as they questioned FBI chief James Comey and National Security Agency head Mike Rogers, focused on the narrow issue of leaks and unmasking. (“Unmasking” is the term of art for when a senior US official cleared to handle top-secret reports based on intelligence intercepts of foreign targets requests an intelligence agency to disclose to him or her the identity of a US citizen referenced in a report.) Or they asked questions designed to raise doubts about the intelligence community’s assessment that Putin meddled in the election to assist Trump. That is, they stuck to the GOP’s political script.

Moreover, in early January, Conaway dismissed the issue of Russian involvement in the campaign with a wacky comparison. Speaking to a Dallas newspaper, he compared the Russian hacking-and-leaking assault to standard campaign moves: “Harry Reid and the Democrats brought in Mexican soap opera stars, singers and entertainers who had immense influence in those communities into Las Vegas, to entertain, get out the vote and so forth. Those are foreign actors, foreign people, influencing the vote in Nevada. You don’t hear the Democrats screaming and saying one word about that.” As the Dallas Morning News reported, “Asked whether he considers that on par with Russian cyber-intrusions that aimed to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Conaway said: ‘Sure it is, it’s foreign influence. If we’re worried about foreign influence, let’s have the whole story.'”

This attitude was on full display during the hearing with Comey and Rogers—at which Comey declared the FBI had no evidence to support Trump’s Obama-wiretapped-me claim and revealed the FBI had been investigating Trump-Russia contacts since July. When Conaway was granted time for questioning, he dwelled on when and why the FBI and the NSA had reached the conclusion that the Russian operation was designed to help Trump. Conaway tried to make an issue out of the fact that the FBI hit this conclusion with more certainty a few weeks before the NSA did late last year. Comey had to point out, “To be clear, Mr. Conaway, we all agreed with that judgment.” And Rogers echoed him.

Conaway’s intent was clear: to attempt to show this damaging-to-Trump assessment was still iffy. This led him into a bizarre exchange with Comey over rooting for college football teams and whether a person can cheer for one team to lose and not really desire the other team to win. (Conaway referenced his wife’s favorite team, the Red Raiders of Texas Tech.) Comey noted that “logically, when Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to lose,” he wanted Trump to win. Conaway then tried to discredit a Washington Post story by noting that the anonymous sources who provided the newspaper information about the US intelligence community’s assessment of the Russian operation (before that evaluation was made public) had probably broken the law. It was not obvious what he was driving at. But Conaway had not bothered to express any outrage over the Russian intervention or to encourage the FBI’s ongoing investigations. He was in Trump-damage-control mode.

Rooney used his grilling time to pose to Rogers a long and detailed series of questions about incidental collection and unmasking. These are not unimportant subjects. But they have nothing to do with how Putin and Russian intelligence intervened in the election. (Rogers noted that only 20 senior-ranked officials at the NSA, including himself, are authorized to approve unmasking requests.) Then came the money shot. Rooney asked, “If the NSA obtained the communication of General Flynn while he was communicating with the surveillance target legally, would you please explain how General Flynn’s identity could be unmasked based on the exceptions that we discussed?” So this was all about targeting those current or past US officials who had leaked information on Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador. Rooney was more concerned about the leaking than Flynn’s deceptions and back-channel communications (for which Flynn was fired). Rogers replied, “I’m not going to discuss even hypotheticals about individuals, I’m sorry.”

Nevertheless, Rooney decried the “serious crime” that had apparently been committed via a presumed act of unmasking. He noted he was worried that the intelligence community had broken a “sacred trust” with the American people. (There was not a word about Flynn violating any trust.) He did not once address the Russian intervention.

When Rooney was done, Gowdy picked up this line of questioning. Gowdy is best known for running the House special committee on Benghazi that went on endlessly—after other House committees had scrutinized the matter and blown apart the various anti-Clinton conspiracy theories of the right—and was marred by partisan moves and, yes, leaks from the GOP side of the committee. (Gowdy also declared during the campaign that he believed Clinton should be prosecuted for how she handled her official email when she was secretary of state.) Citing several newspaper stories about Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador—which referred to classified intercepts that had captured these communications—Gowdy said to Comey, “I thought it was against the law to disseminate classified information. Is it?” Comey replied, “Yes, sir. It’s a serious crime. I’m not going to comment on those particular articles because I don’t want to, in any circumstance, compound a criminal act by confirming that it was classified information, but in general, yes, it’s a serious crime.”

Gowdy subsequently followed up with this question: “Is there an exception in the law for reporters who want to break a story?” Comey answered, “Well that’s a harder question as to whether a reporter incurs criminal liability by publishing classified information and one probably beyond my ken.” But Gowdy suggested that a reporter could be prosecuted for publishing a story containing classified information. “You’re not aware of an exception in the current dissemination of the classified information statute that carves out an exception for reporters?” he asked the FBI chief. No, Comey said: “I’m not aware of anything carved out in the statute. I don’t think a reporter’s been prosecuted certainly in my lifetime, though.”

Gowdy did not ask anything related to how the Kremlin had targeted a political party and presidential campaign to subvert an election. Instead, he fixated on leaks and locking up journalists who receive and report classified secrets. He pressed Comey to investigate the Flynn leak, and he ticked off a list of Obama officials who might have had access to unmasked names—James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates—as if to suggest one or more of them deserved to be investigated for the Flynn leak.

Toward the end of the hearing, Gowdy did speak one sentence about the FBI’s Russia investigation. He told Comey, “I want you to go find every single witness who may have information about interference, influence, motive, our response, collusion, coordination, whatever your jurisdiction is, wherever the facts may take you. Though the heavens may fall, go do your jobs because nature abhors a vacuum.” But Gowdy then cautioned people not to confuse “evidence” with “facts” and to be wary of hearsay. This seemed to be an indirect way of questioning media reporting regarding the Russian intervention in the election and the contacts between Trump associates and Russia. In any event, Gowdy had tried to turn the hearing into an inquiry about the Flynn leak and the once-obscure subject of unmasking—which matched the agenda of Trump defenders.

Acting in a partisan and puzzling manner, Nunes made a hash of the House intelligence committee’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal. After his botched stunt, his credibility was shot. Stepping aside was the correct action. Yet he has placed this important exercise in the hands of men who have indicated they are not fully concerned with the main issues, which, of course, are rather inconvenient for their party and its president. Conaway, Rooney, and Gowdy have not yet demonstrated they can mount an independent and vigorous investigation on this politically sensitive terrain. Nunes may be gone, but the challenges facing the committee remain.

More – 

With Nunes Out, the New Guys Running the Trump-Russia Probe Ain’t Much Better

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