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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPeter Strzok: The staggering counterintelligence issues in the crazy Dec 18, 2020 WH meeting.
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1548315766767792128.html
Take a moment to think about the staggering counterintelligence issues in the crazy Dec 18, 2020 WH meeting. A thread.
In the Oval Office, people advocated Trump illegitimately hold on to power, including using the military to seize voting machines.
That group included: (/1)
Mike Flynn, who who was paid by an organ of Russian state media to travel to Moscow to attend a dinner where he was seated next to Putin.
Flynn later plead guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian Ambassador about election interference. (/2)
Patrick Byrne, one of several men once in an intimate relationship with convicted Russian agent Marina Butina.
Byrne gave money to Butina after her return to Russia, where she ran for the Duma, hounded Navalny, and supported the invasion of Ukraine. (/3)
Patrick Byrne, the pro-Trump former Overstock CEO admits funneling cash to his ex-lover Maria Butina, the glamorous spy expected to be elected to Russia's parliament
Maria Butina, a spy jailed and deported by the US, is standing for the Russia's parliament. Insider spoke to Patrick Byrne about their relationship.
https://www.businessinsider.com/pro-trump-former-overstock-ceo-gave-russian-spy-ex-lover-money-2021-9
Rudy Giuliani, who repeatedly met with and took info from sanctioned Russian agents like Andrii Derkach, despite USIC warnings to the White House in 2019 that Trumps personal lawyer was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence (/4)
washingtonpost.com/national-secur
So in this tiny meeting in the Oval Office where options to upend US democracy were advanced to the President of the United States, there were not one, not two, but three people directly linked to sanctioned and convicted agents of the Russian government. (/5)
While I doubt Russia planned it, their efforts to gain access to Trumps inner sanctum succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
And it demonstrates just how successful seemingly amateurish intelligence activity can be. (6/end)
Image
kentuck
(111,111 posts)The FBI is asleep at the wheel as the Russians clean our clock.
empedocles
(15,751 posts)[President Biden reportedly reorganizing his SS detail].
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)America ELECTED tRump POTUS and turned congress and many state governments over to the Republican Party, tRump cabal, religious white right, others. The power they gained while Sanders and alt-left power seekers mislead followers into believing ti was about healthcare and minimum wage was ENORMOUS.
With it they also took over SCOTUS.
Midterms coming up. Vote "awake."
empedocles
(15,751 posts)msfiddlestix
(7,290 posts)This scenario as outlined is the fundamental underpinning cause of great anxt and concern I have regarding DO and FBI Jan 6 "investigations". Yes Voting Matters!!! No doubt whatsoever.
Unfortunately, so MUCH damage done by the Despot installed by dark forces in play, it's hard to fathom just how much damage to the Justice Department was likely done.
I feel we have to expect a number of moles and their associates still populate the DOJ/FBI.. Impossible for anyone to say with any degree of certainty, but it wouldn't surprise me if it later becomes revealed just high up the chain it actually goes.
It would be a major event for evidence of deep infiltration to be discovered and revealed to the public. Looking at previous cases of Russian agents inbedded in the FBI and the CIA as well as Navel Intelligence, back in the 70's and 80's and I think even later, I can't buy into any notion that it isn't the same today if not worse.
When I imagine how much damage has been done to these institutions, and that Garland's mandate on top of so much else, is to cull them out and clean up house. I don't know, it just seems so beyond any possibility.
Kid Berwyn
(15,226 posts)Some of President Trumps favorite targets in the Russia probe have spent their careers in the Justice Department and the FBI investigating organized crime and money laundering, particularly as they pertain to Russia.
NATASHA BERTRAND
The Atlantic, AUG 30, 2018
Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest Democrats engaged in a partisan witch hunt led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trumps attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia.
snip...
Trumps latest obsession is with Bruce Ohr, a career Justice Department official who spent years investigating Russian organized crime and corruptionan expertise he shared with another Trump target named Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who provided valuable intelligence on Russia to the State Department and the FBIs Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force prior to authoring the Trump-Russia dossier in 2016. Ohr and Steele met in 2007, according to The New York Times, and stayed in touch as a result of their shared interests and mutual respect. Trump has tweeted about Ohr nearly a dozen times this month alone, complaining about his relationship with Steele and Ohrs wifes past work for Fusion GPSthe opposition-research firm that hired Steele in 2016 to research Trumps Russia ties.
snip...
Trumps fixation with seeing Ohr ousted from the Justice Department could be perceived as yet another attempt to undermine the credibility of the people who have investigated him. It could also be interpreted as an attack on someone with deep knowledge of the shady characters Trump and his cohort have been linked to, including Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob boss, and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate close to Putin who did business with Trumps former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Incidentally, another Manafort associate, the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, admitted that he only managed to be in business because Mogilevich allowed him to be, according to a leaked 2008 State Department cable.) Ohr was involved in banning Deripaska from the U.S. in 2006, due to his alleged ties to organized crime and fear that he would try to launder money into American real estate. Nearly a decade later, Ohr and the FBI sought Deripaskas help in taking down overseas criminal syndicates.
Snip...
The president has denied having any business ties to Russia, and his dream of building a Trump Tower Moscow never materialized. But his links to Russian oligarchs and mobsters from the former Soviet Union have been documented: Millions of dollars from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trumps developments and casinos throughout the 1990s, as the journalist Craig Unger has chronicled, as oligarchs looked for a place to hide their money in the West. The Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was once known as a hot spot for Brooklyn mobsters associated with the Russian Mafia, and quickly became the favorite East Coast destination of the top Russian mob boss Vyacheslav Ivankov, according to the 2000 book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. It was also repeatedly cited by the Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for having inadequate money-laundering controls.
Continues...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trumps-top-targets-in-the-russia-probe-are-experts-in-organized-crime/569056/
Talk about treasonous.
kentuck
(111,111 posts)Thanks for the link!
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,644 posts)uponit7771
(90,379 posts)Irish_Dem
(48,715 posts)Of course they helped plan Jan 6.
No doubt whatsoever. The evidence is right in front of us.
MyOwnPeace
(16,959 posts)SO much trouble - he was on to their game from the get-go!
So they hounded him, harassed him, fired him, slimmed him, did everything short of having him 'offed' (which they may regret not having done).
I SO HOPE Agent Strzok gets his day in court - and has a great, victorious parade after helping send IQ45 and his band of Insurrectionists off to jail where they belong.
MLAA
(17,386 posts)TREASON and RUSSIA.
Lucinda
(31,170 posts)deminks
(11,032 posts)I know many use the term 'former' boyfriend, but once you have had some red sparrow, are you ever a 'former' boyfriend? Is he still sending her money? For what exactly?
brush
(54,017 posts)and were let into the Oval Office by a junior WH staffer.
WTF? That's incredibly lax security. I mean every Tom, Dick and Overstock.com bozo can get that close to the president without being stopped.
Nevilledog
(51,402 posts)crickets
(26,007 posts)Joinfortmill
(14,577 posts)dalton99a
(81,756 posts)erronis
(15,528 posts)Of course the orange turd was #1 (even if turds are normally #2).
Very few true defenders of the US Constitution. Fortunately a few that thought that this smelled so to high heaven that they were willing to tell some others (J6C, DOJ?).
CloudWatcher
(1,852 posts)I'm not paranoid, but I'm wondering how many of the Secret Service texts were in Russian.
Still wondering what TFG and Putin discussed at that intimate face-to-face they had. Wondering if their translator is still alive and able to be questioned.
Upthevibe
(8,128 posts)Grins
(7,291 posts)Maria Butina? Glamorous? Really?
I Dont think so, but the eye of the beholder and all that.
Native
(5,946 posts)Wild blueberry
(6,689 posts)Thank you
JudyM
(29,313 posts)Thanks as usual, Nevilledog.
Novara
(5,896 posts)... the sedition and upending democracy to stay in power became THE story. But what if, all along, he was trying to stay in power at Putin's bidding? A lot of people assumed once he lost, Putin was done with him. Maybe not. And maybe a shit-ton of Congresspeople are still on Russia's payroll and THAT'S why they still have their lips firmly glued to his asshole even now.
I mean, I pooh-poohed the idea, thinking that once it was clear how much of a loser he was after the election, Russia would have cut their losses. And to me, it was always clear that he wanted to stay in power to keep the investigations at bay. But maybe it's both?
mopinko
(70,445 posts)yeah, i'm sure putler was watching as gleefully as tfg.
Novara
(5,896 posts)llashram
(6,265 posts)is the right word. I just look at the photos of President Obama in the presence of Putin and trump with a hangdog look in the presence of Putin after their oh-so-private meeting early in trumps maladministration of our country.
trump was in Putin's pocket. No doubt about it.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)They've destroyed many democratic governments by using political warfare techniques to turn whole peoples to destroying their own countries, and they've had outstanding successes in ours in this century.
But of course we are still the world's only superpower and are still a humiliating reality to a nation that peculiarly has historically always regarded itself as the world's greatest. Above all, ae are still able to thwart their hegemonic ambitions. So, equally of course, war continues. i
Russia's famous for blackmail. They must have achieved, and have, extraordinary influence over many decisionmakers in the Republican Party, business, the press, religion, military, etc.
msfiddlestix
(7,290 posts)niyad
(114,182 posts)PurgedVoter
(2,222 posts)Interesting that Russia controls their guns, but they support the Nazi Russian Alliance (NRA) when it pushes for the worst of America to have unlimited access to weapons.
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