Yorkie Mom
Yorkie Mom's JournalCongress Snuck New Russia Sanctions Into Spending Bill, president threatening to veto
Congress Snuck New Russia Sanctions Into Spending Bill
Congress wants to be sure that the United States keeps the pressure on Russia, with or without the president’s help.
Buried in the massive $1.3 trillion spending bill that Congress is considering this week are strict new punishments against Russia, in what lawmakers and aides say is a message to President Donald Trump to reconsider his relaxed posture toward Moscow.
The legislation, which Trump was always expected to sign, includes restrictions that bar many federal agencies from engaging financially or otherwise with the Kremlin and its backers on a number of fronts. Lawmakers from both parties viewed those provisions and others as an opportunity to enshrine new punishments against Vladimir Putin’s regime at a time when the Trump administration has taken heat for its refusal to immediately and fully implement mandatory sanctions and other punishments.
“Those [sanctions] were a good first step. But I do think that these newer sanctions hopefully put a little more bite to it. And frankly I think that’s a good thing,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Daily Beast. “The Russians are guilty of bad behavior all over the world. And so we shouldn’t be doing anything to encourage or condone that.”
The new measures come as the White House faces renewed criticism over its handling of Russia. Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that the president, against the advice of his top aides, congratulated Putin on winning re-election to another six-year term. He also did not press Putin on election-meddling or on the nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom.
More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/congress-snuck-new-russia-sanctions-into-spending-bill?via=twitter_page&__twitter_impression=true
New: Trump Fundraiser Offered to Help Lift Sanctions on Russian Firms
*Elliott Broidy proposed work for clients of Moscow lawyer
*Pre-inauguration discussions didn’t lead to Broidy’s hiring
Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump, offered last year to help a Moscow-based lawyer get Russian companies removed from a U.S. sanctions list.
Broidy made the offer after an inquiry from Andrei Baev, an energy lawyer at Chadbourne & Parke LLP, both men acknowledged in statements to Bloomberg News this week. In a proposal sent to Baev shortly before Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, Broidy sketched out a potential campaign to influence top U.S. officials, according to a person with knowledge of the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The plan never went forward, Broidy and Baev said, and no such lobbying took place. But the discussions are a striking illustration of how Russians’ efforts to escape sanctions led them to seek political allies close to Trump. Broidy, a Los Angeles money manager and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a written statement to Bloomberg that he didn’t offer to “personally” set up meetings with top U.S. officials for Baev’s clients. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“From the beginning I made it clear that while I would consider trying to help the firm build a team and to put them in touch with some experts, I am not a lobbyist and didn’t plan on becoming one,” Broidy said in a statement. “I also made clear from the beginning that any arrangement we reached would need to be in full compliance with U.S. law. We never made any agreement, and the project never went anywhere. I never contacted any U.S. officials on behalf of Chadbourne or its clients and never had any contact with Chadbourne’s clients.”
More: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/trump-fundraiser-offered-to-help-lift-sanctions-on-russian-firms
Trump Fundraiser Offered to Help Lift Sanctions on Russian Firms
Source: Bloomberg
*Elliott Broidy proposed work for clients of Moscow lawyer
*Pre-inauguration discussions didn’t lead to Broidy’s hiring
Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump, offered last year to help a Moscow-based lawyer get Russian companies removed from a U.S. sanctions list.
Broidy made the offer after an inquiry from Andrei Baev, an energy lawyer at Chadbourne & Parke LLP, both men acknowledged in statements to Bloomberg News this week. In a proposal sent to Baev shortly before Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, Broidy sketched out a potential campaign to influence top U.S. officials, according to a person with knowledge of the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The plan never went forward, Broidy and Baev said, and no such lobbying took place. But the discussions are a striking illustration of how Russians’ efforts to escape sanctions led them to seek political allies close to Trump. Broidy, a Los Angeles money manager and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a written statement to Bloomberg that he didn’t offer to “personally” set up meetings with top U.S. officials for Baev’s clients. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“From the beginning I made it clear that while I would consider trying to help the firm build a team and to put them in touch with some experts, I am not a lobbyist and didn’t plan on becoming one,” Broidy said in a statement. “I also made clear from the beginning that any arrangement we reached would need to be in full compliance with U.S. law. We never made any agreement, and the project never went anywhere. I never contacted any U.S. officials on behalf of Chadbourne or its clients and never had any contact with Chadbourne’s clients.”
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/trump-fundraiser-offered-to-help-lift-sanctions-on-russian-firms
Reminder: The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC tied to @SpeakerRyan, used the stolen info
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC tied to @SpeakerRyan, used the stolen info from Guccifer 2.0 in attack ads against Dems.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-alleged-russian-hacker-teamed-up-with-florida-gop-operative-1495724787
https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/946200518539579392
"Nevins also received from Guccifer internal details re congressional districts in KY, PA, TX, VA, & WV. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely tied to Paul Ryan, used the stolen info in attack ads against Dems."
Recall @NancyPelosi Aug 2016 memo to Paul Ryan: NRCC's use of docs stolen by Russians plays into the hands of US' most dangerous adversary...makes the @GOP complicit in aiding RU gov't in its effort to influence US elections. Ryan did not reply.
https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/946213579006595072
Actives Measures
Actives Measures film trailer
https://twitter.com/TrickFreee/status/976793478431559680
You know that John Bolton has ties to Cambridge Analytica, right?
If anyone wants links, I'll go huntin'.
"Tillersons Last Policy:... Before his firing, Tillersons State Department had begun to ramp up
https://twitter.com/maddow/status/976932279409930240
No worries about these coincidences.
Facebook gave data of *57 Billion* friendships, suggests trusted partnership btw Kogan/Spectre & fb
You don't have to wonder how Cambridge Analytica is able to work across the world...
Facebook gave data about 57bn friendships to academic
Volume of data suggests trusted partnership with Aleksandr Kogan, says analyst
Before Facebook suspended Aleksandr Kogan from its platform for the data harvesting “scam” at the centre of the unfolding Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media company enjoyed a close enough relationship with the researcher that it provided him with an anonymised, aggregate dataset of 57bn Facebook friendships.
Facebook provided the dataset of “every friendship formed in 2011 in every country in the world at the national aggregate level” to Kogan’s University of Cambridge laboratory for a study on international friendships published in Personality and Individual Differences in 2015. Two Facebook employees were named as co-authors of the study, alongside researchers from Cambridge, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. Kogan was publishing under the name Aleksandr Spectre at the time.
... snip
“The sheer volume of the 57bn friend pairs implies a pre-existing relationship,” said Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. “It’s not common for Facebook to share that kind of data. It suggests a trusted partnership between Aleksandr Kogan/Spectre and Facebook.”
More: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/22/facebook-gave-data-about-57bn-friendships-to-academic-aleksandr-kogan?CMP=share_btn_tw
Nader (in Special Counsel Investigation) has been granted immunity.
Nader has been granted immunity. I can only imagine what kind of info he has!
A cooperating witness in the special counsel investigation worked for more than a year to turn a top Trump fund-raiser into an instrument of influence at the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to interviews and previously undisclosed documents.
Hundreds of pages of correspondence between the two men reveal an active effort to cultivate President Trump on behalf of the two oil-rich Arab monarchies, both close American allies.
High on the agenda of the two men — George Nader, a political adviser to the de facto ruler of the U.A.E.; and Elliott Broidy, the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee — was pushing the White House to remove Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, backing confrontational approaches to Iran and Qatar and repeatedly pressing the president to meet privately outside the White House with the leader of U.A.E.
Mr. Tillerson was fired last week, and the president has adopted tough approaches toward both Iran and Qatar.
...snip
Mr. Nader’s cultivation of Mr. Broidy, laid out in documents provided to The New York Times, provides a case study in the way two Persian Gulf monarchies have sought to gain influence inside the Trump White House. Mr. Nader has been granted immunity in a deal for his cooperation with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to people familiar with the matter, and his relationship with Mr. Broidy may also offer clues to the direction of that inquiry.
More: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/us/politics/george-nader-elliott-broidy-uae-saudi-arabia-white-house-influence.html
Mueller team so far has indicated 4 main areas it wants to ask the President about
Source: CNN
Washington (CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has so far discussed with President Donald Trump's lawyers four main topics they want to talk about with the President.
According to two sources, the areas that the special counsel investigators have indicated they want to pursue with Trump are the President's role in crafting a statement abroad Air Force One that miscast Donald Trump Jr.'s campaign June 2016 meeting with Russians in Trump Tower, the circumstances surrounding that Trump Tower meeting as well as the firings of FBI Director James Comey and national security adviser Michael Flynn.
One of the sources said the bulk of the topics conveyed surround the President's actions with the Comey and Flynn firings.
The topics are not the extent of Mueller's interest, but, based on discussions between the two sides, they represent significant areas of focus so far for a Trump interview.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/21/politics/mueller-four-main-areas-questions-trump/index.html
Profile Information
Member since: Mon Nov 8, 2004, 09:21 PMNumber of posts: 16,420
