Mike Flynn’s Treason Tour: Global Russian Propaganda Coordinated With Trump
April 16, 2017 ~ patribotics

Sources linked to the intelligence community say that General Mike Flynn’s trips to Cambridge and across Europe will form a key part of Donald Trump’s impeachment and the prosecutions of dozens of his associates.

According to several sources within the intelligence community, Michael Flynn was co-ordinating, with and for Russian agents, the drafting of messages that Vladimir Putin was using to attack democracy in not only the United States, but across Europe. Furthermore, Flynn was doing this with the full knowledge of the Trump campaign, including Donald Trump himself.

This news directly relates to the data laundering performed by the Alfa Bank server on behalf of Donald Trump and Russia, where, as I reported, the Trump campaign colluded with the hacking of both the DNC and state voter databases.

The Alfa Bank server ‘washed’ that data together to tell Trump where to target it, sources say. But the messages and content with which targets were served was co-ordinated with Russia by General Flynn.

More: https://patribotics.blog/2017/04/16/mike-flynns-treason-tour-global-russian-propaganda-coordinated-with-trump/

Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Said to Have Advised Trump Team
by Keri Geiger
and Michael Riley
April 18, 2017, 5:00 AM EDT

...snip

According to people familiar with his activities, Prince entered Trump Tower through the back, like others who wanted to avoid the media spotlight, and huddled with members of the president-elect’s team to discuss intelligence and security issues. The conversations provide a glimpse of Prince’s relationship with an administration that’s distanced itself from him since the Washington Post reported earlier this month that Prince had met with a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles in January.

That island encounter was the latest in a series of conversations between Trump advisers and Russians that have come to light as U.S. investigators probe allegations that Russia interfered with the presidential election.

snip

Yet over a two to three month period around the election, Prince met several times with top aides as the incoming government took shape, offering ideas on how to fight terror and restructure the country’s major intelligence agencies, according to information provided by five people familiar with the meetings. Among those he conferred with was Flynn, a member of the transition team who joined the administration and was later dismissed, some of the people said. He discussed possible government appointees with people in the private sector, one person said. Prince himself told several people that while he was not offering his advice in any official capacity, his role was significant.

Acela Trip

The meetings occurred in Trump Tower, the administration’s transition office in Washington and elsewhere, according to people familiar with them. In one informal discussion in late November, Prince spoke openly with two members of Trump’s transition team on a train bound from New York to Washington. He boarded the same Acela as Kellyanne Conway and they sat together. Joining the conversation at one point was Kevin Harrington, a longtime associate of Trump adviser Peter Thiel who is now on the National Security Council. They discussed, in broad terms, major changes the incoming administration envisioned for the intelligence community, as recounted by a person on the train who overheard their conversation.

More: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-18/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-said-to-have-advised-trump-team

U.S. May Launch Strike If North Korea Reaches For Nuclear Trigger

by William M. Arkin, Cynthia McFadden, Courtney Kube and Kenzi Abou-Sabe

The U.S. is prepared to launch a preemptive strike with conventional weapons against North Korea should officials become convinced that North Korea is about to follow through with a nuclear weapons test, multiple senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

North Korea has warned that a "big event" is near, and U.S. officials say signs point to a nuclear test that could come as early as this weekend.

The intelligence officials told NBC News that the U.S. has positioned two destroyers capable of shooting Tomahawk cruise missiles in the region, one just 300 miles from the North Korean nuclear test site.

American heavy bombers are also positioned in Guam to attack North Korea should it be necessary, and earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group was being diverted to the area.

Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-may-launch-strike-if-north-korea-reaches-nuclear-n746366

What happened to the Presidential @Transition2017 social media accounts?

...snip

We’ve asked the White House for comment and flagged the issue to the U.S. House Oversight Committee. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

As we understand it, transition records — including digital assets, like GreatAgain.gov and associated social media accounts — are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

From our perspective, however, they’re public records that represent on-the-record, official statements from the President-elect’s incoming administration and should be preserved in the public sphere. We’d expect them to end up in Trump’s presidential library some day, not removed from public view.

We’re alarmed that the @Transition2017 and Facebook accounts have been removed from public view entirely, with no evidence of archiving nor public notice.

We hope that the General Accountability Office includes social media and web

Link: https:/

British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia

Exclusive: GCHQ is said to have alerted US agencies after becoming aware of contacts in 2015

Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

...snip

Instead both US and UK intelligence sources acknowledge that GCHQ played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016.

...snip

One source suggested the official investigation was making progress. “They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion,” the source said. “This is between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia

Paul Manafort May Register as a Foreign Agent
by Tom Winter

A spokesman for Paul Manafort said the former Trump campaign manager has consulted with federal authorities about whether he should register as a foreign agent because of his past political work in Ukraine, and will now take "appropriate steps in response to the guidance."

Asked by NBC News whether that meant Manafort would be registering as a foreign agent, Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni would not say yes or no. He also could not say when the "appropriate steps" would be taken.

Maloni said that Manafort began talking to officials about the advisability of registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act prior to the 2016 presidential election, and "received formal guidance recently from the authorities."

More: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/paul-manafort-may-register-foreign-agent-n745731

KremlinGate and the Limits of Classified Evidence
The FBI’s been investigating possible links between the Kremlin and President Trump for nearly a year—here’s why it’s moving so slowly
By John R. Schindler • 04/12/17 9:30am

...snip

Comey faces a particular problem, little understood by the public or even by most journalists covering KremlinGate. That’s the fact that classified evidence is inadmissible in court, and top-secret information will never be shown to a jury. FBI agents therefore face the uncomfortable difficulty of knowing (from highly classified reports) what was going on—and finding unclassified corroboration if they want to prosecute anybody.

Hence the pressing need to get co-conspirators to “flip” on each other and, even better, coercing confessions from those facing possible prison time. This is the usual FBI modus operandi, and it’s most effective against smaller fish who aren’t eager to take the rap for bigger ones. We can safely assume that the Bureau will lean on former members of Team Trump to get confessions; here the recent ham-handed effort by Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former national security guru, a man with plenty of odd ties to the Kremlin himself, to get immunity in exchange for telling what he knows seems relevant.

Without such cooperation, including confessions from at least some members of Team Trump, the transition of KremlinGate from the investigation phase to prosecution is likely to stall. We don’t know exactly what the FBI knows, but some examples from past counterintelligence cases can illuminate the conundrum the Bureau faces right now.

More here: http://observer.com/2017/04/kremlingate-and-the-limits-of-classified-evidence/