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It’s been argued that Stormy Daniel’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is the one person who knows how to out Trump Trump. He and his client clearly know what they’re doing and have been a real thorn in the side of the so-called President.

Not only has their case against Michael Cohen led to a major criminal investigation in the Southern District of NY and totally unnerved Herr Trump, but now Cohen through his own investigation has uncovered major Russia news. That’s right we’ve achieved convergence between Stormy Daniels and Russia.

 

When the Stormy Daniels story first broke much of the MSM dismissed it as a nothingburger story that wouldn’t last beyond a day or two in the news cycle. I never believed that-I always suspected that if nothing else the hush money payments would be a real problem.

Avenatti didn’t initially include evidence but by the end of the night both NBC and the NY Times had independently corroborated these monies received by Cohen.

“A Russian oligarch’s company paid Michael Cohen hundreds of thousands of dollars after the 2016 election — and special counsel Robert Mueller wants to know why.

“Billionaire Viktor Vekselberg chairs a company called the Renova Group, and a US-based subsidiary of that company sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Cohen, CNN’s Kara Scannell and Shimon Prokupecz reported Tuesday evening, citing sources familiar with the matter.”

“The report, which has since been confirmed by the Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff, Noah Schachtman, and Kate Briquelet, raises some extremely serious questions about just why this oligarch was paying Donald Trump’s personal lawyer large amounts of money.”

“Mueller seems to be asking those questions. When Vekselberg traveled to the United States earlier this year, Mueller’s investigators questioned the billionaire at an airport and searched his electronic devices. The CNN team reports that the payments to Cohen were one subject of Mueller’s questioning. According to the New York Times, a lawyer for the company in question “described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Mr. Vekselberg.”

“There’s another twist. Shortly before the new CNN report went live, Michael Avenatti — the high-profile lawyer who represents Stormy Daniels — claimed on Twitter that he has obtained information about Cohen’s finances. In fact, Avenatti was the first to claim that Vekselberg’s company sent $500,000 to an account controlled by Cohen.”

Avenatti was the first to break the story and other news orgs confirmed it through the night. Meanwhile, as we’ve learned recently, Mueller questioned the Russian oligarch at an airport. Now we know that one subject of Mueller’s questioning were the payments to Cohen.

“The money itself came from “Columbus Nova,” the US-based subsidiary of Vekselberg’s company, which is run by his cousin Andrew Intrater. It was also reported last year that Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration — which raised eyebrows considering that, per a Mother Jones report, he had “no public history as a major political funder.”

“Could this money be connected to Russian collusion in some way? Or is it instead some sort of side hustle from Cohen that doesn’t implicate President Trump at all? The implications of all this aren’t entirely clear. But the new reports raise many more questions.”

Well we know that Vekselberg is a person of interest for Mueller; and now we know about Cohen’s payments from his company so it’s quite plausible there’s a connection.

Avenatti also describes many other payments he said came to or from Cohen’s account.

Enter ‘Project Sunlight’:

“Avenatti’s information doesn’t end there, though. On Tuesday, he posted a seven-page PDF document from what he calls “Project Sunlight,” listing what he claims is other information about transactions from bank accounts controlled by Cohen.”

“To recap: It’s been well-documented that in October 2016, Cohen set up a shell company called “Essential Consultants LLC,” which he used to send $130,000 in hush money meant for Stormy Daniels.”

Now, though, Avenatti says he’s learned more about this and other accounts controlled by Cohen. His major claims include:

1) The Viktor Vekselberg company money: Avenatti says that between January and August 2017, Cohen was sent a total of about $500,000 over eight payments from Columbus Nova LLC, which is the US investment arm of Vekselberg’s company the Renova Group.

2) Novartis money: Avenatti says that between October 2017 and January 2018, Novartis sent $399,920 over four payments to the Essential Consultants account.

3) AT&T money: Avenatti says that AT&T sent Essential Consultants $200,000 over four payments, again between October 2017 and January 2018. (AT&T has confirmed making the payments.)

4) Korea Aerospace Industries money: Avenatti says this company sent Cohen $150,000 in November 2017.

5) Elliott Broidy’s money: Broidy, a former RNC fundraiser close to the White House, sent at least $187,500 to Cohen’s accounts, according to Avenatti. Reports quoting anonymous sources have previously suggested that Cohen was making sex scandal hush money payments on Broidy’s behalf.

So was all this part of a slush fund to bail Herr Trump out of his endless jams? As Rachel Maddow puts it, watch this space. 

Yes, Avenatti himself went on to have quite a fall in public standing-Chapter A for more. But the information he sent here about payments
Cohen received was accurate.

As noted in Chapter A the one Dossier claim that has been conclusively falsified is the idea that Cohen paid Russian hackers-or more generally was the point person on Russian Collusion-post the Mueller Report-it’s now undeniable that was Paul Manafort; as for paying hackers we have the late GOP operative Peter Smith.

As for the money from Viktor Vekselberg it appears it was intended to fund the pro Russia Ukrainian ‘peace plan’ that Cohen and Felix Sater were involved with-along with Steve Bannon and Erik Prince.

Certainly with the burgeoning Ukraine if you’re listening scandal that appears to be the straw that finally is leading to Trump’s impeachment this Russian tilted peace plan is newly relevant-against the idea that Ukraine if you’re listening should be treated in a vacuum without reference to Russia if you’re listening-beyond the fact that Ukrainian Extortion is just the logical sequel to Russian Collusion what stands out is how much Trump’s badgering of Ukraine has served Russian interests-denial of military aid approved by Congress a rolling back of the relationship between us the Ukraine, etc.

One of the first areas of investigation for Mueller was Cohen’s relationship to Vekselberg:

“The revelation that Robert Mueller subpoenaed a bit player in the Trump-Russia melodrama, Andrii Artemenko, to appear before a Virginia grand jury last month went largely unnoticed. But among careful observers of the escalating F.B.I. probe, the development was significant. Artemenko, after all, is the Ukrainian politician who worked alongside Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, and Felix Sater, a Russian-born real-estate developer with ties to both Trump and organized crime, to hand-deliver a Kremlin-approved peace plan to former national security adviser Mike Flynn shortly after the inauguration. “What this is is another strand. It’s another person who I believe the investigators suspect is, or has been in the past, acting as a de facto agent for the Russian government, having significant policy political communications with the Trump organization,” Patrick Cotter, a former assistant U.S. Attorney and longtime white-collar defense attorney, told me at the time. Trump biographer Tim O’Brien suggested that Artemenko’s entanglement in the Mueller probe signaled that the special counsel might be “trying to look for quid pro quos that involve the exchange of either business favors or money to people in Trump’s orbit, or Trump himself, in exchange for policy shifts.”

Clearly Trump’s denial of aid and extortion-and the overall reducing our relationship with Ukraine to a pecuniary one is a major pro Russian policy shift.

In May,, soon after the release of the Mueller Report, it was revealed that Mueller investigated Cohen’s relationship to Viktor Vekselberg’s cousin.

President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, communicated more than 1,000 times by text and telephone over eight months with the chief executive of a U.S. money-management firm with ties to a Russian oligarch, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office determined in the summer of 2017.

Five search warrants filed by Mueller’s office starting that July were unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., detailing some of the early suspicions of Mueller’s investigators. Exchanges between Cohen and Andrew Intrater, the chief executive officer of Columbus Nova LLC, began on the day of Donald Trump’s election, according to a warrant filed in Washington on Aug. 7, 2017.

The government was looking into whether payments from Columbus Nova to Cohen were connected to a plan to give then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn a proposal to lift sanctions on Russia, according to the filing. Mueller didn’t bring any charges related to that inquiry.

“Telephone records related to Cohen’s cellular telephone show that on or about Nov. 8, 2016, the day of the presidential election, a telephone registered to Cohen exchanged the first in a series of text messages with the CEO of Columbus Nova,” according to one warrant seeking Cohen’s electronic communications. The two exchanged 230 phone calls and 950 text messages, it said.

Citing public records and news reports, the government said Columbus Nova is an investment management firm controlled by Renova Group, which is itself controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, a wealthy Russian citizen. Intrater, an American, is a cousin of Vekselberg.

Again then Cohen was important not to the collusion part of Russian Collusion but the quid pro quo part. Again this is something of no little interest today more than ever post the exploding of Ukraine if you’re listening. In July, Mueller revealed to Adam Schiff’s HSPCI Committee that there is an ongoing FBI  counterintelligence investigation into the question of wether Trump himself is a national security threat.

Everyday now 50 new stories break that scream yes. And this side of it-the quid pro quo, what Russia got for rigging our election for Trump got out of it-was where Cohen was involved.

At this point the amount of benefit Russia derived from their Manchurian ‘President’ is truly immense.

The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces told a senior US diplomat, “You are leaving us to be slaughtered,” demanding to know whether the US is going to do anything to protect Syrian Kurds as Turkey continues its military operation targeting America’s Kurdish allies in Syria.

“You have given up on us. You are leaving us to be slaughtered,” Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi told the Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, William Roebuck, in a meeting Thursday, according to an internal US government readout that has been obtained exclusively by CNN.

“You are not willing to protect the people, but you do not want another force to come and protect us. You have sold us. This is immoral,” Mazloum added.

He insisted the US either help stop the Turkish attack or allow the Syrian Democratic Forces to strike a deal with the Assad regime in Damascus and their Russian backers, allowing Russian warplanes to enforce a no-fly zone over northeast Syria, thereby denying Turkey the ability to carry out airstrikes. The US does not want the Kurds turning to the Russians, administration officials say.

Not only is this a major boon to Turkey and not only has it demoralized our own military-they now have to watch their own Kurdish allies get slaughtered but the Kurds will be forced into the arms of Putin.

The same thing occurred with the Ukraine with Trump’s refusal to defend this huge and hugely strategic country, they have now agreed to  elections in the Russian separatist part of the country.

If you want to imagine what a national security threat might look like imagine a time in the near future where the Russians gain control over Ukraine’s massive oil supply and now have the power to extort our European allies.

 

 

 

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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