613

Let’s hear it for Seth Abramson who has done yeoman’s work on Russia-AND on the FBI’s Trumplandia Conspiracy the last 16 months. With all the rightful focus on Russia, many have neglected Comeygate but not Abramson.

UPDATE: We still have heard nothing regarding this part of the IG investigation that begun in January, 2017. Jerrold Nadler had stated previously that he was interested investigating the leaks of the rogue anti Clinton pro Trump agents at the FBI but haven’t heard him speak of it since the Democrats took over in January, 2019 and the IG-which was so quick to investigate and report about the texts and Lisa Page and Peter Strozk and the report used as the pretext to fire Andy McCabe still has yet to show us anything from that aspect of the FBI investigation. Again it’s been two years.

While I get there’s a lot on Nadler’s plate he ought to at a minimum demand that both the FBI and IG let him know the status of these investigations. But the bigger picture is that the larger scandal of Comeygate has been buried-by the MSM, by the IG and it’s part of the bigger Conspiracy to inappropriately influence and rig an election that I call Waterate 2.0 aka Stupid Watergate.

In Chapter A I look at Chuck Todd’s canard that there’s no simple soundbite explanation of what all the Russia and assorted other Trump investigations are about-which, of course, couldn’t be more wrong. The simple soundbite explanation is this is about a coordinated and widespread attempt by Trump and his GOP co-conspirators to improperly influence  and rig a Presidential election-and a number of Congressional elections-and the resulting legitimacy crisis, the resulting Constitutional crisis we’ve been living in the last two plus years.

And as Laurence Tribe says, Trump’s obtaining his Office by corrupt and/or illegal conduct is in itself an impeachable offense.

Indeed, I would argue this is the most impeachable offense you can have, it’s foundational even more corruption in Office that someone at least legitimately won. This is why the talk about ‘overturning an election’ in Trump’s case is somewhat ironic-ok but what if the election manipulated and rigged in the first place?

Regarding Trumplandia, Comey himself acknowledged it in his Senate testimony last June after Trump fired him when he revealed there was an investigation into wether Giuliani and others leaked information to force the Comey letter.

In the latest. Abramson’s excellent work on Papadopoulos has been picked up by Buzzfeed. As we know, while the recent misleading Nunes’ memo attempted to make heavy weather of the fact that the Steele dossier was partially funded by Democrats-as if that says anything about its truth or falsehood-in its last paragraph it had to admit that the  initial start  of the Russia investigation had nothing to with the Steele dossier which the FBI didn’t know of yet but because of the alarming statements and boasts Papadopoulos made to Australia’s top diplomat-that Russia had thousands of emails damaging to Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE: Although as John Schindler points out, the etymology of the Russia investigation didn’t begin with the Coffee Boy either-it was all the signals intelligence of the NSA and it’s allies in the Five Eyes-as well as France, Germany, the Dutch-Chapter A-et al.

Speaking of which, it turns out that Papadopoulos-who Trump and friends tried to dismiss as a volunteer-everyone that worked for his campaign was called a volunteer-had more than one worrisome conversation. Our European allies intel picked up conversations Papadopoulos had with another key Putin ally:

The equivalents between Nixon and Trump are too many to enumerate in one sit in-after all both Watergate and Watergate 2.0 center largely around a break-in to the DNC to steal oppo.

FN: Though, of course, while John Oliver rightly calls Watergate 2.0-Stupid Watergate-the fact is that this cyber break in to the DNC was much more successful the kinetic original that was a Keystone Cops operation.

Trump fired Comey, Nixon fired Archibald Cox-and tried to get his own flunky in at the FBI-Pat Gray who had destroyed Watergate evidence for old Tricky Dick.

Here is yet another parallel-Nixon also had ties to compromised Greek oligarchs and officials. 

Similarly the Trump campaign had ties to Kammenous:

“European counterintelligence officers say Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos’s meetings with Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos before and after the election should alarm US investigators. And Papadopoulos isn’t the only official he managed meetings with.”

“When Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, attention fell on his meetings with a mysterious Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud, who, according to court documents, told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton emails — nearly two months before the Democrats themselves knew that their computers had been hacked.”

“But European security officials say another set of meetings Papadopoulos held in Europe in the months before and after the 2016 election should alarm US investigators. That’s because the person with whom he met, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, is known to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin — a relationship that goes beyond Greece’s traditional ties to Russia through the Eastern Orthodox Church and a growing relationship brought on by Greece’s economic collapse.”

Trump’s claim that he’s just a coffee boy doesn’t pass the laugh test: what coffee boy meets with foreign dignitaries on the part of a just elected US Presidential transition?

“Like much of the Greek economic and security establishment, the Ministry of Defense is considered compromised by Russian intelligence,” said one NATO military intelligence officer, who like the others in this story declined to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of his work. “Specifically, we have been officially warned against briefing Greek ministry representatives about sensitive intelligence operations involving the Russians” because of concerns about his apparent links to their intelligence services.

What Papadopoulos discussed with Kammenos is not publicly known-though Mueller may well know as Papadopoulos is a cooperating witness in exchange for his plea bargain.

“But the concerns of the European security officers are a reminder that the US government’s interest in contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russia began as a counterintelligence probe, with Obama-era CIA director John Brennan stressing that such contacts might have been unwitting. The Russians “try to get individuals, including US persons, to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly,” Brennan told Congress last May in testimony explaining how the counterintelligence investigation began.”

Indeed, a counterintelligence probe with much of the intelligence coming from our European allies. Again, the dossier only showed up later.

Nor was Papadopoulos the only member of Team Trump to meet with the Putin friendly Greek Defense Minister: Kammenos also showed up at social events during the Trump inauguration talking to among whoever else, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus.

“Papadopoulos also was not the only Trump-connected figure who met Kammenos. Over the weekend of Trump’s inauguration, Kammenos was photographed at social events talking with incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus and Trump political adviser Steve Bannon. That was in contrast to Kammenos’s visit to Washington in 2015, when President Barack Obama’s secretary of defense, Ash Carter, canceled an already scheduled meeting with him. Photographs showing Priebus and Bannon with Kammenos were distributed by the Greek Defense Ministry.”

“How substantive those encounters — widely reported in Greece at the time — were is unclear. The Greek Defense Ministry portrayed them as private meetings where Kammenos discussed Greek foreign policy goals, and photos of Kammenos and Priebus, shot on Jan. 19 and Jan. 21, 2017, appear to show the two in intense conversation. Priebus declined to comment.”

Well, of course, who shows up at whose social events can in itself be ‘substantive’ in implication. In any case, Bannon, at least was in the loop regarding Papadopoulos’ convos with Kammenos:

“But Bannon possibly knew who Kammenos was when he encountered him on Jan. 21. A month earlier, Papadopoulos had sent emails to Bannon and Michael Flynn, Trump’s designated national security adviser, describing his contacts with Kammenos, according to a report in the Washington Post. Those emails were sent in the same month Kammenos and Papadopoulos dined together at a restaurant in Piraeus, a port city outside Athens.”

“According to the Post, Papadopoulos’s email said Greece wanted “to sign a government-to-government agreement with the USA for all rights to all energy fields offshore, strategic foothold in the Mediterranean and Balkans.” Bannon forwarded the email to Flynn and Flynn’s deputy, K.T. McFarland. Later that month, the Post reported, Flynn emailed Papadopoulos, urging him to “stay in touch, and, at some point, we should get together.”

“Greek political observers say it’s no surprise that Papadopoulos, a Greek-American whose parents are from Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, would be greeted warmly once word was out in March 2016 that he was a foreign policy adviser to a US presidential candidate.”

“By the time he met with a Greek journalist on May 27, 2016, the 10th day of a visit to Greece that Papadopoulos documented on social media, Papadopoulos had already met with Kammenos, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, and Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, the journalist, Marianna Kakaounaki of Kathimerini, a newspaper in Athens, told BuzzFeed News. By May 31, Papadopoulos was posting photos of the meetings to social media.”

“The president of Greece is a mostly ceremonial position, and it’s not much for a prominent Greek-American to get a meeting,” according to one Greek government official who asked not to be identified discussing internal political issues.

However, Papadopoulos’ meeting with the defense minister raised a lot more eyebrows:

But Papadopoulos’s meeting with Kammenos was more of an oddity, the official said. “To a Greek, Papadopoulos meeting with Kammenos is a bit of an eyeroll because he’s seen as a bit of a clownish figure with close ties to the Russians,” the official said of the defense minister.

“To EU security officials, it was alarming. At a minimum, they said, it showed the Trump campaign was naive in allowing a representative to meet with him.”

At best naive. This remains Team Trump’s best defense: we’re too incompetent to have colluded with Russia-as if for the Russians this is not a feature not a bug.

“Trump has called him a ‘coffee boy’ or something like it but that doesn’t matter,” said a Central European counterintelligence official, speaking of Papadopoulos.

Then he explained why: “Either they knew officials were meeting with a [Ministry of Defense] in Athens that has a big black mark next to it due to Russian infiltration, or they didn’t know what meetings were being taken.”

Exactly-the second scenario is more unlikely but even if so, isn’t really much better.

And the contacts of the alleged coffee boy with Greece’s Putin leaning defense minister continued right through the inauguration:

“And Papadopoulos’s contacts with Kammenos didn’t end with Trump’s election. Papadopoulos met again with Kammenos in December, an encounter that was documented in a photo posted on social media.”

“The two were also together on Jan. 19, 2017 — the day before Trump’s inauguration — at a reception at Washington’s St. Regis Hotel after a ceremony where the highest-ranking Greek Orthodox Church cleric, Archbishop Demetrios of America, presented the church’s Medal of St. Paul to incoming chief of staff Priebus, longtime Trump aide and incoming White House scheduling and advance director George Gigicos, and Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis, all prominent Greek-Americans.”

“A video posted by a Greek journalist at the event, which was hosted by the Hellenic Initiative, a Greek nonprofit, shows Kammenos, the highest-ranking Greek official in Washington for the inauguration, congratulating and embracing Priebus. He also presented Priebus with a gift plaque.”

“Two days later, Priebus and Kammenos were photographed together on the roof of the Hay–Adams Hotel near the White House. The photo was posted on the Greek Defense Ministry website and widely shared in Greek media reports, which cited a private meeting in which Kammenos briefed Priebus on Greek policy issues.”

“The event where the two met was a reception held to celebrate Priebus’s wife’s baptism in the Greek Orthodox Church, according to Stavros Papagermanos, a press officer for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, was also photographed at the reception with Kammenos.”

For his own part, Kammenous has never been shy about his affection for Russian dictator Putin:

When Putin visited Athens in May 2016, at the same time Papadopoulos was there, Kammenos greeted him at the airport in Russian. “He would have been a very friendly face to the Russians,” said a Greek opposition member of parliament, who like all Greek officials interviewed for this story requested anonymity when talking about domestic politics.

“Since he became defense minister in 2015, Kammenos has promoted closer military ties with Russia. He announced a program in June 2016 to begin production in Greece of Kalashnikov-style weapons under license from Russia. He has also repeatedly criticized European Union and US sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine.”

“Greece is a member of NATO and the EU, and my message to these organizations is that we need to work together with Russia and do everything possible to lift the embargo, which has been a disaster both for Russia and the EU. Greece is prepared to act as a go-between to make this happen,” Kammenos said of the sanctions to Sputnik News, a state-owned Russian news agency, on April 17, 2015.

So you don’t have to go out on too much of a limb to surmise that Kammenos was pushing this Putin friendly agenda in his talks with Papadopoulos. Beyond that there is Kammenos’ think tank, Institute of Geopolitical Studies.

“But what worries European counterintelligence officers more than Kammenos’s public positions are the close ties between Kammenos’s think tank, the Institute of Geopolitical Studies, and the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, a Moscow think tank managed by Russia’s foreign intelligence services.”

“The two think tanks have an open partnership that was outlined in an agreement signed in late 2014. The Moscow Times newspaper described the RISS — which was operated by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service until 2009, when it was brought under the control of the president’s office — as a landing spot for retiring Putin loyalists from the intelligence services in April 2017.”

“It’s hard to find a straighter line between Kammenos and Russian intelligence than this arrangement,” said a NATO military intelligence official.

In any case, post election we’ve seen Trump take Russia’s position in Syria, in the Ukraine, in cutting back our role in NATO, and in dismantling the State Department root and branch.

UPDATE: Speaking of Syria Trump has since yanked US troops the proximate cause being Turkish Dictator Erdogan asking him to giving Russia and Assad a free hand. I know some reactive leftists saw that as something to celebrate though notably even Noam Chomsky didn’t agree with it.

Andy McCabe’s recent revelations also make it clear that Russia is who has been advising ‘President Trump’ on North Korea-to such stellar results. 

 

 

 

 

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

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