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CF https://evilsax.pressbooks.com/wp/wp-admin/post.php?post=1351&action=edit

CF: https://evilsax.pressbooks.com/wp/wp-admin/post.php?post=1370&action=edit

CF: Maggie Haberman fails to connect the dots

To really get under his skin ask him about Comeygate.

The June, 9, 2016 meeting gets most of the attention, though, as Seth Abramson is always stressing, it’s arguably Jr’s other collusion meeting that is key for seeing a plan to collude in action-the one he and Erik Prince had on August 3, 2016. 

“Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor.”

“The meeting was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months — past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office, according to several people with knowledge of their encounters.”

“Erik Prince, the private security contractor and the former head of Blackwater, arranged the meeting, which took place on Aug. 3, 2016. The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president. The social media specialist, Joel Zamel, extolled his company’s ability to give an edge to a political campaign; by that time, the firm had already drawn up a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Mr. Trump.”

The subject matter here is much more clearly about a plan to collude-a social media campaign, etc. They expressed eagerness to help Donald Jr’s father win the election. Just as Rob Goldstone had said about all the Russian oligarchs. When Goldstone, in the email to set up the June meeting, said part of the Russian government’s support for your father’s campaign, this was not the first time he’d made it clear that Russia wanted to help your father win. As we saw in (Chapter E)

But this meeting hasn’t garnered nearly as much media attention. Why is that? The reason is pretty clear: the meeting wasn’t with the Russians but with George Nader, who represented the Saudi princes and Zamel-an Israeli social media specialist.

So people have been thrown off because the number signs are off. I myself have been thrown off-though Abramson’s been insisting on its importance since the story broke earlier this year, I never totally took it to heart as I wasn’t seeing the big picture either-because again, this is the Saudis, the Israelis, etc, and not Russia. True, the Seychelles meeting in the UAE in January, 2017 where Bannon’s very good friend, Erik Prince had met with a Russian official in what is believed to have been an attempt to set up a back channel with the Russians got some attention.

“Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter.”

“In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of U.S.-Russia relations.”

“A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.”

Right-that cooperating witness is none other than-George Nader the Saudi emissary-another words MBS’s emissary  who has been in the news so much since the brutal murder of Kashoggi-who set up the Donald Jr’s second collusion meeting at Trump Tower. As we saw above, Nader stated at that collusion meeting the interest MBS and friends had in helping Donald Trump win the 2016 election. It turns out that Nader also organized the Seychelles meeting that Erik Prince pretended to remember so little about.

It turns out that Prince in  his peevish and arrogant performance actually committed perjury.

For more detail regarding Prince’s peevish and arrogant performance see (chapters(x,y, and z) Suffice it to say that he is well named-like both MBS and Jared Kushner-Prince comes across as: a spoiled and arrogant prince.

He certainly got whiny when the subject of Comeygate came up as well as regarding his meeting Bannon before the Seychelles meeting. 

Regarding his perjury, back to the Washington Post:

“George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin, as part of Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.”

“Last year, Prince told lawmakers — and the news media — that his Seychelles meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, was an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates.”

“In his statements, Prince has specifically denied reporting by The Washington Post that said the Seychelles meeting, which took place about a week before Trump’s inauguration, was described by U.S., European and Arab officials as part of an effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and the incoming administration.”

“Prince told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that he did not plan to meet Dmitriev in Seychelles but that once he was there discussing possible business deals with UAE officials, they unexpectedly suggested that he visit the hotel bar and meet Dmitriev.”

Dmitriev  controls Russia’s sovereign investment fund and sits on the board of Putin’s daughter’s company.

FN:

Back to the Post:

“Nader has long served as an adviser to the UAE leadership, and in that role he met more than once with Trump officials, including Stephen K. Bannon and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with the matter. After the Seychelles meeting, Nader visited the White House several times, and met at least once there with Bannon and Kushner, these people said.”

“Nader could not be reached for comment, and his lawyer declined to comment.”

“Nader — and the Seychelles meeting — are also of interest to Mueller’s team as it examines whether any foreign money or assistance fueled the Trump campaign, and how Trump officials during the transition and early days of the administration communicated with foreign officials, particularly Russians.”

Regarding the Seychelles meeting, this is key:

“The UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. Such a concession by Moscow would have been likely to require the easing of U.S. sanctions on Russia, which were imposed for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in 2014, those officials said.”

The thing to keep in mind is that Russian collusion wasn’t only the Russians but also the Saudis-who are in the news now. It should’t be shocking Trump won’t turn on MBS-can you imagine him turning on Putin? But think of MBS as SA’s Putin-as the Saudis as well as the Russians interfered in the election to help Trump our American Presidential election.

The grand bargain between the Trump campaign, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel was for the Trump team to get rid of the sanctions so Russia would make some concessions in Iran-as what the Saudis, UAE, and the Israelis really wanted was a US Administration with a much tougher line on Iran than Obama-or what they imagined would be Hillary Clinton’s.

Regarding the crucial point that MBS is the Saudi Putin see more in (Chapter I).

As noted in (Chapter E) Maggie Haberman in the NY Times did it again recently as they totally missed the bigger picture in their bombshell piece that Rick Gates-who revealed all this in his deal with Mueller-asked for a proposal for fake identities from an Israeli company in 2016.

“A top Trump campaign official requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to interviews and copies of the proposals.”

“The Trump campaign’s interest in the work began as Russians were escalating their effort to aid Donald J. Trump.”

This is huge and it’s a very clear example of a high ranking member of the Trump campaign actively colluding with foreign nationals-in this case an Israeli company. But while Haberman has a huge scoop she fails to put 2 and 2 together and connect the dots.

“Though the Israeli company’s pitches were narrower than Moscow’s interference campaign and appear unconnected, the documents show that a senior Trump aide saw the promise of a disruption effort to swing voters in Mr. Trump’s favor.”

And here she again is played by the Trump loyalists-no wonder she’s something of a Trump whisperer.

Back to Maggie Haberman:

“The campaign official, Rick Gates, sought one proposal to use bogus personas to target and sway 5,000 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention by attacking Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Mr. Trump’s main opponent at the time. Another proposal describes opposition research and “complementary intelligence activities” about Mrs. Clinton and people close to her, according to copies of the proposals obtained by The New York Times and interviews with four people involved in creating the documents.”

A third proposal by the company, Psy-Group, which is staffed by former Israeli intelligence operatives, sketched out a monthslong plan to help Mr. Trump by using social media to help expose or amplify division among rival campaigns and factions. The proposals, part of what Psy-Group called “Project Rome,” used code names to identify the players — Mr. Trump was “Lion” and Mrs. Clinton was “Forest.” Mr. Cruz, who Trump campaign officials feared might lead a revolt over the Republican presidential nomination, was “Bear.”

“There is no evidence that the Trump campaign acted on the proposals, and Mr. Gates ultimately was uninterested in Psy-Group’s work, a person with knowledge of the discussions said, in part because other campaign aides were developing a social media strategy. Psy-Group’s owner, Joel Zamel, did meet in August 2016 with Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s eldest son.”

Again, because it’s the wrong number sign-we think in terms of the Russians, so discount instances where the Trump campaign spoke t-other foreign nationals-it’s easy to not see the larger point.

Scott Stedman who had that big scoop on Aras Agalarov the other day (as detailed in Chapter K0 is right this is not a separate story than Russia collusion. But the important factor here isn’t just that Psy Group is owned by the Russians-though if so it’s significant. The key is that Russia,  the Saudis, the UAE all colluded with Russia and the Trump campaign. It’s what Seth Abramson calls the five nation grand bargain.

 

But the real significance of the story is that it shows that the Trump campaign-in the person of Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, did follow up on Nader’s offer back on August 3,

It was pretty clear previously that collusion happened-that the Trump campaign accepted the offer of Saudi Arabia-why else did Nader pay Zamel $2 million dollars post election-clearly whatever they ended up doing the Trump campaign believed that Zamel had given them some pretty valuable services rendered.

https://twitter.com/Otpor17/status/1049790085670076418

FN: As to differing accounts it’s pretty clear that the more believable account is that they did implement the proposal-how else do you explain the $2 million dollar payment?

So the second Trump Tower collusion meeting more directly discussed actual collusion. Then there were future meetings.

“In the hectic final weeks of the campaign and during the presidential transition, several of Mr. Trump’s advisers drew Mr. Nader close. He met often with Mr. Kushner, Mr. Flynn and Stephen K. Bannon, who took over as campaign chairman after Mr. Manafort resigned amid revelations about his work in Ukraine.”

“In December 2016, Mr. Nader turned again to an internet company linked to Mr. Zamel — WhiteKnight, based in the Philippines — to purchase a presentation demonstrating the impact of social media campaigns on Mr. Trump’s electoral victory. Asked about the purchase, a representative of WhiteKnight said: “WhiteKnight delivers premium research and high-end business development services for prestigious clients around the world. WhiteKnight does not talk about any of its clients.”

“After the inauguration, both Mr. Zamel and Mr. Nader visited the White House, meeting with Mr. Kushner and Mr. Bannon.”

Ironic Bannon talked to Michael Wolff about Kushner’s Russia exposure as he has his own-for much more on Bannon’s exposure see Chapter A.

But again, if you don’t get fooled by different number signs, the elements of collusion are clearly present here.

UPDATE: This meeting in details remains the most damning episode of all in terms of establishing collusion/coordination. While the full details of the Trump Tower Russia Collusion Meeting of June, 9, 2016 remain ambiguous-we still need to get to the bottom of who Aras Agalarov planned the meeting with-it appears to be directly with the Russian Prosecutor General-and the purpose of setting it up-the clear quid pro quo nature of the Trump Tower Saudi UAE Collusion Meeting of August 3, 2016 is much more clear: social media campaign assistance in exchange for what would end up being a $2 million payment to Joel Zamel.

FN: Again not to dismiss the June 9 meeting as  weeks later in June, Rob Goldstone was emailing Dan Scavino-Trump’s aide who is now his social media director-about encouraging him to persuade Trump to publish a page on VK, a Russian social-networking website.

“In the email, Goldstone also mentioned that Trump Jr. and then-campaign chairman Manafort would go along with the idea.”

There remains so much that we still need to learn about the June 9 meeting

But if you want a clear and unambiguous meeting were a clear quid pro it’s the August 3 collusion meeting that led to a multi million dollar payout. Maddow asked the question in June:

It’s an excellent and crucial question that at least the redacted Mueller Report does not answer.

Hopefully we will learn more about the Trump Tower Saudi UAE Collusion meeting in the underlying counterintelligence for the Trump Russia investigation.

Gates has given Mueller a tremendous amount of information-the Mueller Report chronicles what he knows about Manafort and Trump’s pursuit of the Wikileaks email dumps.

Regarding Flynn his sweetheart deal now would seem to be in considerable jeopardy-as he has stopped cooperating and now has new Fox News lawyers. For some reason his attitude started to really change after the Mueller Report.

 

 

 

 

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

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