435

But the GOP ended the Russia probe last month under the guise that they hadn’t found evidence of collusion-and were confident that no one ever would presumably-as if it’s possible to be confident of that. And now? The GOP has moved on, they’re pushing Jeff Sessions to do more to investigate the damn emails again.

And Sessions is complying-what recusal?

NPR also recently noted that the GOP in shutting down the probe was wagering not only that there is no evidence of collusion today but that there never will be.

UPDATE: Note this premise was absurd then-there was already a good deal of evidence-probable cause to begin the Trump-Russia investigation in the first place-and it’s even more absurd today after we see how much evidence there is just in the redacted Mueller Report-meanwhile between the recent positive court rulings in both the Roger Stone and Michael Flynn cases and the DOJ’s agreement to offer Schiff counterintelligence and foreign intelligence evidence and a much less redacted report we will soon have a lot more information.

End of UPDATE

“Democrats have alternatively fumed about this conclusion and mocked it, including frequent Trump critic Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif.

“They say Nunes and the committee’s GOP majority won’t even ask the questions — of witnesses or by way of documents and other materials — that might result in the answers they don’t want to hear.”

“There have been some indications that members of the House intelligence committee might have a little gambler’s remorse about their play: A few broke from another of Nunes’ conclusions, that the U.S. intelligence community was wrong in assessing that Putin’s active measures were aimed at supporting Trump.”

But if the GOP worried about gambler’s remorse they didn’t have to wait long. Now we do have evidence of collusion. 

That didn’t take long:

“The FBI has found that a business associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, including during the 2016 campaign when Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were in touch with the associate, according to new court filings.”

“The documents, filed late Tuesday by prosecutors for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, also allege that Gates had said he knew the associate was a former officer with the Russian military intelligence service.”

So not just collusion but knowledge of collusion. Richard Gates has a plea deal with Mueller while Manafort continues to refuse to cooperate.

“Prosecutors made the allegation without naming the Manafort associate but described his role with Manafort in detail. The description matches the Russian manager of Manafort’s lobbying office in Kiev, Konstantin Kilimnik.”

“Manafort has acknowledged staying in frequent contact with Kilimnik during the time he worked for Trump’s campaign, including meeting with him in person in May 2016 and again in August 2016, about two weeks before Manafort resigned as Trump’s campaign chairman.”

A Manafort spokesman expressed confidence in June that investigators would ultimately conclude that Manafort’s interactions with Kilimnik were “perfectly permissible and not in furtherance of some conspiracy.”

“The information about the FBI’s assessment of the Manafort associate came in a court filing related to the upcoming sentencing of London attorney Alex van der Zwaan, whose firm worked with Manafort when he served a political consultant in Ukraine.”

“Van der Zwaan, 33, the son-in-law of a prominent Russian-Ukrainian banker, pleaded guilty last month to lying about his September 2016 contacts with Gates and the Manafort associate, identified in court documents only as “Person A.”

“Van der Zwaan’s lawyer is now desperately making the case for leniency in sentencing pointing to his family obligations, etc. But his lie to prosecutors contained ‘pertinent’ information about these conversations with Kilimnik:

“Prosecutors explained that van der Zwaan had lied and withheld documents about information that was “pertinent” to their investigation — that Gates had been in direct contact during the presidential campaign with a person who “has ties to a Russian intelligence services and had such ties in 2016.”

“In November, van der Zwaan testified to the FBI that Gates had informed him that this Manafort associate was a former GRU officer.”

Manafort’s ties to Kilimnik go back years:

“Kilimnik ran Manafort’s office in Kiev during the 10 years he did consulting work there, The Post reported in 2017.”

“During his August 2016 meeting with Kilimnik, Manafort has said he and his longtime Kiev office manager discussed, among other topics, the ongoing campaign, including the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. Stolen DNC emails had been released by WikiLeaks the previous month and the hack was widely suspected to be the work of Russia.

So Manafort admits they discussed the DNC hack-when he was Trump’s campaign manager- but wants us to believe this was totally innocent.

CF: this with other chapters that touch on Manafort and Kilimnik”s August 2. 2016 dinner.

During the campaign Kilimnik also served as Manafort’s liason to: Manafort’s Russian oligarch friend, Oleg Deripaska-who we know Manafort owed millions of dollars to and was hoping to use his position as Trump’s campaign manager to ‘get whole.’

“During Kilimnik’s time working for Manafort in Kiev, he had served as a liaison for Manafort to the Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, with whom Manafort had done business. Emails previously described to The Post show that Manafort asked Kilimnik during the campaign to offer Deripaska “private briefings” about Trump’s effort. A Deripaska spokeswoman has said the billionaire, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was not offered and did not receive such briefings.”

“Kilimnik previously told The Post that he had served for a time in the early 1990s in the Russian army, but he denied intelligence ties.”

Manafort has also denied knowingly communicating with Russian intelligence during the campaign. He told the New York Times last year, however, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’ ”

Manafort was buddies with Kilimnik for 10 years and claims not to know he’s former GRU? Yet:

In any case, you can no longer say ‘There was no collusion…’

UPDATE 2.0 That was in late March 2018. Here in late May of 2019 we can only say it’s gotten more obscene.

Rick Gates is certainly someone we need to continue to watch-he’s still cooperating in several investigations. 

In April it was reported that Manafort told Gates not to plead guilty that Trump’s lawyer would take care of us. 

Manafort told Gates not to plead guilty, said Trump’s lawyer vowed to ‘take care of us’ Manafort said he was told they’d “be taken care of,” but the word pardon was not used.

He didn’t use the word pardon? Sounds like TOTAL EXONERATION to me!

Unless you use the word pardon it’s not a pardon-like if you get paid to commit a murder but the guy doesn’t use the word ‘murder’ it’s not murder.

Of course this is absurd but it’s the way the GOP co-conspirators like Coverup AG Barr have tried to defend ‘President Trump.’

In the recently released Cohen transcripts we had the specter of GOPers trying to argue that Jay Sekulow not ‘President Trump’ directed Cohen to lie-but was it a lie if Sekulow didn’t call it a lie?

Gates is a very important witness in terms of getting at the full breadth and extent of Russian collusion and coordination-his recent status report suggests Trump will be a major focus of the Roger Stone trial in November of this year.

Seth Abramson has argued persuasively that Manafort may well have been the senior Trump campaign official  who was directed to contact Stone to find out what else Assange had on the Democrats after Wikileaks began releasing stolen DNC emails on July 22.

This is logical when you remember Stone and Manafort’s close relationship. In October Bannon was in charge of the campaign-the Campaign Director-and emailed Stone back with the words well done after Wikileaks begun leaking the Podesta emails. Not only was Manafort in charge in July he had a long business relationship and friendship with Roger Stone and Stone took credit for getting Manafort hired as CM.

Despite the no collusion canard it’s clear that there was lots of collusion and lots of coordination and-and honestly conspiracy as well even if Mueller didn’t feel it was established for beyond reasonable doubt-Rick Gates told Mueller all about it.

FN: Regarding conspiracy Trump expressed frustration the campaign wasn’t able to obtain Clinton’s deleted emails. 

End FN.

President Trump’s team strategized about how to take advantage of a WikiLeaks operation against rival Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2016, a campaign adviser told special counsel Robert Mueller.

“[B]y the late summer of 2016, the Trump campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks,” Mueller’s report states.

Attorney General William Barr released a redacted version of the long-awaited report Thursday, noting that Mueller did not find any criminal coordination between the Trump team and WikiLeaks. But, based in part on testimony from Trump campaign strategist Rick Gates, Mueller found that senior members of the campaign and outside allies thought WikiLeaks’ release of damaging emails from Clinton’s campaign would boost Trump’s presidential prospects.”

“Beginning in June 2016, [redacted] forecast to senior Campaign officials that WikiLeaks would release information damaging to candidate Clinton,” the report said.

Much of the supporting evidence is redacted because publication would cause “harm to [an] ongoing matter.” Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone has been charged with obstruction, witness tampering, and lying to Congress about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks during the campaign.

Gates documented for Mueller Manafort’s deep participation in Russia collusion.

Gates testified that then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort “expressed excitement” about WikiLeaks’s release of DNC emails in July 2016. Manafort, who was indicted in 2017 on unrelated fraud charges, “told Gates to keep in touch … about future WikiLeaks releases.”

As noted above Manafort and Kilimnik discussed the DNC hacks in their August 2, 2016 meeting in NYC-how’s this for ‘coincidences’-on that exact same day Jerome Corsi got back to Stone-Wikileaks had Podesta’s emails and would release them in October.

If you presume the quite reasonable hypothesis that Manafort was the ‘Senior campaign official’ who was ‘directed’ by someone likely Trump-then it puts this picture in much higher relief.

Indeed Gates relates an occasion when Trump informed Gates himself that more damaging information from Wikileaks was coming.

The Republican candidate was also on the watch for the new documents. “Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming,” the report says. Mueller ties that prediction to a phone call, but other details about the conversation are redacted. He also points to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s June 2016 statement that he had obtained “emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.”

There’s just no question about it-whatever Mueller’s rationale for not charging conspiracy and he needs to be questioned in great detail about this as it certainly seems that Trump’s quest to work with the Russians to steal Clinton’s emails is a clear case of conspiracy-the Trump campaign and Russia colluded massively to ‘win’ that election.

Indeed, this is why former GOP Congressman Tom Cole has the best reason of all for impeaching ‘President Trump.’

 

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