Tag: Wikileaks

Here are 7 damning revelations from the new Senate report on Trump and Russia

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Long after any debate about whether President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia’s 2016 election interference might lead to his impeachment had fizzled out, the Senate Intelligence Committee dropped a bomb of a report on Tuesday including explosive new details of the sordid affair.

While the new report doesn’t completely upend the story of the 2016 campaign as we knew it — much of the outline of the conduct was contained in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and previous news articles — it highlights new details and facts that emphasize the duplicity going on behind the scenes. It completely undermines the notion, pushed by the president and attorney general, that there was no basis for the investigation and shows there is ample evidence for what was once widely discussed as “collusion.” And this is particularly significant because the report was developed by a committee led by Republicans — they can’t be painted as enemies of the president, as Mueller’s team was.

Here are seven of the most striking details from the new report: Continue reading.

Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds

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President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.

In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.

It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated. Continue reading.

Senate report finds Manafort passed campaign data to Russian intelligence officer

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The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released the fifth and final volume of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which details “counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities.”

Why it matters: The bipartisan, 996-page report goes further than the Mueller report in showing the extent of Russia’s connections to members of the Trump campaign, and how the Kremlin was able to take advantage of the transition team’s inexperience to gain access to sensitive information.

Highlights

Paul Manafort: The report found that the former Trump campaign chairman began working on influence operations for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs in 2004. Continue reading.

Roger Stone Is A Wise Guy — So Treat Him Like One

Even amid the endless torrent of malevolent incompetence that characterizes the Boss Trump regime, some days stand out. One such was his Friday night commutation of career lowlife Roger Stone’s 40-month sentence for lying to Congress, obstructing a congressional investigation, and witness tampering. The federal judge who handed it down described Stone’s crimes as “covering up for the president.”

Specifically, he obstructed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In the immediate aftermath, Stone bragged to veteran journalist Howard Fineman about why he lied and who he was protecting. “He [Trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”

Turn on him, that is, by fully describing his own and Trump’s conversations about Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign when Julian Assange served as a cat’s paw for Russian intelligence by publishing the Democratic National Committee’s stolen emails. Trump testified that he has no memory of talking with Stone about it, although two witnesses overheard them. He also swore that his son Donald, Jr. never told him about meeting Kremlin operatives promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in Trump Tower. Continue reading.

Roger Stone joins the remarkable universe of criminality surrounding President Trump

Washington Post logoOn Friday, President Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone was found guilty on seven criminal charges related to testimony he gave to Congress as part of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Those charges included five counts of offering false statements, one of obstruction and one of witness tampering. Stone is scheduled to be sentenced early next year.

Stone was with Trump at the very beginning of the president’s time in politics. In fact, Stone long pushed Trump to enter into the political world, encouraging him repeatedly to announce presidential bids in previous cycles. He was sidelined during Trump’s 2016 run after either quitting or being fired; as with many things related to Stone, details are murky.

Friday’s convictions seem to bring to an end the high-profile criminal probes stemming from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The convictions also contribute to a truly remarkable universe of admitted, proved or alleged criminal behavior involving people linked to Trump.

View the complete November 15 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Roger Stone’s defense: MAGA, God and Donald Trump

As a legal strategy, it caught many by surprise. As a political play, it might be perfectly tailored for another audience — MAGA-ites and the president himself.

For once, Roger Stone is letting others do the talking.

The political provocateur has spent decades verbally sparring with almost anyone who is willing to engage. But as his trial over lying to Congress and tampering with a witness nears its end, Stone has left his defense in the hands of external factors: lawyers, God, the race card, a coterie of MAGA-world figures and, if all else fails, President Donald Trump.

Given the chance to tell his side of the story, Stone chose not to take the witness stand. Given the opportunity to call witnesses, his attorneys opted instead to simply play portions of the congressional testimony in question.

View the complete November 13 article by Darren Samuelsohn and Josh Gerstein on the Politico website here.

Roger Stone Trial Testimony Ends With Talk of Outreach to Jared Kushner

WASHINGTON — Testimony in the colorful trial of Roger Stone — featuring talk of dognapping and Godfather references — wrapped up Tuesday with a top Trump campaign official telling jurors that Stone tried to contact Jared Kushner to “debrief” him about hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

While Stone’s trial in Washington didn’t produce the bombshells about President Donald Trump that some expected, the testimony over the last week reinforced that those at the highest ranks of the Trump campaign were eager to gather information about WikiLeaks’ plan to release the damaging emails and saw Stone — who had repeatedly inferred he had inside information about those plans — as the best person to gather that intelligence.

Stone, a longtime Trump friend and ally, is charged with witness tampering and lying to Congress about his attempts to contact WikiLeaks about the damaging material during the 2016 presidential campaign.

View the complete November 12 article on the Time website here.

Roger Stone trial: Former top Trump official details campaign’s dealings on WikiLeaks, and suggests Trump was in the know

Washington Post logoRoger Stone was the linchpin of a months-long effort by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to discover damaging information on Hillary Clinton to be released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, an effort that began before the hack of Democratic emails was publicly known, Stone’s trial has shown.

Testimony over four days ending Tuesday also revealed engagement by Trump and top aides in making use of Stone’s claims that he knew emails detrimental to Clinton’s campaign would be released.

The trial in federal court in Washington turns on accusations that Stone lied to Congress about his attempts to learn more about what WikiLeaks would publish and when it would do so. But some testimony also raises questions about the president’s written assertions under oath that he did not recall being aware of communications between Stone and WikiLeaks or recall any conversations about WikiLeaks between Stone and members of his campaign.

View the complete November 12 article by Spencer S. Hsu, Rachel Weiner and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.

Bannon testifies that Trump campaign saw Stone as link to WikiLeaks

The Hill logoStephen Bannon, President Trump‘s former White House adviser and campaign CEO, testified in court on Friday that the campaign saw Roger Stone as a potential intermediary with WikiLeaks.

“I think it was generally believed that the access point or potential access point to WikiLeaks was Roger Stone,” Bannon testified at Stone’s criminal trial.

“I was led to believe he had a relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange,” he added, referring to the site’s founder.

View the complete November 8 article by Harper Neidig on The Washington Post website here.

‘The truth looked bad for Donald Trump’: Here are 5 stunning moments from the first day of Roger Stone’s trial

AlterNet logoRoger Stone, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, finally faced a jury of his peers on Wednesday as the first full day of his trial began.

He stands accused of lying to Congress, obstructing Congress, and witness tampering in the course of the Russia investigation. Stone, who has spent a career billing himself as a political “dirty trickster” and is known for, among other things, proudly showing off a Richard Nixon tattoo on his back, denies the allegations.

But the U.S. Justice Department maintains it has substantial documentary evidence to prove its allegations, and it began to make its case to the jury on Wednesday, some of which had already been laid out in Stone’s indictment.

View the complete November 7 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.