Friday, April 21, 2017

CNN reports that the Russians used Trump advisers to attempt to infiltrate campaign. I'm sorry, "attempt?"

Courtesy of CNN: 

The FBI gathered intelligence last summer that suggests Russian operatives tried to use Trump advisers, including Carter Page, to infiltrate the Trump campaign, according to US officials. 

The new information adds to the emerging picture of how the Russians tried to influence the 2016 election, not only through email hacks and propaganda but also by trying to infiltrate the Trump orbit. The intelligence led to an investigation into the coordination of Trump's campaign associates and the Russians. 

These officials made clear they don't know whether Page was aware the Russians may have been using him. Because of the way Russian spy services operate, Page could have unknowingly talked with Russian agents.

I have seen a few interviews with this Page guy and it seems likely that he is either a gifted actor able to lie right to your face without raising suspicions, or a complete idiot easily manipulated by just about anybody who spends five minutes talking to the guy.

I would however point out that the report specifically says "advisers" which leads me to think that Page was not their only "useful idiot."

That could mean that Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and perhaps a few others could also have been compromised.

At the end of the article was also this rather interesting nugget: 

Intelligence analysts and FBI investigators who analyzed various strands of intelligence from human sources to electronic and financial records have found signs of possible collusion between the campaign and Russian officials. But there is not enough evidence to show that crimes were committed, US officials say. 

Part of the problem for investigators has been that they lost their opportunity to conduct the investigation in secret after several leaks last year revealed FBI was looking at people close to the Trump campaign. After those reports, people that the US was monitoring changed their behavior, which made it more difficult for US officials to monitor them.

So that means that there likely IS evidence of some collusion between some in the Trump campaign and the Russians, but because those under investigation were made aware that they were under investigation that they may have destroyed data needed to charge them with actual crimes.

That kind of sounds to me as if the FBI knows that the Russians were actually successful in infiltrating the Trump campaign, but just can't prove it yet.  

Of course if the FBI can prove they destroyed evidence after being notified of an investigation that is enough on its own to charge them with a crime.

So fingers crossed.

24 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:08 PM

    Lock um up. Lock um up. Lock um up. LOCK THEM UP.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous5:33 PM

    ...and again I ask, does anyone think that any of them will be brought to justice? There is so much corruption and, with Comey at the helm, maybe I'm jaded but I just don't see it happening.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rachel Maddow just reported on this article, and also focused on that last part.

    She pointed out that even without criminal charges the political fallout from finding collusion could be substantial.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous12:07 AM

      Remember when some asshole was suggesting names for a certain baby back on 10-12-15? Or when he accused her of being "hormonal" on 11-26-15?

      Delete
    2. Anonymous3:22 AM

      @12:07 AM Assholes have mirrors, take a look. Why don't you use your free time to assist Track Palin with his mental problems
      before he kills his family members?

      Delete
    3. Anonymous10:10 AM

      Awww, Gryphen gets called out for sexism and 3:22 is butthurt over it. So sad!

      Delete
    4. Anonymous10:24 AM

      Hahaha oh Gryphen who needs to watch tv when Days of our Lives plays out here.
      322 go get her. Popcorn?

      Delete
  4. Anonymous6:00 PM

    I am so with you regarding the testimony of Carter Page. It confounds me as he seems so naive.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous6:01 PM

    Veteran newsman Carl Bernstein quite simply went off on President Donald Trump’s former communications director Jason Miller on CNN’s “AC360” Friday.

    “Again, there is great evidence to prove that this minnow was pursued by the great sharks in the Trump campaign and by the Russian sharks,” Bernstein said about Miller’s comment that former foreign policy advisor Carter Page had no role in the campaign.

    It was revealed Friday that Russia tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign and use Carter Page as an inside man. Page maintains that he served as a source for U.S. intelligence agencies to report back on what was happening with his communications with Russia. Former CIA agent Phil Mudd called the claim absurd, saying that it’s Page’s “cover.”

    “I want to go to something Jason Miller said about four reporters and anonymous sources, and I don’t want to belabor the example of Watergate, but in Watergate, in the stories we did at The Washington Post and also what the New York Times did, there was not a single quoted source, it was all reporting based on anonymous sources,” Bernstein continued. “Mr. Miller, tell me if indeed I am correct that you have often been an anonymous source, am I correct got that?”

    Miller admitted he had been a source but tried to claim that there was a difference.

    “After eight months of them looking at this, including today’s story, including today’s story, there’s still nothing at the end of it,” Miller claimed. “There’s not one shred of evidence that says that the campaign and any foreign entity–”

    Cooper interrupted saying that it isn’t unusual for a counter-intelligence investigation to go on for a while.

    “Let me tell Mr. Miller something about what is going on,” Bernstein continued. “There is so far, as far as I know, from FBI sources, and sources on Capitol Hill, no there is a serious belief in the FBI, in the congressional committees, in the House and the Senate that there is an active cover-up going on involving trying to keep investigators from finding out what happened in terms of the Trump campaign, Trump associates, near the top of the campaign, and what happened in their associations with Russians.”

    Bernstein went on to say that an “active cover-up” does not necessarily mean “an active obstruction of justice” but it is an active cover-up nonetheless.

    “But, Mr. Miller,” Bernstein continued. “You cannot keep going on with this fiction, that nothing occurred and nothing serious is being investigated. And one of the things that the Congressional committees are very concerned about as is the FBI is that they don’t have the resources to conduct a proper investigation, and the White House is taking advantage of it. There are only seven investigators, many of them part-time, in the Congressional investigation in the House, not many more in the Senate, and it’s a reason why the White House does not want a special prosecutor or a select committee of the House and Senate and why increasingly members of Congress do want it.”

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/there-is-an-active-cover-up-going-on-carl-bernstein-goes-off-on-former-trump-staffer/

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous6:02 PM

    ‘So what? That’s a cover’: Ex-CIA agent calls BS on Carter Page excuse he didn’t collude with Russia

    Former foreign policy advisor to President Donald Trump, Carter Page told CNN that he has been giving information to the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies for years about Russia. However, former CIA agent Phil Mudd called the statement nothing more than an excuse.

    “So what? That’s cover for saying, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong with Russians,'” Mudd told Wolf Blitzer Friday. “The question here is not whether or not you talk to the agency or bureau. The question is: did you not only have conversations with the Russians? Did you do things to influence an election? Day by day, including this reporting today, it’s getting deeper and deeper.”

    Ret. Rear Adm. John Kerby explained that any person, whether they’re in the United States or in Moscow, they are likely being monitored by the U.S. government.

    “When I talked to the KGB, and when I talk to anyone at the Russian embassy, my assumption is they will report anything I say,” Mudd continued. “And if I show a vulnerability — if I have an extra drink, spend an extra dollar, complain about my Visa bill, they will find it and exploit it.”

    It was revealed Friday that Russia sought to infiltrate the Trump campaign and have Page monitor the person.

    Watch the revealing conversation below:

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/so-what-thats-a-cover-ex-cia-agent-calls-bs-on-carter-page-excuse-he-didnt-collude-with-russia/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous6:06 PM

    The Trumpkins Turn on Assange

    The albinoid antipodean publisher of Wikileaks served the Russians and the Trump campaign well. Now? He's expendable.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/21/the-trumpkins-turn-on-assange.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous6:11 PM

    Report: Trump gave $10 million in Russian money to Jason Chaffetz when he leaked FBI letter

    Now that Jason Chaffetz has announced he won’t seek reelection to Congress and has revealed that he may resign early to take a job in the private sector (link), it’s given credence to last week’s report that Russia has been blackmailing Chaffetz and the FBI knows about it. That’s also bolstered by last night’s report that a former Chaffetz staffer has confirmed the FBI investigation. But now comes another report which – if true – helps explain much of what took place during the 2016 presidential election.

    The latest report comes from Lisa Garner from the site Reason and Justice, who claims that the Jason Chaffetz campaign “took $10mil donation from Trump the same day he leaked Comey letter” (link), a claim which Daily Kos is presenting as plausible (link). This may initially sound absurd, and we can’t yet find the claim corroborated elsewhere, but it does fit with some of the other details coming from more proven sources. For instance the former Chaffetz staffer asserts that the FBI is investigating him for “campaign finance fraud” (link). And last week’s report asserted that the “fraud” in question involved Russia (link). Put those together and you have Chaffetz being busted by the FBI for illegally taking Russian money.

    It would also explain why Jason Chaffetz took the risk of leaking James Comey’s letter about Hillary Clinton’s emails on October 28th, a plainly improper move that’s subsequently made him the subject of various ethics inquiries. Chaffetz had been hemming and hawing in his support of Donald Trump all along, and his decision to leak the letter before the election always seemed suspicious. As the chair of the House Oversight Committee, it would seemingly have been more advantageous for Chaffetz to sit on the letter until the day after the election, then use it as an excuse to resume his years of investigations into President Hillary Clinton. But if he had $10 million waving in his face, it’s a different story.

    It’s been pointed out that it would have been completely illegal for Trump to donate $10 million to the Jason Chaffetz campaign. But that’s not an argument against the legitimacy of this premise. It’s actually an argument that bolsters it, as Chaffetz is now under FBI investigation for campaign finance fraud. It’s also notable that Trump made the out-of-character move of donating $10 million of his own money to his campaign, which was announced on October 29th (link) – one day after Chaffetz leaked the Comey letter. Is that the same $10 million that supposedly made its way to Chaffetz? And considering that Trump was allegedly the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars of Russian money laundered through Deutsche Bank (link), did this $10 million flow from Russia to Trump to Chaffetz?

    https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/10-million-chaffetz-trump-russia/2392/

    https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/10-million-chaffetz-trump-russia/2392/

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous6:12 PM

    UK Electoral Commission investigating Brexit leaders for hiring Steve Bannon’s company

    https://www.palmerreport.com/news/brexit-steve-bannon/2393/

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous6:51 PM

    Omg sarah looks like a horse face.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous6:53 PM

    Omg sarah is old and looks like a man. Yeah, caitlyn is right.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous7:01 PM

    "...a complete idiot easily manipulated by just about anybody who spends five minutes talking to the guy."

    I'd say that's a perfectly accurate description of Carter Page



    's boss T.Rump.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous7:18 PM

    May be just me, but this is all the "libtards" fault for calling out? How stupid do you have to be to not see what's right in front of your nose?


    ReplyDelete
  14. More blood on Trump's hands. And gorSUCKS.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/neil-gorsuch-death-penalty-supreme-court_us_58fa193ae4b018a9ce5a99a9?qjk&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

    I guess we know where he stands now, by golly by gosh ah shucks.

    "If Thursday’s rebuff of the Arkansas inmates is any indication, that’s where Gorsuch falls."

    "Harvard law professor Ronald Sullivan filed an amicus brief on Thursday urging the Supreme Court to halt Lee’s execution and go the extra step of ending the “failed experiment” of capital punishment once and for all. In a later statement to The Huffington Post, he deplored the justices’ failure to act in the face of Arkansas’ brazenness.

    “The Court’s role is to vigorously police overzealous exercises of government power,” Sullivan said. “When execution after execution involves not the most culpable people, but those with the most severe impairments and the worst lawyers, the failure to intervene to affirm the basic human dignity that every person deserves becomes culpable.”

    Arkansas’ execution schedule resumes Monday with two planned executions. Four other inmates have won temporary reprieves in state and federal court."

    Arkansas just got redder.

    A state I will NEVER provide any of my tourist dollars, nor if I know about it, spend money on anything grown or manufactured in Arkansas. The absolute unwiped butthole of America.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous1:22 AM

      Lee bludgeoned a neighbor to death, striking her more than 36 times with a tire tool. The victims family and the state have been waiting over 20 years for his debt to be paid for his crime. There is no reason for this piece of shit to have lived this long. He was sentenced for his crime and there is no reason for the sentence to be delayed any further. Foolishness you pin the carrying out of his original sentence for such a brutal murder on a Supreme Court Justice.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous9:25 AM

      So he's going to get 36+ smax with a tire tool, @1:22AM, as some sort of revenge? Isn't that the eye for an eye bullshit you scream about. What is justice?
      Let's return one murder for a state-sanctioned one, shall we? Enlightened civilization, indeed. Yes, this murderer's death-by-state WILL BE THE ONE that brings the loved one back from the dead won't it. Won't it???

      Delete
    3. Anonymous12:24 PM

      Hahaha

      Delete
  15. Anonymous8:40 PM

    OT>
    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/this-march-for-science-is-going-to-be-yuge/

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous9:32 AM

    Carter Page is the love child of Pence's brief but bitter affair with Trey Gowdy.
    FACT.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anonymous5:42 PM

    Stop doing RT's job for them!

    This is the headline they want everyone to see. The real headline should be"

    "Russia now admits election plot, denies Trump knew".

    ReplyDelete

Don't feed the trolls!
It just goes directly to their thighs.