Comey confirms FBI probing if Trump campaign colluded with Russia

[SueEllenRules!]

No one seems to buy Devin Nunes' explanation for why he was at the White House last week
The revelation that the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, was on White House grounds the day before he briefed President Donald Trump on documents related to surveillance of his transition team has fueled speculation that the White House itself was Nunes' source.

• Nunes, who was a member of Trump's transition team, told Fox on Tuesday afternoon that he would "never reveal" the source of the classified documents he obtained, not even to other members of the House Intelligence Committee.
• Nunes on Monday said he had gone to the White House last week to view the documents because Congress didn't have "networked access" to those reports.
• His spokesman later told Business Insider that Nunes had been there to view the documents in a secure compartmented information facility, or SCIF, to "safeguard the proper chain of custody and classification of these documents," but did not respond when asked why an executive branch source would not go directly to Trump, instead of to Nunes, with documents they found suspicious.
• Nunes has insisted that no one from the Trump administration knew he was on White House grounds being briefed on the documents. But national-security experts, Republican and Democratic members of Congress, and White House reporters have said it is highly unlikely Nunes could have gone unnoticed on White House grounds.
• "This is insane," Juliette Kayyem, a CNN national-security analyst and former official at the Department of Homeland Security, told Business Insider on Monday. "You only go to the White House to get briefed by the White House. It's not a meeting point like a McDonald's off the turnpike."
• Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, echoed Kayyem's assessment on Tuesday morning. The White House "is not an internet café," Swalwell told MSNBC. "You can't just walk in and receive classified information."
• Swalwell also wondered why Nunes couldn't have viewed the documents inside an SCIF at the Capitol after consulting with his fellow committee members.
• "If this was done the proper way, they could have brought it over, shared it with both parties of the committee," he said, referencing what he said was the bipartisan nature by which intelligence-committee investigations are typically conducted.
• If you're a member of Congress visiting the White House, "everyone in the building knows that you're there in the building," Swalwell said. "This is what a cover-up to a crime looks like."
• "None of us, Democrat or Republican, on the Senate Intelligence Committee still has any idea what [Nunes is] talking about," Sen. Mark Warner, the committee's ranking Democrat, told reporters on Tuesday. "I don't believe, frankly, the members, Republican or Democrat, on the House committee do either."
• "To come onto these grounds at the White House, you must be authorized," Jeff Zeleny, CNN's senior White House correspondent, said on Tuesday. "Someone invited him in, cleared him in, escorted him in. This White House has made the decision to not say who that was."
• Republican Sen. John McCain agreed that Nunes' move was unusual.
• "I've been around for quite a while, and I've never heard of any such thing," he said on Tuesday morning on CBS.
• White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday that while he didn't know who Nunes spoke to, any conversations the congressman had with a source - assuming that person had security clearance - were "100% legal" and "completely appropriate."
• The day after he went to the White House, Nunes announced in an unexpected press conference that the president and his advisers may have had their communications "incidentally collected" by the intelligence community during the transition period.
• Nunes said the reports he had seen had nothing to do with Russia, which is why he felt comfortable briefing Trump on the matter without first informing the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.
• Schiff joined a growing chorus of Democrats calling for Nunes to recuse himself from the committee's investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, saying in a statement that "none of the committee members - Democrats or Republicans - has seen the relevant documents, now almost a week later."
• "There was no legitimate justification for bringing that information to the White House instead of the committee," Schiff added. "That it also obtained at the White House makes this departure all the more concerning."

https://apple.news/Al350qOm8Q86TBxwD3KqmVQ

 

[SueEllenRules!]

 

[SueEllenRules!]

Sean Spicer: "If the president puts Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that's a Russian connection."

 

[SueEllenRules!]

 

[SueEllenRules!]

Mike Flynn Offers to Testify in Exchange for Immunity
Former national security adviser tells FBI, the House and Senate intelligence committees he’s willing to be interviewed in exchange for deal, officials say.

• WASHINGTON—Mike Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has told the Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional officials investigating the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.
• As an adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and later one of Mr. Trump’s top aides in the White House, Mr. Flynn was privy to some of the most sensitive foreign-policy deliberations of the new administration and was directly involved in discussions about the possible lifting of sanctions on Russia imposed by the Obama administration.
• He has made the offer to the FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committees through his lawyer but has so far found no takers, the officials said.
• Mr. Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, wouldn’t comment on details of his discussions involving Mr. Flynn, but noted he is a decorated Army veteran with a lifetime of public service.
• “General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,” Mr. Kelner said.
• It wasn’t clear if Mr. Flynn had offered to talk about specific aspects of his time working for Mr. Trump, but the fact that he was seeking immunity suggested Mr. Flynn feels he may be in legal jeopardy following his brief stint as the national security adviser, one official said.
• Representatives for the FBI and Senate Intelligence Committee declined to comment. Officials with the House Intelligence Committee didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
• Mr. Flynn was forced to resign after acknowledging that he misled White House officials about the nature of his phone conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the presidential transition.
• Mr. Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, have been scrutinized by the FBI, which is examining whether Trump campaign personnel colluded with Russian officials who are alleged to have interfered with the presidential election, according to current and former U.S. officials. Russia has denied the allegations.
• Mr. Flynn also was paid tens of thousands of dollars by three Russian companies, including the state-sponsored media network RT, for speeches he made shortly before he became a formal adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, according to documents obtained by a congressional oversight committee.
• At a House Intelligence Committee hearing last week, Democratic lawmakers requested a copy of the security-clearance form that Mr. Flynn was required to file before joining Mr. Trump in the White House, to see if he disclosed sources of foreign income.
• And they have asked the Defense Department to investigate whether Mr. Flynn, a retired Army general, violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting money from RT, which U.S. intelligence officials say is part of a state-funded media apparatus, without authorization, according to a letter several Democratic lawmakers sent Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in February.
• Mr. Kelner, Mr. Flynn’s attorney, decried the “unfounded allegations, outrageous claims of treason” and other charges by lawmakers and media commentators.
• “No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch-hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution,” he said.
• Congress and the executive branch have the power to grant immunity from prosecution in exchange for witness testimony or cooperation in an investigation. People granted immunity still can be prosecuted for perjury if they give false information.
• Traditionally, investigators grant immunity when they believe a witness’s information is important to the investigation and might not be able to be obtained otherwise. During the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the FBI granted limited forms of immunity to some of her aides. Mrs. Clinton wasn’t charged in the matter.
• A grant of immunity from Congress would require approval from two-thirds of the congressional committee requesting testimony or a majority vote in the full House or Senate. Congress would then need to notify the attorney general and get the approval of a district court judge.
• Mr. Flynn, 58 years old, also has drawn questions about whether he properly disclosed aspects of his work after he left military service.
• Earlier this month, Mr. Flynn filed registration forms acknowledging he had previously worked as a foreign agent on behalf of Turkish government interests. The Wall Street Journal reported that while serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign, Mr. Flynn met with top Turkish government ministers and discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey, according to former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey, who attended, and others who were briefed on the meeting. The Turkish government has accused the cleric of being behind an attempted coup last year.
• A spokesman for Mr. Flynn disputed the account, saying “at no time did Gen. Flynn discuss any illegal actions, nonjudicial physical removal or any other such activities.”
• Mr. Flynn is one of at least four people associated with the Trump campaign who are part of a wide-ranging counterintelligence investigation by the FBI, according to the current and former U.S. officials.
• The other three—former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former Trump advisers Roger Stone and Carter Page—all have volunteered to speak to the House and Senate committees and haven’t asked for immunity from prosecution, according to the individuals, committee officials and representatives for the individuals.

https://apple.news/A6ZydU2qORNuaR50p9Mj8Lw

 

[SueEllenRules!]

 

[Gabriel Maxwell]

Hehehe... Sing, birdie, sing...

Of course this is the guy who not only led the "Lock Her Up" chants, but also said anyone asking for immunity must have committed a crime. In fact, Trump said so, too. Of course, that's when they were attacking Hillary.

But if they want immunity, poor babies - they're just innocent victims of a political "witch hunt". That's the sound byte they're going with it. It was in Flynn's lawyer's letter as well as Trump's tweet this morning.

Boy, they're beyond despicable.

I hope they'll have enough evidence against him, NOT to grant him immunity. If he's taken part in collusion with the Russians, he should pay the full price for it. Along with each and every one of these traitors.

 

[SueEllenRules!]

Testimony of former FBI Special Agent Clinton Watts to Senate Intelligence Committee: Trump 'has used Russian active measures against his opponents'

 

[SueEllenRules!]

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Oh, Trump will never go to jail. He lies too much.

 

[Zable]

Clinton Watts on what he thinks should be a focus of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation. It comes towards the end of this first video.

(I'm laughing at the outrage of the video poster and some commentators ....wonder who they are. 'Explore The Unexplained' spends his/her time calling Mr Watts 'Watts the Hack' here, there and everywhere. 'Kelly_41m' spends his/her time extolling a list of 'real truth' websites here, there and everywhere; etc.)

Speaking on the opening day of the SIC investigative hearing, Clint Watts also said: "Follow the trail of dead Russians. There's been more dead Russians in the past 3 months that are tied to this investigation who have assets in banks all over the world. They are dropping dead even in Western countries. These are all huge openings to understand how they are funded by the Russian government. I don't have the capability to do that from where I sit but I think that's a huge angle. ..."

MSNBC carried clips of Mr Watts comments at the hearing, including the above statement during a panel interview with him.

I found it all interesting, with the discussion ranging:

* from whether Mr Watts was "at this point, worried or concerned about the potential of collusion between elements of the Trump campaign and Russian Intelligence Services" & "why didn't the Obama administration move more aggressively back last summer when information about what the Russians were doing were beginning to be clear..."

* to "what those in the media should be doing to try and recognise what is going on here" & "incidental intelligence gathering" coupled with the loaded question of whether the 3 National Security staff in the employment of the White House who turned up the information which landed in Mr Devin Nunes's hand had an easy or tough time unearthing it.
​

I get undertones that people think the Commander-in-Chief (Mr Trump) is trustingly using info fed to him by staffers, himself unaware of distortions and falsehoods at the time.

Mr Watts gave the SIC two examples of Mr Trump's election campaign using "Russian Active Measures".

Thinkprogess.org has given the background on those incidences, in a report by Aaron Rupar. https://thinkprogress.org/clinton-w...russia-fake-news-trail-of-bodies-1900e6fde054

(Although I like the "weaponize fake news" bit, I think Mr Rupar writing that "Watts explained how Russia and the Trump campaign team up ..." is twisting what Mr Watts said somewhat.)

Rachel Maddows' interview of Mr Watts goes deeper into one of these incidences, clearly illustrating from the very beginning to end the 'weaponizing' of a piece of fake news.

 

[SueEllenRules!]

The New York Times Op-Ed
Dwindling Odds of Coincidence
We are still not conclusively able to connect the dots on the question of whether there was any coordination or collusion between members of Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russians who interfered in our election to benefit him, but those dots do continue to multiply at an alarming rate.

• First, and we have to keep saying this because this fact keeps getting obscured in the subterfuge of deflection, misdirection and ideological finger-pointing about what has yet to be proven: It is absolutely clear that the Russians did interfere in our election. This is not a debatable issue. This is not fake news. This is not a witch hunt. This happened.
• The investigations, rightly, are seeking to figure out exactly how and to what degree, and those questions obviously depend on knowing more about campaign contacts with Russian meddlers.
• We continue to learn of new contacts between people in Trump’s orbit and Russians during the campaign.
• Last week we learned from The New York Times: “Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, has offered to be interviewed by House and Senate investigators who are examining the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in exchange for immunity from prosecution, according to his lawyer and a congressional official.”
• In a statement, Flynn’s lawyers teased: “General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should circumstances permit.”
• It doesn’t truly surprise me that Flynn would want immunity, although according to his own words, requests for immunity can often signal guilt. I am tantalized by this “story” he has to tell. What does that mean? It feeds the beast of speculation lurching around this administration.
• Also last week The Times reported: “A pair of White House officials helped provide Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.”
• This signals another area of possible collusion — related not only to what happened during the election but also about the independence and impartiality of the investigation into what happened during the election.
• There is something here, but I can’t yet put my finger on what it is.
• But unlike some others, I find no glee in the prospect of something amiss.
• To be sure, Donald Trump is a despicable man and an awful president who deserves whatever he gets. He is crude, a liar, a bully and a cheat. He is vainglorious and vengeful.
• It is not clear to me that America — and indeed the world — can survive a full-term Trump presidency.
• But there are no real winners here, regardless of what the current investigations reveal. Russia has already unveiled an incredible vulnerability in our electoral process — the relatively cheap vehicles of information disclosure and propaganda advancement — and the damage that has already been done to faith in the system will not only be hard to measure, but hard to erase.
• The public and the press’s appetites for prurience far outweigh their appreciation of prudence.
• If coordination or collusion with the Russians by anyone on the Trump campaign is revealed, just as important is the question of “What then?”
• Polls continue to find a strong appetite for the ultimate remedy: Trump’s impeachment. You would get no resistance from me if it ever came to that. But I also understand the order of succession and that, too, gives me pause.
• It moves from the zealot Mike Pence, to the weasel Paul Ryan, to anti-abortion crusader Orrin Hatch, to Rex “Russian Order of Friendship” Tillerson, to the former Hollywood producer Steven Mnuchin, who had to apologize last week for plugging “The Lego Batman Movie,” for which he was an executive producer.
• The list goes on and on.
• Yes, an administration without Trump would be less of an international embarrassment and exceedingly more predictable, but these men have all cozied up to Trump or were picked by him, so there is little daylight among them on policy.
• Then there is the brazenly political, callously calculating school of thought — which is as dangerous as it is interesting — that holds that the severe distaste for sitting-President-Trump will likely be the best liberal motivator for success in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. Following this logic, a crippled Trump is better than a vanquished one.
• At this point this is all conjecture. First we must clear the hurdle of finding out exactly what happened and who was involved. That could take months, if not years.
• We must now decide how to process the mounting suggestions of impropriety.
• The journalistic caution in me keeps having to write that these could all be coincidences, but the journalistic instinct has learned long ago that coincidence is the albino alligator of political reality: It exists, but is exceedingly rare.

https://apple.news/A48xy3D3XRTi7t6-XYO9_xA

 

[SueEllenRules!]

Trump Campaign Associate Carter Page Revealed as Target of Russian Spies
Former Trump foreign policy adviser was unwittingly recruited and cultivated as an asset by Russian spies.

Carter Page, whom Donald Trump cited last year as a possible foreign policy adviser, at a news conference in Moscow on Dec. 12.

• Carter Page, the energy industry consultant who was linked last year to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, is the unnamed man identified in a federal complaint as having met with a Russian intelligence agent four years ago, Page himself revealed on Monday.
• Page confirmed his role in the 2013 FBI investigation to NBC News after ABC News and Buzzfeed identified him as a subject called "Male 1" in a criminal complaint filed in 2015 against Evgeny Buryakov, an undercover agent posing as a Russian bank executive in New York.
• Buryakov was freed from prison last week a few months short of completing a 30-month sentence and was ordered to be deported to Russia.

Former Trump Adviser Duped By Russian Spies

• Page — from whom Trump's transition team disassociated itself earlier this year — said the role he played was to provide "assistance to the U.S. federal investigation." The 2015 complaint doesn't accuse him of spying for Russia or of sharing any sensitive information.
• Page accused the administration of former President Barack Obama of "unmasking" his identity in retribution for his sharp criticism of Obama's policy toward Russia. The "politically-motivated unmasking ... amplified the reputational damage against me," he said.
• The 2015 criminal complaint details a secretly recorded conversation among the three Russians discussing their attempts to recruit Male 1 — that is, Page — on April 8, 2013. The conversation alludes to email messages exchanged between Page and one of the Russians, identified as Victor Podobnyy.
• According to a partial transcript of the conversation included with the complaint, the Russians laughed over how they believed Page had no idea that they were Russian agents.
• About two months later, on June 13, 2013, FBI agents interviewed Page, who said he'd met with Podobnyy at a public energy symposium in January 2013, according to the 26-page complaint.
• Page told the FBI that he gave Podobnyy his business card and shared emails passing along his opinions and general documents about the energy business, according to the complaint.
• Monday night, he expanded on that description, saying he "shared basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents" — simply "a few samples from the far more detailed lectures I was preparing at the time for the students" in a world energy class he taught at New York University.
• In March 2016, Trump named Page, a former Merrill Lynch investment backer, as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign.
• But in January, after Page was identified by The New York Times as being among people the FBI was "examining" for his ties to Russia, White House Press Secretary declared: "Carter Page is an individual the president-elect does not know."
• Separately, Page told MSNBC's Chris Hayes last month that he "may have met, possibly," with Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, during the Republican National Convention last summer.
• NBC News reported last week that Page has volunteered to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in its investigation of alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...er-page-revealed-target-russian-spies-n742356

 

[SueEllenRules!]

FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page
Carter Page was suspected of acting on Russia's behalf.

• The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.
• The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.
• This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.
• Page has not been accused of any crimes, and it is unclear whether the Justice Department might later seek charges against him or others in connection with Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The counterintelligence investigation into Russian efforts to influence U.S. elections began in July, officials have said. Most such investigations don’t result in criminal charges.
• The officials spoke about the court order on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of a counterintelligence probe.
• During an interview with the Washington Post editorial page staff in March 2016, Trump identified Page, who had previously been an investment banker in Moscow, as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks later described Page’s role as “informal.”
• Page has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with the Trump campaign or Russia.
• “This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” Page said in an interview Tuesday. “I have nothing to hide.” He compared surveillance of him to the eavesdropping that the FBI and Justice Department conducted against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
• The White House, FBI and Justice Department declined to comment.
• FBI Director James B. Comey disclosed in public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee last month that the bureau is investigating efforts by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
• Comey said this includes investigating the “nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
• Comey declined to comment during the hearing about any individuals, including Page, who worked in Moscow for Merrill Lynch a decade ago and who has said he invested in Russian energy giant Gazprom. In a letter to Comey in September, Page had said he had sold his Gazprom investment.
• During the hearing last month, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly singled out Page’s contacts in Russia as a cause for concern.
• The judges who rule on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests oversee the nation’s most sensitive national security cases, and their warrants are some of the most closely guarded secrets in the world of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Any FISA application has to be approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI.
• Applications for FISA warrants, Comey said, are often thicker than his wrists, and that thickness represents all the work Justice Department attorneys and FBI agents have to do to convince a judge that such surveillance is appropriate in an investigation.
• The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said.
• Among other things, the application cited contacts that he had with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013, officials said. Those contacts had earlier surfaced in a federal espionage case brought by the Justice Department against another Russian agent. In addition, the application said Page had other contacts with Russian operatives that have not been publicly disclosed, officials said.
• An application for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act need not show evidence of a crime. But the information obtained through the intercepts can be used to open a criminal investigation and may be used in a prosecution.
• The application also showed that the FBI and the Justice Department’s national security division have been seeking since July to determine how broad a network of accomplices Russia enlisted in attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election, the officials said.
• Since the 90-day warrant was first issued, it has been renewed more than once by the FISA court, the officials said.
• In February, Page told “PBS NewsHour” that he was a “junior member of the [Trump] campaign’s foreign policy advisory group.”
• A former Trump campaign adviser said Page submitted policy memos to the campaign and several times asked to be given a meeting with Trump, though his request was never granted. “He was one of the more active ones, in terms of being in touch,” the adviser said.
• The campaign adviser said Page participated in three dinners held for the campaign’s volunteer foreign policy advisers in the spring and summer of 2016, coming from New York to Washington to meet with the group. Although Trump did not attend, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a top Trump confidant who became his attorney general, attended one meeting of the group with Page in late summer, the campaign adviser said.
• Page’s role as an adviser to the Trump campaign drew alarm last year from more-established foreign policy experts in part because of Page’s effusive praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his criticism of U.S. sanctions over Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine.
• In July, Page traveled to Moscow, where he delivered a speech harshly critical of the United States’ policy toward Russia.
• While there, Page allegedly met with Igor Sechin, a Putin confidant and chief executive of the energy company Rosneft, according to a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer and cited at a congressional hearing by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Officials said some of the information in the dossier has been verified by U.S. intelligence agencies, and some of it hasn’t, while other parts are unlikely to ever be proved or disproved.
• On Tuesday, Page dismissed what he called “the dodgy dossier” of false allegations.
• Page has denied such a meeting occurred, saying he has never met Sechin in his life and that he wants to testify before Congress to clear his name. A spokesman for Rosneft told Politico in September that the notion that Page met with Sechin was “absurd.” Page said in September that he briefly met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich during that trip.
• Comey has declined to discuss the details of the Russia probe, but in an appearance last month, he cited the process for getting FISA warrants as proof that the government’s surveillance powers are very carefully used, with significant oversight.
• “It is a pain in the neck to get permission to conduct electronic surveillance in the United States. And that’s good,’’ he told an audience at the University of Texas in Austin.
• Officials have said the FBI and the Justice Department were particularly reluctant to seek FISA warrants of campaign figures during the 2016 presidential race because of concerns that agents would inadvertently eavesdrop on political talk. To obtain a FISA warrant, prosecutors must show that a significant purpose of the warrant is to obtain foreign intelligence information.
• Page is the only American to have had his communications directly targeted with a FISA warrant in 2016 as part of the Russia probe, officials said.
• The FBI routinely obtains FISA warrants to monitor the communications of foreign diplomats in the United States, including the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. The conversations between Kislyak and Michael Flynn, who became Trump’s first national security adviser, were recorded in December. In February, The Washington Post reported that Flynn misled Vice President-elect Mike Pence and others about his discussions with Kislyak, prompting Trump’s decision to fire him.
• In March, Trump made unsubstantiated claims about U.S. surveillance of Trump Tower in New York. Later that month, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a Trump transition official, charged that details about people “associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence value” were “widely disseminated” in intelligence community reporting. He said none of the surveillance was related to Russia. The FISA order on Page is unrelated to either charge.
• Last month, the former director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that U.S. law enforcement agencies did not have any FISA orders to monitor the communications of Trump, either as a candidate or as a president-elect, or his campaign. But Clapper did not address whether there were any FISA warrants targeting Trump associates.
• Three years before Page became an adviser to the Trump campaign, he came to the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents, who learned that Russian spy suspects had sought to use Page as a source for information.
• In that case, one of the Russian suspects, Victor Pobodnyy — who was posing as a diplomat and was later charged by federal prosecutors with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government — was captured on tape in 2013 discussing an effort to get information and documents from Page. That discussion was detailed in a federal complaint filed against another Kremlin agent. The court documents in that spy case only identify Page as “Male 1.’’ Officials familiar with the case said that “Male 1’’ is Page.
• In one secretly recorded conversation, detailed in the complaint, Pobodnyy said Page “wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. Plus he writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language. He flies to Moscow more often than I do. He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up. Maybe he can. I don’t know, but it’s obvious that he wants to earn lots of money.’’
• The same court document says that in June 2013, Page told FBI agents that he met Pobodnyy at an energy symposium in New York, where they exchanged contact information. In subsequent meetings, Page shared with the Russian his outlook on the state of the energy industry, as well as documents about the energy business, according to the court papers.
• In the secret tape, Pobodnyy said he liked the man’s “enthusiasm” but planned to use him to get information and give him little in return. “You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go f--- himself,’’ Pobodnyy said on the tape, according to court papers.
• Page has said the information he provided to the Russians in 2013 was innocuous, describing it as “basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents.” He said he had assisted the prosecutors in their case against Evgeny Buryakov, who was convicted of espionage.

https://apple.news/AmhlIgr5lSp2IJH895iS7QA

 

[SueEllenRules!]

And now a word from the Trump campaign on Carter Page...

 

[SueEllenRules!]

Flynn’s Turkish lobbying linked to Russia
The former national security adviser’s client had business dealings in Russia and worked with an executive in Russian oil companies on Turkish lobbying projects.

• The Turkish man who gave Mike Flynn a $600,000 lobbying deal just before President Donald Trump picked him to be national security adviser has business ties to Russia, including a 2009 aviation financing deal negotiated with Vladimir Putin, according to court records.
• The man, Ekim Alptekin, has in recent years helped to coordinate Turkish lobbying in Washington with Dmitri “David” Zaikin, a Soviet-born former executive in Russian energy and mining companies who also has had dealings with Putin’s government, according to three people with direct knowledge of the activities.
• This unusual arrangement, in which Alptekin and Zaikin have helped steer Turkish lobbying through various groups since at least 2015, raises questions about both the agenda of the two men and the source of the funds used to pay the lobbyists.
• Although Turkey is a NATO ally, its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has grown increasingly authoritarian and friendly with Putin. And the hiring of Flynn by Alptekin came at a time when Flynn was working for Trump’s campaign and Putin’s government was under investigation for interfering with the U.S. election.
• Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, declined to comment. In a filing with the Justice Department, Flynn said he relied on assurances from Alptekin that he was not directly or indirectly funded by a foreign government. But shifting explanations and a web of business ties raise questions about the arrangement.
• Flynn has offered evolving accounts of his lobbying work for Alptekin. In September, Flynn reported his client as a Dutch shell company owned by Alptekin. After being forced to leave the White House — reportedly because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations during the transition with the Russian ambassador — Flynn filed new paperwork in March acknowledging that his lobbying work “principally benefitted” the Turkish government.
• The revelation of Russian business ties to the man who hired Flynn threatens to complicate the White House’s struggle to escape the shadow of the FBI investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian agents.
• Flynn has been a focus for concerns about Russian ties to both the Trump campaign, for which he was a key adviser and surrogate, and the Trump administration, in which, as national security adviser, he had access to the most sensitive state secrets.
• He also has a history of failing to disclose ties to Russia. His original White House ethics disclosure failed to include payments from Kremlin propaganda network RT and two other Russian companies. The RT payment was for a paid speech Flynn gave at a Moscow gala where he sat at the same table as Putin.
• A White House spokesman declined to comment.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/25/michael-flynn-turkey-russia-237550

 

[SueEllenRules!]

CNN Editorial
The White House's decision-making on Michael Flynn is troubling
(CNN) -- We learned two important things on Tuesday in relation to the ongoing investigation into Russian attempts to meddle with the 2016 election.

1. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is in a LOT of trouble.

2. The Trump White House declined to provide the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee with documents related to Flynn's application for a security clearance to work at the White House.

• Both of those things came to light following a classified meeting of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and press briefing held by Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah and ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland. That briefing also produced this amazing quote from Chaffetz regarding Flynn: "I see no data to support the notion that Gen. Flynn incomplied with the law."
• The Flynn stuff is relatively straightforward. He reportedly gave a paid speech to RT-TV in Russia without asking the Pentagon's permission or flagging the State Department. (No elected official has made a charge that Flynn actually broke the law; Flynn has offered to testify before the Intelligence Committee but only with the promise of immunity.) RT is widely regarded as a propaganda arm of the Russian government.
• What's far more confusing to me is why the White House doesn't appear to be cooperating with the committee's investigation into Flynn. Wrote CNN's Tom LoBianco and Manu Raju:

"White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short outlined in a letter to the House oversight committee how it would not complete the request from the panel, referring some requests to the Department of Defense, saying the office doesn't have custody of some of the other documents or simply stating 'we are unable to accommodate' others."

• The letter says one reason is that "many, if not all, documents relating to" Flynn's contacts with foreign nationals after January 20, 2017 "are likely to contain classified and/or confidential information."
• This is a pattern with the Trump White House. Instead of welcoming these investigations as a chance to clear up questions regarding the attempted Russian efforts to influence the election and his campaign, Trump and his senior staff seem to stonewall at every turn.
• Trump regularly decries the alleged Russian ties to his campaign as "fake news," but the best way to prove that there is no "there" there is to fully and totally cooperate with the investigation. And yet, time and again, the Trump team refuses to do just that.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/25/politics/trump-flynn-white-house-russia/index.html