Sunday, May 27, 2018

The Illegitimate President-- "A Mistake We Should All Regret"

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Donald Trump, Jr by Nancy Ohanian

It's been clear for over a year now that Putin crony and deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank, Alexander Torshin, was funneling Kremlin money into the Trump campaign through the NRA. I've been looking forward to Mueller laying out all the evidence on that one in precise detail when his investigation of how Putin stole the 2016 presidential election is completed. Now Michael Isikoff is reporting that the FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations implications Trump Jr and Torshin.
José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.




“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”

The comments by Grinda were the first clear sign that the FBI may be investigating Torshin, possibly as a part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Torshin-- a close political ally of Vladimir Putin-- had multiple contacts with conservative activists in the United States during the election, seeking to set up a summit between the Russian president and then candidate Trump. Although the summit never transpired, Torshin did meet briefly with the president’s son at a private dinner in Louisville during the May 2016 annual convention of the NRA. A member of the NRA since 2012, Torshin has been a regular attendee of the group’s conventions in recent years and hosted senior members of the group in Moscow.



Grinda said that the FBI, in its request for the evidence to the Guardia Civil, the Spanish National Police, provided no explanation as to why it was interested in the material and he didn’t ask for one. “I don’t have to ask them why they want this information,” he said. But Grinda added that if Mueller or any other U.S. prosecutor seeks to use the material as part of a court case, they would have to make a second, more formal request to do so to the Spanish government.

...Despite the suspicions about his ties to Russian money laundering, Torshin continued to travel frequently to the United States and even showed up as part of a Russian delegation in February 2017 to the National Prayer Breakfast, where he was at one point scheduled to meet with President Trump. (The meeting was canceled the night before, after National Security Council officials raised concerns about it.) More recently, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden sent multiple letters to the NRA asking about its ties to Torshin and other Russian figures, questioning whether Russian money was funneled to the NRA to help pay for the more than $30 million the group spent on political ads and get out the vote efforts during the 2016 election.
Benjamin Lamdy, writing for Vanity Fair, raised a silly question yesterday: Is Don Jr. A Criminal Or An Idiot? He knows the answer; everyone knows the answer. Meanwhile former FBI director, James Comey, fired by Trump in a major obstruction of justice move, was on Conor O'Brien Friday night. Comey asserted that Trump was making up his spy gate nonsense. Watch:



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3 Comments:

At 1:48 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Like anything will be done about any of this? So much of the case has already leaked out to the public that I can see some judge assigned to this case throwing it out. Then what? Impeachment to put Jesus H Pence in charge? Damn me to Gilead!

I begin to wonder if on this Memorial Day that our dead soldiers were sacrificed in vain.

 
At 6:22 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Even what passes for media in America has known about this shit for longer than Mueller has been "investigating".

The more time that passes with nothing substantive being reported, the more obvious it becomes that Mueller isn't in business to 'find' anything. His job is to do his duty as a republican Eichmann and run out the clock.

Did the Russians pay all the media companies for all the free coverage/advertising that trump got?
Did the Russians pay the DNC to ratfuck voters in several states (Colorado, talking about you) to make sure trump had $hillbillary to run against?
Did the Russians make 62 million americans into potted geraniums who hate?
Did the Russians hack the vote counting software to make trump the 'winner' (actually, this may have happened... but only because the Nazi party is too stupid to do this effectively).

Did the Russians make americans not give a flying fuck that our elections are always illegitimate?

America is the worst shithole nation on earth. The Russians didn't make us so. We did that all on our own.

 
At 11:17 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

we haven't had a 'legitimate' election since before 2000. We never shall again. The parties goon their own primaries and someone winds up gooning the general one way or another.

And it probably doesn't matter. We vote for either a Nazi or a corrupt fascist. It kind of doesn't much matter which one gets elected or selected or falls face-first into something.

 

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