***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[swendro]

Told a very close relative, someone who I consider like a brother to me, to **** off and lose my number tonight. He couldn’t defend trump so he went off on a racist tirade and that was it for me. Straight brainwashed by Fox News. Just your typical republican douche bag. In retrospect I should’ve checked him a lot sooner, but we grew up together and he didn’t used to be like this, or at least not as bad. Maybe it will be a wake up call for him, but I doubt it.

So it goes.

 

[aepps20]

Told a very close relative, someone who I consider like a brother to me, to **** off and lose my number tonight. He couldn’t defend trump so he went off on a racist tirade and that was it for me. Straight brainwashed by Fox News. Just your typical republican douche bag. In retrospect I should’ve checked him a lot sooner, but we grew up together and he didn’t used to be like this, or at least not as bad. Maybe it will be a wake up call for him, but I doubt.

So it goes.

Is he a DEPLORABLE?

 

[swendro]

Yeah

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[fargin]

If UK intelligence is shaken, they're just not paying attention.

 

[Sharpshoeter13]

OhThatWasDifferent.gif

 

[Sharpshoeter13]

 

[aepps20]

Where's Raymond Lewis and Scam Newton to make sense of Doolittle?

 

[IATT]

 

[fargin]

Yup, this is why all those civility, business as usual candidates, needs to pocket their campaign donations and gracefully bow the **** out.

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[plansb]

OhThatWasDifferent.gif

Preset had a great glengarry Glen Ross reference on this.
“Don’t open your mouth before you know what the shot is”

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[Belgium]

DOJ has now released some of the interview memos from the Mueller probe in response to a Buzzfeed lawsuit.
They include Rick Gates, Bannon, Cohen, ...
Recall how Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Crowdstrike/the DNC server, in an attempt to exculpate Russia from the DNC hack and pin the blame on Ukraine instead. According to the Rick Gates interview, it was Manafort who spearheaded that theory as early as back in 2016 when the hack was attributed to Russia.
Document link:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6537502-19-Cv-1278-Release-1-Bates-1-503-Ocr.html

Looking forward to reading these.

 

[IATT]

 

[Belgium]

From one of the Rick Gates interviews regarding Wikileaks email dumps. The redacted identity probably refers to Stone. Interesting that Gates recalled a conversation with someone where he was told about upcoming Wikileaks dumps prior to July 22nd 2016. I'll have to see what happened that day. It's like reading a spy thriller, I could do this all day in my spare time.

Edit: July 22nd was when Wikileaks dumped the DNC leaks. According to Gates, he was told in advance of that email dump.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6537502-19-Cv-1278-Release-1-Bates-1-503-Ocr.html
(Page 40)

(Page 28 )

Hmm

 

[Belgium]

On to the Cohen 302, he told investigators that his initial letter to Congress about the Moscow project was to coordinate testimony with other potential witnesses. Damn near everything in this 302 is redacted.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6537502-19-Cv-1278-Release-1-Bates-1-503-Ocr.html
(Page 73)

Cohen also told investigators that Don Jr told Trump that he was setting up a meeting to get dirt on Hillary. He didn't recall whether Jr said dirt on "Hillary" or dirt on "Clinton."
He believes this conversation took place on June 6 2016, a few days prior to the meeting with the Russians.
(page 245)

The Steve Bannon 302 is very lengthy but has lots of redactions and most of what is there isn't particularly new or interesting. It does offer a lot of detail on what took place behind the scenes during the campaign.
Odd email exchange about Jared Kushner here though.

"Bannon said his friends in the intelligence community said the girlfriend was "questionable."

Apparently Manafort tried to keep advising the Trump campaign after he was officially kicked out. Bannon cautioned other other advisers that they should avoid Manafort like the plague and not let word get out that Manafort was still active in the campaign.

Went through all 274 pages so this is about it. I mostly skimmed through the supplementary exhibits that were referenced in the interviews. Cohen's 302s in particular are extremely heavily redacted.

 

[aepps20]

Very proud of swendro for cutting off his friend. We need to follow suit. I have had to do the same thing. DEPLORABLES are not with us and you can't reason with these people. Cut them off or hit them with a left hook to the jaw, preferably both. Stay off of Facebook because you will discover that your friends and family might be DEPLORABLES.

 

[Belgium]

The Bannon 302 also references an email from Erik Prince, recommending Bannon to meet with "Oleg."
Presumably that refers to Oleg Deripaska. Bannon said he had no recollection of such a meeting.

This appears to link Erik Prince to Oleg Deripaska, and suggests an attempt to link Deripaska with the campaign in person, not just through Manafort.

As the Mueller report lays out, Manafort essentially worked for Oleg Deripaska while he was on the campaign. He told Deripaska's liaison Kilimnik that he was willing to provide "private briefings" on the campaign to Deripaska. In order to "get whole" with Deripaska, in other words settling a debt, he conducted the type of activties you'd typically expect from a spy.
Throughout his time as campaign manager, and afterwards via Rick Gates, Manafort collected private Trump campaign polling data and periodically gave it to Kilimnik across a span of several months. It was understood that Kilimnik would then provide it to Oleg Deripaska. On August 2 2016, Kilimnik was given a full walkthrough of the data and also received a briefing on the campaign's strategy for several key battleground states.
Kilimnik flew back to Moscow the next day.

Gates believed Kilimnik was a spy, and the Mueller report states that Kilimnik was a former GRU officer with active Russian intelligence ties in 2016.
In his communications with Kilimnik, Manafort and Kilimnik also reference Deripaska's deputy Viktor Boyarkin.
More specifically, Kilimnik emailed Manafort "Yes, I have been sending everything to Victor, who has been forwarding the coverage directly to OVD."
This was in response to Manafort emailing Kilimnik to ask if "the OVD operation" had seen all the articles about his new position as Trump campaign chairman. "How do we use to get whole?", Manafort said, referring to leveraging his position to pay off his debt to Deripaska.

Like Kilimnik, Boyarkin is a former GRU officer. He also served as a defense attachee for the Russian Embassy in the US.
Boyarkin was sanctioned by the Trump administration Treasury Dept.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm577

Boyarkin himself publicly boasted of the work Manafort was doing for him and Deripaska.
https://time.com/5490169/paul-manafort-victor-boyarkin-debts/

To date, Trump has never publicly criticized Manafort for literally spying on his campaign on behalf of Deripaska, Boyarkin and Kilimnik. The complete opposite in fact. Trump publicly praised him while the jury was deliberating Manafort's felony convictions. He subsequently praised him for "refusing to break, unlike Michael Cohen" while Manafort was under indictment for obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation.
When Manafort started cooperating, Trump publicly said in November 2018 that a pardon for Manafort was still on the table.
During said cooperation, Manafort's lawyer Kevin Downer maintained a joint defense agreement with Trump and briefed the Trump attorneys on what the Special Counsel prosecutors were asking Manafort about.
During this time, Manafort was also repeatedly lying to prosecutors, all while his attorney was in touch with Trump's legal team.

Members of Trump's legal team such as Giuliani have since continued to defend Manafort despite him sabotaging his own plea deal to continue lying to prosecutors and prevent them from learning the full scope of his interactions with Kilimnik.

As the Rick Gates 302 lays out, it was Manafort who came up with the theory that Ukraine was responsible for the DNC hack instead of Russia. According to Gates, Manafort brought this up back in 2016.
Trump is now pressuring the Ukrainian president Zelensky to investigate Manafort's assertion and thereby exculpate Russia.

 

[Belgium]

 

[IATT]