Flynn in major trouble for speaking to Russia about sanctions

[Pavlov]

lol fake twitter

[boutons_deux]

Russia Is 4chan, China Is Facebook

Mike Pence’s equation of Beijing’s influence with Moscow’s hacking was misleading and dangerous

US. Vice President Mike Pence’s speech on China last week was the proverbial curate’s egg:

excellent in parts but spoiled by its rotten segments.

It laid out the global challenge presented by an increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, and reactionary Chinese state under Xi Jinping.

But it also contained dangerous exaggerations—for instance,

Orwellian as China’s surveillance dreams might be,

there’s no plan for a unified point-scoring system for citizens.

China’s TV network only technically “reaches more than 75 million Americans” in the sense that they could watch it if they chose as part of their cable package; barely any of them actually do.

The most worrying part of the speech was Pence’s attempts to claim that China is interfering in U.S. elections,

and his equation of the Chinese threat with the Russian one.

As so often happens, Pence was playing to an audience of one—a man desperate for any distraction from his own problems with Moscow.

President Donald Trump, after all, had already made the absurd claim that it was China, not Russia,

who hacked the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/10...a-is-facebook/

[boutons_deux]

Data mining has revealed previously unknown Russian Twitter troll campaigns

Trolls left forensic fingerprints that cybersecurity experts used to find other disinformation campaigns both in the US and elsewhere.

Various researchers have begun to study these patterns and found that they can identify certain types of accounts, particularly those that post in high volume.

One corpus of interesting tweets encompasses the messages posted by Russian trolls attempting to influence the 2016 US presidential election.

Now researchers have analyzed these to search for any unique fingerprints they might contain.

The idea is to use these fingerprints to identify other disinformation campaigns by the same trolls that have gone unnoticed.

But is this possible?

These guys’ forensic analysis has identified a unique signature in these tweets and used it to find evidence of other disinformation campaigns.

“We identify an operation that includes not only the 2016 US election, but also the French national and both local and national German elections,”

the behavioral signature becomes more distinctive as the volume of messages increases.

That’s why the Russian trolls are identifiable in this way. Griffin and Bickel downloaded a database of 200,000 Russian troll tweets gathered by Twitter and obtained by NBC News. They then analyzed the tweets by the most prolific users—those who posted more than 500 times during the election period.

The analysis revealed seven communities that each use different word clouds.

Four of these communities were clearly focused on topics such as the US Tea Party movement and African-Americans.

But two of these word clouds consisted entirely of words in Russian and German.

Russian troll activity was significantly more ambitious on an international scale than previously thought.

It also suggests a way of spotting this kind of meddling as it is happening by looking for the kind of forensic fingerprint the team identified.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...oll-campaigns/

Trash is an illegitimate President, and he and his mafiya know it.

[boutons_deux]

Investigative reporter Craig Unger: “Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years”

Author of “House of Trump, House of Putin” on the president’s long history with Russian oligarchs and murky money

In recent weeks Mueller has issued more indictments against Russian cyber-spies.

The Trump campaign's connections with a foreign company skilled at using social media for information warfare has become the focus of renewed interest.

Perhaps the most important development is the news that a Republican operative -- who later committed suicide -- had

transferred large sums of money to Russian hackers with the goal of obtaining information from Hillary Clinton's email server.

the New York Times recently presented evidence that Donald Trump has been one of the largest tax cheats in recent American history.

it may be something more mundane and obvious that finally leads to Trump's downfall.

veteran investigative journalist Craig Unger presents a detailed and exhaustively researched account of how

Donald Trump has for decades laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs.

This fits a larger pattern in which Trump and his inner circle have shown

a great comfort with financial crimes and other forms of unethical or illegal behavior

to personally enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.

Trump's involvement with Russia's criminal underworld

may have created an opening for Putin and his agents

to manipulate and control the man who would later become president of the United States.

https://www.salon.com/2018/10/11/inv...-for-35-years/

[boutons_deux]

Rick Gates’ Ex-Attorneys Are Suing Him For Not Paying Them

Gates has only paid $20,000 of the $388,525.34 the firm billed him,

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/rick-gates-ex-attorneys-are-suing-him-for-not-paying-them?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_cam paign=Feed%3A%20tpm-news%20%28TPMNews%29

[Winehole23]

no puppet, you're the puppet

"When you think of it, there was collusion between Hillary, the Democrats, and Russia"

[ducks]

Federal Judge Ellis demands sentencing date for Manafort, calls Mueller deal ‘highly unusual

[Pavlov]

Federal Judge Ellis demands sentencing date for Manafort, calls Mueller deal ‘highly unusual

lol Ellis

[RandomGuy]

How are Dems going to beat the GOP in 2020?

not being the GOP isn't a platform...

the same way we won by not being Bush, sadly.

Hopefully some of the better ideas, such as single payer will be talked about seriously, but keeping it simple is usually the way to go.

We will know a lot more in the second week of November.

That will be when some serious oversight of the executive will be done, as well as forcing a lot of votes on the Republicans that will be used to hammer them in 2020.

[RandomGuy]

no puppet, you're the puppet

About the same way Democrats are out to gut Social Security.

[Winehole23]

the same way we won by not being Bush, sadly.

how did not being Donald Trump work out in 2016?

[boutons_deux]

Trump's Team Is Finally Answering Robert Mueller's Questions — Getting to the Heart of the Russian Collusion Probe: Report

For now, Mueller has accommodated a highly unusual request from Trump's team.

CNN reported that President Donald Trump's legal team is preparing responses to written questions submitted by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of the Russia investigation:

The questions are focused on matters related to the investigation of possible collusion between Trump associates and Russians seeking to meddle in the 2016 election, the sources said.

Trump's lawyers are preparing written responses, in part relying on do ents previously provided to the special counsel, the sources said.

"We are in continuing discussions with the special counsel and we do not comment on those discussions," said Trump attorney Jay Sekulow.

There may be more rounds of questions after the first answers are returned.

The special counsel had insisted that there be a chance for follow-up questions as well.

But after a prolonged back-and-forth over months, the two sides agreed to start with a first round of questions.

Additionally, the two sides have still not come to agreement on whether the President will be interviewed in person by investigators

who are also probing whether Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.

"Typically prosecutors do *not* send written questions to a subject in lieu of an interview.

The value of obtaining written answers is limited for several reasons.

For one thing, they can be prepared by attorneys and carefully worded to be evasive, vague, or misleading,"

"That said, this entire situation is highly unusual.

Trump is the subject of a criminal investigation, which means he has potential criminal liability.

Usually defense attorneys would not let a subject of a criminal investigation be interviewed by prosecutors."

"One obvious implication is that Mueller is far enough along on collusion to pose questions to Trump."

He added that Mueller probably settled for written questions either because

he thinks Trump does not have much to add to the investigation, or

he thinks that Trump could use the powers of his office to obstruct a subpoena for anything more substantial.

Everything about Mueller's intentions at this point are still speculative.

But he is clearly getting closer to making a determination about Trump's role in Russian interference with the 2016 election

— and to getting some answers for the American people.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-po...uestions-probe

[boutons_deux]

Trash's team knows Trash would screw himself in a live interview

I bet this Q/A exercise accomplishes nothing.

Maybe M's team's Qs, some or all, will be too hot for Trash to answer, and/or will be answered with generic, non-committal, vanilla bull . Which in a way would show M where Trash's sensitive areas are.

Will finally end up in SCOTUS, ruling 5-4 in favor of Trash,

yet another hammer blow to any pretension, any myth that America is a democracy, and

proving it really is a brutal, extractive, authoritarian oligarchy/plutocracy beyond the reach of the (corrupted, politicized) law.

[Winehole23]

lol Ellis

I thought sentencing was dependent on cooperation? Sounds like Judge Ellis wants wants to short circuit that process.

Dunno, maybe he started to miss the spotlight.

[Chris]

Ellis

[Chris]

[boutons_deux]

Watergate prosecutor: Why it’s ‘disturbing’ that Trump’s lawyers are answering Mueller questions for him

Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks mocked President Donald Trump for having his legal defense team draft written answers to questions asked by special counsel Robert Mueller — instead of sitting for a live interview with investigators.

I am disturbed that

it’s so clearly being drafted by his lawyers, that’s not an answer,” Wine-Banks explained.

“Obviously he will have to submit them under his name, and

he will be responsible for them, but

the fact that he’s being protected from answering the questions himself says that

he can’t be trusted to answer those questions about conspiring with the Russians,

or any other foreign power,” Wine-Banks concluded.

“So that’s disturbing,” she added.

“It’s nowhere near as good as having an in-person interview,

where the witness has to answer extemporaneously and is thinking on the spot,” she explained.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/watergate-prosecutor-disturbing-trumps-lawyers-answering-mueller-questions/

Trash is such little chicken .

Can't trusted, like an adult and self-proclaimed fantastic, successful business executive, to answer questions.

And he keeps insulting JeBo hoping JeBo will quit.

Trash won't surprise JeBo with tweet that fires JeBo, won't fire him face to face.

[TSA]

djohn2oo8

[TSA]

Problem with that is that Democrats will control the House next year. Get ready for this to be actually investigated, as opposed to actively covered up by Republicans running interference.

That will mean that the Chair of the Finance Committee will have the power to subpoena Trumps records.

“actually investigated”


First off, the FBI has, on repeated occasions in 2016 and 2017, told me emphatically that it looked at the allegations and could find no conspiracy and, instead, believed the server communications were simply explained by normal internet traffic activities.

Secondly, Alfa Bank's law firm traveled to meet an FBI cyber team in Chicago in 2017 and opened up its data vaults to assist the investigation. There was no follow-up, Alfa Bank says.

The private lawyer who supervised the review for Alfa Bank was Brian Benczkowski. He later was confirmed to be the chief of the U.S. Justice Department's criminal division, one of the most sensitive and important jobs in law enforcement; Democrats asked him about the Alfa review during his confirmation. And neither the FBI nor the intelligence community offered any information to the Senate during his confirmation to contradict his conclusions that there was no conspiracy involving the Alfa-Trump servers.

Furthermore, not once in the 17 months of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation has a member of Mueller's staff reached out to Alfa Bank to raise questions about collusion or the servers, the bank says.

Another common omission from the news stories on this subject involves the political leanings of a key researcher who has pushed the Alfa-Trump narrative. Indiana University professor L. Jean Camp, who is well respected in computer science circles, was an unabashed supporter of and donor to Hillary Clinton in 2016. After the 2016 election, Camp accused the FBI in a tweet of ignoring the Trump server allegations and instead focusing on the reopening of Clinton's email case. "The data are there and worth investigation. Why did FBI, #NYTimes kill this story before election to focus on Her Emails?" she tweeted in March 2017.

Camp acknowledged her political leanings to me last year, but insisted they had no bearing on her decision to raise questions about the data.

There's one final omission worth noting. Most of the stories include a passing reference that Alfa commissioned one or two reports concluding there was no nefarious communications between Trump and Alfa servers. But nearly all ignore one of the most important findings in the reports: The DNS data released by researchers such as Camp to make their case of a possible conspiracy between Trump and Alfa were formatted differently than the bank server's DNS logs.

"The format of the data does not match the format of actual logs at Alfa Bank," the respected firm Stroz Friedberg wrote in a 2017 report. "If the DNS log data posted by Professor Camp is actual DNS log data from Alfa Bank, it has been edited and placed into a different format."

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...mpression=true

[Spurs Homer]

“actually investigated”


First off, the FBI has, on repeated occasions in 2016 and 2017, told me emphatically that it looked at the allegations and could find no conspiracy and, instead, believed the server communications were simply explained by normal internet traffic activities.

Secondly, Alfa Bank's law firm traveled to meet an FBI cyber team in Chicago in 2017 and opened up its data vaults to assist the investigation. There was no follow-up, Alfa Bank says.

The private lawyer who supervised the review for Alfa Bank was Brian Benczkowski. He later was confirmed to be the chief of the U.S. Justice Department's criminal division, one of the most sensitive and important jobs in law enforcement; Democrats asked him about the Alfa review during his confirmation. And neither the FBI nor the intelligence community offered any information to the Senate during his confirmation to contradict his conclusions that there was no conspiracy involving the Alfa-Trump servers.

Furthermore, not once in the 17 months of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation has a member of Mueller's staff reached out to Alfa Bank to raise questions about collusion or the servers, the bank says.

Another common omission from the news stories on this subject involves the political leanings of a key researcher who has pushed the Alfa-Trump narrative. Indiana University professor L. Jean Camp, who is well respected in computer science circles, was an unabashed supporter of and donor to Hillary Clinton in 2016. After the 2016 election, Camp accused the FBI in a tweet of ignoring the Trump server allegations and instead focusing on the reopening of Clinton's email case. "The data are there and worth investigation. Why did FBI, #NYTimes kill this story before election to focus on Her Emails?" she tweeted in March 2017.

Camp acknowledged her political leanings to me last year, but insisted they had no bearing on her decision to raise questions about the data.

There's one final omission worth noting. Most of the stories include a passing reference that Alfa commissioned one or two reports concluding there was no nefarious communications between Trump and Alfa servers. But nearly all ignore one of the most important findings in the reports: The DNS data released by researchers such as Camp to make their case of a possible conspiracy between Trump and Alfa were formatted differently than the bank server's DNS logs.

"The format of the data does not match the format of actual logs at Alfa Bank," the respected firm Stroz Friedberg wrote in a 2017 report. "If the DNS log data posted by Professor Camp is actual DNS log data from Alfa Bank, it has been edited and placed into a different format."

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...mpression=true

You are touting the investigative work of journalists?

lol

[Spurs Homer]

Yup - traitor in chief STILL OWNED by Putin;


https://investigaterussia.org/media/...n-interference

[Cuck Ross]

[Winehole23]

great, Trump should declassify it

[Cuck Ross]

[boutons_deux]

Why did the Trump campaign pay the law firm representing Lewandowski $173K in the last three months?

The Trump campaign spent over $170,000 to a firm representing former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in the Russia probe since July.

The New York Times reported that along with dramatic increases in spending in other areas, the Trump 2020 campaign also paid $173,000 to Mintz Levin, the firm representing Lewandowski.

Of the $7.7 million the campaign spent between July and the end of September, the report added, the largest single recipient was American Made Media Consultants, a company “created by the campaign to purchase digital, radio and television advertising, including online fund-raising solicitations.”

The company received $1.6 million in a total of 19 payments.

The Times noted that Mitt Romney pioneered such corporate en ies with his 2012 presidential campaign and could

allow the Trump campaign to conceal “precise details about its spending, instead just listing line-item expenditures.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/tru...-three-months/