American Justice

America does not like whistleblowers.

UPDATE  7/23:  Twice victimized.

Jared speaks

Now that he avoided indictment by the Mueller investigators, he's mouthing off again.

“You look at what Russia did, buying some Facebook ads and trying to sow dissent. It’s a terrible thing,” Kushner, who is also one of President Donald Trump’s senior advisers, said at a Time magazine event in New York. “But I think the investigations and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years has a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple Facebook ads.”

  Politico

"A couple of Facebook ads."

The Justice Department, however, is offering a starkly different assessment of the potential dangers of a Russian intelligence operation to U.S. national security — and argues that it doesn’t take a master spy to do serious harm.

In a little-noticed court filing on Friday, an expert witness for the government, Robert Anderson Jr., a former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, outlined how the activities of Russian gun-rights activist Mariia Butina during the election contained all the hallmarks of a sophisticated intelligence operation.

[...]

[T]he filing also sheds light on how the Justice Department views the ongoing threat of Russian attempts to influence American politics and goes well beyond what Mueller’s team was able to say in its 448-page report.

Allowing Russia to “bypass formal channels of diplomacy, win concessions, and exert influence within the United States” by entertaining backchannel lines of communication could result in “commensurate harm to the United States, including harm to the integrity of the United States’ political processes and internal government dealings, as well as to U.S. foreign policy interests and national security,” Anderson wrote.

Butina created a plan called the Diplomacy Project in March 2015 aimed at cultivating Republican presidential candidates and their advisers and reporting her progress back to Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia.

She also tried to connect members of the National Rifle Association with Kremlin officials in December 2015 during a trip to Moscow, prosecutors say, and held U.S.-Russia “friendship dinners” to “exert the speediest and most effective influence on the process of making decisions in the American establishment,” according to a document she wrote during the runup to the election.

How many Republican Congress members - apart from those who were running for office - do you imagine are compromised by Russian influence or kompromat in some way?

Butina wasn’t the only Russian trying to make inroads outside formal diplomatic structures before and after the election, however. And she was arguably the least successful.

Mueller confirmed in his report that [...] Kushner suggested using Russian Embassy facilities to discuss Syria policy during the transition period, thereby evading detection from the U.S. intelligence community.

[...]

Mueller had little to say about the broader national security implications of Russia’s efforts to cultivate Trump associates. But Andrew Weiss, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees research on Russia and Eurasia, noted on Twitter on Monday that, seen against the backdrop of Anderson’s declaration, “it’s clear that the conduct outlined in Volume I of the Mueller Report created enormous damage to US national security.”

[...]

The special counsel’s counterintelligence findings could illuminate the extent to which people in Trump’s orbit — and the president himself — have been, or remain, compromised. But those findings were largely handed off to the FBI over the course of the 22-month probe and were not enumerated in the final report.

So is there a slim chance that Kushner and Junior will yet be contained?

And, speaking of Maria Butina...

Butina pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign official. She admitted to using her contacts in GOP political circles, in the National Rifle Association and at the National Prayer Breakfast to influence US relations with Russia.

As part of her plea deal, Butina has cooperated extensively with the government. A source familiar with the situation said she primarily provided information about her boyfriend, GOP political operative Paul Erickson, who was allegedly involved in her scheme.

So far, Erickson has not faced charges in DC. Erickson was indicted in February on wire fraud and money laundering charges in a separate case in South Dakota. He pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

[...]

An assistant US attorney, Erik Kenerson, said Butina worked with a Russian official as a "conduit" to send information to the Russian government, and listed several examples that the defense had not disputed of her reports, including a list of potential US secretary of state nominees she had sent back.

Kenerson also described how Butina would organize dinners with influential Americans to practice and "adjust her pitch" to draw out useful information.

[...]

Butina spoke for five minutes at Friday's hearing, her voice at times breaking, as she expressed regret for her crime and asked for forgiveness.

"I deeply regret this crime," Butina said. "Ironically it has harmed my attempts to improve relationships between the two countries."

"I came to the US not under orders but with hope," Butina said. "I sought to build bridges between my motherland and the country that I grew to love."

"Never did I wish to hurt anyone," Butina said.

While prosecutors have admitted that Butina is not a spy in the traditional sense, they argued that her crime still could have jeopardized national security.

[...]

She is the first Russian citizen convicted of crimes relating to the 2016 election, though her efforts to infiltrate Republican circles appeared to be separate from the Kremlin's sweeping election-meddling campaign detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller's report.

The 30-year-old gun rights enthusiast has been incarcerated since her arrest in July and will receive credit for the nine months previously served. She will be deported to Russia after serving her sentence.

  CNN

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Paul Erickson indicted

A conservative US political activist romantically linked to the Russian agent Maria Butina has been indicted by a federal grand jury on wire fraud and money laundering charges, the US attorney’s office in South Dakota has said.

Paul Erickson, 56, was indicted on 11 counts of wire fraud and money laundering on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to the charges in an appearance before US magistrate judge Mark Moreno, the office said.

[...]

Erickson is a well-known figure in Republican and conservative circles and was a senior official in Pat Buchanan’s 1992 Republican presidential campaign. He was romantically linked to Butina, a 30-year-old native of Siberia, who pleaded guilty in December to conspiracy.

  The Guardian

"Romantically linked." He got caught in a Russian honey trap is what happened.

Butina admitted working with a top Russian official to infiltrate the powerful National Rifle Association gun rights group and to make inroads with American conservatives and the Republican party as an agent for Moscow.

[...]

The indictment against Erickson alleges that between 1996 and 2018 he made “false and fraudulent representations” to people in South Dakota and elsewhere about his business schemes in an effort to convince potential investors to give him money, the US attorney’s office said.

[...]

He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each count as well as possible fines. He was released on bond and no date has been set for a trial.

The NRA-Russia connection

While there has been speculation that [Alexander] Torshin and his protegée, Maria Butina, had the Kremlin’s blessing to woo the NRA—and federal prosecutors have vaguely asserted that she acted “on behalf of the Russian federation”—no one in the White House or the U.S. intelligence community has publicly stated as much. Senior Russian government officials, for their part, have strenuously distanced themselves from Butina’s courtship of the NRA, which she did at Torshin’s direction.

[...]

A U.S. intelligence report reviewed by The Daily Beast tells a different story.

[...]

Torshin, the Russian central bank official who spent years aggressively courting NRA leaders, briefed the Kremlin on his efforts and recommended they participate, according to the report.

[...]

[T]he Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was fine with Torshin’s courtship of the NRA because the relationships would be valuable if a Republican won the White House in 2016.

[...]

The report, published last year, is based on conversations that happened in 2015, before NRA leaders visited Moscow on a trip arranged by Torshin and Butina. The document does not specifically name the NRA or the Republican Party, but its context makes clear it is discussing those two American organizations. (American intelligence reports generally do not name U.S. persons or organizations for privacy and legal reasons.)

[...]

The report notes that Russian officials discussed having their embassy in Washington participate in the work of courting the NRA. Kremlin officials also discussed preparations for NRA members’ upcoming trip to Moscow. Torshin recommended that someone from President Vladimir Putin’s executive office, meaning the group of people who support his day-to-day activities, meet with the group.

“My assessment of what was happening with Torshin and Butina and the NRA was that the Russians decided, a good period of time before 2016, to run an influence operation here in the U.S. with a couple of different goals,” said Steve Hall, who spent 30 years in the CIA and oversaw its Russia operations. “The obvious goal was the one the intelligence community assessed back in 2016, which was to help Donald Trump win and increase the likelihood that Hillary Clinton would lose. In addition, they wanted to create as much chaos in our democracy as possible.”

[...]

International Affairs Prof. Nina Khrushcheva of the New School, meanwhile, told The Daily Beast that the American intelligence officers who produced the report described in this piece may have overstated the Kremlin’s organization and efficiency.

“I’m sure there’s truth to the report,” she said, “but that kind of incredible consistency and logic that Americans have in their report about what and how Russia is doing is just culturally wrong.”

“Russia is a chaotic country that makes it up as it goes along,” she added.

  Daily Beast

American arrested in Russia

You may have been seeing the stories about Paul Whelan, an ex-Marine, who his parents say was only in Russia for a wedding when he was arrested recently as a spy.

This story will be interesting for how the Trump administration deals with it.  The man's parents and the media are going to cry foul because "he's innocent".  I tend to have a much more jaded view of these types of arrests in other countries.  Just because someone hasn't told his or her family that he/she is working for the US government, doesn't mean they're not.  I don't know about Mr. Whelan, but I'm going to remain skeptical of the protestations simply because Russia and the US have long been spying on each other, and neither ever admits to any of their apprehended citizens being spies.

And the wedding bit is not convincing, because it could also be true, and that's what provided the cover.  Some stories have it that Amelia Earhart was working for the US government when she disappeared on what was supposedly just a bit of PR for herself.  Harpo Marx once carried secret messages to and from Americans  involved in spying when he was on an entertainmnet tour in Soviet Russia.  Had he been caught, he would certainly have been arrested as a spy - and rightly so.  (I'm so glad he wasn't.) There are any number of incidences in which spies have been caught, and how many more might there be of those who didn't?  They all had a cover story.

Maybe Trump will offer to trade Maria Butina.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

FURTHER UPDATE:

Yeah, he just went for a wedding.  There's more.

Butina plea deal

Maria Butina, a 30-year-old Russian gun rights activist who stands accused developing a covert influence operation in the United States, has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and cooperate with federal, state and local authorities in any ongoing investigations.

She admits, as part of the deal, according to a copy obtained by ABC News that is expected to be filed to the court, that she and an unnamed “U.S. Person 1,” which sources have identified as longtime Republican operative Paul Erickson, with whom she had a multiyear romantic relationship, “agreed and conspired, with a Russian government official (“Russian Official”) and at least one other person, for Butina to act in the United States under the direction of Russian Official without prior notification to the Attorney General.”

Based on the description, the “Russian Official” appears to be Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of the Russian Central Bank and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Under his direction, the agreement said, she “sought to establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over U.S. politics.”

The agreement, which Butina signed on Saturday, Dec. 8, also notes that the conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison, but the deal could see Butina receive a lesser sentence, depending on the level of her cooperation, before likely being deported back to Russia.

[...]

[F]ederal prosecutors have reportedly notified Erickson that he is a target of an ongoing investigation.

[...]

Butina has acknowledged that with U.S. Person 1’s assistance, she drafted a proposal called “Description of the Diplomacy Project” in March of 2015 which was later sent to the Russian Official, in which she said that she had already “laid the groundwork for an unofficial channel of communication with the next U.S. administration” and requested $125,000 from a Russian billionaire to attend conferences and meetings to further develop those ties. The Russian Official, the agreement said, confirmed that her proposal would be at least partially supported.

  ABC

A hundred and twenty five dollars. Spend wisely.

The government has alleged that U.S. Person 1 “worked with Butina to arrange introductions to U.S. persons having influence in American politics,” including high-ranking members of the National Rifle Association and organizers of the National Prayer Breakfast, that would ultimately give her a surprising level of access to conservative politicians, including — in one memorable interaction captured on video — to then-candidate Donald Trump.

[...]

Butina’s Russian gun rights group “Right to Bear Arms” hosted a delegation of former NRA presidents, board members and major donors in Moscow in 2015, where she appears to have succeeded in arranging a meeting between NRA insiders and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, raising the prospect of a discussion between conservative political operatives and a powerful member of Russian President Putin’s inner circle in the midst of a presidential campaign.

After that now infamous meeting, the agreement said, Butina sent the Russian Official a message, which was translated as saying “We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later.”

[...]

“Unrelated to specific presidential campaigns,” Erickson wrote in an October 2016 email to an acquaintance that was later obtained by the FBI, “I’ve been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key [unnamed political party] leaders through, of all conduits, the [unnamed gun-rights organization].”

And during an FBI raid of Erickson’s South Dakota home, investigators discovered a handwritten note suggesting Erickson may have been aware of a possible job offer from Russian intelligence services: “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?” Erickson scratched, an apparent reference to the Russian equivalent of the CIA.

Well, he's toast, isn't he?

[Erickson] supported [Butina] financially, telling McClatchy DC he established a South Dakota-based company Bridges LLC with Butina in order to help defray her [graduate student] educational expenses, and according to court filings, assisted with her coursework “by editing papers and answering exam questions.”

How nice of him.  The old honey trap still works.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

You can't trust anyone

Especially if you're doing illegal shit.  Maria Butina is offering to flip on her GOP operative lover.

Their love story may have bridged the divide between the plains of South Dakota and the wilds of Siberia, but the five-year romance between GOP consultant Paul Erickson and alleged Russian agent Maria Butina may be headed for a crack-up – leaving Erickson in legal jeopardy.

In a federal court filing, prosecutors allege that Butina has offered to flip on Erickson — who is also identified as “Person 1” in case documents. “Although the defense contends that the defendant is in a committed relationship with Person 1,” the feds write, “she recently offered to provide information to the government about his illegal activities.”

[...]

[E]lsewhere in the filing, prosecutors underscore that “there is an ongoing fraud investigation examining the activities of U.S. Person 1.” The federal document also states plainly: “U.S. Person 1 has aided the defendant’s charged criminal activity for years.” It elaborates that Erickson played an “integral role in the defendant’s efforts to establish an informal line of communication between the Kremlin and the incoming Presidential Administration, knowing that she was acting at the direction of the Russian Official.”

  Rolling Stone

Sure, I know...NO COLLUSION!

The official is identified in other court documents as the Russian Central Banker Alexander Torshin. For a deep dive on the illicit nexus between Russia, the NRA and the Trump campaign, read Rolling Stone’s original expose here.

[...]

Prosecutors insist that Butina would merely need to reach a Russian diplomatic outpost to give justice the slip: “If the defendant is released, and she goes to the Russian embassy or consulate,” they write, “she will be beyond the reach of this Court, and it will have no redress.”

[...]

A judge ruled in a hearing Monday afternoon that Butina should continue to be held without bail. The judge also placed a gag on the lawyers in the case.

[...]

Butina’s lawyers blasted the federal government for maligning Butina as a “Kremlin-trained seductress, or spy-novel honeypot character, trading sex for access and power.” They pointed to key text exchanges between Butina and a Russian friend in which Butina — in a joke the feds took seriously — offered “sex” for the friend’s help registering a shared automobile at the Russian DMV.

In a remarkable turn, the documents show the feds abandoning the explosive accusation that Butina offered sex for access — admitting that “the government’s understanding of this particular text conversation was mistaken.” In court Monday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan upbraided prosecutors for having “damaged” Butina’s reputation. “It took me approximately five minutes to read those emails and tell that they were jokes,” she said. The judge nonetheless agreed with prosecutors that Butina should stay locked up.

Is that going to be a cause for an appeal? Personally, I don't care about Butina's handling. I want to see Erickson, his NRA contacts, and GOP conspirators, in orange.

The court filing introduces new evidence that Butina infiltrated the NRA in order to gain access to high-ranking GOP figures. It reproduces a Twitter direct message, sent to Torshin, in which Butina describes her plan to use the NRA’s 2016 annual convention as a forum to influence a presidential candidate’s views on Russia. The document redacts the candidate’s name, but it appears to be Donald Trump.

You think?

Describing the NRA convention as providing a “unique opportunity” for forging “contacts with the candidate and his entourage,” Butina wrote of her intention to “help form [Political Candidate 2]’s correct view of Russian-American relations.” It has been widely reported that Torshin and Butina used events surrounding the NRA convention to meet with Donald Trump, Jr. — but did not secure a meeting with his father.

I think we can find enough orange material to suit up Junior.

The document also reveals that Erickson coached Butina on how to frame her success infiltrating the GOP in a report to Torshin. In an email crafted shortly before Trump secured the Republican nomination in the summer of 2016, the feds write: “U.S. Person 1 suggested the defendant should close her report to the Russian Official by noting that she had worked to make ‘deep, inside connections to . . . [Political Party 1] . . . in the past year. . . . As of today, it’s more likely than not that [Political Candidate 2] wins the presidency and that my connections can be utilized for the benefits [sic] of both countries.’”

[...]

Butina, the feds reveal, has received at least “six consular visits” from the Russian Government, which has also sent four communiques to the State Department on her behalf — more than for any other Russian in U.S. captivity over the past year. The document also indicates that “Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has spoken to the U.S. Secretary of State twice to complain about this prosecution,” and observes that “the official Kremlin Twitter account changed its avatar to the defendant’s face and started a #FreeMariaButina hashtag.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What's going on here?

Maria Butina, the Russian national accused of acting as a Kremlin agent in the United States, was abruptly moved from a jail in Washington to a lockup in Alexandria, Virginia, according to her lawyer.

“I got a collect call from Maria from Alexandria Detention at midnight last night, but was disconnected before we could speak,” Robert Driscoll told The Daily Beast. “I couldn’t get in to the facility last night, but visited her this morning. She was not informed of the reason for the move. I was not notified of the move, and still am unaware of the reason.”

[...]

Butina's case is slated for federal court in D.C.

[...]

Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chief, is also currently being held at the same jail, awaiting the verdict in his trial for a host of alleged financial crimes.

  Daily Beast

Her transfer came just days after the Russian Embassy in Washington accused the U.S. of mistreating Butina with poor jail conditions.

Driscoll told the Post that he was unsure if Butina's transfer was related to the complaint.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mueller drilling down in the tangled web

The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

  McClatchy

For now.

[T]he NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

Two people with close connections to the powerful gun lobby said its total election spending actually approached or exceeded $70 million.

[...]

Torshin, a leading figure in Putin’s party, has been implicated in money laundering by judicial authorities in Spain, as Bloomberg News first revealed in 2016.

[...]

A summary obtained by McClatchy of the still-secret report links Torshin to Russian money laundering and describes him as a godfather in a major Russian criminal organization called Taganskaya.

[...]

Torshin is among a phalanx of Putin proxies to draw the close attention of U.S. investigators, who also have tracked the activities of several Russian billionaires and pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs that have come in contact with Trump or his surrogates.

[...]

Torshin was a senior member of the Russian Senate and in recent years helped set up a Moscow gun rights group called Right to Bear Arms. He not only spoke with Trump Jr. at the NRA convention, but he also tried unsuccessfully to broker a meeting between Putin and the presidential candidate in 2016, according to the Times.

[...]

Mueller’s investigation has been edging closer to Trump’s inner circle. This week, The New York Times reported that Mueller had negotiated an agreement under which Steve Bannon, who was recently ousted from his post as a senior White House adviser, would fully respond to questions about the Trump campaign. Bannon headed the campaign over its final weeks.

[...]

In their internal report, Spanish prosecutors revealed a web of covert financial and money-laundering dealings between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a Russian who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

[...]

In their internal report, Spanish prosecutors revealed a web of covert financial and money-laundering dealings between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a Russian who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2016 and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

Always surrounding Trump is the specter of money laundering. I'm still waiting for Mueller to hand that charge over to some prosecutor.

And, the collusion...always the collusion:

[Veteran conservative operative Paul] Erickson has raised funds for the NRA and is a friend of Butina’s. Shortly before the NRA’s May 2016 convention, he emailed Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn about the possibility of setting up a meeting between Putin and Trump during the campaign, according to the Times.

Erickson’s email to Dearborn bore the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In it, Erickson solicited advice from Dearborn and his boss, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a top foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, about the best way to connect Putin and Trump.

[...]

Bridges LLC, a company that Erickson and Butina established in February 2016 in Erickson’s home state of South Dakota, also is expected to draw scrutiny. Public records don’t reveal any financial transactions involving Bridges. In a phone interview last year, Erickson said the firm was established in case Butina needed any monetary assistance for her graduate studies — an unusual way to use an LLC.

Unusual - maybe unheard of?

On top of Torshin’s efforts to cozy up to the Trump campaign, the Moscow banker has forged ties with powerful conservatives, including Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the Californian whom some have deemed Putin’s best friend in Washington.

[...]

Last February when Torshin visited Washington, Rockefeller heir and conservative patron George O’Neill Jr. hosted a fancy four-hour dinner for the banker on Capitol Hill, an event that drew Rohrabacher, Erickson and other big names on the right. Rohrabacher has labeled Torshin as “conservatives’ favorite Russian,” Torshin was in Washington at the time to lead his country’s delegation to the National Prayer Breakfast, where Trump spoke. The banker also was slated to see the president at a meet-and-greet event prior to a White House breakfast, but Torshin’s invitation was canceled after the White House learned of his alleged mob connections, Yahoo News reported.

[...]

[David Keene, a former NRA president] helped lead a high-level NRA delegation to Moscow in December 2015 for a week of lavish meals and meetings with Russian business and political leaders. The week’s festivities included a visit to a Russian gun company and a meeting with a senior Kremlin official and wealthy Russians, according to a member of the delegation, Arnold Goldschlager, a California doctor who has been active in NRA programs to raise large donations.

Others on the trip included Joe Gregory, who runs the NRA’s Ring of Freedom program for elite donors who chip in checks of $1 million and upwards, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke and Pete Brownell, a chief executive of a gun company and longtime NRA board member.

In a phone interview, Goldschlager described the trip as a “people-to-people mission,” and said he was impressed with Torshin — who, he noted, hosted both a “welcoming” dinner for the NRA contingent and another one.

“They were killing us with vodka and the best Russian food,” Goldschlager said. “The trip exceeded my expectations by logarithmic levels.”

Or, perhaps more accurately, whichever White Houes staff member scheduled him to meet Trump didn't know about the connections.

I have a feeling we're going to see a fair number of Republicans caught in this net. Sooner than later, I hope.


...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.