Speaking of Israel

Erik Prince, Iran, and the Trump Tower meeting

Check out this Jeremy Scahill video.

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

It ain't over till the fat lady sings

Clarification 8/6: That title is not any comment on Brittany Kaiser. It's a quote attributed to Casey Stengel about calling a game before it'a actually ended.

A director of the controversial data company Cambridge Analytica, who appeared with Arron Banks at the launch of the Leave.EU campaign, has been subpoenaed by the US investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

A spokesman for Brittany Kaiser, former business development director for Cambridge Analytica – which collapsed after the Observer revealed details of its misuse of Facebook data – confirmed that she had been subpoenaed by special counsel Robert Mueller, and was cooperating fully with his investigation.

He added that she was assisting other US congressional and legal investigations into the company’s activities and had voluntarily turned over documents and data.

[...]

Damian Collins, chairman of parliament’s inquiry into fake news, said it was “no surprise” that Kaiser was under scrutiny by Mueller because “her work connected her to WikiLeaks, Cambridge Analytica and [its parent company] SCL, the Trump campaign, Leave.EU and Arron Banks”.

He said it was now vital Britain had its own inquiry into foreign interference: “We should not be leaving this to the Americans.”

  Guardian

Not if you want to get to the truth of the matter.

In August, Sam Patten, a US political consultant who had worked for Cambridge Analytica on campaigns in the US and abroad, struck a plea deal with Mueller after admitting he had failed to register as a foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.

He became a subject of the special counsel’s inquiry because of work done with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, in Ukraine. He had also set up a business with Konstantin Kilimnik, a key figure who Mueller has alleged has ties to Russian intelligence and who is facing charges of obstruction of justice. [Kaiser, however, is the first person connected directly to both the Brexit and Trump campaigns known to have been questioned by Mueller.

The news came to light in a new Netflix documentary, The Great Hack, which premiered at the Sundance film festival last month and is expected to be released later this spring. Film-makers followed Kaiser for months after she approached the Guardian, including moments after she received the subpoena. She claims the summons came after the Guardian revealed she had visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while still a Cambridge Analytica employee in February 2017, three months after the US election.

[...]

In the film, Kaiser says that she has gone from being a cooperating witness to a subject of investigation because of her contact with Assange.

In October 2017, it was revealed that Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, had contacted Assange in August 2016 to try to obtain emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign – which indictments from Mueller’s team say were obtained by Russian military intelligence – to use in Donald Trump’s campaign.

[...]

Patten and Kaiser were involved in a controversial election campaign in Nigeria in January 2015, which former Cambridge Analytica employees say had “unsettling” parallels to the US presidential election.

The Guardian revealed that the data firm had worked alongside a team of unidentified Israeli intelligence operatives on the campaign.

Ah yes, the Israeli connection. I imagine there will be several countries interested in the information in Mueller's eventual report - assuming there is one.



UPDATE 8/6:

Jeremy Scahill talked to Naomi Klein about Trump's hate-filled SOTU

This week on Intercepted: Naomi Klein and Jeremy analyze Trump’s threats toward North Korea, his executive order on Guantánamo, and the attack on immigrants, the poor, and the environment. Naomi also reflects on her recent reporting trip to Puerto Rico. Veteran journalist Juan González dissects the roots of fascism, the rise of authoritarian movements, and global migration trends. Marcy Wheeler gives a brief analysis of a theory floated by a former CIA officer that the “Steele dossier” contains Russian disinformation. Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada discusses Israeli collusion with the Trump campaign and Mike Pence’s trip to Israel. He also gives an update on the case of Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teen who is in military detention after a video of her slapping and kicking two Israeli soldiers went viral.

  Intercepted

The story of Paul Manfort

We've had this information before, in bits and pieces, an article here, an article there, letting us know that Paul Manafort into the Trump campaign is very likely his way of paying his debts to Russians he owes. (Remember the email where it appears Manafort asked how they could use his position with the Trump campaign "to get whole" with the Russians?) Anyway, here it is laid out in a  Max Bergmann Twitter thread. Excerpts:














The thread seems to be based on this Atlantic article extensively reporting Manafort's fantastic history and his entry into the Trump cabal, the key bits on that being:

When Manafort offered Trump his services, he resisted his tendency to slap a big price tag on them; he would provide his counsel, he said, free of charge. To his family, Manafort described this decision as a matter of strategy: If Trump viewed him as wealthy, then he would treat him as a near-equal, not as a campaign parasite.

But Manafort must have also believed that money would eventually come, just as it always had, from the influence he would wield in the campaign, and exponentially more so if Trump won. So might other favors and dispensations. These notions were very likely what led him to reach out to Oleg Deripaska almost immediately upon securing a post within the campaign, after having evaded him for years. Through one of his old deputies, a Ukrainian named Konstantin Kilimnik, he sent along press clippings that highlighted his new job. “How do we use to get whole,” Manafort emailed Kilimnik. “Has OVD operation seen?” Manafort’s spokesman has acknowledged that the initials refer to Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska. In the course of the exchanges, Kilimnik expressed optimism that “we will get back to the original relationship” with the oligarch.

All of Manafort’s hopes, of course, proved to be pure fantasy. Instead of becoming the biggest player in Donald Trump’s Washington, he has emerged as a central villain in its central scandal. An ever-growing pile of circumstantial evidence suggests that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian efforts to turn the 2016 presidential election in its favor. Given Manafort’s long relationship with close Kremlin allies including Yanukovych and Deripaska, and in particular his indebtedness to the latter, it is hard to imagine him as either a naive or passive actor in such a scheme—although Deripaska denies knowledge of any plan by Manafort to get back into his good graces.

[...]

Last year, a group of Manafort’s longtime friends, led by an old Republican hand named Bill Greener, tried to organize a cadre of surrogates to defend Manafort from the allegations against him, including the worst one: that he collaborated with a hostile foreign power to subvert the American democratic process. Manafort’s old partner Charlie Black even showed up for a meeting, though the two had largely fallen out of touch. A few of the wheel men from the old firm wanted to help too. Yet, when volunteers were needed to go on TV as character witnesses, nobody raised his hand. “There wasn’t a lot to work with,” one person contacted by this group told me. “And nobody could be sure that Paul didn’t do it.” In fact, everything about the man and the life he chose suggests that he did.

  The Atlantic

How about collusion with Israel?

In the days before a late-2016 vote on a United Nations resolution that criticized Israel, then-President-elect Donald Trump and top aides made a last-ditch push to target a majority of the U.N. Security Council to scuttle the text, people familiar with the situation said.

The lobbying effort, which ultimately failed, was wider and more intense than has been reported. [...] It was also conducted against the wishes of the sitting U.S. government.

  NYT

Sounds like a criminal act to me. Success or failure isn't the question. The attempt is what violates the law.

The December 2016 push by Mr. Trump and his transition team came at the request of Israel and involved top aides including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, former national security adviser Mike Flynn and the current U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, according to the people familiar with the matter.

[...]

Mr. Flynn’s lies about it to federal officials have formed part of the basis of the December plea deal he struck that requires him to cooperate with investigators looking into whether the Trump team colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

[...]

Mr. Flynn in last month’s plea agreement admitted to having placed calls to officials from multiple countries, including Russia, about the Israel resolution and to having “falsely stated” to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he had only asked the countries about their position on the text. In fact, “a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team”—Mr. Kushner, according to people familiar with the matter—“directed Flynn” to contact the officials to “influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution,” according to the documents.

[...]

Legal experts have questioned whether the U.N. lobbying effort ran afoul of an 18th century law called the Logan Act, which bars unauthorized private citizens from negotiating with foreign officials in a dispute with the U.S.

[...]

Jennifer Rodgers, a Columbia Law School lecturer, said a transition team member could argue that any acts backed by an incoming president would be done by someone other than a private citizen and thus not in violation of the Logan Act. But, she said, “if you’re acting on behalf of a government, it should be the current, sitting government,” noting that the attempt to sway U.N. votes was contrary to the U.S. position at the time.

[...]

Obama administration officials had asked the transition team to stay out of U.S. policy-making until Mr. Trump was in the White House, according to people familiar with the matter.

They shouldn't have to ask.

Mr. Kushner called the British ambassador to the U.S., Kim Darroch, urging the U.K. to delay the vote, these people said. Mr. Flynn spoke with Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis about the vote while the minister was at a loud holiday party in Madrid, according to a person familiar with the call.

Ms. Haley tried to contact [then US ambassador to the UN, Samantha] Power, but she declined to take or return the call, telling her staff that Ms. Haley’s outreach was inappropriate.

[...]

About two hours before the scheduled 3 p.m. vote on Dec. 23, 2016, Mr. Flynn called Malaysia’s Permanent Mission to the U.N., according to a Malaysian official. The mission staff, aware of the likely reason for the call, refused to connect him to their representative, the official said.

[...]

At the U.N., ambassadors discussed at holiday parties and in late-night phone calls how best to respond, some noting that Messrs. Flynn and Kushner had told them the incoming administration “would remember” how they voted.

[...]

Mr. Trump discussed the U.N. resolution with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi on the day the vote was scheduled. The president-elect made it clear that putting the resolution to a vote would damage Egypt’s standing with his administration.

They were bullying before they even got into office.

The resolution passed with 14 members of the Security Council voting in favor and the U.S. abstaining. Mr. Trump, in a Dec. 28, 2016, tweet condemning the result, wrote: “Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!”

A day that will live in infamy.