Where is your source for McGonigal trying to get sanctions lifted on Ho. It sure looks like you are just making things up zgain.

 

The point was that YOU and the right seem to think there is something nefariously simple that their children played lacrosse a year before McGonigal even met Oleg Deripaska...

Stretching to try and make a connection...

Next thing there will be something about the ballet classes their daughters were in together...

And Patrick Ho? Haven't seen anything that is of real concern, just a lot of allegations.

Funny that you perport to believe in innocent until... You sure have Hunter convicted without there's even being an indictment.

 

The last thing is to just claim its made up.
But given how triggered @anon_de_plume and @stumbler are they think something is there.

Shooter has laid it all out. It wouldn't get a conviction in court, but it damn well should be investigated further.

Don't you two want to know if the presidents son is tied up with this kind of corruption?

 

This is why no one can debate @shootersa ln this forum. He simply makes things up and is totally dishonest. And he will double and triple down on his lies and personal attacks just to keep people going in nonsense circles.

Once again here is the link @shootersa posted first and falsely accused me of dishonestly editing it. Here is the link he provided. And anyone can click on it to see I copy and pasted the entire article he linked to with the exception of one last paragraph I missed which was this.

Now where he is getting all the other stuff he claims was in the article I have no idea and of course being totally dishonest he will not provide the link.

But anyone can look at the first link he provided and see it is not in there.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/n...ed-ex-fbi-agent-charles-mcgonigal/ar-AA16LDVU

Just lies and phony dishonest games.

And then this.

Again just a total fabrication like claiming Ho paid McGonigal $250,000. There is zero evidence for that claim which is whey I asked.

And so @shootersa comes back with this because we are on a new page.

And again not a single thing @shootersa said there is true and easily proven false like I just did.

But why? Just to get people to engage with him. He is willing to suffer this kind of humiliation just for that? That is not a mentally healthy person.

 

Shooter keeps wondering, how much lower can they go, these despicables? What lies, schemes, attacks and plots can they come up with that are worse than the last thing they pulled?
Shooter keeps being surprised; a despicable on a mission has no limit, no boundary, no standard they will not break. Nothing will stop them from their mission. Whatever it takes. Lies, slander and libel, artful editing, made up allegations, made up "witnesses", fake congressional hearings. Nothing is sacred, nothing is to fundamental for them to not stomp on it.

And we see an example with @stumbler on this thread. Anyone bothering to go back and read all of the posts will see multiple examples of stumbler's attempts to divert the discussion, attack posters, and change the narrative to what he wants.
And all to protect a presidents son from scrutiny into his questionable dealings with foreign governments.
Stumbler has claimed a link Shooter posted doesn't say what Shooter claims.

The link hasn't changed since Shooter posted it. Anyone who clicks on the link will see exactly what Shooter saw and what stumbler would have seen.
There is no magic. What Shooter saw and posted is what stumbler saw and edited.
The link Shooter posted;

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/n...ed-ex-fbi-agent-charles-mcgonigal/ar-AA16LDVU​

The link Stumbler says he looked at;

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/n...ed-ex-fbi-agent-charles-mcgonigal/ar-AA16LDVU​

It's clear. Stumbler tried to artfully edit the story to fit his agenda and got caught at it. So now he's doubled and tripled down trying to cover it up.
Fail.

And in true despicable fashion, he wants to blame someone else.
Fail.

And in true Stumbler fashion he's going to attack and demonize and insult.
Fail.

His plan is obvious; blame someone else when he gets caught fucking around, divert the discussion, and attack.
Fail, Fail, and Fail.

The only thing we've learned out of all of stumblers posts is that he'll go to even lower lengths than before to protect his agenda, his politics, and the son of his president.

 

Talk about hilariously triggered this full page personal attack and false accusation just takes the cake. And instead of looking at just the links provided people have to look at this first.

That is @shootersa's original attempt to try and link Hunter Biden to McGonigal. So I actually did click on the link and copy and pasted the entire article with the exception of the last paragraph I accidentally missed.

Click the link and you will see a copy and pasted the entire article with the exception of the last paragraph which was this.

 

You keep bobbing and weaving stumbler.
Anyone can click on the link and see for themselves what the article says.
And they can see what you edited out/forgot to copy N paste
And decide for themselves who the charlatan is.

Your diversion failed.
Your attack on Shooter failed.
Your defense of Hunter Biden failed.

You won't be answering the question shooter posed earlier, will you?

Don't you want to know if the presidents son is tied up with this kind of corruption?​

Its OK. It's a rhetorical question.
You already proved you'll attack the President's family if it's a deplorable.
The question really is, will you do the same for a despicable president?

 

You keep bobbing and weaving stumbler.
Anyone can click on the link and see for themselves what the article says.
And they can see what you edited out/forgot to copy N paste
And decide for themselves who the charlatan is.

 

Go back to Rudy Giuliani constantly on TV predicting what was going to happen next to the Clinton campaign with incredible accuracy. How? Was Rudy clairvoyant? He sure hasn't proven to be since where he's exposed as a nut case drunk So the logical conclusion is someone in the New York district was feeding him information. And now we see probably even orchestrating it.




Veteran reporter goes there: Was 'crooked' Russia-friendly FBI spy the source of the Trump and Clinton lies to the NYT?

Sarah K. Burris
January 30, 2023



Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton (Trump photo via AFP, Clinton photo by David Gannon for AFP)


Veteran reporter Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer questioned the reporting from The New York Times that was published in 2016 during the campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Among the many false things that the Times reported was the allegation that new emails were discovered related to Anthony Weiner's underage sexting case. None of the reporting was true.

MSNBC's Joy Reid said that the report "sparked a lot of questions, not just about the Justice Department's decision-making but also the FBI, because the push for that announcement was coming from the FBI's New York field office, which according to Reuters, had a faction of investigators based in the office known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton."

Last week, former FBI counterintelligence chief at the New York office, Charles McGonigal, was arrested and charged with money laundering and other concerns related to his relationship with a Russian oligarch.

"At the time, James Comey made his unprecedented public announcement in 2016, there was no bigger consumer of the Clinton email story than The New York Times," Reid explained. "They ran story after story on her emails in 2016, devoting two-thirds of the Gray Lady's front page to Comey's announcement. That was followed up a few days later with another helpful piece on Trump citing unnamed intelligence sources headlined Investigating Donald Trump, FBI sees no clear link to Russia. Something that would later be proven untrue."

Given McGonigal's charges, these stories are now being looked at in a whole new light. Writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bunch penned a column about whether McGonigal was the source for those stories.

"We should be asking that," Bunch told Reid. "You know, that second story you showed about the lack of 'clear ties' between Trump and Russia. I mean, we now know that story was false. I mean, a key premise of that story was [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Russia were not trying to help Trump win the election. Well, the U.S. intelligence community, not much after that, found that's exactly what they were doing. Who was misleading The New York Times? You know, clearly, that story hung on high-level intelligence sources. And McGonigal was basically the top spymaster in the New York office."

He also said that it appears the FBI field office in New York was also the "nexus of so much of this activity that was then leaked to the press and was overplayed by the media, especially by The New York Times. And polling bureaus said this absolutely was the decisive factor that swung enough votes in the last minute from Hillary. We should rethink everything we think we know about what happened that October. What the FBI was up to, now that we know they had this corrupt agent."

Reid noted that there were 34 people convicted that had ties to Russia from the investigations into Donald Trump and his ties to Russia during the 2016 election.

Bunch noted that Oleg Deripaska seems to be in the background of a lot of different things in the U.S., whether with Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign and now with this FBI agent.

"We now know Manafort was sharing important data from the trump campaign, polling data, and data that could have helped Russia's internet trolls know what states to target with their internet trolling," said Bunch. "He shared that with a suspected Russian intelligence agent who was also part of this triangle with Manafort and Deripaska. And how does this FBI agent who is supposed to be investigating Deripaska then end up working for him a year or two later? If that's indeed when it started. I would love to see the Times given its role in disseminating the bad information, go back. I think they should apologize for their bad coverage but they should also investigate how they were duped by these FBI agents and by their intelligence sources and share that with their readers."

He went on to say that he specifically singled out the Clinton emails piece of the story and that the media bought into all of it. They also excused Trump from a very real scandal that could have made a difference in the 2016 campaign results.

See the full conversation with Bunch below or at the link here.

https://www.rawstory.com/new-york-fbi-russia-nytimes/

 

Rhetorical questions for the members to ponder;
1) Was the Steele Dossier proven to be a made up bunch of lies with no basis in fact?
2) Was the Steele Dossier used to obtain FISA warrants to spy on members of Donald Trump's campaign?
3) Was the Steele Dossier used to further spy on the Trump Whitehouse?
4) Was the Steele Dossier funded by Clinton/the DNC through their law firm, Perkins Coie?
5) Was the FBI investigation into Trump/Russia connections begun because of a report authored by Charles McGonigal?
6) Is Wrong Story a leftist rag?
Raw Story Media Bias | AllSides
Raw Story - Media Bias/Fact Check (mediabiasfactcheck.com)
Is Raw Story Reliable? - The Factual | Blog
7) Is the New York Times a leftist rag?
These Are the Most and Least Biased News Outlets in the US (businessinsider.com)
New York Times Media Bias Rating | AllSides
What Are the Most Credible Liberal News Sources? = (thefactual.com)

 

No, no, and no.

Now this story does need an update because since it was written the claim that Michael Cohen went to _Prague had been disprove. But to the best of my knowledge and beliefs that is the only thing/.



The Steele Dossier: A Retrospective
By Sarah Grant, Chuck Rosenberg
Friday, December 14, 2018, 8:00 AM

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President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to the 2018 Helsinki Summit. (kremlin.ru)

The dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele remains a subject of fascination—or, depending on your perspective, scorn. Indeed, it was much discussed during former FBI Director Jim Comey’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 7. Published almost two years ago by BuzzFeed News in January 2017, the document received significant public attention, first for its lurid details regarding Donald Trump’s pre-presidential alleged sexual escapades in Russia and later for its role in forming part of the basis for the government’s application for a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page.

Our interest in revisiting the compilation that has come to be called the “Steele Dossier” concerns neither of those topics, at least not directly. Rather, we returned to the document because we wondered whether information made public as a result of the Mueller investigation—and the passage of two years—has tended to buttress or diminish the crux of Steele’s original reporting.



The dossier is actually a series of reports—16 in all—that total 35 pages. Written in 2016, the dossier is a collection of raw intelligence. Steele neither evaluated nor synthesized the intelligence. He neither made nor rendered bottom-line judgments. The dossier is, quite simply and by design, raw reporting, not a finished intelligence product.

In that sense, the dossier is similar to an FBI 302 form or a DEA 6 form. Both of those forms are used by special agents of the FBI and DEA, respectively, to record what they are told by witnesses during investigations. The substance of these memoranda can be true or false, but the recording of information is (or should be) accurate. In that sense, notes taken by a special agent have much in common with the notes that a journalist might take while covering a story—the substance of those notes could be true or false, depending on what the source tells the journalist, but the transcription should be accurate.

With that in mind, we thought it would be worthwhile to look back at the dossier and to assess, to the extent possible, how the substance of Steele’s reporting holds up over time. In this effort, we considered only information in the public domain from trustworthy and official government sources, including documents released by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in connection with the criminal cases brought against Paul Manafort, the 12 Russian intelligence officers, the Internet Research Agency trolling operation and associated entities, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos. We also considered the draft statement of offense released by author Jerome Corsi, a memorandum released by House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Ranking Member Adam Schiff related to the Carter Page FISA applications and admissions directly from certain speakers.


These materials buttress some of Steele’s reporting, both specifically and thematically. The dossier holds up well over time, and none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven.

But much of the reporting simply remains uncorroborated, at least by the yardstick we are using. Most significantly, the dossier reports a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [Trump and his associates] and the Russian leadership,” including an “intelligence exchange [that] had been running between them for at least 8 years.” There has been significant investigative reporting about long-standing connections between Trump, his associates and Kremlin-affiliated individuals, and Trump himself acknowledged that the purpose of a June 2016 meeting between his son, Donald Trump Jr. and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. But there is, at present, no evidence in the official record that confirms other direct ties or their relevance to the 2016 presidential campaign. With that caveat, here are excerpts from the dossier that correspond with details contained in official documents.

The dossier reports:

Over the period March-September 2016 a company called [redacted] and its affiliates had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct “altering operations” against the Democratic Party leadership. Entities linked to one [redacted] were involved and he and another hacking expert, both recruited under duress by the FSB, [redacted] were significant players in this operation.


Additionally, it reports:


the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing email messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the Wikileaks platform. The reason for using Wikileaks was "plausible deniability" and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.

The indictment of 12 officers of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) corroborates these allegations from Steele’s sources. In particular, the indictment alleges:


3. Starting in at least March 2016, the Conspirators used a variety of means to hack the email accounts of volunteers and employees of the U.S. presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton (the “Clinton Campaign”), including the email account of the Clinton Campaign’s chairman.


4. By in or around April 2016, the Conspirators also hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (“DCCC”) and the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”). The Conspirators covertly monitored the computers of dozens of DCCC and DNC employees, implanted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code (“malware”), and stole emails and other documents from the DCCC and DNC.


5. By in or around April 2016, the Conspirators began to plan the release of materials stolen from the Clinton Campaign, DCCC, and DNC.


6. Beginning in or around June 2016, the Conspirators staged and released tens of thousands of the stolen emails and documents. They did so using fictitious online personas, including “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0.”


7. The Conspirators also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release additional stolen documents through a website maintained by an organization ([Wikileaks]), that had previously posted documents stolen from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S. government. The Conspirators continued their U.S. election-interference operations through in or around November 2016.


The indictment further alleges:


On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, “thank u for writing back … do you find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs I posted?” On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, “please tell me if I can help u anyhow … it would be a great pleasure to me.” On or about September 9, 2016, the Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0 referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person, “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.” The person responded, “[p]retty standard.”

Trump advisor Roger Stone publicly acknowledged that he had communicated with Guccifer 2.0 and was likely the unnamed individual to whom the indictment refers.


While the GRU indictment does not provide any additional detail on communications between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Guccifer 2.0 or Wikileaks, the draft statement of offense for Jerome Corsi does. Corsi, an author connected to Stone, publicly released the draft statement on Nov. 27, 2018.

The document states:

CORSI said that in the summer of 2016 an associate ([Roger Stone]) who CORSI understood to be in regular contact with senior members of the Trump Campaign, including with then-candidate Donald J. Trump, asked CORSI to get in touch with [Wikileaks] about materials it possessed relevant to the presidential campaign that had not already been released.

…

[A]fter [Stone] asked CORSI to get in touch with [Wikileaks], CORSI did not decline the request as he stated in the interview. Instead, CORSI contacted an individual who resided in London, England (“overseas individual”) to pass on [Stone’s] request to learn about materials in [Wikileaks’] possession that could be relevant to the presidential campaign. CORSI thereafter told [Stone] that [Wikileaks] possessed information that would be damaging to then-candidate Hillary Clinton and that [Wikileaks] planned to release damaging information in October 2016.

a. On or about July 25, 2016, [Stone] sent an email to CORSI with the subject line, “Get to [Wikileaks founder Julian Assange].” The body of the message read: “Get to [Assange] [a]t Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending [Wikileaks] emails … they deal with [the Clinton Foundation], allegedly.” On or about the same day, CORSI forwarded [Stone’s] email to the overseas individual.

b. On or about July 31, 2016, [Stone] emailed CORSI with the subject line, “Call me MON.” The body of the email read in part that the overseas individual should see [Assange].”

c. On or about August 2, 2016, CORSI responded to [Stone] by email. CORSI wrote that he was currently in Europe and planned to return in mid-August. CORSI stated: “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging …. Time to let more than [Clinton Campaign chairman John Podesta] be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton.] That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke -- neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.”


In sum, the official record connects Russian intelligence—behind the guise of Guccifer 2.0—to Wikileaks and, to a lesser extent, to Stone. It also connects Corsi and Stone to Wikileaks. It does not, however, corroborate the statement in the dossier that the Russian intelligence “operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.” Put another way, Mueller and his team have not yet alleged or asserted in public filings that individuals associated with the Trump campaign knew that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian intelligence cover and that the documents in Wikileaks’s possession came from Russian government hackers.

To date, the communications that draw the clearest line between the Russian government, hacked documents and the Trump campaign are detailed not in court filings, but rather in emails between Donald Trump Jr. and Rob Goldstone, a British-born former tabloid reporter and entertainment publicist. Trump Jr. released this correspondence in July 2017. In those emails, Goldstone wrote:


The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with [Aras Agalarov, an Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire property-developer] this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.


This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin [Agalarov].


Donald Trump Jr. responded, "… f it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer."


Aras Agalarov is connected, in the dossier, to Trump’s interest in Russian real estate:


Two well-placed sources based in St. Petersburg … knew Trump had visited St. Petersburg on several occasions in the past and had been interested in doing business deals there involving real estate. The local business/political elite figure reported that Trump had paid bribes there to further his interests but very discreetly and only through affiliated companies, making it very hard to prove.

…

The two St. Petersburg figures cited believe an Azeri business figure, Araz Agalarov (with offices in Baku and London) had been closely involved with Trump in Russia and would know most of the details of what the Republican presidential candidate had got up to there.

Another report in the dossier adds a layer: “The Kremlin’s cultivation operation on Trump also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament. However, so far, for reasons unknown, Trump had not taken up any of these.”

That leads us to the material in the criminal information and sentencing memorandum for Michael Cohen—Trump’s former attorney—filed by the Special Counsel’s Office in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. These documents relate to Cohen’s false statements to Congress regarding attempted Trump Organization business dealings in Russia. The details buttress Steele’s reporting to some extent, but mostly run parallel, neither corroborating nor disproving information in the dossier. They do, however, contradict the president’s many public statements on the matter.

The statement of information explains Cohen’s role in pursuing a deal to get a Trump-branded building in Moscow, in the midst of the presidential campaign. In July 2016, in an interview with a local TV news affiliate in Florida, then-candidate Trump said: “I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.” But, as the statement of information in Cohen’s case reveals, Cohen and others within the Trump Organization were actively working on the Trump Tower Moscow project as late as June 2016:

1. The Moscow Project was discussed multiple times within the [Trump Organization] and did not end in January 2016. Instead, as late as approximately June 2016, COHEN and [Felix Sater, a Russian-American businessman and associate of President Trump] discussed efforts to obtain Russian governmental approval for the Moscow Project. COHEN discussed the status and progress of the Moscow Project with [Trump] on more than the three occasions COHEN claimed to the Committee, and he briefed family members of [Trump] within the Company about the project.
2. COHEN agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the Moscow Project and took steps in contemplation of [Trump’s] possible travel to Russia. COHEN and [Sater] discussed on multiple occasions traveling to Russia to pursue the Moscow Project.

1. COHEN asked [Trump] about the possibility of [Trump] traveling to Russia in connection with the Moscow Project, and asked a senior campaign official about potential business travel to Russia. (Emphasis added.)

Later, the document reports, "in or around January 2016, COHEN received a response from the office of [Dmitry Peskov], the Press Secretary for the President of Russia, and spoke to a member of that office about the Moscow Project."

Thus, the statement of information from Mueller’s office details substantial efforts by the Trump Organization to engage in business in Russia and to coordinate with the Russian government. But it does not allege election-related outreach. Additional details on that front, do, however, come in the special counsel’s sentencing memorandum:

The defendant also provided information about attempts by other Russian nationals to reach the campaign. For example, in or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a “trusted person” in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign “political synergy” and “synergy on a government level.” The defendant recalled that this person repeatedly proposed a meeting between [Trump] and the President of Russia. The person told Cohen that such a meeting could have a “phenomenal” impact “not only in political but in a business dimension as well,” referring to the Moscow Project, because there is “no bigger warranty in any project than consent of [Putin].” Cohen, however, did not follow up on this invitation.

The footnote accompanying the above text explains, "The defendant explained that he did not pursue the proposed meeting, which did not take place, in part because he was working on the Moscow Project with a different individual who Cohen understood to have his own connections to the Russian government."

While this builds on the general theme from the Steele dossier of Russian interest in helping Trump’s campaign, it does not indicate that this was a two-way street. Even with the additional detail from the Cohen documents, certain core allegations in the dossier related to Cohen—which, if true, would be of utmost relevance to Mueller’s investigation—remain largely unconfirmed, at least from the unredacted material. Specifically, the dossier reports that there was well-established, continuing cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin; that Cohen played a central role in the coordination of joint efforts; and that he traveled to Prague to meet with Russian officials and cut-outs. At most, one could speculate—and it would be just speculation—about what Mueller’s team means when they say Cohen “provided the [Special Counsel’s Office] with useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with [Trump Organization] executives during the campaign.”

On Cohen’s substantial role in a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin related to the election, the dossier states:

[A] Kremlin insider highlighted the importance of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, in the ongoing secret liaison relationship between the New York tycoon’s campaign and the Russian leadership. Cohen’s role had grown following the departure of Paul Manafort as Trump’s campaign manager in August 2016. Prior to that Manafort had led for the Trump side.”

…

According to the Kremlin insider, Cohen now was heavily engaged in a cover up and damage limitation operation in the attempt to prevent the full details of Trump’s relationship with Russia being exposed.

Additionally, according to the dossier, Cohen attended one or more meetings with Russian interlocutors in Prague in late August 2016, accompanied by three colleagues. Steele’s sources indicated that Cohen met with Russian Presidential Administration Legal Department officials to discuss how to:

contain further scandals involving Manafort’s commercial and political role in Russia/Ukraine and to limit the damage arising from exposure of former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, Carter Page’s secret meetings with Russian leadership figures the prior month.” The overall objective had been “to sweep it all under the carpet and make sure no connections could be fully established or proven.”

The reporting continues:

One of their main Russian interlocutors was Oleg Solodukhin operating under Rossotrudnichestvo [a Russian federal government agency that conducts cultural exchange activities] cover.… [T]he agenda comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow’s secret liaison with the Trump team more generally.

Again, the current public official record does not affirmatively corroborate the assertion that Cohen spearheaded, even for a short time, efforts by the Trump team to obtain unlawful election assistance from the Russian government. But neither does the absence of such detail mean that the dossier is false. For what it’s worth, Cohen strenuously denied ever traveling to Prague, though that denial preceded his guilty plea and (spotty) cooperation with the government.

Paul Manafort makes a few appearances in the dossier, including those described above. One report from July 2016 says:

Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the Trump side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter Page, and others as intermediaries.

Elsewhere, Steele reports that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych “confided in Putin that he did authorize and order substantial kick-back payments to Manafort as alleged but sought to reassure him that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide clear evidence of this.”

The official record supports this second allegation: Manafort’s work for, and bankrolling by, Yanukovych is at the core of the criminal charges against him—conduct he has admitted. The superseding indictment filed by Mueller’s office in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia goes into extensive detail about Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych and other Ukrainian political and business interests, but in short:

1. Defendant PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR. (MANAFORT) served for years as a political consultant and lobbyist. Between at least 2006 and 2015, MANAFORT, through companies he ran, acted as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and foreign political parties. Specifically, he represented the Government of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine (Victor Yanukovych, who was President from 2010 to 2014), the Party of Regions (a Ukrainian political party led by Yanukovych), and the Opposition Bloc (a successor to the Party of Regions after Yanukovych fled to Russia in 2014).
2. MANAFORT generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of his Ukraine work. From approximately 2006 through 2017, MANAFORT, along with others including Richard W. Gates III (Gates), engaged in a scheme to hide the Ukraine income from United States authorities, while enjoying the use of the money.

Manafort’s ties to Ukraine are relevant to the Russia investigation, as most readers will know, because he worked closely with an individual—Konstantin Kilimnik, a named co-conspirator in the superseding indictment against Manafort and a star player in Mueller’s submission last week regarding Manafort’s breach of his plea deal—suspected of ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort and Kilimnick worked on behalf of pro-Russian parties and lobbied within the United States to advance what were not merely Ukrainian interests, but Russian interests as well. Among those interests, according to the dossier, were “sidelin[ing] Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue,” “deflect[ing] attention away from Ukraine,” and building political support in the U.S. for “lift[ing] Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia.”

The Kremlin also pursued that last interest through, among others, Trump’s campaign advisor and first national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to one count of making materially false statements to the FBI, in violation of 18 USC § 1001(a), and is due to be sentenced on Dec. 18. Among the things he lied about to the Special Counsel’s Office were his discussions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the Trump administration’s intent to lift sanctions:

During the interview, FLYNN falsely stated that he did not ask Russia’s Ambassador to the United States (“Russian Ambassador”) to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed on Russia. FLYNN also falsely stated that he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which the Russian Ambassador stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of FLYNN’s request.



The dossier does not allege significant communications between Flynn and Kremlin-affiliated individuals during the campaign—as it does for Manafort, Cohen and Carter Page—but does remark upon Flynn’s visit to Moscow in December 2015. Steele reports:

[A] Kremlin official involved in US relations commented on aspects of the Russian operation to date. Its goals had been three-fold—asking sympathetic US actors how Moscow could help them; gathering relevant intelligence; and creating and disseminating compromising information (‘kompromat’). This had involved the Kremlin supporting various US political figures, including funding indirectly their recent visits to Moscow. S/he named a delegation from Lyndon Larouche; presidential candidate Jill Stein of the Green Party; Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page; and former DIA Director Michael Flynn, in this regard and as successful in terms of perceived outcomes.

The redacted addendum to the sentencing memorandum filed by Mueller’s team in Flynn’s case explains that Flynn has cooperated extensively with the Special Counsel’s Office and provided information relevant to at least three different investigations: one criminal investigation, about which all information is redacted; the special counsel’s investigation into interactions between Russian government figures and the Trump campaign; and a third, completely redacted investigation. With respect to the special counsel’s investigation, the addendum notes that Flynn “assisted the [Special Counsel’s Office’s] investigation on a range of issues, including interactions between individuals in the Trump Transition Team and Russia,” and other topics which are redacted. This indicates that the relevant information Flynn is providing to Mueller’s team is not limited to the post-election discussions about sanctions relief about which he previously lied.

Notably absent from the dossier is any reference to George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign foreign policy advisor who pleaded guilty last fall to lying to the FBI about his contacts during the campaign with individuals tied to the Russian government and recently served a 12-day sentence after proving himself unhelpful to the Special Counsel’s Office. (He was sentenced to 14 days but was released two days early, prior to a weekend.) The statement of offense asserts that over the first half of 2016, Papadopoulos had multiple in-person interactions and email communications with several individuals connected to the Russian government or whom Papadopoulos believed were connected to the Russian government, including a London-based professor, later identified as Joseph Mifsud; a female Russian national who was introduced as a relative of Russian president Vladimir Putin; the Russian ambassador in London; and an individual claiming to be affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In April 2016, Papadopoulos learned from the professor that the Russians possessed “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, in the form of thousands of her emails. Over the course of approximately five months, strongly encouraged by his contacts, Papadopoulos aggressively pursued a meeting between Trump and/or senior campaign officials with Russian government officials. He communicated the idea and his progress on a number of occasions to various high-ranking Trump campaign officials. When interviewed by the FBI in January 2017 in the course of its investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election, Papadopoulos lied about the extent, timing and nature of his communications with these individuals.

Again, Papadopoulos is not mentioned in the Steele dossier. We revisit his case because it resonates with one of the themes of the dossier, which is the extensive Russian outreach effort to an array of individuals connected to the Trump campaign. Steele’s sources reported on alleged interactions between Carter Page and Russian officials, but Papadopoulos’s conduct would have fit right in. In any event, Papadopoulos is noteworthy as the first figure in the Trump campaign—as far as we know—approached and informed by Russian proxies that the Russian government had obtained Clinton’s emails.

To conclude, we return to Carter Page, about whom there is a great deal in the dossier. We will not recount the details here because the allegations have not been corroborated in filings by Mueller’s team. The only nod at confirmation we have from an official source is a heavily-redacted memorandum from the House intelligence committee minority. In it, Ranking Member Schiff describes the FBI’s wholly independent basis for investigating Page’s long-established connections to Russia, aside from the Steele dossier, and emphasizes that the Justice Department possessed information “obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting” with respect to Page.

As we noted, our interest is in assessing the Steele dossier as a raw intelligence document, not a finished piece of analysis. The Mueller investigation has clearly produced public records that confirm pieces of the dossier. And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of Steele’s reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.

However, there is also a good deal in the dossier that has not been corroborated in the official record and perhaps never will be—whether because it’s untrue, unimportant or too sensitive. As a raw intelligence document, the Steele dossier, we believe, holds up well so far. But surely there is more to come from Mueller’s team. We will return to it as the public record develops.



https://www.lawfareblog.com/steele-dossier-retrospective


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Charles McGonigal's Role in Trump-Russia Investigation
By Ewan Palmer On 1/24/23 at 7:29 AM EST


A former FBI official with ties to the investigation into Russia's alleged links to Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign has been charged with providing services to a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

Charles McGonigal, 54, the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI's New York office, is accused of secretly working with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, including attempting to have him removed from the U.S. sanctions list in 2019.


(Left) Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media after voting on November 8, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Right) Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office, stands silently after leaving Manhattan Federal Court on January 23, 2023 in New York City. McGonigal is accused of secretly working with a Russian billionaire and has ties with the investigation into Trump's 2016 election. Joe Raedle/Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

McGonigal, along with Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who later became a U.S. citizen and a Russian interpreter for courts and government offices, has also been charged with allegedly being paid by Deripaska to investigate a rival oligarch, and then attempting to conceal the payments.


During his time in the FBI, McGonigal participated in investigations of Russian oligarchs, including Deripaska.

He was also one of the key figures who helped trigger special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into allegations that Trump's campaign team colluded with Russia to help the former president win the 2016 election.


McGonigal, while serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, was among the first FBI officials to be made aware of allegations that George Papadopoulos, a 2016 campaign adviser for Trump, boasted that he knew Russians had political dirt on Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.

This information led to the FBI launching "Crossfire Hurricane," which would examine whether Trump officials had been coordinating "wittingly or unwittingly" with Russia's attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.


In September 2020, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa said, during Senate Judiciary Committee questioning, he received an email in July 2016 from McGonigal about Papadopoulos that "contained essentially that reporting, which then served as the basis for the opening of the case."

In 2017, the FBI's work was taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his expansive probe into the Trump campaign's ties with Russia amid the 2016 election.


In 2019, the Mueller Report determined there is no evidence that the Trump campaign criminally worked with Russia to help interfere in the election, but detailed several examples of the former president allegedly attempting to obstruct the investigation.

A number of Trump's inner circle were also convicted as a result of the Mueller Report.


Papadopoulos was jailed for 12 days in 2018 after admitting lying to the FBI about his contact with a professor who allegedly claimed to have dirt on Clinton in 2016.

Deripaska was also a client of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager who was jailed in 2019 for tax and bank fraud charges in a case that stemmed from Mueller's probe.

In a post on Truth Social after the Department of Justice announced the charges against McGonigal, Trump said: "The FBI guy after me for the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, long before my Election as President, was just arrested for taking money from Russia, Russia, Russia. May he Rot In Hell!"

McGonigal and Shestakov have both been charged with one count of conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, one count of violating the IEEPA, one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, and one count of money laundering. Shestakov is also charged with an additional one count of making false statements.


"As alleged, Charles McGonigal, a former high-level FBI official, and Sergey Shestakov, a Court interpreter, violated U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.

"They both previously worked with Deripaska to attempt to have his sanctions removed, and, as public servants, they should have known better."

Both men pleaded not guilty to the charges during court appearances in New York on Monday.


https://www.newsweek.com/charles-mcgonigal-trump-russia-2016-investigation-muller-1776049

 

The steele dossier has been disproven.
The FBI did use it to spy on Trump.
And later to spy on his administration.

Posting a full page of bloviation doesn't change that.
It does expose a complete failure to understand the meaning of "rhetorical".

 

Key Senate Democrat wants details on probes overseen by arrested former FBI official

Key Senate Democrat wants details on probes overseen by arrested former FBI official
LUKE BARR
Thu, February 2, 2023 at 10:01 AM MST


The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee wants more information about investigations overseen by the former head of the FBI New York Field Office Charles McGonigal.

McGonigal, who was the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI's New York Field Office, was arrested last month over his alleged ties to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who has been sanctioned by the United States and criminally charged last year with violating those sanctions.


PHOTO: U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin takes part in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on President Joe Biden's judicial nominees on Capitol Hill, Jan. 25, 2023, in Washington. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

"These allegations are extremely disturbing and raise concerns about the potential impact this misconduct may have had on the FBI's counterintelligence matters and criminal investigations," Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, writes to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. "As a SAC for the New York Field Office, Mr. McGonigal oversaw many sensitive counterintelligence investigations, including investigations involving individuals he has now been accused of working to benefit."


PHOTO: Charles McGonigal, former special agent in charge of the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York, leaves court, Jan. 23, 2023, in New York. (John Minchillo/AP)
Durbin points out U.S. officials have said Deripaska was a close associate of former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and also on the U.S. sanctions list.


Noting the indictment alleges that McGonigal concealed his receipt of $225,000 cash from a former Albanian intelligence agency employee, Durbin writes, "Both indictments include alleged conduct that occurred while Mr. McGonigal served as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of FBI's Counterintelligence Division in the New York Field Office from 2016 to 2018 and after his retirement."

Durbin is wanting to know if any investigations were impacted and how many investigations that he oversaw were potentially compromised.


PHOTO: FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a press conference to announce an international ransomware enforcement action, Jan. 26, 2023, in Washington. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Durbin is asking for a response by Feb 15.

"Mr. McGonigal's alleged misconduct may have impacted these highly sensitive matters, including whether he compromised sensitive sources, methods, and analysis," Durbin writes. "Whether his alleged misconduct materially impacted the outcome of any investigations or further compromised our national security also remains unknown at this time."

Previously, FBI Director Christopher Wray said McGonigal's actions don't represent his agency.

McGonigal, who retired from the FBI in 2018, has pleaded not guilty to the four-count indictment unsealed Monday in Manhattan.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/key-senate-democrat-wants-details-170100901.html

 

Oh, Durbin will want to be careful making his demands.
God only knows what shit will land on Obama and the despicables with that kind of exposure, eh?

 

Isn't that what Durham was supposed to do? How is that working out for you and all your bold predictions and personal attacks?

 

Ever the whinning victim.

 

Ex-FBI official Charles McGonigal worked for more than one Russian billionaire
By
Lisa Fickenscher
January 26, 2023 6:15pm
Updated


Charles McGonigal — the former FBI official who has been arrested and indicted by US authorities over his ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska – has quietly spent the past year working for another Russian-born billionaire, The Post has learned.

Aman Resorts, a five-star hotel chain owned by Vladislav Doronin – a martial-arts-trained property magnate who has been branded “Russia’s answer to Donald Trump” – hired McGonigal in the spring of 2022 for a high-dollar job as director of security for Aman’s 34 locations around the world, according to sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

Indeed, sources speculated that when McGonigal was arrested at JFK Airport on Saturday he was returning from a business trip in Sri Lanka, where Aman operates a pair of swanky hotels.

Sources said McGonigal worked for Aman out of New York City, where the company opened its first property in August on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in the former Crown building, quickly earning the reputation as the most expensive property in the Big Apple with room rates starting at $2,400 per night.



Vladislav Doronin with his partner former model Kristina Romanova.
Getty Images for amfAR


An Aman spokesperson confirmed the company hired McGonigal last year, but maintained that his tenure began just a few months ago.

“Mr. McGonigal was hired by Aman Group in the fall of 2022 as global head of security, based on his qualifications and similar role in the real estate industry, as well as his two decades with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the Aman rep said.

The company also said McGonigal is no longer working for Aman Group, but it it did not disclose when he left.

A former Aman employee who left the hotel group said that the office culture was more Russian than American and could be “demanding” and “uncomfortable.”

The company said: “Aman Group was founded 35 years ago and has built its own distinctive culture enriched by its global presence in over 20 countries, reflecting the contributions from and collaboration with a diverse, international staff of 6,500 employees worldwide.”



In September, Business Insider reported that federal prosecutors were looking at McGonigal’s involvement with Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who was sanctioned by the US and had allegedly turned to McGonigal to get the sanctions removed.

“Based on his background, we thought it was very strange that he was brought in” – and that McGonigal stayed after reports surfaced that he was under investigation, one former Aman employee said.


“The process was very obscure,” another source added. A corporate director of security at Aman “had been in place,” but was reassigned and “no apparent reasons were given,” according to the source. “It was then when Charlie showed up.”



Doronin and Romanova have two children together.
Dave Benett/Getty Images for amf
Following McGonigal’s 2018 retirement from the FBI – where he was head of counterintelligence at the agency’s New York office and had led the Trump “Russiagate” probe into whether Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election – McGonigal was hired as a senior vice president for global security at real-estate giant Brookfield Properties.

He left that position in January 2022, Brookfield said. McGonigal – whose hiring at Aman raised eyebrows among hotel staffers, according to the sources – told Aman employees that he left Brookfield for “personal reasons,” a source close to the situation told The Post.

Former CIA, FBI and NSA officials are routinely hired by large companies that are targets of espionage and cyber threats, said Anthony Roman, president of risk management firm, Roman & Associates.

“It’s an easy and regular stop for these officials,” Roman said.



McGonigal’s attorney Seth DuCharme did not respond for comment. The Department of Justice also did not respond.

On Monday, 54-year-old McGonigal was indicted for money laundering and violating US sanctions law. The Justice Department alleges that McGonigal along with a former Russian diplomat turned interpreter for the federal courts – Sergy Shestakov – worked for Deripaska, an aluminum magnate that had been sanctioned by the US in 2018.

During his tenure at the FBI, McGonigal supervised investigations of oligarchs, including Deripaska, who was sanctioned by the US for allegedly acting on behalf of the Russian government in the energy sector. The government alleges that Deripaska hired the pair to get him off of the sanctions list and to investigate one of his rival oligarchs, paying them through shell companies.



McGonigal pleaded not guilty and was released on a $500,000 bond.

Doronin’s ties to McGonigal will surely raise more questions as prosecutors scrutinize his relationship with Russia, experts say.

“With Doronin, it’s not the same as Deripaska, who is under sanctions,” said Louise Shelley, founder and executive director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, and chair of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

“But McGonigal was on the payroll of a powerful Russian,” Shelley added, referring to the fact that McGonigal was on Aman’s payroll. “It’s certainly a cushy job that pays an awful lot. It’s a very good job to get in retirement, but it makes him more tied to the Russian elite around the world.”



Born in the Soviet Union, 60-year-old Doronin renounced his Russian citizenship in 1986. He is now a citizen of Switzerland and Sweden and has spoken out against the war in Ukraine. He bought Aman in 2014 and moved its headquarters to Sweden.

Doronin dated supermodel Naomi Campbell for several years before his current partner, Kristina Romanova, a former Russian model who is an Aman executive. He is a martial-arts devotee of Qigong, having reportedly shown off his ability to smash slabs of marble with his head and break metal-tipped wooden spears against his throat, according to Wikipedia.

Doronin, who also owns real estate development company OKO Group, has said in media interviews that he ended his business ties in Russia in 2014, when he sold his stake in the Moscow-based real estate firm Capital Group.

Last year, RealDeal reported that court papers showed he held a stake in a separate Moscow-based company as recently as 2022, when he transferred ownership to his mother who still lives in Russia. Doronin responded that the firm merely held “legacy assets” that were being slowly liquidated and that he hasn’t been involved in any development activity since 2014.

Doornin’s lingering investments in Russia were earlier reported on by the Aspen Times, which Doronin sued last year for defamation claiming that the publication falsely portrayed him as a Russian “oligarch” in a series of articles about land he purchased in the area.



The lawsuit was settled and the editor of the Aspen Times, Andrew Travers, was fired. Travers penned an article in The Atlantic in August about the paper’s flap with Doronin under the headline, “End Times in Aspen: How to Kill a Newspaper.”

In a statement about the lawsuit, the Aman spokesperson said “the paper itself ultimately said [the articles] did not meet its ‘standards for accuracy, fairness and objectivity.’ Likewise, The Aspen Times expressed regret for the statements Mr. Doronin asserted were libelous and retracted and corrected several articles.”


https://nypost.com/2023/01/26/ex-fb...worked-for-more-than-one-russian-billionaire/

 

A full page of bloviation, but he did manage to get trumps name in the second paragraph highlighted.

 

But but once upon a time Hunter Biden and McGonigal's kids went to the same school. And Hunter and McGonigal's wife even got the same emails from the school. Its got to be Hunter Biden I tell ya.




Did Charles McGonigal sabotage the 2016 election?

Lindsay Beyerstein
February 07, 2023



Charles McGonigal
(AFP)


The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee is pressing the Department of Justice for details about a former FBI agent who was indicted for working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch and laundering the proceeds.

Charles F. McGonigal retired as special agent in charge of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office in 2018. McGonigal allegedly began cooperating with an agent of aluminum baron Oleg Deripaska while he was still working for the FBI. Deripaska is under indictment for allegedly evading sanctions and obstructing justice.

Dick Durbin raised urgent questions in his open letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. As Durbin noted, McGonigal was promoted to special agent in charge just before the FBI’s October 2016 announcement that it saw no ties between Trump and Russia.

Durbin is asking the questions that are on everyone’s mind:

Did McGonigal do anything to tip the scales of justice in favor of anyone he’s now linked to in the indictments? What roles did McGonigal play in the 2016 FBI’s Trump-Russia probe and the Mueller investigation? Is there any chance that McGonigal compromised sources, methods or evidence? How did one of the most elite counterintelligence operations not notice that one of its main guys was allegedly doing favors for a sanctioned Russian oligarch while he was still on the FBI payroll.

Deripaska’s history with the FBI is long and bizarre. The FBI has investigated Deripaska for links to Russian organized crime.

Nevertheless, 2007, the FBI colluded with Deripaska to spring a kidnapped CIA contractor from captivity in Iran. His name is Robert Levinson and he was an FBI agent before he went to work for the CIA.

Deripaska reportedly spent $25 million of his own money on the mission. You might wonder why the FBI needs a Russian oligarch’s money. The idealistic answer is that Iran is under economic sanctions, so Americans couldn’t legally spend money there. Realistically, it’s probably because some of that money went to bribe people the FBI regards as terrorists. Deripaska went along with this scheme because the FBI was supposed to make his US visa problems go away.

They didn’t.

And Levinson didn’t get to come home.

The US State Department had barred Deripaska from the country because of his alleged ties to Russian organized crime. Evidently, they were on the cusp of a deal to release Levinson when the mean-old State Department scuttled the visa scheme once and for all – possibly because they didn’t want to be in the debt of a man like Deripaska.

Undeterred, the FBI tried to enlist Deripaska’s help again in 2014, first as an informant on Russian organized crime and in 2016 as a source for their probe into the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Two months before Donald Trump was elected, FBI agents reportedly visited Deripaska in New York City and asked him whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia. Deripaska put on his best innocent face and insisted that the agents were making something out of nothing.

By this point, campaign manager Paul Manafort had been feeding sensitive campaign and polling data to Deripaska’s associate for months, information that made its way to Russian intelligence. It’s unclear how much impact Deripaska’s denial had on the FBI’s later announcement that it knew of no links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Did the FBI’s attempts to recruit Deripaska ultimately result in Deripaska recruiting a top FBI agent? A recent story in the Times strongly implies as much, albeit without providing much in the way of supporting evidence.

Let’s hope that answers are forthcoming.



https://www.rawstory.com/charles-mcgonigal/

 

Hunter Biden begs friends, dad Joe's employees to get him off the hook (nypost.com)

Hunter Biden begs friends, dad Joe’s employees to get him off the hook
By
Emily Crane
February 2, 2023 6:41pm
Updated
HUNTER BIDEN

• House GOP tells spies who lied: Time to testify on Hunter Biden laptop
• Hunter Biden laptop repairman says first son broke the law with false ‘stolen’ claims
• House Oversight chair is building a killer case against Joe Biden
• House Committee demands docs from Biden aide Chung over classified materials

Hunter Biden has friends in high places.

Two Delaware prosecutors whom the first son’s lawyer called upon to probe Hunter’s infamous laptop have deep ties to the Biden family — while a top DOJ official who received a similar demand is a veteran of the Obama administration and liberal think tanks, an analysis by The Post has shown.

In other developments in the laptop story:

• Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell tried to walk back his prior admission that the laptop did indeed belong to his client.
• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dismissed the first son’s investigation demand as a “delaying tactic” and vowed lawmakers would “get to the bottom” of the computer’s secrets.
• An attorney for repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac slammed Hunter Biden as “desperate” and trying to “blame everyone else for his own actions.”

Lowell fired off a series of letters late Wednesday calling for a criminal investigation into what happened to the laptop after it was abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019.

First State Attorney General Kathy Jennings was among those urged to look into people connected with the laptop, including Mac Isaac and former President Donald Trump’s onetime attorney Rudy Giuliani.


Hunter Biden’s lawyer attempted to have two prosecutors connected to the Biden family probe the first son’s laptop.
Jennings, a Democrat who was elected state AG in 2018, was tapped in 2011 by then-Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden — Hunter’s late brother — to serve as a prosecutor in the state Department of Justice.

In 2019, despite the misgivings of many Democrats about a Biden 2020 presidential run, Jennings jumped on board the day the former vice president announced he would seek the White House.

“I’ve known Joe, Jill, and the Biden family for most of my life,” Jennings wrote in a gushing Facebook post. “Joe is one of the kindest and most genuine people I’ve ever known … I’m choosing Joe because nobody understands more what it means to heal, and right now that’s what America needs.”


Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings wrote in a Facebook post that she has known the Biden family for most of her life.
Facebook / Kathy Jennings
Even closer to the Biden family is Jennings’ chief deputy, Alexander Mackler, who served as Joe Biden’s press secretary in his final months as a US senator, managed Beau’s successful re-election campaign for state attorney general in 2010, and served as the elder Biden’s deputy counsel during his time as Barack Obama’s vice president.

Mackler’s name also appears frequently in Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“I just finished a hellacious couple months in court,” Mackler wrote Hunter on Oct. 16, 2018, in a message with the subject line “Hey.”

“Now that I have a chance to breathe, was wondering how life is on your end,” Mackler went on. “Last you told me you were out in LA. Gimme a call sometime we can catch up. Love you brother.”


Jennings was chosen to be a state prosecutor by President Biden’s late son Beau Biden when he was Delaware attorney general.
AP Photo/The Wilmington News-Journal, Jason Minto
In Mackler’s last message to Hunter, from Feb. 3, 2019, he wished his friend a happy birthday and added, “Lost track of time down here. Hope you’re ok. Call sometime.”

Jennings’ office didn’t respond to The Post on Thursday when asked if she would recuse herself from any potential investigation given her personal and professional ties to the Bidens.

Meanwhile, another letter from Lowell was addressed to the Justice Department’s top national security official, Matthew Olsen — who held several sensitive legal positions in the Obama-Biden administration, including general counsel of the National Security Agency and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, before leaving government in 2014.

While in the private sector, Olsen was a fellow at two left-leaning think tanks — the Center for a New American Security and the Center for American Progress — and wrote a number of op-eds critical of Trump and his administration.

One of those op-eds, published by Time during the 2016 election campaign, bore a provocative title: “Why ISIS Supports Donald Trump.“


Hunter Biden’s lawyer also sent a letter to DOJ official Matthew Olsen.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When Biden nominated Olsen to head the DOJ’s National Security Division in May 2021, many Republican senators saw him as damaged goods.

“Although I appreciate Mr. Olsen’s prior public service, he no longer has the credibility necessary to fill this important role given the partisan nature of his post-government writings,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said at the time. “Institutions are only as good as the American public’s confidence in them, and Mr. Olsen would further undermine public confidence in America’s national security institutions.”