All Things Russia & Ukraine

[RedFromMI]

Natalia Veselnitskaya, who became widely known due to her presence at the infamous Trump Tower meeting was charged with obstruction of justice in an unrelated money laundering case:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 9d1ac1b132

Unrelated only in the sense that it was in connection with a specific Russian money laundering scheme involving fake suits/settlements which led to tax refunds that were undeserved. However the scheme directly relates to the Magnitsky Act, as it was Sergei Magnitsky himself who helped uncover the scheme (involving players close to the Kremlin/oligarchs) and which directly led to his death and the subsequent sanctions law named after him. And that law was a likely topic of discussion at that Trump Tower meeting...

[Typical Lax Dad]

Natalia Veselnitskaya, who became widely known due to her presence at the infamous Trump Tower meeting was charged with obstruction of justice in an unrelated money laundering case:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 9d1ac1b132

Unrelated only in the sense that it was in connection with a specific Russian money laundering scheme involving fake suits/settlements which led to tax refunds that were undeserved. However the scheme directly relates to the Magnitsky Act, as it was Sergei Magnitsky himself who helped uncover the scheme (involving players close to the Kremlin/oligarchs) and which directly led to his death and the subsequent sanctions law named after him. And that law was a likely topic of discussion at that Trump Tower meeting...

Thanks for that article. Decided to look up Wilbur Ross and Prevezon: http://www.artconsultant.com/timeline.html at every turn there is a Russian nexus.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/par ... ness-ties/

[old salt]

Natalia Veselnitskaya, who became widely known due to her presence at the infamous Trump Tower meeting was charged with obstruction of justice in an unrelated money laundering case:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 9d1ac1b132

Unrelated only in the sense that it was in connection with a specific Russian money laundering scheme involving fake suits/settlements which led to tax refunds that were undeserved. However the scheme directly relates to the Magnitsky Act, as it was Sergei Magnitsky himself who helped uncover the scheme (involving players close to the Kremlin/oligarchs) and which directly led to his death and the subsequent sanctions law named after him. And that law was a likely topic of discussion at that Trump Tower meeting...

Nice reporting by the WP -- they don't bother to tell us where she is now. Vox reports she's in Russia.

I wonder if this was when she was working with Fusion GPS against the Magnitsky Act sanctions.

Is this the sealed indictment the MSNBC prosecutors have been anxiously awaiting ?

[youthathletics]

Who can help me understand the weird stuff I am seeing on the interwebs accusing Rand Paul of being a Russian agent???

He did get one of those strange black eyes or beatings like many others, I recall Bush2, Kerry, the Pope, Harry Reed.

[Trinity]

Dana R gave him up? Manafort? Sater? Nader? Gates? Cohen? Lots of possibilities.

[RedFromMI]

Manafort shared 2016 polling data with Russian employee, court filing says

The apparently inadvertent revelation indicates a pathway by which the Russians could have had access to Trump campaign data.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/le ... 9e52caeb85

Exposed information as Manafort's lawyers failed to redact appropriately - basically they were responding to Mueller's accusation that this one of Manafort's lies to him after agreeing to cooperate with the government...

Lawyers here seem to be about as incompetent as Manafort in trying to deal with the government...

[seacoaster]

So when, exactly, was Manafort in Madrid?

[dislaxxic]

MANAFORT’S REDACTION FAIL TELLS TRUMP THAT MUELLER CAUGHT HIM LYING ABOUT HIS RUSSIAN CO-CONSPIRATOR, KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK

..

[old salt]

So when, exactly, was Manafort in Madrid?

...& when did he share the polling data ?

Was the WP saying the Madrid mtg was Jan 2017 ?

Didn't Manafort also offer to give KK some briefings to settle his debt to him ?

[Trinity]

When would be good for you? When would that act be acceptable?

[old salt]

Just trying to fit the pieces together. The WP also mentioned meetings with KK (not in Madrid) in Mar & Aug 2016.

If Manafort was sharing campaign polling data, it would most likely have been the Aug '16 mtg, not the 2017 Madrid meeting.

The WP also reported an email from Manafort to KK pondering how they might use his campaign position "to get whole" & resolve his debt with Oleg D.

The Madrid meeting might have been about the pro-Russian Ukraine peace plan.

[Trinity]

At the close of the race Manafort is telling Trump to concentrate on Michigan and Wisconsin. And then he lied about all of it after pleading guilty. You got an innocent explanation for that? Campaign data is the mother’s milk of politics and Manafort is sharing it with Russians? Paulie is a traitor. The only question left is who else.

[old salt]

At the close of the race Manafort is telling Trump to concentrate on Michigan and Wisconsin. And then he lied about all of it after pleading guilty. You got an innocent explanation for that?

Manafort left the campaign Aug 19. Maybe Trump was following Brad Parscale's advice.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/ ... ale-470263

“I understood early that Facebook was how Donald Trump was going to win,” Parscale said in a CBS “60 Minutes” profile of him last October. “Facebook was the method — it was the highway in which his car drove on.”

The data operation underpinning Parscale’s targeting effort, he has said, also provided the campaign with the kind of surgically precise, real-time information it needed down the stretch to focus precious resources on swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin, while Hillary Clinton focused elsewhere.

“I took every nickel and dime I could out of anywhere else. And I moved it to Michigan and Wisconsin. And I started buying advertising, digital, TV,” Parscale told “60 Minutes,“ which described him, and his targeting operation, as the campaign's “secret weapon.”

His “secret weapon” wasn’t any proprietary software or algorithm, but the way in which Parscale marshaled various resources, including data provided by Cambridge Analytica and Facebook itself, to determine which versions of ads worked best when microtargeting voters. Parscale told “60 Minutes” he embraced an offer by Facebook — declined by the Clinton campaign — to send ideologically like-minded staffers to work in-house at the Trump campaign and teach him “every, single secret button, click, technology” available for microtargeting.

Some have criticized Parscale for using Cambridge Analytica and its controversial technology known as psychographics, in which huge troves of data are collected to microtarget potential voters based on personality traits, as divined from their social media profiles, rather than typical categories like race or age. Mueller has reportedly been examining Cambridge Analytica’s campaign role.

[Trinity]

Paulie left the campaign. He never left Trump Tower. Till, you know, now.
The Democratic Congress wants to know why Mnuchin is currently helping Deripaska.


https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/_cache ... signed.pdf

[jhu72]

2 Cross posts --

Bill Browder admits he appears in SDNY's Veselnitskaya indictment and Saak Albertovich Karapetyan, Natalia Veselnitskaya's boss died in suspicious helicopter crash.

[Trinity]

Dems want to know why it’s Deripaska Week in Washington. Lifting sanctions for no reason? Peace breaks out in Ukraine?

[jhu72]

Looks like that supercilious little weasel Steve Mnuchin is being served for diner.

Deripaska has his finger prints all over this whole affair. He was there in the beginning of the "collusion" having suspicious meetings and physical exchanges with Trump actors. He is also one of the most highly motivated oligarchs pressing for sanction removal. I suspect Mueller is way ahead of congressional democrats in terms of understanding Deripaska's roll in this.

[dislaxxic]

Who Exactly Did Paul Manafort Give Trump Campaign Data To?

"Yesterday the New York Times revised its revelation on who Manafort gave Trump campaign polling data to, shifting it from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to two Ukrainian clients of his: Rinat Akhmetov and Serhiy Lyovochkin.


Both backed former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, and both find themselves frequently accused of supporting pro-Russian political movements in Ukraine.

But who are they, really? And why would Manafort use his former Russian intelligence associate Konstantin Kilimnik to share information with the two?"



..

[Jim Malone]

Unbelievable twists and turns. The whole story could appear in a Monte Python Flying Circus bit and crack up all watchers!

[Trinity]

Combined value of #Russia’s National Welfare & Reserve funds

01.01.2014: $175.8
01.01.2015: $165.9
01.01.2016: $121.7
01.01.2017: $87.9
01.01.2018: $65.2
01.01.2019: $58.1

Putin is as desperate as Trump. Sanctions work.