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12 People Were Just Arrested for Hacking DNC

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Twelve Russian military intelligence officers hacked into the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party and released tens of thousands of private communications in a sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election, according to an indictment announced days before President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The indictment represents special counsel Robert Mueller’s first charges against Russian government officials for interfering in American politics, an effort U.S. intelligence agencies say was aimed at helping the Trump campaign and harming his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The case follows a separate indictment that accused Russians of using social media to sow discord among American voters.

The 29-page indictment lays out how, months before Americans went to the polls, Russians schemed to break into key Democratic email accounts, including those belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Stolen emails, many politically damaging for Clinton, appeared on WikiLeaks in the campaign’s final stretch. (Read more from “12 People Were Just Arrested for Hacking DNC” HERE)

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Investigation Into ‘Dossier’ Against Trump Gets Big Break

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The longer the investigation into alleged Russia collusion with the Trump campaign goes on, the more information seems to surface tied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, it seems.

The latest development comes from District Judge Reggie Walton, who ordered the Justice Department to begin to immediately hand over the communications records of Nellie Ohr, the wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr.

She worked for Fusion GPS, the company funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign that created the “salacious and unverified” anti-Trump “dossier,” which helped fuel the launch of the Russia probe.

The FBI already is neck deep in scandal over its handling of the Clinton and Russia investigations. This week, Congress members rebuked officials in hearings for refusing to provide requested documents. And the recent inspector general report produced more evidence of bias by key FBI officials and investigators, including Peter Strzok, the lead investigator in the Clinton and Russia probes. . .

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said he’s pleased another court rejected the Justice Department’s “inexcusable stonewalling on documents of intense public interest – Obama DOJ collusion with the Clinton campaign vendor Fusion GPS to target then-candidate Donald Trump.” (Read more from “Investigation Into ‘Dossier’ Against Trump Gets Big Break” HERE)

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Moscow and Washington Strike Deal to Hold Putin-Trump Summit

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By Reuters. Moscow and Washington have struck a deal to hold a summit soon between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters on Wednesday.

Ushakov said the summit would take place in a mutually-convenient third country and that several more weeks were needed for preparations. (Read more from “Moscow and Washington Strike Deal to Hold Putin-Trump Summit” HERE)

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India Among Top Five Friends, Beijing Moscow’s Top Ally: Russia Poll

By Times of India. Despite a significant cooling between traditional strategic partners Russia and India, India can still count itself as one of the top five “friends” of Russia. And for all the talk about Russia moving towards Pakistan, an annual opinion poll by one of Moscow’s most respected think tanks shows Pakistan does not yet cross Russian consciousness.

The Levada Centre, the only non-governmental pollster in Russia, and labelled a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin in 2016 is distinguished by the comprehensive Russian opinion polls they publish. In their latest 2017 poll, which came out in 2018, Russians identified Belarus as their country’s top ally, followed by China, Kazakhstan, Syria and India.

While Indians may feel reassured that the “druzhba-dosti” relationship remains intact, it is more important to note that China is seen as Russia’s top ally. At the government level, Russia in China’s embrace is a common sight, this poll makes it clear that this embrace has percolated to the popular level too. The declining ties between India and Russia received a fresh lease of life after an informal summit between Modi and Putin several weeks ago, where the two leaders spent a lot of quality time together to reaffirm strategic convergences.

Identifying the top enemies of Russia, the poll picks on the US, specifically Donald Trump for top spot, with Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Germany occupying the big ‘foes’ spaces. Afghanistan remains a designated enemy, though the Russian system is now reputed to be working closely with the Taliban. Interestingly, the average Russian identified radical Islamism and Islamic extremism as an important threat/enemy. They consider Trump, Ukraine, Europe, ISIS and radical Islam and corruption to be the greatest threats to Russia. (Read more from “India Among Top Five Friends, Beijing Moscow’s Top Ally: Russia Poll” HERE)

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Collusion: Twitter CEO Found Sharing Russian Propaganda

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. . .Now, you can add “The Emperor’s New Clothes” to the list of cautionary tales that Twitter is emulating. Even after the company claimed to be on a crusade against so-called “trolls” and inaccurate news sources, it’s CEO was just revealed to be spreading the same “fake news” he pretends to be against.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey shared over a dozen tweets around the time of the presidential election which originated from an account that investigators now know to be part of a Russian trolling operation.

Dorsey “between late 2016 and mid-2017 shared at least 17 tweets from a Russian troll who went by Crystal1Johnson on Twitter, the Journal’s analysis found,” the respected newspaper stated.

“The tweets from the Russian account that Mr. Dorsey shared touched on topics including Bob Marley’s son converting a prison into a place to grow marijuana and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who first sparked the anthem controversy to make a statement on the treatment of African-Americans in the U.S.,” The Wall Street Journal continued.

While Dorsey did not originate the “fake news” tweets, he willingly shared them, despite the fact that they were from unconfirmed news sources known to be connected to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian propaganda effort. (Read more from “Twitter CEO Found Sharing Russian Propaganda” HERE)

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Russian Journalist and Putin Critic Who Was ‘Shot and Killed’ in Ukraine Turns up Very Much Alive

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A Russian journalist who was “shot and killed” in Ukraine Tuesday turned up very much alive at a press conference Wednesday.

Ukrainian authorities reportedly faked his death in an effort to catch the murderers sent to kill him, Vasily Gritsak, head of the Ukrainian Security Service, introduced at the press briefing. The operation was apparently a success, according to Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian politician with close ties to security services.

Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist and Kremlin critic, was gunned down in his apartment in Kiev, local police revealed Tuesday. His wife reportedly found him bleeding out at their home in the Ukrainian capital, and he died on the way to the hospital. . .

“We know that many people are dying, many journalists are dying, journalists are thrown into prison for doing journalist work. We consider this unacceptable, we believe that this should be the topic for a very tough international reaction that will encourage the Ukrainian authorities to take effective measures to rectify the situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.

Babchenko, a renowned reporter who fled Russia last year after receiving threats for his writings critical of the Russian government, is definitely not dead. (Read more from “Russian Journalist and Putin Critic Who Was ‘Shot and Killed’ in Ukraine Turns up Very Much Alive” HERE)

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James Clapper Struggles to Explain Why Trump Campaign Wasn’t Warned of Russian Threat

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By The Daily Caller. . .During an interview with Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Clapper seemed to argue that the Russian threat “had [not] reached the point” where the FBI would alert the campaign, but apparently had reached the point where the FBI would send in an informant.

“The first thing is just to determine what was going on,” Clapper said. “If there wasn’t a concern about the Russians…perhaps no reason to do that. You know, the FBI has rules and protocols for when they decide to do something like that and I don’t think that at that point it had reached the point where it would be appropriate to engage the head of the campaign or the nominee.” (Read more from “James Clapper Struggles to Explain Why Trump Campaign Wasn’t Warned of Russian Threat” HERE)

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Trump: Lives Have Been ‘Devastated and Destroyed’ by Russia Probe

By Politico. President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that the Russia probe has “devastated and destroyed” the reputations of people, continuing his weekend Twitter assault against the Robert Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“Who’s going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt? They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation. … They went back home in tatters,” the president wrote on Twitter.

Trump has repeatedly called special counsel Mueller’s probe a “witch hunt,” a charge that in recent weeks has been coupled with renewed calls from his allies to end the probe soon. Some House lawmakers have gone even further, arguing that reports stating a confidential FBI informant met with Trump campaign officials means the investigation is irrevocably tainted.

“With Spies, or ‘Informants’ as the Democrats like to call them because it sounds less sinister (but it’s not), all over my campaign,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Saturday, “even from a very early date, why didn’t the crooked highest levels of the FBI or ‘Justice‘ contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?” (Read more from “Trump: Lives Have Been ‘Devastated and Destroyed’ by Russia Probe” HERE)

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Russian Business Entity Rips Mueller’s Charges as ‘Make-Believe’

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Lawyers for a business entity charged in the special counsel’s investigation of Russian interference in the presidential election on Monday derided the alleged crime as “make-believe” and said the prosecution has “absolutely nothing to do” with probing any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

The Russian business entity, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, represented by a Washington-area team from Reed Smith, suggested in a court filing that Special Counsel Robert Mueller III had overstepped his authority to investigate any conspiracy between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian actors who meddled in the presidential race. Concord Management and other Russian entities and individuals were charged in February in Washington federal district court for alleged roles in “sowing discord” in the presidential campaign.

Mueller’s team alleged Concord Management funded the Internet Research Agency, a Russian outfit also charged in the indictment. Prosecutors in charging documents identified the Internet Research Agency as the “organization.”

The reason for bringing the case, Reed Smith partners Eric Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly said in a court filing Monday, “is obvious, and is political: to justify his own existence the Special Counsel has to indict a Russian—any Russian.” The two lawyers describe Mueller’s case as based on allegations that Concord Management “engaged in the make-believe crime of conspiring to ‘interfere’ in a United States election.” . . .

Concord Management’s attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich to review the legal instructions prosecutors provided to the grand jury that charged the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management and other Russian entities and individuals.

(Story appeared at Yahoo.com but read more about it HERE)

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Mueller Indicted a Russian Company That Doesn’t Exist

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By The Daily Wire. This week, one of the Russian companies accused by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of funding a conspiracy to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was revealed in court to not have existed during the time period alleged by Mueller’s team of prosecutors, according to a lawyer representing the defendant.

U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey asked Eric Dubelier, one of two lawyers representing the accused Russian company, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, if he was representing a third company listed in Mueller’s indictment . . .

“What about Concord Catering?” Harvey asked Dubelier. “The government makes an allegation that there’s some association. I don’t mean for you to – do you represent them, or not, today? And are we arraigning them as well?” . . .

“That company didn’t exist as a legal entity during the time period alleged by the government,” Dubelier continued. “If at some later time they show me that it did exist, we would probably represent them. But for purposes of today, no, we do not.” (Read more from “Mueller Indicted a Russian Company That Doesn’t Exist” HERE)

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Mueller, It’s Time to Wrap This Investigation Up

By The Hill. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been the leading story in the headlines ever since his appointment on May 17, 2017. He promised the nation a swift, narrow, focused investigation into the allegations that President Trump had colluded with Russia, and as we approach the one year anniversary of his appointment he has failed to deliver despite extraordinary waivers of executive privilege by the Trump administration.

It would be a terrible thing for Mueller to stain, forever, his superb reputation going into this job by his conduct of the investigation. A key problem is that Mueller has two major conflicts of interest, which suggest, at a minimum, that he is the wrong man for this job.

First, the big legal charge he seems to be investigating is whether President Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI director, James Comey, a close personal friend of Mueller’s with whom Mueller worked closely both during both the second Bush and Obama administrations. Nobody should be picked to investigate the legality of the firing of a close personal friend or acquaintance.

As the investigation has unfolded, a different conflict of interest for Mueller has arisen, which is that serious questions have arisen about whether the integrity of the FBI itself was seriously compromised during the time when James Comey was the FBI director. It is obvious that Mueller, a former FBI director, is not the right person to conduct an investigation into possible impermissible conduct by the FBI. (Read more from “Mueller, It’s Time to Wrap This Investigation Up” HERE)

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Journalist Posts Dossier Timeline, Confirms Deep State and Media Colluding to Trounce Trump

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By Conservative Tribune. For more than a year, the liberal mainstream media — and particularly CNN — have gleefully perpetuated a conspiracy theory regarding alleged collusion between the Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government as an explanation for Hillary Clinton’s surprising electoral loss in 2016. The centerpiece of that claim are the contents of a “salacious and unverified” anti-Trump dossier.

That dossier was believed to have been compiled during the lead up to the election by former British spy Christopher Steele in association with a liberal opposition research firm known as Fusion GPS, with funding supplied by Clinton’s campaign and the Democrat National Committee.

Unfortunately for them, its veracity has increasingly become even more dubious as more information about its creation and introduction to the public have been uncovered.

Indeed, it now appears that the only “collusion” that took place during the 2016 election was between Trump-hating “deep state” government employees — namely former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and fired FBI Director James Comey, among others — and their willing anti-Trump allies in the liberal media.

Sean Davis of The Federalist laid it all out last week in a timeline after scouring through the 253 pages of a declassified House Intelligence Committee report on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and comparing that knowledge with what has already been gleaned from other sources. (Read more from “Journalist Posts Dossier Timeline, Confirms Deep State and Media Colluding to Trounce Trump” HERE)

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Leaked Questions Reveal What Mueller Wants to Ask Trump About Russia

By The Guardian. Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the US election, wants to ask Donald Trump about contact between his former election campaign manager Paul Manafort and Russia, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The paper said it had obtained a list of nearly 50 questions that Mueller, investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, wants to put to the US president. More than half relate to potential obstruction of justice.

“What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” is one of the more dramatic questions published by the Times.

The pointed reference to Manafort breaks tantalising new ground, since there was no previous evidence linking him to outreach to Moscow. Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, tweeted: “This is very interesting – strong evidence that there are still collusion threads that are not yet public.”

Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, pleaded not guilty last October to a 12-count indictment accusing them of conspiring to defraud the US by laundering $30m from their work for a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine. (Read more from “Leaked Questions Reveal What Mueller Wants to Ask Trump About Russia” HERE)

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Mattis Explains Why He Ordered the ‘Annihilation’ of Hundreds of Russian Soldiers

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By The Blaze. Back in February, reports surfaced that hundreds of Russian mercenaries were killed during an attack on a U.S. base in Syria’s Deir Ezzor region. … Yesterday, during a hearing with the the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense James Mattis explained why he directed the strike.

“The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, and my direction to the chairman was for the force, then, to be annihilated,” said Mattis. “And it was.” (Read more from “Mattis Explains Why He Ordered the ‘Annihilation’ of Hundreds of Russian Soldiers” HERE)

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Mattis: Criminal Charges Likely Amid Probe into Intelligence Contract

By Federal News Radio. Defense Secretary James Mattis told lawmakers Thursday it’s probable that federal officials will file criminal charges as part of an ongoing investigation into a series of contracts the Army issued to help establish security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The contracts were supposed to be used to help those nations build their own intelligence gathering capabilities, but audits thus far have pointed to tens of millions of dollars in potential fraud connected to at least one vendor, including for luxury vehicles and six-figure salaries paid to its employees who performed no discernible work.

The ongoing criminal investigation involves a series of agreements, beginning in 2007, that wound up costing $458 million.

According to an audit the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction published in July, the lion’s share of those funds went to a single subcontractor, New Century Consulting (NCC). But SIGAR concluded that because of poor recordkeeping and a reliance on vendors to grade their own performance, it’s almost impossible to determine whether the contracts’ objectives were ever met. (Read more from “Mattis: Criminal Charges Likely Amid Probe into Intelligence Contract” HERE)

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