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The Operation Trump
Election of Trump as intelligence operation | The signs of hostile intelligence operations
Counterintelligence Investigations of Elections 2016 | Counterintelligence Investigations of Donald Trump | Mueller Counterintelligence Investigation | Counterintelligence Investigations
The Hypothesis
The New Abwehr
Trumpocracy - M.N.: The New Abwehr Inspired... - Trumpocracy: M.N.: The New Abwehr Inspired, The Russian-Style Trumpocracy, In A Red Mafia Sauce, "Is Infiltrating America", and the Kleptocracy is just a part of it.
The US, UK, Russia, the rest of the WW2 Allies, and the whole World under the aegis of the UN, should probe the New Abwehr and the post-War Germany's involvement in ALL THE MAJOR CALAMITIES AND CRISES after WW2.
| German Spy Agency Probes Russia Links to Right-Wing Parties: Report | World News | US News | Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America - Google Search
2.14.19
| German Spy Agency Probes Russia Links to Right-Wing Parties: Report | World News | US News | Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America - Google Search
2.14.19
Trump Investigations
Trump Investigations: A Study In Political Criminology - Web Review - 7:15 AM 2/5/2019
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The New Abwehr Hypothesis of The Operation Trump: A Study In Political Psychology, Political Criminology, and Psychohistory, and as the aid for the General, Criminal and the Counterintelligence Investigations of Donald Trump - by Michael Novakhov, M.D. (Mike Nova): Web Research, Analysis, Hypotheses, and Opinions | Current News | Reviews of media reports | Selected reading lists | Site: http://trumpinvestigations.org/ | Bike With Mike! Psycho-Historically And Hermeneutically.
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Democrats are raising questions about why Deutsche Bank was willing to lend the Trump Organization money when other banks wouldn’t. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo
Why did Deutsche Bank lend money to Trump business when others refused?
House Democrats are planning to cross one of President Donald Trump’s red lines: investigating his personal finances.
With special counsel Robert Mueller expected to wind up his work soon, Democrats are launching an investigation to discover why Deutsche Bank was willing to lend the Trump Organization money when other banks wouldn’t and whether Russia was involved.
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The German bank, which has been under scrutiny for its role in Russian money laundering, lent Trump hundreds of millions of dollars over the years for his property development ventures.
The House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees have been staffing up for their probes into the bank and Trump's Russia ties. Democrats on the panels say that with Deutsche Bank they are willing to pursue a key area that Mueller may have avoided — crossing what Trump sees as a "red line" into his personal finances.
“There's a heightened need to look into anything that could compromise the president or the country, particularly if it's not being investigated elsewhere," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told POLITICO. "I don't know that to be the case but I just haven't seen any external signs that that's happening."
Democrats won't be confined by boundaries set by the president as they ramp up their probes, so any perceived omissions by Mueller will be prime targets for House committees.
“What does Bob Mueller know?" said Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), a member of the two committees. "Has he requested information from Treasury? Does he have anything from them? I don't know one way or another. Has he requested anything directly from Deutsche Bank? There seems to be indications not, but we really don't know."
Democrats are skeptical that Mueller showed much interest in Deutsche Bank because of reporting last year that Trump nearly tried to shut down the Russia investigation — prompted by news that Mueller had subpoenaed the lender — but backed down after the special counsel's office denied the stories.
"I'm happy to be proven wrong," Schiff said.
A spokesperson for Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the Mueller investigation but said the bank "takes its legal obligations seriously and remains committed to cooperating with authorized investigations." The White House referred questions to the Trump Organization, which did not respond to a request for comment.
In his latest financial disclosure filing, Trump reported owing Deutsche Bank at least $130 million.
House Democrats, now armed with their own subpoena power, aren't waiting for the results of Mueller's investigation. Schiff and Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) have already agreed to work together on a probe of Deutsche Bank.
"We are moving forward," Schiff said.
For Schiff, Deutsche Bank is a starting point as his committee investigates possible money laundering by the Trump Organization. Waters, who has called for the president's impeachment, has said her inquiry into the "Trump money trail" would also start with the bank.
Waters told CNBC in an interview that aired this month that there was a need to look further into Trump's finances to figure out "whether or not money laundering has been involved and whether or not there are connections with the oligarchs of Russia."
Last year, House Intelligence Committee Democrats outlined concerns they had about Deutsche Bank in a status report on the panel's Russia investigation, which at that time was being run by Republicans. Among their questions: Did Trump's financial exposure via Deutsche Bank or other loans represent a point of leverage that Russia could exploit? Did the Russian government try to court Trump and launder money through the Trump Organization?
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"There's a desire to get the facts around whatever relationship Deutsche Bank might have had with the Trump Organization so that we can just put that behind us, whatever the facts may show," said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), who serves on the committees that plan to investigate the bank.
Even House Republicans have raised questions about the German bank. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, asked Deutsche Bank's CEO to lay out what measures the company has taken to respond to money laundering scandals.
McHenry is steering clear of Trump, but he told POLITICO that money laundering for Russians is a major, bipartisan concern and that his inquiry is "directed at solid policymaking."
Further questions have mounted in recent weeks.
Bloomberg News reported Wednesday that bank executives discussed giving the Trump Organization more time to repay $340 million in loans until after a possible second Trump term in 2025 because of concerns that the Trump Organization might default. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Deutsche Bank turned down Trump for a loan in early 2016.
Democrats also have questions about how Trump's businesses were able to rely on cash transactions in the years before he became president to fund real estate development, as opposed to investors' money and debt — and despite a track record of bankruptcy.
“All we know is that there was one period of Donald Trump's before he became president where he was spending cash for his developments all around the world.” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), the chairman of a subcommittee with jurisdiction over money laundering issues. “Very few people pay cash when they do a big development. ... He was paying cash at a time when he wasn't supposed to have money. We're going to have to find out why."
Another question, Heck said, is whether anyone was guaranteeing Deutsche Bank's loans to Trump.
"It's a guy who ended up at Deutsche Bank because domestic U.S. banks wouldn't touch him," Heck said. "It begs the question, if nobody else would touch him, was Deutsche Bank's desire to get into the market in the U.S. so strong that they were willing to override as it were all common underwriting practices, or was there another element present? We don't know."
Schiff said Democrats were “staffing up with people that have the appropriate expertise for each of the investigative threads that we are pursuing."
The House Financial Services Committee has recruited Bob Roach, a veteran investigator who oversaw earlier Senate probes into Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC. Ty Gellasch, a former Senate colleague, described Roach as "remarkably familiar" with money laundering issues and seasoned when it comes to dealing with international banks and their regulators.
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Roach may even share some traits with Mueller himself.
"Bob [Roach] tries to work in a bipartisan way and often more slowly than people might hope," Gellasch said. "He's extremely careful and doesn't investigate by press release. If he's left to work as he wants, the first we'll learn of what he's doing will likely be when the committee schedules its hearing and releases a report."
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5:05 AM 2/25/2019 - Quotes of the day: - “If this is a witch hunt, Mueller’s found a coven at this point,” said Neal Katyal - Google Search
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- M.N. I agree with Mr. Sessions. McCabe just proved with this "rat line" that he is the one with the nose rings and tattoos also but well hidden and conspiratorial ones.
- The rings and tattoos could be overlooked if they did their job properly. The problem is that we do not really know who "these people" are, and what they are doing. And this problems is as old as the FBI itself, or even older, starting with the Pinkertons, who were much more transparent and down to earth, it seems in retrospect.
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Andrew McCabe's disturbing account of working for Sessions and Trump
Washington Post-Feb 14, 2019The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau's workforce. “They were drunks but ...
Andrew McCabe: Jeff Sessions Complained That He Missed When the ...
Slate Magazine-Feb 15, 2019The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau's workforce. “They were drunks but ...
Review: A disturbing account of work under Sessions, Trump
The Daily Herald-Feb 19, 2019The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau's workforce. “They were drunks but ...“The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump”By Andrew G. McCabe(St. Martin’s, 274 pages, $29.99)He didn’t read intelligence reports and mixed up classified material with what he had seen in
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WASHINGTON — Donald Trump was in full deflection mode.
The Democrats had blamed Russia for the hacking and release of damaging material on his presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump wasn't buying it. But on July 27, 2016, midway through a news conference in Florida, Trump decided to entertain the thought for a moment.
"Russia, if you're listening," said Trump, looking directly into a television camera, "I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing" — messages Clinton was reported to have deleted from her private email server.
Actually, Russia was doing more than listening: It had been trying to help Republican Trump for months. That very day, hackers working with Russia's military intelligence tried to break into email accounts associated with Clinton's personal office.
It was just one small part of a sophisticated election interference operation carried out by the Kremlin — and meticulously chronicled by special counsel Robert Mueller.
We know this, though Mueller has made not a single public comment since his appointment in May 2017. We know this, though the full, final report on the investigation, believed to be in its final stages, may never be made public. It's up to Attorney General William Barr.
We know this because Mueller has spoken loudly, if indirectly, in court — indictment by indictment, guilty plea by guilty plea. In doing so, he tracked an elaborate Russian operation that injected chaos into a U.S. presidential election and tried to help Trump win the White House. He followed a GOP campaign that embraced the Kremlin's help and championed stolen material to hurt a political foe. And ultimately, he revealed layers of lies, deception, self-enrichment and hubris that followed.
FILE - In this June 21, 2017 file photo, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election, departs Capitol Hill following a closed door meeting in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
AP
Woven through thousands of court papers, the special counsel has made his public report. This is what it says.
RUSSIA, LOOKING TO INTERFERE
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The plot began before Bernie Bros and "Lock Her Up," before MAGA hats and "Lyin' Ted," before there was even a thought of Trump versus Clinton in 2016. It started in 2014, in a drab, concrete building in St. Petersburg, Russia.
There, a group of tech-savvy Russian nationals, working at an organization called the Internet Research Agency, prepared"information warfare against the United States of America." The battleground would be the internet, and the target was the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Using a game plan honed on its own people, the troll farm prepared to pervert the social networks — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram — that Americans had come to depend on for news, entertainment, friendships and, most relevantly, political discourse.
It would use deception, disinformation and the expansive reach of the electronically connected world to spread "distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general." Ultimately, it would carry a budget in the millions, bankrolled, according to an indictment, by Yevgeny Prighozin, a man so close to the Russian president that he is known as Putin's chef. (Prighozin's company has denied the charges).
It was a long game. Starting in mid-2014, employees began studying American political groups to see which messages fell flat and which spread like wildfire across the internet. The organization surreptitiously dispatched employees to the U.S. — traveling through states such as Nevada, California and Colorado— to collect on-the-ground intelligence about an America that had become deeply divided on gun control, race and politics.
As they gathered the research, the trolls began planning an elaborate deception.
They bought server space and other computer infrastructure in the U.S. to conceal the true origin of the disinformation they planned to pump into America's social media blood stream. They began preparing networks of fake accounts they would use like sock puppets to masquerade as U.S. citizens.
The Russian trolls set up accounts that appeared to be associated with Black Lives Matter, the Tennessee GOP, Muslim and Christian groups and the American South. By late 2015, as Clinton sparred with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic nomination, and as American media still saw Trump as a longshot to emerge from a crowded Republican field, the Internet Research Agency began secretly buying online ads to promote its social media groups.
By February 2016, they were ready. A memo circulated internally. Post content about "politics in the USA," they wrote, according to court papers, and "use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump— we support them)."
As disinformation scrolled across American computer screens, an entirely different Russian operation readied its own volley.
In March 2016, as Clinton and Trump began to emerge as the leaders of their respective parties, Russian military intelligence officers began setting a trap.
Hackers in Russia's military intelligence, known as the GRU, started sending dozens of malicious emails to people affiliated with Clinton's campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee.
Like Watergate, it was a break-in. But this time, the burglary tools were emails disguised to fool people into sharing their passwords and in turn provide hackers unfettered access to their emails. The goal was to collect as many damaging documents as possible that could be released online and damage Clinton's candidacy.
In a few short weeks, the hackers had penetrated their targets and hit the motherlode: the private Gmail account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
___
A RECEPTIVE CAMPAIGN
While the Russians were hacking, a young Trump campaign adviser named George Papadopoulos received some startling news in London.
It was April 26, 2016. While traveling through Europe, he had connected with a Maltese academic. The professor, a middle-aged man with thinning gray hair named Joseph Mifsud, had taken a keen interest in Papadopoulos upon learning that he had joined the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser. To dazzle his young friend, Mifsud boasted of his high-level Russian connections and introduced him to a woman named Olga — a relative, he claimed, of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mifsud and Olga wanted Papadopoulos to arrange a meeting between Trump aides and Russian officials. Eager to ingratiate himself with the campaign, Papadopoulos brought up his newfound connections in a meeting with Trump and several high-ranking campaign officials, saying he could broker a Trump-Putin summit. When he raised the idea, his lawyers later said,Trump nodded with approval and deferred to another aide in the room, future Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who said the campaign should look into it. Sessions would later say he remembered telling Papadopoulos that he wasn't authorized to speak for the campaign.
When he walked into a London hotel for breakfast with Mifsud, Papadopoulos expected to discuss Russia's "open invitation" to meet with Trump. But the conversation quickly turned to another subject. Mifsud confided in Papadopoulos that Russia had "dirt" on Clinton. What kind of dirt? "Thousands of emails."
What happened next remains a mystery. Prosecutors haven't revealed exactly where Mifsud got his information or what Papadopoulos might have done with it. The encounter, the first known instance of a Trump aide hearing of stolen emails, would later help kick-start the Russia investigation. But at the time, it was just one of many connections already established between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Unbeknownst to the public, Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen had been trying to broker a business deal in Russia for the Republican candidate. The proposal was for a Trump Tower Moscow. A letter of intent was signed. Cohen had discussed it with Trump and his children. Cohen had even gone so far as to reach out to the Kremlin directly for help, speaking with an official about ways to secure land and financing for the project.
While Cohen pursued the deal, another person with Russia ties joined the Trump campaign. Paul Manafort, a longtime Washington insider, had made millions as a political consultant for Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Over that time, Manafort developed a close relationship with a man named Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI says has ties to Russian military intelligence. Manafort also had worked for a Russian billionaire named Oleg Deripaska who is close with Putin.
But in March 2016, Manafort was looking for a comeback. His business had dried up after Yanukovych was ousted and fled to Russia. The millions that Manafort had hidden from the IRS while enjoying a lavish lifestyle were largely gone. With the Trump campaign, Manafort saw an opportunity to get back on his feet. He and his protege, Rick Gates, quickly worked their way into the highest levels of the campaign, and they began trying to make sure old clients had heard about their new positions.
As Trump clinched the Republican nomination, Manafort and those around him began preparing for a general election battle against Clinton.
The Russians did, too. The Internet Research Agency boosted its support of Trump — and disparagement of Clinton. Using stolen identities and bank account information, the troll farm also began buying political ads on social media services, according to Mueller.
"Donald wants to defeat terrorism ... Hillary wants to sponsor it," read one. "Hillary Clinton Doesn't Deserve the Black Vote," read another.
Meanwhile, hackers with the GRU secretly implanted malicious software — called X-Agent — on the computer networks of the DNC and the DCCC. It allowed them to surreptitiously search through the political operatives' computers and steal what they wanted. As the hackers roamed the Democratic networks, a separate group of Russian intelligence officers established the means to release their ill-gotten gains, registering a website, <a href="http://DCLeaks.com" rel="nofollow">DCLeaks.com</a>.
By May, the Democratic groups realized they had been hacked. The DNC quickly hired a private cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike, to identify the extent of the breach and to try to clear their networks of malware. But they kept it quiet until they knew more.
On the Trump campaign, Papadopoulos continued to push for a Trump-Putin meeting, unsuccessfully.
At the same time, another Russian outreach found a willing audience in Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
In early June, Trump Jr. exchanged a series of emails with a British publicist representing Emin Agalarov, a pop singer in Russia, whose father had partnered with the Trumps on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Emin Agalarov and Trump Jr. had become friendly, and the publicist, Rob Goldstone, had become a common intermediary between the two wealthy sons.
Over email, Goldstone brokered a meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. He said the lawyer had documents that could "incriminate" Clinton and they were being shared as part of the Russian government's support of the Trump campaign. "Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer," Trump Jr. wrote back.
The meeting was held at Trump Tower in Manhattan on June 9. Trump Jr. attended along with Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Participants in the room would later say the meeting was a bust, consumed by a lengthy discussion of Russian adoption and U.S. sanctions. To Trump Jr., the information wasn't useful ammunition against Clinton. He was less concerned that it came from Russia.
Days later, on June 14, the DNC publicly announced it had been hacked, and pointed the finger at Russia.
By then, the Russian hackers had launched <a href="http://DCLeaks.com" rel="nofollow">DCLeaks.com</a>. According to Mueller , the DNC announcement accelerated their plans.
They created a fake online persona called Guccifer 2.0, which quickly took credit for the hack. Through Guccifer, the hackers masqueraded as a "lone Romanian hacker" and released caches of stolen material.
The efforts attracted the attention of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group led by Julian Assange from his exile within Ecuador's embassy in London.
On June 22, 2016, the group sent a private message to Guccifer: "Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing."
Over the next several weeks, WikiLeaks requested any documents related to Clinton, saying they wanted to release them before the Democratic National Convention when they worried she would successfully recruit Sanders supporters.
We "think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary ... so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting," WikiLeaks wrote.
Using Guccifer, the Russian intelligence officers transferred the files to WikiLeaks, hoping for a big online splash.
They wouldn't have to wait long.
___
LEAKS AND CIGARS
July 22 was supposed to be a big Friday for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The former secretary of state was planning to announce Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate. The party's convention was just days away.
But at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, WikiLeaks stole the limelight, releasing more than 20,000 stolen DNC emails.
The cascade of stolen material was almost immediately picked up by American news outlets, conservative pundits and Trump supporters, who in the wake of Clinton's FBI investigation for using a private email server, were happy to blast out anything with "Clinton" and "emails" in the same sentence.
So was Trump. After publicly questioning that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic groups, he took to the stage in Florida to make his famous call to Russia, "if you're listening." He would later begin praising WikiLeaks.
Smelling a possible political advantage, the Trump campaign reached out to Roger Stone, a close confidant of Trump's who is known for his bare-knuckles brand of political mischief. Stone had been claiming to have connections to WikiLeaks, and campaign officials were looking to find out when Wikileaks would drop its next batch of documents.
According to an indictment against Stone, after the first release of DNC documents, "a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information" WikiLeaks had regarding Clinton's campaign.
In August, Stone began claiming he had inside information into Assange's plans. At the same time, he was privately sending messages to a radio host and a conservative conspiracy theorist — both of whom had claimed to have connections to WikiLeaks — seeking anything they knew. (No evidence has emerged that these messages made it to Assange).
That same month there was a meeting that went to the "heart" of the Russia investigation, according to a Mueller prosecutor. It involved Manafort, and it remains an enigma, at least to the public.
Court papers indicate Manafort had previously shared polling information related to the Trump campaign with Kilimnik, his old Russian pal. According to emails and court papers, Manafort — looking to make money from his Trump access — had also been in touch with Kilimnik about providing private briefings for the billionaire Deripaska. (There's no evidence such briefings ever occurred).
Meeting with Manafort and Gates at New York's Grand Havana Room cigar bar on Aug. 2, 2016, Kilimnik brought up a possible peace plan for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. What happened at that meeting is in dispute and much of it remains redacted in court papers.
But the Mueller prosecutor would note: The men left separately to avoid unwanted attention.
As the campaign entered the final stretch and Trump's advisers waited for the next WikiLeaks dump, Russian trolls— who had gained hundreds of thousands of social media followers — were barraging Americans with pro-Trump and anti-Clinton rhetoric, using Twitter hashtags such as "#MAGA" and "#Hillary4Prison."
By early October, Stone was looking for more. On Oct. 3, 2016, ahead of an expected news conference by Assange, Stone exchanged messages with Matthew Boyle, a writer at Breitbart who was close to Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon.
"Assange — what's he got? Hope it's good," Boyle wrote to Stone.
"It is," Stone wrote back. "I'd tell Bannon but he doesn't call me back."
Hours later, Assange held a news conference in which he appeared to waffle on whether he would release additional documents about Clinton.
Bannon reached out to Stone: "What was that this morning???" Stone chalked it up to a "security concern" and said WikiLeaks would be releasing "a load every week going forward."
By Oct. 7, the Trump campaign was embroiled in its own scandal. The Washington Post released audio of Trump bragging about sexually harassing and groping women. But within hours, WikiLeaks gave Trump's team a break.
The first set of emails stolen from Podesta's accounts popped onto WikiLeaks' website. Stone's phone lit up. It was a text message from a Bannon associate.
"well done," it read.
___
A SERIES OF LIES
The first documented lie in the Russia investigation happened on Jan. 24, 2017, in the White House office of freshly appointed national security adviser Michael Flynn.
It was the Tuesday after Trump's inauguration, and Flynn was settling in after a whirlwind presidential transition.
Since Trump's victory in November, Flynn had become part of Trump's inner circle — and the preferred contact between the Trump team and Russia. In late December, Flynn had asked Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the U.S., to reject or delay a U.N. vote condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Days later, as the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia for election-meddling, Flynn implored Kislyak not to escalate a "tit-for-tat" fight over punishment imposed on Moscow for election interference.
But on that Tuesday, when FBI agents asked Flynn about those conversations, he lied. No, he said, he hadn't made those requests of Kislyak.
Days later in Chicago, other FBI agents confrontedPapadopoulos as he had just stepped out of the shower at his mother's home. Though his mother would later say she knew it was a terrible idea, he agreed to go to their office for questioning, where he misled them about his conversations with Mifsud, the Maltese professor.
Months later — after Mueller's May 2017 appointment — Cohen lied to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, saying it ended much sooner than June 2016. Cohen would later say he was trying to be loyal to Trump and match the public messaging of a president who had adamantly denied any business dealings with Russia.
Even when Trump aides tried to come clean and cooperate with Mueller's team, they couldn't keep their stories straight.
As he was working out a plea agreement with Mueller, Gates liedto investigators about his and Manafort's Ukrainian lobbying work. Manafort pleaded guilty and agree to cooperate but a judge later determined he had also misled Mueller's team about several matters, including about his interactions with Kilimnik. Those lies voided the plea deal.
The deceptions played out as Mueller methodically brought criminal cases. He indicted the Russian hackers. He did the sameto the troll farm. He exposed Manafort's tax cheating and his illicit foreign lobbying, winning at trial and putting the 69-year-old political operative at risk of spending the rest of his life in prison. And one by one, his team got guilty pleas from Flynn, Papadopoulos and others .
Most recently, he indicted Stone, accusing him of witness tampering and lying to Congress about his efforts to glean information about the WikiLeaks disclosures. Despite emails showing him repeatedly discussing WikiLeaks with Trump advisers and others, Stone told lawmakers he had no records of that sort. (Stone has pleaded not guilty.)
In the backdrop of all this is Trump and his family.
Mueller's grand jury heard testimony from several participants of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting arranged by Trump Jr., but no charges have been filed.
The mercurial president himself has made no secret of his disdain for the Mueller investigation and his efforts to undermine it. Mueller has investigated whether any of Trump's actions constituted obstruction of justice, but the special counsel hasn't gone public with what he found.
And it's unclear if he ever will.
Read the whole story
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Andrew McCabe's disturbing account of working for Sessions and Trump
Washington Post-Feb 14, 2019
The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau's workforce. “They were drunks but ...
Andrew McCabe: Jeff Sessions Complained That He Missed When the ...
Slate Magazine-Feb 15, 2019
The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau's workforce. “They were drunks but ...
Review: A disturbing account of work under Sessions, Trump
The Daily Herald-Feb 19, 2019
The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau's workforce. “They were drunks but ...
“The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump”
By Andrew G. McCabe
(St. Martin’s, 274 pages, $29.99)
He didn’t read intelligence reports and mixed up classified material with what he had seen in newspaper clips. He seemed confused about the structure and purpose of organizations and became overwhelmed when meetings covered multiple subjects. He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness.
This isn’t how President Trump is depicted in a new book by former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. Instead, it’s McCabe’s account of what it was like to work for then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”
It’s a startling portrait that suggests that the Trump administration’s reputation for baseness and dysfunction has, if anything, been understated and too narrowly attributed to the president.
The description of Sessions is one of the most striking revelations in “The Threat,” a McCabe memoir that adds to a rapidly expanding collection of score-settling insider accounts of Trump-era Washington. McCabe’s is an important voice because of his position at the top of the bureau during a critical series of events, including the firing of FBI chief James Comey, the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller, and the ensuing scorched-earth effort by Trump and his Republican allies to discredit the Russia probe and destroy public confidence in the nation’s top law enforcement agency. The work is insightful and occasionally provocative. The subtitle, “How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” all but equates the danger posed by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to that of the current president.
But overall, the book isn’t the comprehensive account McCabe was presumably capable of delivering. He seems reluctant to reveal details about his role in conflicts at key moments, rarely adding meaningful new illumination to areas of the Trump-Russia-FBI timeline established by Mueller, news organizations and previous authors.
McCabe is a keen observer of detail, particularly when it comes to the president’s pettiness. He describes how Trump arranges Oval Office encounters so that his advisers are forced to sit before him in “little schoolboy chairs” across the Resolute Desk. Prior presidents met with aides on couches in the center of the room, but Trump is always angling to make others feel smaller.
McCabe was known as a taciturn figure in the bureau, in contrast to the more garrulous Comey. His book reflects that penchant for brevity, with just 264 pages of text. Even so, he documents the president’s attempts to impair the Russia probe and incessant attacks on the institution, describing the stakes in sweeping, convincing language.
“Between the world of chaos and the world of order stands the rule of law,” McCabe writes. “Yet now the rule of law is under attack, including from the president himself.”
Inevitably, the book includes disturbing new detail about Trump’s subservience to Russian President Vladimir Putin. During an Oval Office briefing in July 2017, Trump refused to believe U.S. intelligence reports that North Korea had test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile — a test that Kim Jong Un had called a Fourth of July “gift” to “the arrogant Americans.”
Trump dismissed the missile launch as a “hoax,” McCabe writes. “He thought that North Korea did not have the capability to launch such missiles. He said he knew this because Vladimir Putin had told him so.”
McCabe, of course, has some baggage that hurt the reputation he’d built over 22 years at the bureau and raised questions about his credibility. He was accused by the FBI inspector general of making false statements about contacts with the media.
McCabe also has ample motivation to lash out at the president. He had been a target of Trump insults and taunts for nearly two years by the time he was fired, mainly because McCabe’s wife, a pediatrician, had run for state office in Virginia with the financial backing of longtime Clinton ally and former governor Terry McAuliffe.
Trump seized on the connection to insinuate that McCabe had stifled the bureau’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails — a claim debunked by internal FBI investigations. Trump seems never to have let go of the issue, even as he dangled the FBI director job to McCabe, sneering in one conversation that it “must have been really tough” when McCabe’s wife lost her race. “To lose,” Trump said, driving the dagger further. “To be a loser.”
When McCabe was finally forced out, it was in the most petty fashion possible. He was fired just 26 hours before his own self-declared retirement date. Trump was gleeful. “Andrew McCabe FIRED,” he tweeted. “A great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI.”
But for all of the understandable alarm and indignation that McCabe registers, he seems, like other Trump dissidents, never to have found reason or opportunity to stand up to the president. There are paragraphs in “The Threat” that recount in detail McCabe’s inner outrage — but no indication that those thoughts escaped his lips in the presence of Trump.
What is it that makes otherwise proud public servants, Comey included, willing to subject themselves to Trump-inflicted indignities?
Deference to the office? A determination to cling to power? A view of oneself as an indispensable institutional savior?
At one point, McCabe puts his odds of getting the FBI director’s position at “one-in-ten-million,” but he goes through a job interview with Trump that feels like a charade from the outset.
One of the most frustrating aspects of “The Threat” is that it steers around scenes where McCabe might have provided more detail or insight. He is known to have had a series of tense interactions with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the aftermath of Comey’s firing, each suspicious of his counterpart and convinced that the other should recuse himself from the Russia probe.
McCabe was also witness to secret conversations in which Rosenstein raised the possibility that officials should wear a wire in meetings with the president. You won’t learn about any of that in “The Threat.”
McCabe skims over the conduct of two of his FBI subordinates, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, whose text exchanges during an illicit affair included disparaging remarks about Trump and, when they were later revealed, fueled doubts about the organization’s impartiality.
When first confronted with the details of the Page-Strzok texts, McCabe was asked by the inspector general whether he knew that Page — his closest legal adviser — had had interactions with the press. McCabe said he didn’t, though in fact he had authorized those contacts. In the book, he downplays that false testimony as a momentary mental lapse during a confusing conversation — which sounds a lot like the excuses offered by countless defendants who find themselves being prosecuted by the FBI for lying.
McCabe’s disdain for Trump is rivaled only by his contempt for Sessions. He questions the former attorney general’s mental faculties, saying that he had “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues.”
Logs on the electronic tablets used to deliver the President’s Daily Brief to Sessions came back with no indication he had ever punched in the passcode. The attorney general’s views on race and religion are described as reprehensible.
Sessions “believed that Islam — inherently — advocated extremism” and ceaselessly sought to draw connections between crime and immigration. “Where’s he from?” was his first question about a suspect. The next: “Where are his parents from?”
McCabe notes that he would like to “say much more” about his firing and questions of his candor toward other bureau officials, but that he is restrained from doing so because he is pursuing a lawsuit.
There is one area, however, in which he is considerably more forthcoming than Comey. He acknowledges that the bureau made major miscalculations in its handling of the Clinton probe in 2016 and its decision to discuss it publicly.
“As a matter of policy, the FBI does everything possible not to influence elections,” he writes. “In 2016, it seems we did.”
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A Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday the panel has given special counsel Robert Mueller “full access” to its own Russia investigation.
“We’ve given full access to all of our interviews, all of our investigation. We haven’t had that reciprocated,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Blunt appeared to acknowledge more has been handed over to Mueller’s team than previously known. Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in November the panel had made referrals to Mueller but would not say how many.
The committee has conducted more than 200 interviews in the past two years and is nearing the end of its investigation.
Burr said earlier this year the committee has so far found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
“We are still [investigating],” Blunt said Sunday.
Blunt said the committee would wait until Mueller issues his findings to write its final report.
“We’d like to have, frankly, a little more access the Mueller investigation before we come to a final conclusion. His report will help us write our final report,” Blunt said.
Anticipation has been building in Washington that Mueller will release his findings to the Justice Department in the coming weeks. Neither Mueller’s team nor the department have publicly acknowledged that the special counsel is wrapping up after nearly two years investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump campaign collusion.
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Adam Schiff has warned the Justice Department that any effort to conceal special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report into Russian interference in the election of Donald Trump will be met with swift legal action.
Mr Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was considering taking the Trump administration to court and forcing Mr Mueller to testify before Congress if Attorney General William Barr tries to keep the report secret.
“We are going to get to the bottom of this,” Mr Schiff told ABC’s 'This Week'. “We are going to share this information with the public. And if the president is serious about all his claims of exoneration, then he should welcome the publication of the report.”
“We will obviously subpoena the report. We will bring Bob Mueller in to testify before Congress; we will take it to court if necessary. And in the end, I think the [Justice] Department understands they’re going to have to make this public," Mr Schiff continued.
Mr Schiff, a Democrat, took the helm of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year after Democrats took over the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections.
The comments come as reports indicate Mr Mueller will soon deliver his report, ending a two-year investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
Donald Trump's Cabinet is one the richest in American history, filled with billionaires, conservatives and several career politicians.
AFP/Getty
Secretary of Commerce Wibur Ross raised controversy when he was accused of falsely claiming to have sold stock in a bank and violated a government ethics agreement.
AFP/Getty
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has been a fixture in Donald Trump's ongoing trade spat with China.
AFP/Getty
US Vice President Mike Pence has defended Donald Trump throughout his presidency while walking a fine line to avoid any public involvement in major scandals.
AFP/Getty
Attorney General William Barr replaced Jeff Sessions as the nation's top cop in early 2019 and has refused to commit to recusing himself from the Russia probe despite an unsolicited memo he sent to the Justice Department decrying the investigation.
EPA
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo replaced Donald Trump's previous appointment to the post, Rex Tillerson, and has led talks with North Korea in establishing high-profile summits between the president and Kim Jong Un.
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Energy Secretary Rick Perry has held his post throughout Donald Trump's presidency despite previously undermining the need for the agency he now leads in past public statements.
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also held her post throughout the presidency, despite major backlash to her apparent undermining of the nationwide public school system and advocacy for charter programmes.
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Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta still remains in his post despite calls to resign over his involvement in a controversial case surrounding Jeffrey Epstein.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has faced numerous controversies throughout his tenure as the head of Treasury, including costing taxpayers at least a million dollars in travel expenses.
AP
Veterans Affairs secretary Robert Wilkie was appointed after Donald Trump's White House doctor Ronny Jackson withdrew over allegations he provided prescription drugs to patients without prescriptions.
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Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has held her post throughout the presidency and has mostly avoided controversy, despite a report claiming her office has been in frequent coordination with her husband's, Mitch McConnell.
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Secretary of Homeland Kirstjen Nielsen has stirred major backlash throughout her tenure for allegedly lying about details of the zero tolerance policy that caused the systematic separation of migrant families at the US-Mexico border.
Reuters
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson was appointed shortly after Donald Trump took office and raised controversy over an exorbitant furnishing bill for his office.
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CIA Director Gina Haspel was appointed in 2018 and faced backlash surrounding her oversight of Guantanamo Bay.
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Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats could be the next person to leave Donald Trump's administration over his refuting the president's claims surrounding ISIS.
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Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has been dogged by ethics questions throughout his tenure and faced controversy when emails showed the agency appeared willing to eagerly work with lobbyists under his leadership.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is a former pharmaceutical lobbyist and former drug company executive.
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Acting Chief of Staff and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has described himself as one of the most conservative officials in the White House.
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Mr Mueller’s investigation has resulted in several indictments against individuals close to Donald Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, lawyer Michael Cohen, and political strategist Roger Stone.
Mr Trump has insisted there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 election, and has frequently criticised the investigations into the issue.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
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