RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
You right, there's no way I can comprehend the logic of any one defending this shyt.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
GoddamnyamanProf
Countdown to Armageddon
Nice try
Nothing "happens" on to catch a predator either
Shut your bytch ass up. Donald is your daddy
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
The Hill
18 mins ·
Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly demanded that Vice President Mike Pence shut down President Trump's voter fraud commission's request for states to share private voter registration data, saying that it is "based on false claims made by President Trump and members of his administration."
Dem lawmaker to Pence: Shut down Trump voter fraud commission's request for voter data
Dozens of states have refused to hand over the data to the commission, which is led by Pence.
THEHILL.COM
18 mins ·
Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly demanded that Vice President Mike Pence shut down President Trump's voter fraud commission's request for states to share private voter registration data, saying that it is "based on false claims made by President Trump and members of his administration."
Dem lawmaker to Pence: Shut down Trump voter fraud commission's request for voter data
Dozens of states have refused to hand over the data to the commission, which is led by Pence.
THEHILL.COM
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Al Jazeera English
20 mins ·
"Everyone being able to see the president's tweets feels vital to democracy"
Free-speech group sues Trump for blocking Twitter users
A lawsuit argues the US president's practice of blocking some Twitter users violates the constitution's First Amendment.
ALJAZEERA.COM
20 mins ·
"Everyone being able to see the president's tweets feels vital to democracy"
Free-speech group sues Trump for blocking Twitter users
A lawsuit argues the US president's practice of blocking some Twitter users violates the constitution's First Amendment.
ALJAZEERA.COM
You are a concern troll, it's always the "I don't like trump.....but" or "I hate trump....but" like you have this crystal ball or "see through the bullsh1t" and you have this deep grasp on something more than all of us, and we think that getting Trump will solve all the systemic issues that are wrong with American politics. Save your time, save your energy, we want this fukking piece of sh1t and everything and everyone he represents fukking out, as soon as possible. There is nothing good about this fukk face, nothing good about what he represents, so go talk that sh1t at T_D, brietbart, infowars.....basically anywhere but here.
New details emerge on Moscow real estate deal that led to the Trump-Kremlin alliance
Donald Trump, Aras Agalarov and Rob Goldstone. (Photos: Sean Gallup/Getty Images; Sergei SavostyanovTASS via Getty Images; Adriel Reboh/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
While in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant in November 2013, Donald Trump entered into a formal business deal with Aras Agalarov, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, to construct a Trump Tower in the Russian capital. He later assigned his son, Donald Trump Jr., to oversee the project, according to Rob Goldstone, the British publicist who arranged the controversial 2016 meeting between the younger Trump and a Kremlin-linked lawyer.
Trump has dismissed the idea he had any business deals in Russia, saying at one point last October, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”
But Goldstone’s account, provided in an extensive interview in March in New York, offers new details of the proposed Trump project that appears to have been further along than most previous reports have suggested, and even included a trip by Ivanka Trump to Moscow to identify potential sites.
According to the publicist, the project — structured as a licensing deal in which Agalarov would build the tower with Trump’s name on it — was only abandoned after the Russian economy floundered. The economic downturn resulted in part from sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union following Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
Goldstone placed Donald Trump Jr. at the center of the Trump Tower deal, saying that his father assigned his eldest son the job of moving the project to fruition after the signing of a “letter of intent” between the Trump Organization and Agalarov’s company, the Crocus Group. It is not clear if the future president personally signed the “letter of intent,” but Michael Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Trump, told Yahoo News Tuesday that it would have been standard practice for Trump, as president of the Trump Organization, to do so.
Donald Trump Jr. at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 18, 2016. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Trump “put Donald Jr. in charge and then Ivanka went to Moscow to look around for what the location would be,” Goldstone said. But the plans for a Trump Tower fell apart because “the economy tanked in Russia’’ after the imposition of Western sanctions, he said.
Goldstone, a British-born publicist who once did worked for Michael Jackson, represents Emin Agalarov in his music career and was present in Moscow during the Miss Universe pageant when the Trump Tower project was discussed by Trump and Aras Agalarov. His role has gotten new attention this week after the New York Times disclosed that Goldstone emailed Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 urging him to meet with a Russian lawyer to receive damaging information from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. released his email exchange with Goldstone on Tuesday, confirming the key role of the publicist and, more significantly, the Agalarovs, in offering negative information about Clinton on behalf of the Kremlin. “Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” Goldstone wrote Trump Jr. on June 3, 2016.
A chief prosecutor in Russia “offered to provide the Trump campaign some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and would be very useful to your father. This is very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support of Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.”
Alan Garten, the chief lawyer for the Trump Organization, did not respond to requests for comment. In a telephone interview, Cohen, who is Trump’s personal lawyer, did not dispute any specific details of Goldstone’s account but offered to check them. He did not later respond. But Cohen adamantly rejected the idea there was anything improper about meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, given that Trump Jr. was told she might have information helpful to Trump’s campaign. “The purpose of the election is to win,” said Cohen, adding, “Why is this any different?” than the unverified “dossier” on Trump’s ties to Russia prepared by a former British spy working for a Washington research firm hired by his political opponents.
Trump Jr., accompanied by then campaign manager Paul Manafort and senior adviser Jared Kushner, met with the Russian lawyer at Goldstone’s request to review the information she purported to have. “He met with her face-to-face to determine” the validity of the advertised documents and “no information was provided.”
Goldstone had played a key role in helping to broker the initial decision by the Miss Universe pageant — then owned by the Trump Organization and NBC — to hold its 2013 contest in Moscow.
According to Goldstone, he pitched the idea to Paula Schugart, then chief executive of Miss Universe, as a way to promote the music career of Emin Agalarov. Schugart was initially hesitant because of concerns about red tape in Moscow. “What if you had a partner who owns the biggest venue in Moscow?” Emin Agalarov responded, according to Goldstone’s account. “Between myself and my father, we can cut through the red tape. You have a new partner.”
The plans to bring Miss Universe to Moscow was announced by Trump in Las Vegas in June 2013 during the Miss USA contest. Trump at the time quickly expressed hope that it would lead to a meeting with Putin. “Do you think Putin will be going to the Miss Universe pageant in November in Moscow — if so, will he become my new best friend?” Trump had tweeted at the time.
A meeting with Putin never came off during Trump’s Moscow trip; the Kremlin expressed regret that the Russian president wouldn’t be able to fit it into his schedule on the day in question because he had a meeting with the King of Holland. But the trip gave Trump an opportunity to discuss the plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow with Agalarov, a billionaire who has been called “the Trump of Russia” and “Putin’s builder” because of massive construction projects he has done on behalf of the Kremlin. Just 10 days before the Miss Universe pageant, Putin had given Agalarov a prestigious award at a ceremony at the Kremlin: Order of Honor of the Russian Federation.
But Emin Agalarov said he and the now president have continued to stay in touch, saying that Trump sent a handwritten note to the Agalaovs in November after they congratulated him on his victory. “Now that he ran and was elected, he does not forget his friends.”
Read more from Yahoo News:" style="max-width: 100%;">Read more from Yahoo News:
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@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @dtownreppin214 @The Taxman @JKFrazier @tmonster
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving scumbag
Natalia Veselnitskaya, Lawyer Who Met Trump Jr., Seen as Fearsome Moscow Insider
Natalia Veselnitskaya, Lawyer Who Met Trump Jr., Seen as Fearsome Moscow Insider
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ANDREW E. KRAMERJULY 11, 2017
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. last year, is considered a trusted insider in Moscow. Yury Martyanov/Kommersant, via Associated Press
MOSCOW — When American prosecutors accused a senior Russian official’s son of laundering $14 million by investing in Manhattan property and other assets, she was called to defend him. When Moscow regional officials battled Ikea over the Swedish retailer’s expansion, she took on their case.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. last year to discuss possible compromising material on the Democrats, has been widely depicted as a one-issue activist consumed with getting Congress to repeal sanctions against Russian businessmen.
But lawyers and others in Moscow’s legal community called her a trusted insider, one who could be counted on to argue and win important high-profile court cases that matter to the government and to one senior, well-connected official in particular.
Ms. Veselnitskaya, 42, earned her status as the go-to lawyer for the Moscow regional government. For years, she has been a lawyer for the Katsyv family, whose patriarch, Pyotr D. Katsyv, was minister of transportation of the Moscow region for more than a decade, and whose son was caught up in the New York money laundering case.
The elder Mr. Katsyv is now a vice president of Russian Railways, a state-owned railroad monopoly that is the country’s largest employer and one long dogged by corruption allegations.
The junior Mr. Trump has said he accepted the meeting, which included two high-ranking aides of President Trump, after an email from an associate had said that someone advertised as a “Russian government attorney” would deliver informationcompiled by the Russian state prosecutor that was damaging to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.
It is not known exactly what Ms. Veselnitskaya said in the roughly 30-minute meeting. Donald Trump Jr. said she spent much of the time attacking American sanctions. Ms. Veselnitskaya has denied that, at the behest of Russian officials, she discussed compromising material with members of the Trump campaign team.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, told reporters that the Kremlin had never heard of her. Asked about possible links between Ms. Veselnitskaya and the Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, the ministry’s spokeswoman, said that it had “nothing to do” with her efforts.
But in Russia, lines between career, loyalty and government service tend to blur more than in other countries.
Ms. Veselnitskaya built her career in the sharp-elbowed struggle for land as the Moscow suburbs expanded, as once derelict factory sites and other plots became wildly valuable with the spread of shopping centers and new highways. And she forged an important connection to the Katsyv family.
William Browder, an American-born hedge fund manager who has tussled repeatedly with Ms. Veselnitskaya, said of the elder Mr. Katsyv: “In the world of Russia he’d be the equivalent of a Chris Christie: no formal relationship to the Kremlin, but with very strong relations to the powers that be.”
The family’s trust in Ms. Veselnitskaya was rewarded in May, when she helped Denis P. Katsyv, Petr’s son, fight the money laundering claims in New York brought by the Manhattan federal prosecutor at the time, Preet Bharara. Mr. Bharara tangled with Ms. Veselnitskaya several times and protested at one point that she had been charging the government for a $995-a-night room at the Plaza Hotel.
The case was settled two months after Mr. Bharara was dismissed by President Trump.
Prevezon Holdings, Mr. Katsyv’s company, paid $6 million to resolve the claim without admitting any crime. While the prosecution portrayed the settlement as a victory, Ms. Veselnitskaya told the newspaper Izvestia that it was “almost an apology from the government.”
In recent years, she had become the public face of Moscow’s efforts to reverse international travel and financial sanctions on key Russian figures linked to an alleged $230 million tax fraud.
Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who exposed the fraud, was arrested by the same prosecutors who he suggested had organized it. He died in jail in 2009 amid accusations of beatings and medical malpractice.
In 2012 Mr. Browder, who had been Mr. Magnitsky’s boss, successfully campaigned for the United States Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a collection of sanctions naming Russian officials linked to Mr. Magnitsky’s death. An outraged Mr. Putin responded by banning Americans from adopting Russian children.
President Vladimir V. Putin, center, in Moscow last month. His spokesman said Tuesday that Mr. Putin had never heard of Ms. Veselnitskaya. Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ms. Veselnitskaya has also met with members of Congress and helped to establish a Delaware nonprofit group that lobbied against the sanctions. She submitted lengthy testimony and organized a screening of an anti-Magnitsky film at Newseum in Washington in June 2016, just days after she met with Donald Trump Jr.
She also attended a congressional committee hearing on American policy toward Russia a day after the screening, taking a front-row seat.
“She has this kind of patriotic thing about her,” said Andrei Nekrasov, the Russian documentary maker who made the film, which critics called inaccurate. “She does have a tendency to go a bit solemn, if not pompous and say ‘My country is being attacked’ — that is her style.”
It was Ms. Veselnitskaya’s desire to get the United States to reverse the Magnitsky Act that prompted her to seek a meeting with the Trump campaign, she said Saturday in written responses to questions from The New York Times. On Tuesday, her office withdrew the promise of an interview.
Ms. Veselnitskaya started her career in the prosecutor’s office in Moscow’s suburbs before branching out. She earned a reputation as a fearsome opponent, intimidating both inside the courtroom and in the corridors, where she was known to threaten adversaries with the wrath of the government. By her own account in a recent United States legal filing, she said she had argued and won more than 300 cases.
One lawyer who has opposed her in court described her technique as 20 percent law, at which she excelled, and 80 percent acting. She would wave her hands and describe the travails of her victims in emotional terms, the lawyer said, who feared using his name for the safety of his family.
Mr. Putin’s government has long been criticized as favoring an elite of loyal and trustworthy insiders who are permitted to manipulate the courts and government agencies to promote their interests — so long as they toe the Kremlin line. Ms. Veselnitskaya, lawyers and others who have followed her career said, was well versed in this game and wielded its weapons in the mad dash for real estate profits in the Moscow region that often pitted factions of current and former regional officials against one another.
In one instance, a small nonprofit, Spravedlivost, that tried to expose corruption in the Moscow region, published a series of articles accusing a group that included Ms. Veselnitskaya, her former husband, Aleksandr Mitusov, and Mr. Katsyv of being corporate raiders who used their clout in the regional government and the courts to seize valuable land.
Ms. Veselnitskaya helped bring a defamation suit against the nonprofit and the factory owner who had accused her of grabbing property. The court hit the representatives of Spravedlivost and the factory owner with hefty fines.
In 2008, her work with her stepdaughter attracted the attention of Vladimir R. Soloviev, now a well-known talk show host on state-run television.
“They were involved in several very similar and very dubious stories,” Mr. Soloviev wrote in a much-shared blog post about the spread of corporate raiding in Russia. “Internecine strife, strange court decisions, documents that appear from nowhere and, as a rule, all connected with land plots in the Moscow region.”
In another such case, Ms. Veselnitskaya took on Ikea, claiming that some of the land under an office complex owned by the Swedish company on the outskirts of Moscow belonged to an old farming cooperative.
It was one of many cases brought against the Swedish giant, and a former board member said they never could figure out who was behind them. This case was ultimately dismissed by the Russian Supreme Court.
Emails from the younger Mr. Trump released Tuesday indicate that the meeting with the Trump campaign was organized through Emin Agalarov, the singer son of the billionaire developer Aras Agalarov, who was Mr. Trump’s partner in bringing the 2013 Miss Universe contest to Moscow.
Mr. Agalarov’s fortune is based partly on giant shopping centers built around Moscow by his Crocus Group, whose work would undoubtedly have brought him into contact with Mr. Katsyv — and Ms. Veselnitskaya.
Ms. Veselnitskaya seems to revel in her emergence as a player in Russian policy. On her Facebook page, decorated with the Russian flag, she has a penchant for articles about conspiracy theories, and has often handicapped political developments in the United States like the appointment of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court or the dismissal of Sally Q. Yates as acting attorney general.
When a friend wrote that she wished that Yuri Chaika, the Russian state prosecutor, had the same principles as Ms. Yates, Ms. Veselnitskaya objected, accusing the Americans of being corrupt. “In the United States, politics has long been the most lucrative type of business,” she wrote.
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:sadsarahsanders:
Maybe if you dropped out of Trump U sooner, you too would know it all. :TrumpUKnowledge:You know it all breh