RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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Judiciary Committee to release transcripts of interviews with Trump Tower meeting participants
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to release transcripts of its interviews with President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and others who participated in a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday that the committee would start releasing “all witness interviews that we have done related to that meeting” right away and “get them out to the public for everyone to see,” as the panel’s interviews with “witnesses surrounding the Trump Tower meeting are complete.”
Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) said Thursday she was “delighted” by Grassley’s intentions, and “very grateful for your decision to proceed.”
The committee spoke with Trump Jr. in September, and in the last several months has also interviewed other participants in the Trump Tower meeting, including music promoter Rob Goldstone, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, U.S.-based Russian real estate company employee Ike Kaveladze, and Anatoli Samochornov, the translator for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who answered the committee’s questions in writing.
The panel never spoke with President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, or with his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, both of whom also attended the Trump Tower meeting.
Grassley said Thursday that the panel’s “chances of getting a voluntary interview with Mr. Kushner has been shot,” and blamed Feinstein for having “spooked” potential witnesses when she unilaterally released the transcript of the panel’s interview with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Simpson and his company were involved in producing a now-famous dossier detailing alleged ties between Trump and the Kremlin.
Grassley’s team has also privately blamed Feinstein for costing the committee an interview with Manafort in July, just before FBI agents raided his apartment. Feinstein denies the insinuation, and has faulted Grassley for failing to subpoena Manafort’s testimony.
Kushner and Manafort have spoken with the Senate Intelligence Committee. There are three congressional committees conducting probes of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
On Thursday, Grassley said he hoped that Feinstein, who also sits on the Intelligence Committee, could broker a deal for Grassley to be able to view the transcript of that committee’s interview with Kushner, as she did with Manafort.
Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) has thus far resisted Grassley’s entreaties to share the transcript.
Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
Read more at PowerPost
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @wire28 @smitty22 @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @.r. @GnauzBookOfRhymes @Dorian Breh @Dameon Farrow @TheNig @VR Tripper @re'up @Blackfyre_Berserker @Cali_livin
Judiciary Committee to release transcripts of interviews with Trump Tower meeting participants
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to release transcripts of its interviews with President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and others who participated in a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday that the committee would start releasing “all witness interviews that we have done related to that meeting” right away and “get them out to the public for everyone to see,” as the panel’s interviews with “witnesses surrounding the Trump Tower meeting are complete.”
Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) said Thursday she was “delighted” by Grassley’s intentions, and “very grateful for your decision to proceed.”
The committee spoke with Trump Jr. in September, and in the last several months has also interviewed other participants in the Trump Tower meeting, including music promoter Rob Goldstone, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, U.S.-based Russian real estate company employee Ike Kaveladze, and Anatoli Samochornov, the translator for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who answered the committee’s questions in writing.
The panel never spoke with President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, or with his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, both of whom also attended the Trump Tower meeting.
Grassley said Thursday that the panel’s “chances of getting a voluntary interview with Mr. Kushner has been shot,” and blamed Feinstein for having “spooked” potential witnesses when she unilaterally released the transcript of the panel’s interview with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Simpson and his company were involved in producing a now-famous dossier detailing alleged ties between Trump and the Kremlin.
Grassley’s team has also privately blamed Feinstein for costing the committee an interview with Manafort in July, just before FBI agents raided his apartment. Feinstein denies the insinuation, and has faulted Grassley for failing to subpoena Manafort’s testimony.
Kushner and Manafort have spoken with the Senate Intelligence Committee. There are three congressional committees conducting probes of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
On Thursday, Grassley said he hoped that Feinstein, who also sits on the Intelligence Committee, could broker a deal for Grassley to be able to view the transcript of that committee’s interview with Kushner, as she did with Manafort.
Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) has thus far resisted Grassley’s entreaties to share the transcript.
Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
Read more at PowerPost
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @wire28 @smitty22 @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @.r. @GnauzBookOfRhymes @Dorian Breh @Dameon Farrow @TheNig @VR Tripper @re'up @Blackfyre_Berserker @Cali_livin
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Cole Cash
They took a hammer and sickle to my back
Hood Critic
The Power Circle
He's absolutely spooked - who wouldn't be when they realized the well crafted lies you were going to lay at the feet of the senate judiciary were going to fall apart as soon as they were released and analyzed by the public.
Poetical Poltergeist
Precise and cold hearted
Kushner looks like a rat fukk. Can't stand that dude.
So no one is going to call Grassley weak like ya'll do dems? 
Poetical Poltergeist
Precise and cold hearted
Well how about that. Cuz we all know people in secret societies call their secret society, The Secret Society.
hes also saying it wasnever his intention to malign the fine people at the FBI
either this old b*stard got a call reminding him of where some metaphorical bodies or burried
or somebody in the IC rolled through and said
"how you doin?"
then hit him with
ExodusNirvana
Change is inevitable...
Yeah....the Alphabet boys gave him a call
I was mistaken...THIS is probably why Wray and Rosenstein were talking to Paul Ryan the other day
Hood Critic
The Power Circle
Putin Family Split Offers Peek at Secret Dealings of Russia Inc.
More stories by Irina ReznikJanuary 25, 2018, 9:23 AM EST
During his courtship and marriage, Kirill Shamalov catapulted into the ranks of the super-rich with a little help from some of the closest allies of his father-in-law: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But now Shamalov’s matrimonial alliance with Putin’s youngest daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, is over, four people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity. The son of an old Putin pal is back working as a senior executive for the same petrochemical giant, Sibur, where his rise and fall as a multibillion-dollar owner coincided with his stint in Russia’s First Family.
Kirill Shamalov
Photographer: Kirill Kallinikov/Sputnik via AP Photos
The reversal of fortune offers a rare glimpse into the secretive ways Putin’s inner circle mixes family, friends and finance. How and why riches are divvied up is the subject of intense scrutiny in the U.S., where investigators are looking for more targets to penalize for Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.
Shamalov’s brief tenure as a captain of industry started in 2012, around the time he was preparing to wed. Sibur’s main owners, Leonid Mikhelson and Gennady Timchenko, promoted their vice president for business administration to deputy chief executive officer and then awarded him 4.3 percent of the company. In 2014, with a loan from Gazprombank, he acquired another 17 percent from Timchenko for about $2.2 billion. He was 32.
Then Sibur announced last April that Shamalov had sold the shares he bought from Timchenko to Mikhelson. Though the details of the deal and the reasoning behind it were never disclosed, a person familiar with the transaction said Shamalov made “zero” from the sale because he was only allowed to hold those shares in a kind of trust as a Putin family member. That ownership privilege ended when the marriage did, three of the people said.
Bloomberg Billionaires Index
These are the kinds of relationships that are being increasingly scrutinized by the Treasury Department and other agencies in Washington, where investigators have until Jan. 29 to submit a list of “oligarchs” who may be subject to future penalties. There’s growing concern among Russia’s elite that the U.S. blacklist will be expanded to include progeny, complicating their lives for years.
QuicktakeTrump-Russia Saga
A person close to Shamalov denied any connection between the Sibur transactions and his marriage. Speaking on condition of anonymity, this person said that the initial 4.3 percent stake Shamalov gained was the result of a management stock-option plan and that the purchase from Timchenko was a joint acquisition with Shamalov’s father. The Shamalovs “barely broke even” when the investment turned out worse than they had hoped, the person said.
Shamalov declined to comment through a representative. Tikhonova’s office didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment, nor did Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, Gazprombank or Mikhelson. Sibur’s press service said Shamalov rose through its ranks and was awarded his first stake by shareholders based on performance. A spokesman for Timchenko said his sale to Shamalov was priced at the market rate. Shamalov’s father couldn’t be reached for comment.
Separating from the Putin family hasn’t been a total loss for Shamalov, who’s worth about $800 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s due mainly to the 3.9 percent of Sibur he still owns, a stake that is currently valued at about $504 million.
This estimate doesn’t take into account any interest Shamalov might have paid on the Gazprombank loan or any changes to his marital status. Under Russian law, former spouses are entitled to half of all assets accrued during marriage unless a prenuptial agreement was signed.
So assiduously does the Kremlin guard the Putin family’s privacy that even off the record none of the people contacted for this story would say whether Tikhonova has formally divorced or when, exactly, she got married.
Russian media are all but banned from reporting about his daughters, Katerina, 31, and Maria, 32, so their lives are shrouded in mystery. Even their maiden names are different.
Oliver Stone
Putin, who’s seeking to extend his 18-year rule in March elections, rarely talks about his family in public, citing security concerns. He announced his own divorce to a television reporter as he and his then-wife Lyudmila were leaving a ballet inside the Kremlin in 2013.
In 2015, Putin said more about his daughters than ever before, though in characteristically vague terms. Both women graduated from Russian universities and speak multiple languages, he said, adding that they were “doing well” in their chosen careers, keeping “a low profile” and avoiding business and politics. Earlier that year, Tikhonova and Shamalov attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, the RBC newspaper reported.
There’s a YouTube video of Tikhonova dancing in 2013 that’s been viewed more than 1.3 million times. And it’s public knowledge that she helps run a startup incubator at Moscow State University whose sponsors include Gazprombank, Sibur and several companies directly controlled by the state.
Less is known about Maria, reportedly an endocrinology researcher in Moscow who’s married to a Dutchman. The Russian public didn’t learn that the couple had given birth until Putin told Hollywood director Oliver Stone during a series of interviews last year that he’d become a grandfather.
Presidential Account
As for Shamalov, he may still be singled out for U.S. sanctions even if he no longer has direct ties to the Kremlin.
His father, Nikolai, was blacklisted over the Ukraine conflict by the European Union, which called him a part of “an influential group” around Putin. The elder Shamalov is a shareholder in the first Russian entity slapped with U.S. restrictions, Bank Rossiya, a St. Petersburg lender partly owned by Timchenko, who was under sanctions when he sold his Sibur stake to Kirill Shamalov.
But any U.S. penalties imposed on the younger Shamalov, an alum of the same St. Petersburg law school as Putin, would likely only strengthen his standing in Russia. After Rossiya was punished by the Treasury for being the “personal bank” of senior government officials, Putin ordered the Kremlin to open an account in his name and send his presidential salary there.
— With assistance by Henry Meyer, Gregory White, and Torrey Clark