RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

What we know about Rudy Giuliani's relationship with a shady Russian-Ukrainian oligarch​

businessinsider.com
What we know about Rudy Giuliani's relationship with a shady Russian-Ukrainian oligarch
Josh Kovensky, TPM
5-6 minutes
It wasn't clear why Rudy Giuliani took a day in November 2017 to travel to the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Now, more light has been shed on Giuliani and his oddball Ukrainian associates — according to a new profile of Russian-Ukrainian oligarch Pavel Fuchs, Giuliani is working to "create a US office for supporting investment in the city." The profile was published Nov. 12 in the Ukrainian magazine Novoye Vremya.

Fuchs — known mainly for negotiating with the Trump Organization for a Trump Moscow project — has arguably been one of Giuliani's murkiest connections in his global consulting business.

For more than a decade, the former New York City mayor has consulted for unsavory clients around the world, from a recent sojourn to Armenia to a 2004 journey to meet a Russian billionaire in the steel town of Magnitogorsk.

But Fuchs — photographed above in New York with Giuliani in July 2017 — could mark a new low in Giuliani's foreign consulting career.

It's not clear whether Giuliani has undertaken any activities to promote Kharkiv or Fuchs.
Ty Wright/Getty Images
Fuchs, a Kharkiv native, has reportedly been under investigation in Ukraine for alleged corruption surrounding a deal to buy $160 million in frozen assets of the country's former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was deposed in February 2014.

Yanukovych was the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's prime Ukraine client for more than a decade. Manafort pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges arising from his Ukraine work and is now cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.

Fuchs built his wealth in Moscow throughout the 1990s and 2000s, amassing investments in energy, banking, and real estate.

In an Al Jazeera profile, Fuchs was quoted as telling a Russian TV host, "when I was young, I beat people up."

"I don't like it when someone lies to me," he added.

Most notably, Fuchs was contracted to build Moscow-City, a complex of skyscrapers in the Russian capital along the Moscow river.

Fuchs's position as a major real estate developer in Russia brought him into contact with the Trump Organization in June 2008, when the group was in negotiations to franchise its name to one of the towers in Fuchs's Moscow-City complex.

"We were going to name one of the Moscow-City towers 'Trump Tower'," Fuchs recalled in a November 2017 interview. "Donald Trump's son also wanted to enter the Russian luxury real estate market, he flew to us for negotiations many times."

Read more: The US government just awarded a $167 million contract to build 8 more miles of the border wall in south Texas

By 2017 — the year of Fuchs's first documented meeting with Giuliani — he had relocated to Ukraine.

Fuchs pops up in photographs with Kharkiv's mayor, Gennady Kernes, and was named an "honorary citizen" by him in 2014.

Kernes, who flaunts his love of New York City-related apparel on his Instagram account, initially sided with the outgoing Ukraine regime during the 2014 protests. After the revolution, he switched allegiances, but was accused and investigated over allegedly organizing the kidnapping and torture of protestors in his city. That case went nowhere, but accusations of reprisals and grand corruption have continued to dog the mayor.

Kernes's city hired US lobbyist Shai Franklin in 2016 to represent the city's economic interests in Washington, though that relationship doesn't appear from FARA filings to have continued.

By May 2017, Giuliani's company Giuliani Security had inked an agreement with Kharkiv city government to review the city's security services. A New York firm called Triglobal Strategic Ventures, a company the New York Times reported as "provid[ing] image consulting to Russian oligarchs and clients with deep Kremlin ties," too credit in a press release for introducing the Ukraine city and Giuliani's firm.

The New York City meeting with Fuchs occurred in July 2017, and Giuliani visited Kharkiv in November 2017. Giuliani hosted a delegation from Kharkiv in New York City in March.

It's not clear whether Giuliani has undertaken any activities to promote Kharkiv — or Fuchs — in the US A review of FARA found no record of Giuliani ever registering as a foreign lobbyist.

Giuliani and Fuchs did not reply to requests for comment.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

:ALERTRED:

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[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

:ALERTRED:

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[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[ineedsleep212]

Speaking of Facebook

 

[Arithmetic]

Like I said, nationwide, constitutions are getting pulled off top shelves, dusted off, and cracked open.

 

[jerniebert]

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

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[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Exclusive text messages show Roger Stone and friend discussing WikiLeaks plans
​

Exclusive text messages show Roger Stone and friend discussing WikiLeaks plans
"Big news Wednesday...Hillary's campaign will die this week," Randy Credico appears to have texted Stone six days before WikiLeaks email dump.

Roger Stone talks to people outside the courtroom in New York on March 30, 2017.Seth Wenig / AP file
Nov. 14, 2018 / 5:36 PM EST
By Anna Schecter
Six days before WikiLeaks began releasing Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, Roger Stone had a text message conversation with a friend about WikiLeaks, according to copies of phone records obtained exclusively by NBC News.

“Big news Wednesday,” the Stone pal, radio host Randy Credico, wrote on Oct. 1, 2016, according to the text messages provided by Stone. “Now pretend u don’t know me.”

“U died 5 years ago,” Stone replied.

“Great,” Credico wrote back. “Hillary’s campaign will die this week.”

Credico turned out to be wrong on one count — nothing incriminating about Clinton came out that Wednesday. But two days later, on Oct. 7, WikiLeaks released its first dump of emails stolen from Podesta, altering the trajectory of the 2016 presidential election.

Stone, a confidante of then-candidate Donald Trump and notorious political trickster, has denied having any advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked messages that could be damaging to Clinton’s presidential bid.

But the text messages provided by Stone to NBC News show that Credico appeared to be providing regular updates to Stone on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s plans in the days before the hacked emails were released. In the texts, Credico told Stone he had insights into Assange's plans through a longtime friend, who was also Assange’s lawyer, according to the text messages.

New York radio host Randy Credico speaks to members of the media after after appearing before the grand jury hearing evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on Sept. 7, 2018, in Washington.Jacquelyn Martin / AP file
Reached Wednesday, Credico downplayed the text exchanges. “There's absolutely nothing there that I had any knowledge of any thing that Assange was going to do because I didn't,” he told NBC News.

"Where's the smoking gun?" he added.

Stone said the messages support the story he's been telling all along. “These text messages prove beyond dispute that Randy Credico was the source who told me of the significance of the material that Julian Assange told CNN he had and would publish in June 2016 and that Credico’s source was indeed a woman attorney who worked for WikiLeaks," Stone said. "If Randy said anything different to the grand jury, he perjured himself under oath.”

Stone’s lawyer Grant Smith said the messages vindicate his client.

“The texts provided to NBC News demonstrate that my client, Roger Stone has been consistent for the past two years in his assertion that Randy Credico was the person who was providing him what limited information Mr. Stone had regarding WikiLeaks,” Smith said.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating whether Stone had any advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to publish Podesta's emails, according to people familiar with the investigation. Nearly a dozen Stone associates have been summoned by Mueller to appear before his Washington, D.C, grand jury, the sources said.

The text messages obtained by NBC News appear to show that Stone and Credico exchanged messages about Assange having damaging information about Clinton at least as early as Aug. 27, 2016. The texts show at 6:07 p.m. that day, Credico wrote to Stone, “Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary.”

Stone did not appear to reply to that particular message but the conversations ramped up over the following weeks.

“I think it’s on for tomorrow,” Credico texted Stone on Oct. 3, 2016, according to the messages obtained by NBC News.

The message is time-stamped 2:42 p.m. About 40 minutes earlier, Stone fired off a tweet suggesting he had intimate knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans. It’s not clear if a time zone difference meant that Stone had already received Credico’s message, or if there was another reason behind the timing of his tweet.

“I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp,” read Stone’s tweet.

Later that day, Credico texted Stone asking, “Why can't you get Trump to come out and say that he would give Julian Assange Asylum[?]” according to the texts obtained by NBC News.

The texts appear to show that Credico sent another message less than three hours later: “Off the Record Hillary and her people are doing a full-court press they keep Assange from making the next dump…That's all I can tell you on this line…Please leave my name out of it."

Stone responded with a question: “So nothing will happen tonight?” according to the texts obtained by NBC News.

Credico responded: “tuesday….There is so much stuff out there… There will be an announcement but not on the balcony.”

Credico followed up five minutes later: “And by the way your friend did not have a meeting with Julian Assange that's a complete lie.”

Stone replied: “How would u know, rummy?” according to the texts obtained by NBC News.

According to Stone, the “friend” the men were referring to was blogger Charles Ortel, who Stone mistakenly thought had met with Assange.

Credico responded to that message: “Because I'm best friends with [Assange's] lawyer and leave it at that and leave it alone.”

The lawyer Credico referred to is Margaret Ratner Kunstler. Kunstler declined repeated requests for comment.

The next day, Oct. 4, Assange announced that his organization would publish emails related to the 2016 campaign.

The email dump actually came three days later, only hours after the Washington Post released a recording of a lewd conversation between then-candidate Donald Trump and TV host Billy Bush.

 

[Dr. Acula]

Like I said, nationwide, constitutions are getting pulled off top shelves and dusted off.

When folks says "liberals want to radically change the country" liberals need to stop being afraid of doing that.

I would be working to make voting day a holiday, start putting in voting protections, etc. Just start cleaning and fixing shyt en masse and ignore the howling that will happen either way on the right.

I've even personally thought Democrats can maybe cut off Republicans on their talking points about voting ID. Make a national ID like social security number if not social security itself, that every citizen will be granted at birth to prove their ability to vote.

But see Republicans will FLIP at the above because we know it's not about verifying the integrity of the vote but to stiffle votes. But shyt I would start turning shyt like that on it's head just at a minimum to further highlight Republican hypocrisy.

 

[Arithmetic]

Speaking of Facebook

 

[Orbital-Fetus]

When folks says "liberals want to radically change the country" liberals need to stop being afraid of doing that.

I would be working to make voting day a holiday, start putting in voting protections, etc. Just start cleaning and fixing shyt en masse and ignore the howling that will happen either way on the right.

I've even personally thought Democrats can maybe cut off Republicans on their talking points about voting ID. Make a national ID like social security number if not social security itself, that every citizen will be granted at birth to prove their ability to vote.

But see Republicans will FLIP at the above because we know it's not about verifying the integrity of the vote but to stiffle votes. But shyt I would start turning shyt like that on it's head just at a minimum to further highlight Republican hypocrisy.

yup.
just have the federal government send everyone a card free of charge.

problem solved.

 

[ineedsleep212]

Thank God shyt like this completely torpedoes any 2020 ideas for this clown.

 

[Arithmetic]

Thank God shyt like this completely torpedoes any 2020 ideas for this clown.

Go on a rust belt tour while secretly waging a lobbying war to deflect from Cambridge Analytica brehs.

Sandberg.