There was an uneasy feeling about the potential for a Donald Trump Presidency from inside the GOP last summer, one that started long before Trump won the nomination.
Those who were familiar with Trump were growing concerned about his ties to the mafia, the lawsuits – many of which were civil and whitewashed. What we mean by “whitewashed is that under any other circumstance, without a well connected individual named – would have been considered criminal and would have resulted in felony criminal cases. The Trump University alone should have cost him 20 years. In nearly every failed deal, and nobody fails like Trump, money was stolen, misrepresentations were made and in some of the cases, Trump’s own mouth did it, pure felonies for any “non-connected mafia don.”
Those in positions of power who questioned his credibility and his background already had this information on his ties to Roy Cohn, Felix Sater, the many lawsuits, Jeffrey Epstein, as well as countless documents that showed a clear pattern of someone who was vulnerable for blackmail. An individual or group of individuals within the GOP wanted to look further, to find out if there was something peculiar going on between Trump and Moscow. They wanted more. Later Democrats took over their charge and began to pay Fusion GPS too.
Fusion, a private intelligence firm, had gathered what they could, which until this point was not enough to tip the scales on Trump for their client, so they needed to find someone with direct contacts in Russia, someone with credibility and experience and who knew how and where to look to gather the goods on Trump.
Fusion contacted Christopher Steele who had worked in Russia starting in 1990 for three years as a young spy, who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Steele returned in 2004 and served until 2009, heading the M.I.6’s Russia Station. Steele later retired and joined Orbis Business Intelligence LTD, where he was able to use the years of trade craft for private clients’ risk analysis.
After being hired by Fusion, Steele, with well over twenty years experience and field knowledge, meticulously contacted old “comrades” working inside Russia to present what would later become the 35 page dossier. This dossier was not compiled for the general public. It was compiled for top GOPers and later some Democrats who sought to gain a better understanding of what was behind Trump in Russia, and if he was vulnerable to “Kompromat ”
The dossier only became released to the public when it was published on BuzzFeed on January 10, well after the election. According to various reports, Steele had thought the dossier itself was enough to flip the election, showing the lurid details of influence, hacking and leaking that were ongoing between the Trump campaign, Russians and Wikileaks. The public acknowledgment of foreknowledge by Trump officials of the coming leaks of hacked material should have been enough to corroborate and validate information included in the dossier.
Yet, even when the dossier was released to the public, the Mainstream Media – the same media that bolstered the case for the fraudulent and unnecessary war in Iraq, the one that only lightly questioned the backers of the terrorists involved in the “War on Terror,” and the media that also refused to cover the various potential criminal conspiracies surrounding Trump – focused on the “golden showers” aspect of the dossier, leaving out his background of serving as a conduit for Russia cash, the publicly discussed hacks and leaks by his surrogates, as well as the clear pattern that emerged from not only the dossier, but that tied in with Trump’s personal business dealings that had gone on for more than 8 years.
It was confirmed, according to the dossier, that Trump served as a direct conduit to the Kremlin.
From the dossier, “Source close to Trump campaign however confirms regular exchange with Kremlin has existed for at least 8 years, including intelligence fed back to Russia on oligarchs’ activities in the US.”
This information fits with the various reports stating that oligarchs that had bought condos in Trump properties, in what has appeared to many to be a virtual means for laundering Russian cash in the US, which was at the time a top concern of the Kremlin. This also brings to mind the ongoing attempted computer links found with Alfa Bank to Trump Tower, found during the Trump campaign.
Alfa Bank was also mentioned in the dossier, misspelled as Alpha Bank.
“Top level Russian government official described the Putin-Alpha relationship as both the carrot and stick. ” Though Alfa was later said to be controlled by “the most enduringly successful, western-oriented (if hard-edged) capitalists in Russia,” according to Fortune Magazine and who were seemingly at odds with Putin.
In one exchange sited in the Fortune article, “One former employee of the bank recalls a ceremony 10 years back at which (Mikhail) Fridman’s partner (in Alfa) Pyotr Aven, a deputy prime minister who has headed the group’s government relations, was due to receive an award from Putin. An awkward exchange (allegedly) ran as follows:
“Putin: ‘Remind me, why am I giving this to you?’
“Aven: ‘Because I haven’t done anything you can put me in jail for.’
“Putin: ‘No, not yet. ‘ ”
So, why was Alfa Bank repeatedly trying to connect with Trump tower?
With that multitudes of attempted virtual links by Alfa and the knowledge of potential money laundering schemes with Russian oligarchs, well known mafia ties and the dossier further connecting the dots to illegal hacking and leaking, potentially purposefully done, combined together, this should have been enough to bring Trump under public scrutiny before the election.
Why did it take so long to reach the public, and why is there still an ongoing cover-up by the GOP? Perhaps, the potential for blackmail of a sitting US President is not enough?
Last week, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa petitioned “Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, to identify the clients who hired him to dig up dirt on Trump during the campaign.”
The Republican Senator is not concerned about the information that amounts to hacking and leaking done by Russians, nor is he concerned by money laundering and potential criminal activity conducted by someone who is now a sitting President, and the fact that the information was known prior to the election. It is now known globally.
Is he not concerned about the reputation of the country he chooses to serve, or is he more concerned about the “who did to them” aspect?
This idea of labeling and misdirection has been ongoing with Trump and officials tied to the campaign, as well as by current administration staff. The Mainstream Media cherry picks the stories to be let out to the public and still allows the words, “Fake News” to be associated with the dossier, even though it was compiled by a spy with more than 20 years field experience.
Comparing that to the experience of those within the administration making superficial claims and Trump operatives actually claiming foreknowledge for incidents cited in the dossier, one would have to wonder if there is anyone telling the truth and willing to investigate this thoroughly to protect our National Security?
It seems absurd that someone, even the White House Press Secretary, can claim to debunk something like the reporting on the Steele dossier by calling it “Fake News,” even if he says it twice.
Just the words “Fake News” do not debunk the dossier, which is “becoming more true every day”, as the Senate Intelligence Committee may finally choose to interview Christopher Steele, directly.
And the BBC reports that Trump Russia dossier key claim ‘verified’
“The BBC has learned that US officials ‘verified’ a key claim in a report about Kremlin involvement in Donald Trump’s election – that a Russian diplomat in Washington was in fact a spy.”
Steele wrote in the dossier, “A leading Russian diplomat, Mikhail KULAGIN, had been withdrawn from Washington at short notice because Moscow feared his heavy involvement in the US presidential election operation… would be exposed in the media there.”
It was found that “There was no diplomat called Kulagin in the Russian embassy; there was a Kalugin,” said the BBC, who verified that Kalugin was indeed considered a spy by US intelligence.
When asked to comment on this to the BBC reporter, Trump former top political adviser Roger Stone and ally, said to him about Steele, “scornfully: ‘If 007 wants to be taken seriously, he ought to learn how to spell.’
After Trump and Stone publicly parted ways, Stone contacted Russian hacker, Guccifer 2.0 “at least 16 times during the 2016 campaign” of which Stone said “That’s Called Networking.”
Not only was Stone in communication with the Russian Hacker, but he was, according to himself, in contact with Wikileaks, “Stone began discussing WikiLeaks and Assange in August 2016. Stone told a local Republican Party group in Florida on August 10 that he had ‘communicated with Julian Assange,’ according to CNN.
The information he gathered lead to an infamous tweet.
Stone repeatedly made claims in advance of what was to be leaked by Wikileaks.
More from the CNN article: “In an interview later in August, Stone suggested that Assange had material that included emails deleted by Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills. At other times, Stone said the material released would be related to the Clinton Foundation.
“On August 21, Stone tweeted that ‘it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel.’ Stone claimed in an October 19 Breitbart post that he did not have advanced knowledge that Podesta’s hacked emails would be leaked, claiming his tweet was about Podesta’s business dealings.
“In mid-September, Stone said on Boston Herald Radio that he expects, ‘Julian Assange and the Wikileaks people to drop a payload of new documents on a weekly basis fairly soon. And that of course will answer the question of exactly what was erased on that email server.’
Considering that both the dossier and a report from the US Intelligence Community have stated that Wikileaks laundered the hacked emails to the public and potentially other groups, was Stone complicit?
From the Steele dossier: “Trump associate admits Kremlin behind recent appearance of DNC emails on Wikileaks, as a means of maintaining plausible deniability.
“Agreed exchange of information established in both directions. Trump’s team using moles within DNC and hackers in the US as well as outside in Russia.”
From the Intelligence Community report, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, a report including “an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA).”:
“We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.”
If indeed Wikileaks served as a vehicle for the Russian hacker(s), the information seems to have been used for much more than was originally disclosed.
According to a source in the BBC article sited above, ” ‘This is a three-headed operation,’ said one former official, setting out the case, based on the intelligence: Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated ‘bots’, then on Russia’s English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US ‘news’ sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media. Thirdly, Russia downloads the online voter rolls.
“The voter rolls are said to fit into this because of ‘microtargeting’. Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters.
“ ‘You are stealing the stuff and pushing it back into the US body politic,’ said the former official sited in the BBC report, ‘you know where to target that stuff when you’re pushing it back.’ ”
“This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, it is claimed.”
This claim is not far fetched at all thinking about who was Trump’s largest campaign backer, Robert Mercer, his company that operated in the background during the election, Cambridge Analytica and the originator of the term, microtargeting, Nigel Oakes founder of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), that was later spun into Cambridge Analytica.
SCL is now known as “a private Russian behavioral research and strategic communication company. SCL is known as Cambridge Analytica in the United States.”
According to Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix said to Bloomberg’s Sasha Issenburg.
“Your behavior is driven by your personality and actually the more you can understand about people’s personality as psychological drivers, the more you can actually start to really tap in to why and how they make their decisions. We call this behavioral microtargeting and this is really our secret sauce, if you like. This is what we’re bringing to America.”
If Cambridge Analytica/SCL was able to gain access the Wikileaks hacked DNC emails and then use its capabilities potentially relating with the illegally obtained voter rosters in Russia, this may be the largest missing piece of data not found in the dossier or in the US Intelligence report.
It would seem improbable that a group so closely aligned with the Trump campaign would have nothing to do with utilizing the information obtained by hackers laundered through Wikileaks, because that is specifically what they clearly state they do, is to obtain information to microtarget people/voters.
By now, the intelligence community and the Senate should not only be taking a closer look at the dossier, but also at Cambridge Analytica and SCL to determine the role they may have played in regards to the hacked emails and their use to spin truly “Fake News” on the public prior to the election.
They should be questioning, what role did SCL play on the Russian side? Where were the “Fake News” stories originating from?
Why hasn’t Cambridge Analytica/SCL been mentioned by those investigating this in Congress? Could it be that GOP players may not have wanted Cambridge Analytica/SCL mentioned because they hoped to use their services in the future, and hoped to obtain Mercer money?
When it is so obvious that the world knows our President may be compromised, we have to wonder why our leadership is doing so little, so late?