Mueller Files First Charges

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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby blehblah » Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:32 pm

A few new charges for Manafort and Gates.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -and-gates

More than 30 new charges, involving millions of dollars of bank and tax fraud, were filed on Thursday against Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his business partner.

The 32 new charges were filed by Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and a Russian intelligence operation to skew the 2016 presidential election.

The move marks the latest step in ratcheting up pressure on Manafort, and Rick Gates, his business partner who was deputy chairman of the Trump campaign. Gates has been reported to be negotiating a cooperation deal with Mueller’s office, which is in turn likely to significantly increase the pressure on Manafort to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into collusion.


A few, thirty-two; who's really counting?

Manafort's spokesperson was kind enough to offer this:

In a statement, Manafort’s spokesman reiterated his client’s innocence, adding: “The new allegations against Mr Manafort, once again, have nothing to do with Russia and 2016 election interference/collusion. Mr Manafort is confident that he will be acquitted and violations of his constitutional rights will be remedied.”


Right you are! No 2016 election interference/collusion with Russia - just a bunch of financial horseplay/locker-room accounting.

The new charge sheet portrays the two men as resorting to increasingly desperate efforts to keep money flowing to finance extravagant lifestyles, when contracts from their main clients, pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, dried up after 2014, when the Moscow-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia.


Oh, c'mon - who hasn't racked-up a few bills here and there, been stiffed by a no-good, dirty, rotten scoundrel (who knew?), and then found themselves, briefly, in charge of an eventually successful US presidential campaign where your only achievement was changing the GOP platform on only one little, tiny, minor detail, about material support of Ukrainian, anti-Russian forces?
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Cobra-D » Wed Feb 28, 2018 10:00 pm

Well looks like we've come to the "what do he know and when did he know it" part of the investigation.

Mueller is asking what trump knew about the dem emails that were hacked before they were released.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby blehblah » Thu Mar 01, 2018 2:10 pm

Mueller has dropped a bunch of charges against Gates:

https://www.politico.eu/article/robert- ... sia-probe/

Former Donald Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates is quickly discovering that cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller has its advantages.

The lead Russia investigator asked a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia Tuesday to dismiss a series of criminal charges against Gates, including tax and bank fraud, in exchange for his guilty plea and testimony in the wider probe into the 2016 presidential election.


Mueller also agreed to let Gates go GPS-free:

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/ ... nes-430748

Special counsel Robert Mueller has signed off on giving additional freedoms to Rick Gates in exchange for the former Donald Trump campaign deputy’s cooperation in the wider Russia investigation.

In a court document filed Wednesday in federal district court, Gates’ attorney, Thomas Green, said Mueller did not oppose his client’s request to remove the electronic GPS monitoring device that Gates was forced to wear after his indictment last October on multiple charges, including money laundering and making false statements.


Meanwhile, Mueller doesn't seem to give two shits about the 'red line' which Trump and the GOP drew between Mueller investigating collusion, and investigating Trump (and company - which includes his family) financials.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02 ... p-red-line

Last summer, Donald Trump cautioned that Robert Mueller would be crossing a red line if he began digging into his family’s finances. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia,” Trump said at the time. Mueller, however, seems to believe that questions surrounding Trump’s business deals and Russian ties are intertwined. The day after Trump issued his ultimatum, reports emerged that the special counsel was, in fact, probing his overseas business transactions. But the president backed down, allowing Mueller to continue his investigation. And Mueller, unbowed, has kept digging.


It's probably fair to say that for most folks, this is a no-shit-Sherlock revelation. Trump is the definition of a coin-operated human being. Well, coins and flattery. Most folks, mind.

https://www.salon.com/2018/02/26/gop-wo ... -finances/

Half a dozen Republican leaders, each in charge of major congressional committees, recently told CNN that they either don't wish to pursue or would not commit to looking into potential financial connections between the Trump family and Russia. Even though Democrats on the committees have urged Republicans to subpoena bank records that could be germane to the Trump-Russia probe, Republicans claim that the requests are nothing but a partisan fishing expedition.

"I don't see the link at this stage," Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, explained to CNN. "Deutsche Bank is a German bank — I don't see the nexus."


I don't know what Conaway's full quote was, but in isolation, that's a starkly stupid statement. If that quote is all I have to go on, I'm going to go ahead and assume Conaway regularly loses at tic tac toe. The big US banks stopped lending money to Trump because he had a habit of flushing it down golden toilets. Eric, being Eric, is on record bragging about how much Russian financing Trump Org. enjoyed (though, being Eric, who knows if it's true). It's generally understood that Deutsche Bank has a significant position in Trump Org., in the form of debt.

And not just Trump.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1GC2UF

New York’s state banking regulator asked Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and two other lenders for information on their relationships with U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his family’s real estate company, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.


The proceedings against Manafort continue.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-camp ... -1.4555450

U.S. President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to a new indictment brought against him in the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and will face trial in September.

[...]

Manafort's trial is expected to last for several weeks, and could stretch on through November's midterm elections — making headlines at a time when Republicans are fighting to maintain their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson set the trial to start Sept. 17 in Washington, D.C.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:23 pm

The Mueller is setting his piercing gaze of justice on those dastardly sons of milk-less sows that were the Russian DNC email leakers, AKA the people that managed to convince the Redcaps that risotto was somehow threatening.
From the article:
Sources say he has long had sufficient evidence to make a case, but strategic issues could dictate the timing. Potential charges include violations of statutes on conspiracy, election law as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. One U.S. official briefed on the matter said the charges are not imminent, but other knowledgeable sources said they are expected in the next few weeks or months. It's also possible Mueller opts not to move forward because of concerns about exposing intelligence or other reasons — or that he files the indictment under seal, so the public doesn't see it initially.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby blehblah » Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:59 pm

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:The Mueller is setting his piercing gaze of justice on those dastardly sons of milk-less sows that were the Russian DNC email leakers, AKA the people that managed to convince the Redcaps that risotto was somehow threatening.
From the article:
Sources say he has long had sufficient evidence to make a case, but strategic issues could dictate the timing. Potential charges include violations of statutes on conspiracy, election law as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. One U.S. official briefed on the matter said the charges are not imminent, but other knowledgeable sources said they are expected in the next few weeks or months. It's also possible Mueller opts not to move forward because of concerns about exposing intelligence or other reasons — or that he files the indictment under seal, so the public doesn't see it initially.


I'm going to Vulcan mind-meld with Trump...

The Russians soon were inside his machine.


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Ivan, stop make grabbing motion of Hillary emails.


The GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, began vacuuming up emails from Podesta and from DNC accounts


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GRU's vacuumer.


President Trump has repeatedly denied collusion and has called the Mueller investigation a "witch hunt."


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I said Hillary because I misheard the question;
witch hunt, which cun...
...try for old men and Harry Potter and remember I made Christmas Great Again starting at Halloween?
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Sun Mar 04, 2018 2:16 am

So, in new news, Mueller is reportedly looking into quite a coincidence where kinda-sorta Secretary of State Jared Kushner's company was in business talks in Qatar, and a week after they fell through, he was backing a blockade against Qatar. Now, this is probably just bad timing, honestly, but he is the lead on all the Middle East stuff. Again, kids, this is a lesson in why you divest yourself of your business interests before influencing global policy in an administrative position.

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/03/02/world/02reuters-usa-trump-russia-kushner.html
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby iMURDAu » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:53 pm

Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide, has been subpoenaed. He says he will not comply and went as far to tell the Washington Post "let him arrest me". Also said he hates Trump but strange how he's willing to go to jail for his boy.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby iMURDAu » Tue Mar 06, 2018 11:41 pm

I guess I'll double post after all to say a day later that he's being reported as saying he will testify. Unless he won't. Idk.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri Mar 23, 2018 1:02 am

Mueller has turned his attention toward Guccifer 2.0, the hacker that took credit for supplying Wikileaks with hacked DNC emails. The Daily Beast has revealed in an exclusive that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian operative.

Expect some indictments of Rodger Stone soon.
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Last edited by Deathclaw_Puncher on Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby blehblah » Fri Mar 23, 2018 1:40 pm

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:Mueller has turned his attention toward Guccifer 2.0, the hacker that took credit for supplying Wikileaks with hacked DNC emails. The Daily Beast has revealed in an exclusive that Guccifer 2.0 wasa Russian operative.

Expect some indictments of Rodger Stone soon.


Rodger Dodger. Sorry.

As the article mentions, it has been generally accepted that Guccifer is a Russian creation.

But on one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the government’s Guccifer investigation.


Whoops. This is why you set-up your router to block traffic if it is not connected to a VPN.

Here is an in-depth breakdown (from before the news broke that the Guccifer persona had forgotten to use the VPN).

https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/gucc ... ad-russia/

The fact that Guccifer 2.0 would use a proxy service is not surprising, and our first stop was to check with various TOR proxy registration sites. None of these seven IP addresses are part of reported TOR infrastructure from what we were able to uncover.


That is interesting. I wonder if they were using TOR at any point... that would seem like a pretty straightforward checkbox on the "I vant to be anonymouse" to-do list.

It looks like they would SSH into a private Elite VPN server in France (one which wasn't available to other Elite VPN customers). They could tunnel HTTP/S traffic over that connection, using the server as a proxy, or perhaps that was only for set-up and they used stardard OpenVPN connectivity, or (most likely), they tunneled the VPN traffic over the SSH connection, which then popped-out in France. From there, they could have jumped into the TOR network. That would have put further distance between the ultimate source and destination (which, in-turn, is the source of the emails, as found in the email headers). They could have used any old webmail account, accessed from TOR, accessed from a VPN, tunneled over SSH. Further, if you really, really want get all hidy-hidy, you tunnel RDP traffic over SSH to a hosted desktop client (say, running on a Linux box you rent somewhere out there), and from there you tunnel VPN traffic over SSH to the VPN server in France, using a TOR browser on the client. Hoppity hop hop all over, because it's not like you care about your connection speed.

Further, it's best to practice good hygiene on the VPN server (if you have control of it) and anything in between. Firewall rules, either at the network or on the host, need to be set-up to limit inbound connections to be only from the ultimate source. That would limit the ability of folks to take the SSH 'fingerprint' and poke around for other SSH servers using the same, or at least make it more of a hassle.

In the end, either the folks behind Guccifer were truly sloppy, or they did a 'good enough' job to get done what they needed to get done, realizing it would likely be traced back to Russia at some point (meaning, they didn't really care).
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Wed Mar 28, 2018 4:11 am

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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Absentia » Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:39 pm

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:The Lantern Jaw of Justice is recommending that a judge consider jail time for Alex Van Der Zwaan.


I don't know who he is, but his name sounds like a Bond villain.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby cmsellers » Wed Mar 28, 2018 8:11 pm

Absentia wrote:
Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:Alex Van Der Zwaan

I don't know who he is, but his name sounds like a Bond villain.

I dunno, he sounds more like a Broederbond villain to me.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:55 pm

Mueller is now investigating the RNC, focusing primarily on two events: The RNC event attended by Jeff Sessions and Sergey Kislyak and the excision of language hostile to Russia regarding the annexation of Crimea.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri Mar 30, 2018 8:39 pm

Trump campaign volunteer and man who shows up at your door asking if you'll press a button on a box Ted Malloch has been subpoenaed by Mueller regarding his connections to Roger Stone, among other things.
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