Viktor Yanukovych UkrainianOligarch Former President works with an organized crime syndicate that includes Azarov M.Ya., Arbuzov S.G., Pshonka V. P., Pshonka AV, Klimenko O.V., Zakharchenko V.Yu., Bakulin Y.M., Borisov Yu.S., Tamrazov O.G., Kurchenko S.V. and others per Ukraine’s Complaint against Viktor Yanukovych brought by General Prosecutor of Ukraine Lutsenko, Yu.V. and the deputy of Ukraine Chornovil Tetyana, M. “It was established that during the period of 2010-2014 the participants of the aforementioned criminal organization as a result of criminal activity received at their own disposal financial resources at the amount of more than 40 billion US dollars…at the end of April 2011, Arbuzov S.G. and Kurchenko S.V. planned and agreed with Viktor Yanukovych and other participants of the criminal organization the scheme of legalization (laundering) of the proceeds from crime through the commission of the financial transactions and transactions for the acquisition of securities by their control nominees securities – government bonds of Ukraine (hereinafter – bonds) in order to legally highly profitable and highly guaranteed income as a result of currency fluctuations of the national currency of Ukraine and the preservation of their foreign currency assets in one of the most secure and liquid forms of government securities.For the purchase of government bonds Arbuzov S.G. and Kurchenko S.V. used the controlled business entities – residents, especially companies Wonderbliss Ltd., Sabulong Trading Ltd., Opalcore Ltd., Akemi Management Ltd., Wellar Investments Inc., Quickpace Ltd., Loricom Holding Group Ltd., Katiema Enterprises Ltd., Kviten Solution Ltd., Aldoza Investments Ltd. and others having accounts in banking institutions of the Republic of Latviaand Ukraine. Paul Manafort
Victor Pinchuk– 2019 ext $2.31 billion UkrainianOligarch“Trump Foundation reported a $150,000 gift from the foundation of Viktor Pinchuk, a powerful Ukrainian steel magnate…the gift was made as part of an agreement for Trump to speak — via video link — to a conference Pinchuk organized in September 2015. The conference, called the Yalta European Strategy annual meeting, was held in Kiev. At the time of his 20-minute speech, titled “How New Ukraine’s Fate Affects Europe and the World,” Trump was already a presidential candidate.” Washington Post. Metals
Loaned mortgages to Trump World TowerBuyers at 845 United Nations Plaza, NYC (rare in luxury)
1976 Commodore Hotel with Hyatt Corp.- Kislin sold hundreds of TVs toTrump
FL Group-Iceland BV investment bank into Trump SoHo-2013 lawsuit alleging an unrealized $250 million tax avoidance scheme on a 2007 FL $50 million investment into Bayrock with $2 billion tied to Trump.
Why Did a Russia-Friendly Icelandic Fund Want To Invest In Trump Projects? Talking Points Memo By Sam Thielman August 22, 2017 “A former finance director at Bayrock, Jody Kriss, sued the company in 2010 for allegedly misrepresenting Sater’s role—though the complaint remained sealed by the court until 2016. In an interview with Bloomberg, Kriss said another Icelandic bank called offering a counter investment to FL Group’s proposed $50 million, and Sater and Arif told him to stick with that firm because it was “closer to Putin.” The $50 million payment was unusual, to say the least. According to Kriss’s complaint, FL Group bought 62 percent of the profits from four Bayrock properties, which was the developer’s entire stake. Those properties were a development called Waterpointe on a blighted 20-acre property in Whitestone, New York that Bayrock had agreed to detoxify; Trump SoHo; a Trump tower in Phoenix, Arizona; and the Trump Merrimacin Ft. Lauderdale, Florida…Another bank owned in large part by FL, Kaupthing, had made loans to Alexander Shnaider, the Russian-Canadian billionaire who financed the failed Trump tower in Toronto, which he used to buy a yacht. It also had other wealthy Russians on the books, among them Smirnoff Vodka magnate Yuri Shefler. ”
-needed a favor from Fmr. US Amb. Ukraine Marie Yanovovich
help in his repatriating $21 million of infrastructure bonds that Fmr. Ukraine Pres. Viktor Yanukovych stole from Ukraine in 2014 and was laundered through a Cypriot-based shell structure. Kislin sold Trump TVs and made loans to Trump World Tower buyers.:
Trans Commodities New York Inc.– Sam Kislin’s 1990s Russian Metals investment company for Makiivka Metallurgical Combine, laundered millions of Russian mob money
Financial Crimes-Fmr. Ukraine Pres. Viktor Yanukovych-stole more than $1 billion from Ukraine‘s treasury before fleeing in 2014, including $21 million of Sam Kislin‘s government bonds in 2013, into a Cyprus-based firm called Opalcore Ltd. formed with Yanukovych’s Deputy Prime Minister Kurchenko and Arbuzov via UK firm Exbridge Properties LP.Arbuzov acquired the Opalcore in 2016.Kislin’s Trans Commodities bought Opalcore LTD in November 2016; Opalcore accounts were frozen & transferred to government-controlled bank,Oschadbank .The Center for Investigative Reporting Reveal News; Kislin asked for U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s help retrieving the funds from Ukraininan Oschadbank.
Kislin, American lawyer Jeffrey Dannenberg, Ukrainian lawyer Dmytro Shcherbyna
Ihor Kolomoisky– Ukrainian Media Oligarch, owns the TV channel that made Pres. Zelensky famous. FBI raided offices in Cleveland and Miami on August 4, 2020…read more.
The search for dirt on VP Biden and his son, Hunter’s work for Burisma Holdings resulted in the Impeachment of Donald Trump in December 2019 because Trump et al. called President Zelensky on July 25, 2019, and extorted Ukraine for arms it needed to defend Eastern Ukraine against Russia. Also, funding through Ukrainian oligarchs, removingFmr. US Amb. to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a former European affairs director at the National Security Council who testified against Trump.
President Zelensky: “We are ready to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.”
President Trump: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine…they say CrowdStrike…I guess you have one of your wealthy people…The server…they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or one of your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”
**Note: These are contemporaneous notes, not a verbatim transcript.
CROWD STRIKE:CrowdStrike is the publicly-traded top cybersecurity firm which discovered the DNC hack and Russian malware, Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, on its servers,and Russian attacks on Ukraine.
WATCH: House derails Trump impeachment vote PBS Wednesday’s vote to kill the proposal by Texas congressman Al Green was 332-95. Democrats opposed the effort by a 3-to-2 margin, while all Republicans voted to kill it.
“Democratic Representative Al Green of Texas on Wednesday stepped closer to taking the first legislative step to remove President Donald Trump from office by announcing he is drafting articles of impeachment. U.S. Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) joined him at a news conference to disclose that he, too, would undergo an impeachment endeavor.”“There is a desire…to see articles brought so the president can answer for obstruction of justice,” Green told reporters, according to The Texas Tribune.Green first officially called for Trump’s impeachment during a fiery speech on the House floor last month. He contends that the president deserves to be removed for allegedly engaging in obstruction of justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey in May during the agency’s investigation into Russia’s possible meddling in the 2016 election. His appeal came amid revelations of a Comey memo that claimed Trump had asked him to drop an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.” Newsweek June 7Mueller Served Trump With a Subpoena a Day Prior to His Racist Rant: Report
“It’s beginning to look like Special Counsel Mueller will catch President Trump and his three eldest children committing the first ever reality TV show assisted financial crime, all collaborating in a $350 million dollar bank fraud related to the Trump SoHo Condominium Hotel.
The fraud-riddled Trump SoHo project ultimately failed and was foreclosed upon by lenders in 2014, but its legacy lives on in a byzantine web of lawsuits.
A Congresswoman has introduced a resolution calling for President Trump to undergo a physical and mental evaluation to determine if he is fit to continue in office as president. While the measure by Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) probably has little chance of passage in a House controlled by Republicans, it shows that there is growing concern about Trump’s ability to carry out his role as the nation’s chief executive.Washington Journal
“At 12:56 p.m. Thursday, barely four hours after Trump tweeted attacks against MSNBC cable host Mika Brzezinski in crude, personal terms, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the chief sponsor of the bill, sent out an email to his colleagues, urging them to get behind the measure, writing it was of ‘enduring importance to the security of our nation.’
…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!
The 25th Amendment was adopted in 1967 in response to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and past presidential medical crises — including the heart attacks of Dwight Eisenhower and the illnesses of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson — to deal with instances where presidents become incapacitated and unable to perform the duties of their office.
One of its provisions, known as Section 4, empowers the vice president along with a majority of the Cabinet to make a determination that a president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties” of the office, and then provide it in writing to Congress, resulting in the president’s removal. It’s a step that has never been taken.
But Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, has seized on some largely overlooked language in Section 4 as the basis for his bill. It turns out it doesn’t have to be the Cabinet that makes a finding of presidential incapacity. The section also permits “such other body as Congress may by law provide” — along with the vice president — to reach the same conclusion.
Yet in the 50 years since the 25th Amendment took effect, Congress has never set up such a body. Raskin’s bill would do so. It calls for the creation of an “Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity.” The commission would be a nonpartisan panel appointed by congressional leaders composed of four physicians, four psychiatrists and three others — such as former presidents, vice presidents or other former senior U.S. government officials. The commission, if directed by Congress through a concurrent resolution, would be empowered to conduct an examination of the president “to determine whether the president is incapacitated, either mentally or physically.” Yahoo NewsJune 30, 2017
“In a series of tweets, President Trump appears to attack a top official in his own Justice Department, and in the process arguably confirms reports that he is under investigation for obstruction of justice.” LA Times
He contends that the president deserves to be removed for allegedly engaging in obstruction of justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey in May during the agency’s investigation into Russia’s possible meddling in the 2016 election. he is drafting articles of impeachment. U.S. Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) joined him at a news conference to disclose that he, too, would undergo an impeachment endeavor.”Newsweek By Michele Gorman
Steve Bannon pushed him through as Attorney General, the first appointee confirmed on February 8, 2017. Like Bannon and Trump, and according to his mother, he is a contrarian and loves to argue. Sessions recused himself from the investigation, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel. Trump has been openly displeased with Sessions refusing to resign, and Sessions protects Mueller from being fired from the investigation.
Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) prepares to testify at his confirmation hearing to be attorney general. (Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency)
Below, a timeline of events related to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s relationship with the Trump campaign and his own conversations with Russian officials. This will be updated as needed.
Aug. 21, 2015. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) makes an unexpected appearance at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Mobile, Ala. While he doesn’t endorse Trump, he dons a “Make America Great Again” cap to loud applause. Sessions is one of the first elected officials to tacitly embrace Trump’s upstart candidacy.
(CNN)
Feb. 28, 2016. Sessions formally endorses Trump and becomes one of his campaign’s key surrogates.
March 3. Trump names Sessions as chairman of his campaign’s national security advisory committee.
March 17. At an event hosted by the American Council for Capital Formation, Sessions discusses Trump’s foreign policy positions.
“I think an argument can be made there is no reason for the U.S. and Russia to be at this loggerheads. Somehow, someway we ought to be able to break that logjam,” Sessions said. “Strategically it’s not justified for either country. It may not work. Putin may not be able to be dealt with, but I don’t condemn his instincts that we ought to attempt to do that.”
July 18. On the first day of the Republican National Convention, the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel conversation addressing European relations that was attended by a number of ambassadors. “Much of the discussion focused on Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and Georgia,” moderator Victor Ashe later wrote, adding that “[s]everal ambassadors asked for names of people who might impact foreign policy under Trump.”
This appears to be the event after which Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak approached Sessions as part of a small group of foreign dignitaries. Sessions, The Post reports, “then spoke individually to some of the ambassadors, including Kislyak.”
July 31. In an appearance on CNN, Sessions defends Trump’s position on reaching out to Russia.
“This whole problem with Russia is really disastrous for America, for Russia and for the world,” he said. “Donald Trump is right. We need to figure out a way to end this cycle of hostility that’s putting this country at risk, costing us billions of dollars in defense, and creating hostilities.
Sept. 8. Sessions and Kislyak meet in his Senate office. The subject of the meeting isn’t clear, but one official told NBC’s Hallie Jackson that during such meetings ambassadors would “often make superficial comments about election-related news.”
On Mar. 2, 2017, Session explained that the meeting was attended by himself and two or three other staffers. They “listened to the ambassador and what his concerns might be.” The topics discussed included travel to Russia, terrorism and Ukraine. “I don’t recall any specific political discussions,” Sessions said.
Sept. 13. A spokesperson for Sessions indicated that he and Kislyak spoke by phone on this day, but then retracted that claim.
Nov. 8. Trump is elected president.
Nov. 18. President-elect Trump nominates Sessions to serve as his attorney general.
Jan 10, 2017. A hearing on Sessions’s nomination to serve as attorney general is held by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asks about a CNN report on Russian ties to the Trump campaign that came out that day.
Play Video2:15
Sessions ‘unable to comment’ on Trump intelligence briefing reports
FRANKEN: CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week, that included information that “Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.” These documents also allegedly say “there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.” Again, I’m telling you this as it’s coming out, so, you know.
But if it’s true, it’s obviously extremely serious, and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?
SESSIONS: Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.
FRANKEN: Very well.
Jan. 12. The first questions about national security adviser-designate Michael Flynn’s interactions with Russia’s ambassador are reported by The Washington Post.
Jan. 15. Vice President-elect Mike Pence appears on “Face the Nation” and — erroneously, as it turns out — says that Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak were “strictly coincidental” and that Flynn and the Russian “did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.”
Jan. 17. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sends Sessions a lengthy letterasking about Russia (and a number of other things).
Several of the President-Elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after Election Day?
RESPONSE: No.
Jan. 20. Trump is inaugurated as president.
Feb. 8. Sessions is confirmed as attorney general in a 52-47 vote. Franken and Leahy — and every other Democrat save Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) — vote no.
March 1. The Post reveals Sessions’s two interactions with Kislyak.
Sessions’s staff releases a statement from the attorney general: “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”
A statement from Trump’s administration called the questions an “attack” and hinted that Franken was pushing the story for political purposes.
Sarah Isgur Flores, director of public affairs for the Department of Justice, went further in a statement to BuzzFeed.
“There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer. Last year, the Senator had over 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian, German and Russian ambassadors,” she said. “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign—not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee.”
March 2. Speaking with NBC, Sessions addresses the situation directly.”
Sessions had a third meeting with Kislyak in his Senate office in September. Officials declined to say whether U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted any Russian communications describing the third encounter.
As a result, the discrepancies center on two earlier Sessions-Kislyak conversations, including one that Sessions has acknowledged took place in July 2016 on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
By that point, Russian President Vladimir Putin had decided to embark on a secret campaign to help Trump win the White House by leaking damaging emails about his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.
Although it remains unclear how involved Kislyak was in the covert Russian campaign to aid Trump, his superiors in Moscow were eager for updates about the candidate’s positions, particularly regarding U.S. sanctions on Russia and long-standing disputes with the Obama administration over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.
Kislyak also reported having a conversation with Sessions in April at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where then-candidate Trump delivered his first major foreign policy address, according to the officials familiar with intelligence on Kislyak.
Sessions has said he does not remember any encounter with Kislyak at that event. In his June testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sessions said, “I do not recall any conversations with any Russian official at the Mayflower Hotel.”
Later in that hearing, Sessions said that “it’s conceivable that that occurred. I just don’t remember it.”
Current and former U.S. officials said that assertion is at odds with Kislyak’s accounts of conversations during two encounters over the course of the campaign, one in April ahead of Trump’s first major foreign policy speech and another in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
The apparent discrepancy could pose new problems for Sessions at a time when his position in the administration appears increasingly tenuous.” Washington Post
Sessions met with Russian envoy twice, encounters he did not disclose in confirmation hearings March 1, 2017 Washington Post
September 8, 2016:”Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.
One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.”
July 18, 2016: “On the first day of the Republican National Convention, the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel conversation addressing European relations that was attended by a number of ambassadors. “Much of the discussion focused on Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and Georgia,” moderator Victor Ashe later wrote, adding that “[s]everal ambassadors asked for names of people who might impact foreign policy under Trump.”This appears to be the event after which Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak approached [Jeff] Sessions as part of a small group of foreign dignitaries. Sessions, The Post reports, ‘then spoke individually to some of the ambassadors, including Kislyak.'” Washington Post Sessions’ Timeline Washington Post
Sessions offered in recent months to resign as attorney general “Sessions announced his recusal shortly after he became attorney general and a day after The Washington Post revealed that he had twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign and did not disclose that fact to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his January confirmation hearing. Trump learned of the attorney general’s decision shortly before Sessions announced it at a news conference. The president’s anger has lingered for months, according to the people close to the White House. They said that Trump cites Sessions’s recusal as a factor that prompted the decision last month by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to oversee the expanding Russian investigation.” Washington Post June 6 ABC Breaking News
“Democrats spent the hours before the vote on Wednesday seething over the rebuke of Ms. Warren, of Massachusetts, who had been barred from speaking on the floor the previous night. Late Tuesday, Republicans voted to formally silence Ms. Warren after she read from a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King that criticized Mr. Sessions for using “the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens” while serving as a United States attorney in Alabama. Since Mr. Trump announced his choice for attorney general, Mr. Sessions’s history with issues of race had assumed center stage. A committee hearing on his nomination included searing indictments from black Democratic lawmakers like Representative John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights icon, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who broke with Senate tradition to testify against a peer.” NY TimesNow we know that Cory Booker took campaign contributions from Jared Kushner. MSN
“Jeff Sessions got confirmed as attorney general despite refusing to commit to recuse himself from DOJ inquiries into Trump and other administration officials.” Washington Post
“Sessions, then a U.S. senator from Alabama, was among Trump’s early supporters in Congress and went on television to promote the candidate. He has come under scrutiny for two meetings with Kislyak last year…Sessions said at a news conference Thursday that he was “taken aback” by a question — which referred to a breaking news story about contacts between Trump campaign surrogates and Russians. “In retrospect, I should have slowed down and said I did meet one Russian official a couple times. That would be the ambassador,” he said….John McLaughlin, a former deputy CIA director and acting CIA director under Obama, said that “it does strain credibility” that Sessions would have simply forgotten about his meetings with Kislyak when he asserted during his confirmation hearing to become attorney general that he had not met with Russian officials…Paul Saunders, a Russia specialist at the Center for the National Interest and a former official in the George W. Bush administration…hosted then-candidate Donald Trump for a foreign policy speech in April last year. Kislyak was in the audience as one of four invited foreign ambassadors as Trump proclaimed, “America-first will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.” Kislyak is known to collect scores of business cards as he moves around Washington, and to follow up, sometimes relentlessly, with requests for one-on-one meetings. Sessions said Thursday that Kislyak had also invited him to lunch, an invitation he never took up…In the case of Sessions, who was considered a top prospect for a Cabinet job when Kislyak visited him in his Senate office in September, Kislyak would have wanted to know: How reasonable is he from a Russia perspective? Hall said [Steven Hall, former head of Russia operations at the CIA].” Washington Post
Daily Kos Petition:”At his Senate confirmation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath that he had never had contact with the Russian government as a surrogate for the Trump campaign. We now know that he met with Russian officials at the Republican National Convention, right as they were engaging in cyberattacks to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump. After claiming he would “recuse himself” on all Trump-Russia matters at the Justice Department, Sessions then advised President Trump to fire FBI Director James Comey—right after Comey had issued subpoenas on the Trump-Russia investigation and requested more funding. As the nation’s top law enforcement official, Jeff Sessions has completely violated our trust. He must resign, and his successor appoint a special prosecutor to fully and openly investigate the Trump campaign’s ties with Russian officials.”
From Rolling Stone’s Meet the Leaders of the Trump Resistance by Tim Dickinson : “No cabinet pick has united the Trump resistance like Jeff Sessions, the Alabama senator tapped to head the Justice Department, where he would have broad autonomy to set the national course on the enforcement of civil rights, drug and immigration policy. Sessions was blocked from Senate confirmation once before, when the body refused to seat him as federal judge in the mid-Eighties, following hearings that detailed a distressing history of racism. As a U.S. attorney, Sessions had prosecuted black voting-rights activists – close associates of Martin Luther King Jr. – on trumped-up accusations of voter fraud. (The activists were found not guilty.) And he’s railed against the Voting Rights Act as “intrusive.” According to Senate testimony, Sessions repeatedly referred to a black subordinate as “boy” and opined – during an investigation of a Ku Klux Klan lynching – that he’d thought the KKK was “OK until I found out they smoked pot.” (Sessions denied denigrating his colleague, and insisted the Klan comment was a joke.) Sessions also called civil rights groups, including the NAACP, “un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.” In his U.S. Senate career, Sessions has continued a track record as an extremist. He’s an unreconstructed drug warrior – Sessions insisted last year that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” An immigration hardliner, Sessions has long ties to the far-right organization FAIR; “he has cavorted with groups that we consider to be hate groups,” says Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Sharry, the immigrant-rights leader, calls the idea of Sessions enforcing civil rights and immigration laws “preposterous.” Todd A. Cox, director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, says “it is unimaginable that he could be trusted to enforce this nation’s civil rights laws.” Coretta Scott King warned in a 1986 letter that Sessions’ appointment to the judiciary would “irreparably damage the work of my husband.” Sessions faces deep resistance from the drug-reform community, concerned Sessions will break the fragile federal Drug War truce that has enabled state-legal marijuana to boom into a $7 billion industry. Sessions is also opposed by conservatives, who fear he will derail bipartisan progress on issues like criminal justice reform. “Sessions illustrates the need for a new conservative movement,” McMullin says.”
Dmitry Rybolovlev-Putin’s friend from the KGB, who bought a dilapidated mansion in Palm Beach from Donald Trump, overvalued double in 2009, after the financial crash. It was torn down.
1990sboard ofUS-Russia Investment Fund, Rothschild Inc’s bankruptcy advising team, WL Ross & Co
Neighbor of Trump in NY and at Mar-a-Lago, Wilbur Ross cut a favorable deal along with Carl Icahn, resigned Regulatory Adviser, in the Taj Mahal Casino bankruptcy case while representing Trump’s creditors. This saved Trump’s business.
“Trump made a bold bet on Atlantic City when he opened a third casino there — the colossal Taj Mahal — in April 1990. Even riskier: He financed the project with $675 million in junk bonds at a 14% interest rate. Within months Trump was struggling to make the massive bond payments as Atlantic City floundered. In stepped Ross, then head of Rothschild Inc’s bankruptcy advising team, to represent bondholders, who were pondering forcing the casino into involuntary bankruptcy and ousting Trump. Ross reportedly saw crowds pressed against Trump’s limo windows to get a peek at the mogul, and realized the value of Trump’s celebrity. He struck a prepackaged bankruptcy deal: Trump would give up 50% of his stake in the Taj but would receive better debt terms and would remain in control. The Donald was back in business: He ultimately made similar deals for his other troubled properties and climbed out of debt and back onto the Forbes 400. Nearly all of Trump’s wealth is tied up in real estate, but he has also owned stocks. One holding, according to a May 2016 filing: $250,000-$500,000 worth of Invesco European Growth Fund Class Y shares. (Trump claims to have sold his stock holdings in June, though he has not provided evidence to support the claim.) Ross went into private equity in 2000, forming WL Ross & Co. He still runs it, but he sold it to investment firm Invesco in 2006 for some $375 million. In 2013 Invesco partnered with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and others to buy 5 industrial properties from the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn for $240 million.” Forbes
Known Senate and House Intelligence lines of questioning:
Wilbur Ross is Vice Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus and a major stakeholder, oversaw its restructuring.
Viktor Vekselberg, 2nd largest shareholder of theBank of Cyprus, Putin friend, Renova Corp, formerly Rosneft board.
U.S. Russia Investment Fund (TUSRIF) under Clinton
2008 transfer of the investment arm of TUSRIF to Deutsche Bank
Ross appointed Josef Ackermann to be the Chairman of the Board for the Bank of Cyprus from Deutsche Bank, the Trump Organization’s Largest Creditor. “Ackermann’s ties to Russia were especially strong, including a warm relationship with Putin and Herman Gref of Sberbank. In 2015, while he served as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the bank’s Russia-based businesses were sold to a Russian banker and consultant, Artem Avetisyan, who had ties to both the Russian president and Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. At the time, Sberbank was under US and EU sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.” The Guardian
Dmitry Rybolovlev co-invested in the Bank of Cyprus and bought over-inflated home from Trump
Loans and Contacts between Bank of Cyprus and Bank of Cyprus to the Trump Campaign,Trump Organization, its directors or officers, or any affiliated individuals or entities
The Paradise Papers linked Ross to Navigator Holdings (Boardmember) and Sibur
BBC: “Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has an interest in Navigator Holdings, which earns millions a year transporting oil and gas for Russian energy firm Sibur. Two major Sibur shareholders are under some form of US sanctions. “Secretary Ross recuses himself from any matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels,” the spokesman told BBC Panorama. Another Sibur shareholder is President Putin’s son in law, Kirill Shamalov. He holds a 3.9% stake in the firm. Gennady Timchenko, who has been individually sanctioned by the United States, as have at least 12 companies connected to him, and Leonid Mikhelson, whose main company, Novatek, is also sanctioned, are major shareholders. Sibur itself and Mr Shamalov are not under sanctions, although Mr Shamalov’s father, Nikolai, is.”
“Ross was sent a letter late Thursday by six Democratic senators questioning the billionaire financier about his ownership stake in the Bank of Cyprus, on which he still serves as vice chairman of the board of directors. The six senators demanded answers about his relationship with Viktor Vekselberg, the second largest shareholder in the bank. The letter cited reporting by McClatchy last December about Vekselberg, who sits atop the Renova Corp., a Russian conglomerate. Aside from his friendship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Vekselberg at one time served on the board of directors of the Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft. It is under a partial sanction by the U.S. Treasury Department. The senators, led by Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, also want to know about Ross’s relationship with Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a former vice chairman of Bank of Cyprus, a former KGB agent and believed to be a longtime associate of Putin. The letter sent to Ross on Thursday afternoon noted that Russian shareholders had at one point been the largest stakeholders in the bank he rescued in September 2014 amid a financial crisis in Cyprus.”
Letter February 16, 2017: Senator Bill Nelson-FL, the top Democrat on the Senate commerce committee, and was co-signed by Cory Booker-NY, Ed Markey-MA, Tom Udall-NM and Tammy Baldwin-WI. Letter February 24, 2017: Sen. Cory Booker-NJ
Owns a stake through offshore entities in Navigator Holdings, a shipping firm that receives millions of dollars from a company owned by Vladimir Putin’s close allies.
Relationship poses potential conflicts of interest for Ross, who plays a major role in U.S. economic relationships with other countries, including Russia.
Ross’ continuing Navigator investment was so indirectly disclosed that Senators who voted on his confirmation didn’t know about it.
November 5, 2017- He founded WL Ross & Co in 2000, a private equity firm that acquires struggling companies and sells them for a profit. “It engineered the purchase of bankrupt American steel producers and reaped huge profits when the George W. Bush administration imposed a 30 percent tariff on steel imports in March 2002.
His newly formed International Steel Group went public the next year and was acquired by Luxembourg giant ArcelorMittal in 2005. Ross’ firm went on to invest in other struggling American industries, including textiles in the South and coal in Appalachia. Ross gained a reputation as a financier who breathed life into industries others had left for dead.
But he has been criticized for moving American jobs overseas to improve profits. His private equity firm has also run afoul of securities regulations that require full and candid disclosure in dealings with investors.” ICIJ.org
Vice chairman of Bank of Cyprus PcL. and his namesake investment firm owns 1.6% of the Cypriot bank which WL Ross & Co obtained at a share price of $.024 after the July 2014 bailout, down 26% in 2017. Working with Deutsche Bank AG CEO Josef Ackermann to improve the Bank of Cyprus. Sold WL Ross & Co in 2006. Russian oligarchs create political party in Cyprus
“Ross, who’s worth about $2.9 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. A fund overseen by WL Ross is one of the biggest shareholders in the Cypriot lender, which is the nation’s largest. Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg owns 5.5 percent through his Bahamas-based Renova Group. Ross sold his firm to asset manager Invesco Ltd. in 2006. While Ross’s investments in Bank of Cyprus and a stake in Greek lender Eurobank Ergasias SA for an undisclosed amount haven’t paid off, he has fared better in the U.K. and Ireland. In Britain, his fund teamed up with Richard Branson’s Virgin Money Holdings UK Plc in 2011 to acquire the best parts of failed bank Northern Rock from the government. Ross sold the last of his stake in Virgin Money in November to bring total proceeds of about 550 million pounds ($681 million) on a 360 million-pound investment. In 2014, he sold his shares in Dublin-based Bank of Ireland Plc for a profit of about 500 million euros.” Bloomberg
In 2014, the Bank of Cyprus was still considered to be in a precarious state following a dramatic €10bn rescue of Cyprus’s banking sector by the ECB and the IMF. Under the terms of the deal, many of the bank’s wealthy Russian deposit holders lost their cash and became shareholders in the bank.
Ross, who had made billions of dollars years earlier by betting on bankrupt steel mills, was known for taking risky bets. But his decision to inject €400m into the bank with other investors encompassed a different kind of risk. It put him at the centre of the biggest financial institution in a country that was widely considered to be a tax haven for Russian oligarchs, even as the US and EU were imposing sanctions on Russia. In 2014, the year he made his investment, the US State Department considered Cyprus an area of “primary concern” for money laundering (pdf), according to its official assessment.
Ross was appointed vice-chairman at the bank after his investment in 2014, a post he shared with a deposit holder-turned-shareholder, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, referred to in Russian media as a former KGB official and Putin ally. According to the bank’s annual reports, the two attended two board meetings together in 2014 and as many as five together in 2015 before Strzhalkovsky’s May 2015 resignation from the board. One of the questions that has been posed to Ross by Democratic senators is whether he ever had contact with Strzhalkovsky.
One of Ross’s first big decisions at the bank was the appointment of former Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann as chairman, whom he chose in part because of Ackermann’s “huge Rolodex”, according to a 2014 Bloomberg interview.
Ackermann’s ties to Russia were especially strong, including a warm relationship with Putin and Herman Gref of Sberbank.
In 2015, while he served as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the bank’s Russia-based businesses were sold to a Russian banker and consultant, Artem Avetisyan, who had ties to both the Russian president and Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. At the time, Sberbank was under US and EU sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Avetisyan had earlier been selected by Putin to head a new business branch of the Russian president’s strategic initiative agency, which was tasked with improving business and government ties.
Avetisyan’s business partner, Oleg Gref, is the son of Herman Gref, Sberbank’s chief executive officer, and their consultancy has served as a “partner” to Sberbank, according to their website. Ross had described the Russian businesses – including 120 bank branches in Russia – as being worth “hundreds of millions of euros” in 2014 but they were sold with other assets to Avetisyan for €7m (£6m).
Ross has not been accused of wrongdoing and there is no indication the Russian deal violated US or EU sanctions. Ross resigned from the Bank of Cyprus board after he was confirmed as commerce secretary last month.
Democrats raised questions about Ross’s tenure at the Bank of Cyprus before his confirmation, but Ross has said the White House has refused to allow him to respond to the queries. Senator Cory Booker and other Democrats recently sent a third letter to Ross with more questions, including whether Ross had ever done business with companies that were under US sanctions.” The Guardian
“The letter cited reporting by McClatchy last December about Vekselberg, who sits atop the Renova Corp., a Russian conglomerate. Aside from his friendship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Vekselberg at one time served on the board of directors of the Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft. It is under a partial sanction by the U.S. Treasury Department.” McClatchyDC
“Ross had little history in global banking, but in 2011 he took an ownership stake in Bank of Ireland, the only bank in that nation the government didn’t seize. Ross tripled his investment when he sold his Irish stake in June 2014, then months later, he took a gamble on Bank of Cyprus.
Six Democratic senators, led by Florida’s Bill Nelson, asked for details about his relationship with big Russian shareholders in Bank of Cyprus, including Viktor Vekselberg, a longtime Putin ally, and Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a former vice chairman of Bank of Cyprus and a former KGB agent believed to be a Putin associate.
Aides to several of the senators confirmed late Friday that Ross hadn’t responded to their questions. The White House sent McClatchy to a Commerce Department transition aide, who didn’t respond to questions.
Ross was involved with Russia during the 1990s when President Bill Clinton appointed him to serve on the U.S-Russia Investment Fund. The U.S. government set up an investment fund in 1995 to help push the new Russian nation toward a free-market economy after the Soviet Union collapsed.
The fund was converted to a nonprofit corporation in 2008 and many of its assets sold off. The banking investments were purchased by a subsidiary of German financial giant Deutsche Bank, led at the time by Josef Ackermann. Ross asked Ackermann to serve as chairman of the reconstituted Bank of Cyprus after his 2014 investment.
Ackermann left Deutsche Bank in 2012. The bank paid $7.2 billion in fines last year to the U.S. government over toxic mortgages it packaged and sold between 2005 and 2007. And last month, the bank agreed to pay almost $630 million to regulators in London and New York to end investigations into complex stock trades in Russia between 2011 and 2015.
Cyprus also features prominently in the Panama Papers, the massive leak of offshore company data from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.”
Wikipedia “He was a banker, known for restructuring failed companies in industries such as steel, coal, telecommunications, foreign investment and textiles. He specializes in leveraged buyouts and distressed businesses. As of February 2017, Forbes magazine has reported that Ross has a net worth of $2.5 billion.[1]
Ross is known as the “King of Bankruptcy” for his experience in buying bankrupt companies, primarily in the manufacturing and steel industries, and later selling them for a large profit after operations improve.[3]”Wikipedia
Ross as the Secretary of Commerce and Alex Acosta as Secretary of Labor preside over the Apprenticeships program, provided by Executive Order on June 15, 2017. He will have up to 20 unpaid staff who interface with corporations to determine apprenticeship opportunities for future employment needs.
Shipper NAVIGATOR HOLDINGS Cayman Islands connection Revealed by The Paradise Papers: WL Ross & Co is the largest shareholder at 31% and Navigator’s top clients include Russian energy co. Sibur
Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, retained investments in a shipping firm with business ties to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle.
“Mr. Ross’s stake in Navigator has been held by a chain of companies in the Cayman Islands, one of several tax havens where much of his wealth, estimated at more than $2 billion, has been tied to similar investment vehicles. Details of these arrangements surfaced in a cache of leaked files from Appleby, one of the world’s largest offshore law firms, which administered some 50 companies and partnerships in the Caymans and elsewhere connected to Mr. Ross.
The Appleby documents, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, were shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organizations, including The New York Times. They show how the Bermuda-based Appleby worked to help the wealthy elite, from Russian oligarchs to Middle Eastern princes, as well as multinational corporations like Apple and Nike, avoid billions of dollars in taxes. In a written response to questions by the Times, James Rockas, a spokesman for Mr. Ross, said that Navigator’s relationship with Sibur began before Mr. Ross joined the board in March 2012, and that he had never met the Russian oligarchs who are Sibur’s major shareholders. Public records show that Mr. Ross’s firm became a major investor in Navigator in November 2011, three months before the company chartered its first ships to Sibur. Another of Navigator’s major customers is PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, controlled by the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on PDVSA this summer.
Much like President Trump, whose company sought approval for a hotel project in Moscow as recently as last year, Mr. Ross has long shown an appreciation for the untapped potential of Russian markets when seeking investment opportunities. His involvement there dates at least to the 1990s, when he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the board of the U.S. Russia Investment Fund, established to promote American business interests in Russia.
In addition to Navigator, his firm also acquired a German rail car company, VTG, which pursued an expansion strategy in Russia before Mr. Ross sold his stake in 2016. And Mr. Ross led a private bailout of the Bank of Cyprus, long regarded as a favorite financial haven of wealthy Russians, after the worldwide economic crisis crippled the Cypriot banking system.” NY Times
“Ross, a billionaire private equity investor, divested most of his business assets before joining President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in February, but he kept a stake in the shipping firm, Navigator Holdings Ltd., which is incorporated in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. Offshore entities in which Ross and other investors hold a financial stake controlled 31.5 percent of the company in 2016, according to Navigator’s latest annual report.
Among Navigator’s largest customers, contributing more than $68 million in revenue since 2014, is the Moscow-based gas and petrochemicals company Sibur.
Commerce and conflict
The commerce secretary’s indirect business connection with Putin’s son-in-law and oligarch allies emerges from an examination of public records and a leak of millions of offshore financial documents from the Bermuda law firm Appleby obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its global network of media partners. They represent the inner workings of Appleby from the 1950s until 2016. The files include documents from Appleby’s corporate services division, which became independent in 2016 under the name Estera.
The leaked files showed a chain of companies and partnerships in the Cayman Islands through which Ross has retained his financial stake in Navigator.
The fact that Ross’ Cayman Islands companies benefit from a firm controlled by Putin proxies raises serious potential conflicts of interest, experts say. As commerce secretary, Ross has the power to influence U.S. trade, sanctions and other matters that could affect Sibur’s owners. Likewise, Sibur’s owners, and through them, Putin himself, could have the ability to increase or decrease Sibur’s business with Navigator even as Ross helps steer U.S. policy.
Many of the private equity funds involved in these investments were created and administered by Appleby, an offshore law firm founded in Bermuda . The leaked files offer a window into how Appleby helped his firm, WL Ross & Co. LLC, reap the benefits of offshore havens such as the Cayman Islands, a British territory that permits extraordinary levels of financial secrecy and allows paper companies run from New York and elsewhere to operate there tax-free. In 2015, the Cayman Islands was ranked fifth by the Financial Secrecy Index in its worldwide ratings.
Creating offshore funds organized as corporations can be a major draw for certain investors, by allowing U.S. tax-exempt organizations – including huge pension funds and richly endowed universities – to sidestep an Internal Revenue Service rule the requires them to pay taxes on income obtained using borrowed money. They also help attract non-U.S. investors because their names aren’t disclosed to tax authorities in the United States.
General partners in offshore private equity enjoy generous tax breaks in the United States as well, including the ability to count the biggest share of their earnings from the fund as a long-term capital gain, rather than ordinary income. This allows the wealthiest fund managers to reduce the tax on these earnings from the top U.S. rate of 39.6 percent to 20 percent.
When he was nominated as commerce secretary, Ross filed an agreement with the federal Office of Government Ethics that said he intended to divest 80 companies and partnerships, but would keep a stake in nine others that held assets in “real estate financing and mortgage lending” and “transoceanic shipping.” The assets were not specified. Even though he had sold WL Ross & Co. to Invesco in 2006, he remained active as chair and CEO until resigning to join the Cabinet.
His financial disclosure form, also filed with the Office of Government Ethics, runs 57 pages and includes a long list under the heading, “Employment Assets & Income and Retirement Accounts.” This list is broken down into sections listing assets that appear to be held by each of Ross’ companies, detailing as many as seven layers of entities between Ross and the assets he holds.
Buried in a multitude of subsections appear four cryptically named Cayman Islands entities that are among those he said he was keeping: WLR Recovery Associates IV DSS AIV, GP; WLR Recovery Associates IV DSS AIV, LP; WLR Recovery Associates V DSS AIV, GP and WLR Recovery Associates V DSS AIV, LP. All four companies are administered by the Appleby law firm. “Navigator Holdings” is listed among the assets these companies held, but, consistent with the format of the disclosure form, no details about the company or its relationship with Sibur are provided.
The complexity of the offshore structures adds legal and reputational distance and obscures the full extent of Ross’s business relationships even as it allows him to profit from them, according to tax and ethics experts consulted by ICIJ.
Ross’ disclosure values his combined current stake in the offshore entities that hold Navigator shares at between $2.05 million to $10.1 million. But it is not certain what his total holdings are because he did not list a value for one of the four entities he retained. It is not apparent why or whether a value was omitted. His share represents a fraction of the entities’ overall 31.5 percent stake in Navigator, which, based on the firm’s stock price on Oct. 30, 2017, is worth roughly $179 million.” ICIJ.org
“The Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained close to 13.4 million documents. They demonstrate how some clients use offshore companies to mask criminal activity or conceal money from dubious sources. The documents, for instance, expose previously unknown links between a secretary in U.S. President Donald Trump’s cabinet and Russian oligarchs. In fact, information on more than a dozen of Trump’s advisers, cabinet members and major donors can be found in the leaked data.”
“The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 95 media partners explored 13.4 million leaked files from a combination of offshore service providers and the company registries of some of the world’s most secretive countries. The Paradise Papers documents include nearly 7 million loan agreements, financial statements, emails, trust deeds and other paperwork from nearly 50 years at Appleby, a leading offshore law firm with offices in Bermuda and beyond.” ICIJ.org
Records leaked from an offshore law firm show how the wealthy elite sidestep prohibitions on foreigners registering private planes in the United States.
“Still, the Bank of Utah executives were surprised to learn that they had aided Mr. Mikhelson, the Russian oligarch. When told the name of the offshore shell company that Mr. Mikhelson used to manage his Gulfstream jet, Mr. Croasmun interrupted the interview to check the bank’s files. He confirmed that the shell company had been a client since 2013 — but information identifying Mr. Mikhelson as the man behind it “was nowhere that I saw in the files.”
According to a flow chart created by Appleby’s Isle of Man office for the Mikhelson account, the ownership chain for his jet began in Panama, with a company called Golden Star Aviation, which registered on the Isle of Man and then leased the aircraft to a Cayman Islands company called SWGI Growth Fund. Both companies were controlled by Mr. Mikhelson.
A due-diligence report by Appleby noted Mr. Mikhelson’s source of wealth — valued currently at about $18 billion — from oil and gas investments, notably through Novatek, Russia’s largest nongovernment-owned gas company. Mr. Mikhelson’s main business partner is Gennady Timchenko, a close friend of Mr. Putin’s. The two businessmen are the primary investors in Sibur, a Russian gas-processing company.“
Wilbur Ross has played a key part in Donald Trump’s business and political careers
“A top member of Donald Trump’s administration has business links with Russian allies of President Vladimir Putin who are under US sanctions, the Paradise Papers have revealed.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has an interest in Navigator Holdings, which earns millions a year transporting oil and gas for Russian energy firm Sibur.
Two major Sibur shareholders are under some form of US sanctions. A commerce department spokesman did not dispute the revelations.
“Secretary Ross recuses himself from any matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels,” the spokesman told BBC Panorama, adding that the secretary “works closely with Commerce Department ethics officials to ensure the highest ethical standards”.
Another Sibur shareholder is President Putin’s son in law, Kirill Shamalov.
He holds a 3.9% stake in the firm. Gennady Timchenko, who has been individually sanctioned by the United States, as have at least 12 companies connected to him, and Leonid Mikhelson, whose main company, Novatek, is also sanctioned, are major shareholders.
Sibur itself and Mr Shamalov are not under sanctions, although Mr Shamalov’s father, Nikolai, is.
The commerce department spokesman said Mr Ross had never met the three Russian shareholders.
The US imposed some sanctions after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Others were imposed last year for alleged interference in the US presidential election.
The revelations will again raise questions about the Russian connections of Donald Trump’s team. His presidency has been dogged by allegations that Russians colluded to try to influence the outcome of the election. He has called the allegations “fake news”. A special counsel is investigating the matter.
Wilbur Ross and Donald Trump have known each other for more than a quarter of a century. Mr Ross played a key part in a prepackaged bankruptcy deal – deal agreed between a company and its creditors – for Mr Trump’s Atlantic City casino, the Taj Mahal, in the 1990s.
Trump biographer David Cay Johnston told BBC Panorama: “If it hadn’t been for Wilbur Ross, Donald Trump would not be in the White House.
Major client
WL Ross & Co, which was founded by Wilbur Ross, first invested in Navigator Holdings in 2011.
An investigation has revealed details of how Mr Ross retains a financial interest in Navigator Holdings via a number of companies in the Cayman Islands.
Some of these Cayman companies were disclosed by Mr Ross when he became commerce secretary, but under the disclosure rules he did not have to declare his interest in Navigator Holdings.
Its annual report in 2016 showed 31.5% was still held by entities in which Mr Ross has a stake, although the value of Mr Ross’s personal holding remains unclear.
When Trump met Ross
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionDonald Trump at the Taj Mahal casino in 1990
Back in 1990, after a high-profile financial battle, Donald Trump opened his third casino in Atlantic City – the Taj Mahal, dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world”. It didn’t go well. Mr Trump financed it with $675m raised through junk bonds at an interest rate of 14%. He struggled to make the payments. Step in Wilbur Ross. Then at Rothschild Inc, he was representing the angry bondholders but liked Donald Trump’s style. Trump biographer David Cay Johnston said: “Wilbur Ross was a key negotiator in Donald Trump not having to go through bankruptcy and not being swept into the dustbin of history because he saw the value in the Trump name.”
Mr Ross said at this year’s Concordia Annual Summit: “When you meet people who are under tremendous financial pressure… you really get to see what they are made of, and he was made of much stronger stuff than a lot of owners of troubled businesses.” One prepackaged bankruptcy later and The Donald was on his way out of debt and heading up the Forbes rich list.
Wilbur Ross became a board member of Navigator in 2012 but the commerce department said he was not on the board when Navigator signed its charter deal with Sibur that year.
But Mr Ross was still a board member during the period from March to November 2014, when the US was sanctioning Russians over the annexation of Crimea, including Mr Timchenko and Mr Mikhelson’s company, Novatek.
During that period Navigator continued to increase its business with Sibur. The energy firm accounted for 9.1% of Navigator’s total revenues in 2015, compared with 5.3% in 2014, Navigator’s own filings show.
Mr Ross left Navigator’s board in November 2014 but his seat was taken by Ross group partner Wendy Teramoto, who served on it until 2017.
Figures from 2016 showed Sibur was still among Navigator’s top five clients, predominantly exporting Russian gas to Europe and potentially providing significant income to sanctioned Putin allies.
This year, Navigator doubled the fleet it is using on Sibur exports to four. Sibur has provided Navigator with $68m (£49m) in revenue since 2014. There is no suggestion Mr Ross has violated any rules.
But Daniel Fried, who oversaw the introduction of US sanctions against Russia under President Barack Obama, told Panorama that it would be a mistake for any American official to do business with Sibur.
“I would advise any client who came to me to stay well away from Sibur or anybody else who has been sanctioned or has a relationship with sanctioned individuals… on the grounds, at least, of reputational risk.”
But Mr Ross appears to have maintained a close relationship with the shipping company.
On the night that he was nominated as commerce secretary by President Trump, Mr Ross went to a restaurant in New York where he was congratulated on his promotion by the senior management of Navigator Holdings, Bloomberg reported .
Mr Ross reportedly told the CEO of Navigator: “Your interest is aligned to mine. The US economy will grow, and Navigator will be a beneficiary.”
Another key Navigator customer has been PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company. It was targeted by US sanctions this year.
The commerce department said Mr Ross had “been generally supportive of the Administration’s sanctions of Russian and other entities”.
Nancy McLean: “This is about the billionaire radical right…they understood themselves to be a radical libertarian right. The Libertarian right believes that government should only have 3 functions and those are [1]Ensuring theRule of Law to Protect the Rights of Property, in particular, [2]Guaranteeing Social Order, and [3]Providing for the National Defense. So according to this Right, we should not be able to have anything like Social Security, Medicare [anti-poor], like a government that has a right to stop discrimination [anti-civil rights], like a government that cleans up our air and water [anti-environmental regulation]; anything that involves tax revenues going from these unwilling, wealthy and corporate taxpayers going to other people, whether it’s citizens drug benefits or clean air and water, none of that is legitimate in their view.
And what’s so chilling about this history that I uncovered is that they’re using the ideas of this particular Nobel Prize-winning economist who worked in Virginia for most of his life, to actually Change the Political Process essentially by MISINFORMATION ITSELFto get to that great libertarian Utopia that would be so DYSTOPIAN FOR THE REST OF US.So things like VOTER SUPPRESSION, drawing district lines in a way that make the remaining voters’ votes irrelevant, and all of those things. So it really is a stealth plan. It’s different than traditional conservative. Jane Mayer, the journalist who exposed the dark money trail that the Koch brothers have built, mine is more focused on the ideas and strategies and the end game, but she describes that as “New Koch”: a kind of a re-branding effort trying to make themselves popular, by doing these things, by giving these moneys. I would say be very, very wary of this. They have been working with groups like the LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH, which essentially revived SECESSIONIST IDEAS. There’s a long history of the Libertarian Right sliding into the Alt-Right because they are So Committed To These Ideas. You know what used to be called Social Darwinism that blamed people for their situations, so these people are not the friends of African Americans…”
Roland Martin: “And Nancy, let’s be clear. This started with Brown v. Board of Education”
Nancy McLean: “Yeah, that was what was so new in my work was finding this Southern story, that the origins of these ideas came from Virginia, while Virginia was leading the wider South, in massive resistance to Brown v. Board of Education. This particular thinker, James McGill Buchanan, set to work, and he came up with a new set of ideas that basically provided a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a lot of long-standing conservative ideas on the Southern conservative Right, like the ideas that the politicians just buy the votes of people with things like the rights of workers to organize, social security and medicare, they call all of that “Vote Buying”. And they played on a lot of racist tropes over the years to build an audience for this idea, but basically it’s coming after everyone, including the programs that white people depend on and value. So it is really a radical cause.
Alt Right: A Primer about the New White Supremacy Anti Defamation League“White supremacist Richard Spencer, who runs the National Policy Institute, a tiny white supremacist think tank, coined the term “Alternative Right” as the name for an online publication that debuted in 2010. The online publication changed hands in 2013 when Spencer shut it down. It was soon re-launched by Colin Liddell and Andy Nowicki, who were former writers for Alternative Right. Spencer went on to found another online journal, Radix. Both Alternative Right and Radix act as forums for racists, anti-Semites and others who identify with the Alt Right.”
The “Alt-Right” is a loosely defined movement in the US and Europe based in anger…at Muslims, Women, African-Americans, Jews, LGBTQ2+, the Liberal Elites, the Deep State, Immigrants, Refugees and Racial Integration, Big Government, Neocon/Neoliberal Globalism, threats to freedom and personal liberties (guns, unlimited hate speech and calls for violence), Taxes, the UN, World Bank, Mainstream Media (MSM), the Intelligence Community and Dark Military, and more. It has many common sentiments with the Mercer/Bannon camp and lesser so with the Koch brothers.
The Alt-Right has become a politically influential group of Meme Warriors, ready to take on presidential campaigns at a moment’s notice through Reddit chat rooms for strategy, particularly4 chan, 8 chan and The_Donald. Palmer Luckey, the creator of Oculus VR who sold it to Facebook, bought Facebook ads after the RNC in July 2016 and pushed the anti-Clinton memes which Bannon/Mercer‘s Cambridge Analytica refined using big data algorithms in Brad Parscale’s “Project Alamo”, and no doubt included the influence of Rebekah Mercer and Roger Stone in content. This social media “meme war” of disinformation and hate mongering happened simultaneously with Wikileaks email dumps against the DNC and Clinton. The dumps are speculated to have been coordinated bythe Trump Campaign Digital Manager Jared Kushner, and there is evidence that Steve Bannon’s Breitbart news coordinated with Russian bots to spread stories. Bannon spent 20 hours with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. More on Hacking & Cyber Warfare here. They act as the civilian social media arm of the Russian hackers and propagandist’s efforts to sway public thought and votes in the 2016 election and highly active promoting LePen over Macron and Brexit. “Several alt-techies I interviewed said they were fans of A Troublesome Inheritance, a national bestseller published in 2014 by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade that makes a case for the existence of differences in average IQ and behavior between races.” Mother Jones
Alt-Right moves into the White House
Trump has stated many times that he judges people based on genes. His nanny was a Nazi. Steve Bannon‘s wife alleged in divorce proceedings that he didn’t want his kids going to school with a bunch of Jews. He was Chief Strategist and with the ethics waiver is officially overseeing Breitbart from the White House, where he is joined by his former Breitbart mid-20s writer, Julia Hahn.
Stephen Miller is a close Trump policy adviser and gained notoriety for defending the Duke University LaCrosse team when they raped two African-American strippers in a violent act of racism. He became Jeff Sessions‘ over-paid speech writer and moved up the political ladder. Miller, Hahn and Bannon are all from the Westside of Los Angeles. Miller was considered as White House Communications Director following Sean Spicer’s resignation and Anthony Scaramucci’s 250-hour term.
Cooperating Witness Michael Flynn, former DIA and National Security Advisor, was a prominent anti-Clinton voice influencing the Alt-Right hatred throughout the Campaign and Transition (Pizzagate, “Lock Her up”, etc.). He brought Ezra Cohen-Watnick into the National Security Council where he has remained. Michael Flynn’s extremist protege from the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency National Security AdvisorSebastian “Seb” Gorka is Anti-Muslim self-proclaimed counterterrorism expert, and sits on the Strategic Initiatives Group with Bannon, Kushner, and Christopher Liddell.
First Amendment Freedoms: The Alt-Right, although there is current pushback on using that label from its fellow idealogues, has been using Freedom of Speech to turn the tables on those who wish to stop giving hate speech a public platform at Universities and in general. It speaks to the Paradox of Intolerance; to have a tolerant societyThe acquisition of Tribune by Sinclair in May 2017 created the opportunity for the Alt-Right propaganda created by this team of writers and military/security strategists to reach 72% of homes. The “must run” segments are mixed into legitimate news, confusing an unwitting audience. While this group has been attacking Mainstream Media and legitimizing their own fringe voices in the process, they have been weakening the reputation of legitimate journalism, which has had a strict code of ethics and validating sources not unlike the legal system, until now.
On August 12, with a preview the night before, Charlottesville, VA, Richard Spencer led the “Unite the Right” protest of the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee, Confederate hero. It developed into tragedy attributed to the coordinated efforts of what should be a fringe group with limited presence. Because of the power of social media and the internet which allows everyone a voice if they want it, the Alt-Right has developed all of the hallmarks of a terrorist organization. Like ISIS, which uses religion as its tool for legitimacy, the Alt-Right uses the First Amendment against Americans.
“days before the rally, the short-term lodging service Airbnb started suspending the accounts of rally attendees who had rented houses in the area. It was a blow for the organizers, who had “taken over all of the large AirBnBs in a particular area,” according to a user on the message board for the Daily Stormer, a popular neo-Nazi website, who had “set up ‘Nazi Uber’ and the ‘Hate Van’ to help in moving our people around as needed.” Over the last two years, a crop of start-ups has begun offering social media platforms and financial services catering to right-wing Internet users. After being banned from Twitter during the 2016 presidential campaign, many members of the “alt-right” movement of white nationalists joined Gab, which describes itself as “an ad-free social network for creators who believe in free speech, individual liberty, and the free flow of information online.” On Tuesday, one of the site’s most popular posts was an image that said, “I ❤ BEING WHITE.”
Hatreon — pronounced HATE-ree-on — currently features fundraiserssupporting Richard Spencer, one of America’s most prominent white nationalists (who has 34 “patrons” pledging to donate $362 to him a month), and Andrew Anglin, who, as founder and editor of the Daily Stormer, is one of America’s most prominent neo-Nazis (with 50 donors pledging $869.17 a month)…[Creator of Hatreon] Cody Wilson, of Austin, Texas, who is best known for his efforts to produce guns through 3-D printing, described himself as an “Internet anarchist” who wants to disrupt the establishment’s status quo. He was intrigued by far-right users on social media, who sometimes post racist, sexist and anti-Semitic comments and images but also playful memes of their de facto mascot, “Pepe,” a cartoon frog. “Frog Twitter and the so-called ‘alt-right’ — there’s a lot of life there,” Wilson said. “I’m kind of happy to help it mutate.”
Another crowdfunding start-up, WeSearchr, has raised more than $150,000 for Anglin’s legal defense in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the anti-extremism nonprofit, after Anglin organized a “troll storm” against a Jewish woman on the Daily Stormer.
WeSearchr often sponsors fundraisers for medical bills and legal defense funds for far-right figures who have gotten in fights with left-wing activists who call themselves “anti-fascists.” [AntiFa] It also offers “bounties” — money donated by users to meet a certain objective — seeking the identities of anti-fascists involved in violent encounters.
WeSearchr’s owner,Chuck C. Johnson, a right-wing journalist and provocateur who has been banned from Twitter, told The Times in an email that it was “good business to allow free speech” and that he believes not discriminating against users’ political views might give him better protection from lawsuits. Johnson, whose operation is based in California, added that his attorney advised him that, under state law, it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of politics. “All are welcome to fundraise on my properties,” Johnson wrote.
One of WeSearchr’s other founders, Pax Dickinson, recently split from the company to start his own crowdfunding site, Counter.Fund, with an “explicit dedication against Marxist political correctnessand the globalist progressive Left,” according to its website.
Dickinson was the chief technology officer of Business Insider until he was forced to resign in 2013 after sexist and racist tweets of his were uncovered by the news site Gawker. Dickinson since has channeled his entrepreneurial energies into creating financial infrastructure to sustain the far-right.
As for [Richard] Spencer, one of the alt-right’s other most prominent figures, he still has a Twitter account, but he has been banned from the audio hosting site SoundCloud. He said three banks have terminated the accounts of his white nationalist nonprofit, the National Policy Institute, but the group still does business with online payment-processing services such as PayPal.” LA Times August 12, 2017
The Alt-Right is said to have started in the US with Matt Drudge’s “The Drudge Report” radio show, which popularized victim mentality among mostly white men, some of whom were un- or under-employed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Drudge went on the Internet and Breitbart News gained power after Andrew’s death and his replacement with Stephen K. aka Steve Bannon at the helm. Breitbart’s reach has grown exponentially since Trump’s candidacy and as of August 2017, his news segments from the White House will be mandatory on 72% of public broadcast TV under the Sinclair-Tribune merger. More on the First Amendment Freedoms page.
TEA PARTY ROOTS: CITIZENS UNITED, THE KOCH BROTHERS AND MERCERS
The Tea Party movement was heavily funded by the Koch Brothers and Robert and Rebekah Mercer. It took pride in its refusal to compromise and fostered anti-big-government simplicity and economic nationalism. It absorbed the Christian Right vote with “family values”/anti-abortion & LGBTQ stances and the GOP is what it is today. Steve Bannon made a lot of money from the TV Show “Seinfeld” and became a propaganda filmmaker with Koch–Mercer money as it was produced by Citizens United and David Bossie. “Generation Zero”, 2010, is about the apocalyptic aftermath of the financial crisis leading to a cataclysmic war, allowing us to return to the idealized life of the 50s after the horrors of WW2. Bannon, while having made anti-semitic statements in his divorce proceedings, considers himself an Economic Nationalist. White Nationalists are the racial supremacists, according to various alt-right internet and media voices. See Generation Zero here.
ROMANCING THE PAST: PUTIN, THE CHRISTIAN- AND ALT-RIGHT
The self-pity of the victimized white man stirred anti-feminism. Bannon and others openly long for the accepted patriarchy of the past when gender roles were clearly defined and oppressive to women. There is a romance of past greatness, pre-feminist, pre-globalist, pre-mixing of religions and races. Racism and sexism have flourished in this climate. Competition for jobs, physical space and resources, women and the insecurity of dealing with them in a Women’s Lib world, all contribute. Fears of losing a previously great American/European culture, and the social and economic costs of and benefits to immigrants, whether South of the US border or Muslim have fueled hatred against immigrants. Europe has felt a crush of refugees and we have seen the photos of crowded train stations. Rumors of violence, especially against women, have been magnified. All of these things have been magnified by the Alt-Right in their perception and intention to stir up hatred and anger. Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon, and Russia’s Internet Research Agency have used these to steal our government through the politicians and policies they’ve bought.
As the Chief Propagandist / Strategist for Trump and Breitbart News, Steve Bannon has garnered incredible power for a “fringe” fear- and war-mongerer, as he appointed himself to the National Security Council and formed the Strategic Initiatives Group after being removed from the Principals Committee. Most of the Republicans in office have been politically funded by the people behind Bannon’s propaganda films (Mercers, CitizensUnited, Kochs), whose goal is the destruction of the administrative state (as so many Government jobs go unfilled today) and deregulation/removing protections, while the selfish and discompassionate philosophy of Ayn Rand is enacted in our public policy (Libertarian, far-right Republican).
Traditional Patriarchal, Christian and Caucasian-dominated sentiments are also being pushed in Europe. Reportedly and by action, Putin wants a return to 19th. Century absolute power/Oligarchy “greatness” and has appealed to the Christian Right pointing out their anti-feminist, anti-gay and other similar stances in the Eastern Orthodox church-influenced culture of Russia and Eastern Europe. French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is openly backed by Putin and the Alt-Right openly declared a Meme War on her behalf as they did for Trump and Brexit. Turkey’s Erdogan and the Catholic Philippines’ Duterte have their hard right influences. All have received compliments or congratulations from Trump. Breitbart News wants to spread the hard alt-right hatred all over Europe. Erdogan in Turkey was supported by Putin and Michael Flynn Sr. and Jr. (Flynn Intel Group) were paid to lobby for Erdogan (cause for firing and investigation); likewise Paul Manafort was paid to lobby for Putin-backed Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych (resignation & initial investigation inquiries). Poland’s recent resignation of the pro-American government and installation of a far-right fascist one may be due to Russian taping in the top restaurants. Someone did, and it seems like an FSB op.
Voices of the Alt-Right
Steve Bannon, “The Movement” founder, Former Editor of Breitbart News, Former Chief Strategist, propaganda filmmaker, Leninist, Right Wing Catholic Militia
Andy Nowicki aka the Nameless One “is the assistant editor of the white supremacist Alternative Right blog, which was founded by alt right leader Richard Spencer. The Alternative Right weighs in on the alt right hot topics, from “white sharia” and racial disparities in IQs, to the distinctions in thought between the “normie” world versus the alt right.” While Nowicki claims he is not a white nationalist, he shares many of those views.” ADL
Augustus Invictus “(born Austin Mitchell Gillespie) is a far-right activist, attorney, and speaker from Orlando, Florida. He is a member of the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, the “military wing” of the Proud Boys. He is also the Sergeant at Arms for the Florida American Guard, a white supremacist group led by Brien James, one of the founders of the Vinlanders Social Club (VSC), a hardcore, frequently violent racist skinhead gang. At the alt right’s June 25 rally in DC, Invictus claimed that while he is not part of the alt right, he stands with the alt right on the issue of free speech. Infighting on the right, he says, just takes energy away from fighting the “real enemy,” which includes the federal government, the lobbyists, and people like George Soros and the Clintons.” ADL
Brad Griffin aka Hunter Wallace “is the Alabama-based white supremacist behind the Occidental Dissent blog, which celebrates Southern nationalism and the alt right. Griffin has been active in the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South, both traditional white supremacist groups. He is a regular contributor to Altright.com, the online publication run by Richard Spencer and Daniel Friberg. He has also proposed creating an “alt south,” an alt-right version of Southern nationalism that would try to attract a broader range of people who reject mainstream conservatism and embrace some of the tactics of the alt right.” ADL
Christopher Cantwell “runs Radical Agenda, a racist, “pro-European,” internet radio show/blog that touts its pay-to-view content as “common sense extremism.” Cantwell has a history of promoting anti-police and anarchist rhetoric, but has recently moved toward the extreme right, and spoke at the neo-Nazi gathering in Pikeville, Kentucky. He has interviewed and appeared alongside white supremacists Mike Enoch and Matthew Heimbach, and has written that he abandoned libertarianism for the alt right after seeing that the latter “has better memes.” At the June 25 Free Speech Rally in DC, Cantwell urged the crowd to fight “Jewish influence.” ADL
Colin Liddell “is the editor-in-chief of Alternative Right, the website started by Richard Spencer in 2010. Liddell previously contributed to the white supremacist journal American Renaissance. He writes about the notion of racial equality fabricated by the “liberal-leftist media” and the “Jewish propaganda machine.” In his 2012 essay “Is Black Genocide Right?” he writes, “Instead of asking how we can make reparations for slavery, colonialism, and apartheid or how we can equalize academic scores and incomes, we should instead be asking questions like, “Does human civilization actually need the Black race?” ADL
Daniel Friberg “is a Swedish businessman, white supremacist, and European editor, and the co-founder (with Richard Spencer) of Altright.com. He is the CEO and co-founder of Arktos Media, which features books by white nationalists, and was one of the founding members of the Motpol think tank, which organized a well-attended alt right conference in Stockholm in February 2017. In his youth, Friberg was active in the Swedish Resistance, a neo-Nazi group.” ADL
Daniel J. Kleve “runs an online group called “Racial Theocracy,” which promotes the idea that “religious fulfillment comes from the proper expression of racial, social and spiritual consequences.” The group wants “to spread overlooked Right Wing literature.” It also promotes National Socialism as world’s “only hope of a future.” Kleve has set up a pool fund to help pay for travel expenses for people who wanted to attend an alt right rally.” ADL
Dillon Irizarry “a military veteran, has been leading the white supremacist group Vanguard America since early 2016. In a speech at the neo-Nazi gathering in Pikeville, Kentucky, a heavily-armed Irizarry claimed that Vanguard America, which is part of the umbrella Nationalist Front organization, has approximately 200 members in 20 different states. The group, which opposes multiculturalism and believes America is a nation for white people,posted white supremacist fliers at universities across the country during the 2016-17 school year. Vanguard America has participated in a number of rallies with alt right figures. In a June 2017 rally in Austin, Texas, Vanguard America appeared alongside members of The Right Stuff and The Daily Stormer.” ADL
Greg Johnson “is a white supremacist and editor-in-chief of Counter-Currents Publishing and its online compendium, the North American New Right. He has also written for the Occidental Observer, an anti-Semitic online publication. Johnson calls himself a “white nationalist” who hopes to create “racially and ethnically homogeneous homelands for whites.” He holds forums in New York and in the Northwest for alt-right activists and is a leader on the alt right. He and Richard Spencer recently had a falling out over the leadership of the alt right and accusations that Johnson was trying to discredit Altright.com editor Daniel Friberg.” ADL
Jared Taylor “(also known as Samuel Jared Taylor) is the founder of The New Century Foundation, a white supremacist think tank known primarily for its racist online journal, American Renaissance. The annual American Renaissance conference features extreme right speakers from the U.S. and Europe. Taylor presents himself as a “race realist” who believes that racial differences are real and that it is natural and healthy for groups to segregate along racial lines. American Renaissance generally avoids the cruder bigotry and stereotyping characteristic of many other racist publications, and Taylor himself does not appear to be anti-Semitic. Taylor is sometimes referred to as the “father of the alt right” due to his influence on the alt right movement. He also was one of the main speakers, with Richard Spencer, at a September 2016 news conference to “explain” the alt right movement.” ADL
Jason Kessler “of Charlottesville, Virginia, is an alt right activist and white supremacist who claims that a “white genocide” is underway in the United States. Kessler is the president of Unity and Security for America and is a contributor to the racist website VDare.com. He also wrote for The Daily Caller until he was revealed to be a white nationalist. At a May 2017 pro-Confederate rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Kessler reportedly praised racist groups and a Holocaust denier, and was eventually arrested for disorderly conduct. At June’s Free Speech Rally in D.C., he told the crowd that America would be better off if the South had won the Civil War, and advanced conspiracy theories about Jews controlling Hollywood and the media and promoting “filthy propaganda.” Kessler is one of the organizers of the August 12 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.” ADL
Jason Reza Jorjani “co-founded Altright.com with Richard Spencer, and is on the site’s board of directors. A lecturer in humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, he is also the editor-in-chief of Arktos Media, known for publishing nationalist philosophers and “New European” materials. Jorjani calls Arktos “the leading press of the alt right.” ADL
Johnny Ramondetta (aka Johnny Monoxide) “is a white supremacist and an electrician from Berkeley, California, who is responsible for the podcasts “Paranormies Present” and “The Current Year Tonight,” both of which are promoted on The Right Stuff Radio, a popular alt right site. Ramondetta has produced live-streams for a number of alt right events, including the April 2017 “Battle of Berkeley.” ADL
Lana Lokteff “is a white supremacist who runs internet media company Red Ice TV with her husband, Henrik Palmgren. Based in “Sweden and North America,” Red Ice features online TV and radio shows, including Lokteff’s own “Radio 3Fourteen,” that celebrate “European identity and culture.” Lokteff has interviewed numerous white supremacists on the show. She also co-hosts “Red Ice Live,” and “Weekend Warrior,” on Red Ice. In May 2017, Lotkeff appeared in a video segment with Jared Taylor of American Renaissance to discuss “the women of the alt right.” ADL
Matt Forney “currently based in Budapest, Hungary and Lviv, Ukraine, is a white nationalist, anti-Semite, and misogynist who works for Red Ice Radio. Forney, who is active in the alt right, publishes bigoted and hateful rants against Islam, Jews, and women, often on AltRight.com. Forney’s online videos include Holocaust denial tirade “Eric Hunt-The Shoah: The Biggest Hoax of the 20th Century?” Among his virulently misogynistic writings, “How to Beat Your Girlfriend or Wife and Get Away with It,” and “The Myth of Female Intelligence,” Forney’s bigotry extends to people of color, Muslims, and interracial marriage. “Blacks,” Forney says, “do nothing but murder cops, rob and rape people, and bring death and destruction wherever they go.” ADL
Matthew Heimbach “is one of the co-founders of the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP). TWP claims to be the “political arm” of an earlier white supremacist endeavor, the Traditionalist Youth Network (TYN), which was created to attract young people, particularly college students, to the white supremacist movement. In 2016 and 2017, TWP has participated in white supremacist events all over the country, including the neo-Nazi rally in Pikeville, Kentucky. Heimbach is intensely anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier. Alongside National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Schoep, Heimbach co-chairs the Nationalist Front, an umbrella organization of approximately 20 white supremacist organizations, including racist skinhead crews, Klan groups, and neo-Nazi groups. Heimbach started out promoting conservative causes in college but moved further and further to the right, eventually embracing National Socialism. He showed up at Auburn University in Alabama in April 2017 to “protect” Richard Spencer, who spoke there. Heimbach is scheduled to speak August 12 at the white supremacist United the Right event, where he’ll be joined by other alt right figures.” ADL
Matthew Parrott “is the co-founder, with his son-in-law, Matthew Heimbach, of the Traditionalist Worker Party, the “political arm” of the Traditionalist Youth Network. The group promotes white supremacy and a racist interpretation of Christianity, and models itself after the European Identitaire movement, which advocates preserving white European culture and identity in Western countries. Parrott, a frequent contributor to AlternativeRight.com, outlined his belief system in a 2013 essay in the white supremacist online journal Counter-Currents. Though he says that he doesn’t wholeheartedly support the philosophies of Hitler, the Klan, or Southern segregation, he sees them as “ideological progenitors and fallen forefathers.” ADL
Mike Peinovich (aka Mike Enoch) “of New Jersey, is the founder of The Right Stuff (TRS), a racist and anti-Semitic website and well-known voice of the alt right. Peinovich, who frequently appears at events alongside Richard Spencer, hosts a TRS podcast called “The Daily Shoah” which promotes anti-Semitic commentary. Peinovich spoke at the May 13 gathering in Charlottesville in defense of southern monuments, and attended the April 29 neo-Nazi rally in Pikeville, Kentucky. Peinovich blames immigration and diversity policies for the “displacement and genocide of the white race.” He also fixates on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the Federal Reserve, banks, media, and foreign policy. At June’s Free Speech Rally, he said, “It’s Jews, we know that it’s Jews. Why do we go to war in the Middle East against our country’s interests, against the interests of our race? It’s because of Jewish control.” ADL
Nathan Damigo “an Iraq war veteran and student at California State University, Stanislaus, founded Identity Evropa in early 2016. The white supremacist student group is concerned with preserving “white American culture” and promoting white European identity. It is also known for distributing racist fliers at dozens of campuses across the country. At the June 25, 2017, Free Speech Rallyin D.C., Damigo said that America was founded by white people for white people and was not founded to be a multiracial or multicultural society. In April, 2017, Damigo told a reporter he sees the alt right as “the next natural step to take this decentralized internet-based movement into the real world. We’re trying to create a fraternity and brotherhood for people who have awakened and who see the world in a different light. We want to get the normies’ attention.” ADL
Pax Dickinson “was the Chief Technology officer for Business Insider until he was fired after posting a number of offensive tweets attacking the LGBT community, women, Jews, and African-Americans. He has since founded CounterFund, a “crowd-funding platform built by and for the wider alt right counterculture.” Richard Spencer is an enthusiastic supporter, and has said, “the fund might become the most important counter assault against the SJW [social justice warrior] insanity of the past decade.” Dickinson is listed as one of the speakers at the white supremacist Unite the Right rally scheduled for August 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia.” ADL
Tara McCarthy “is a British alt right media personality who hosts the “Reality Calls” podcast, which boasts the tagline, “Let’s Make Western Civilization Great Again.” The goal of the show is to “help make ethno-nationalist views more socially acceptable, and to educate people on the dangers of globalism and replacement migration from the third world.” She has interviewed numerous white supremacists on the show, but denies being a white supremacist herself. She also co-hosts a podcast (with Brittany Pettibone) called “Virtue of the West,” which features interviews with people associated with both the alt right and the alt lite. McCarthy considers herself part of the alt right.” ADL
The Alt-Lite
“You can’t discuss the alt right without mentioning the “alt lite,” a loosely connected movement of right-wing activists who reject the overtly white supremacist ideology of the alt right, but whose hateful impact is more significant than their “lite” name suggests. The alt lite embraces misogyny and xenophobia, and abhors “political correctness” and the left.” ADL
Brittany Pettibone “writes science fiction and co-hosts the “Virtue of the West” podcast with Tara McCarthy. The podcast encourages listeners to “reconnect with the traditional values that once made Western Civilization great, including but not limited to the glorification of the nuclear family, motherhood, masculinity, femininity, etiquette, traditional gender roles and love of one’s own culture, race and country.” Pettibone, unlike McCarthy, does not explicitly identify as part of the alt right, but she walks the very thin line that separates that group from the alt lite. Whatever her personal beliefs, Pettibone uses her podcast to amplify the views of the alt right by interviewing members of the movement. In July 2017, Pettibone traveled to Sicily to join “Defend Europe’s” efforts to keep NGO boats of African refugees from reaching the continent. “Defend Europe” is run by the far-right group “Generation Identity,” which claims to be protecting Europe against “Islamic invasion.” ADL
Colton Merwin“is a 19-year-old self-identified filmmaker/photographer and activist from Baltimore, Maryland. He emerged on the alt right scene when he organized the June 25 Free Speech Rally in DC, an effort that attracted notable alt right personalities including Richard Spencer and Nathan Damigo (of Identity Evropa). Merwin is also affiliated with the Maryland Proud Boys. Despite his organizing and activism on the group’s behalf, Merwin claims he is not part of the alt right.” ADL
Corey Stewart “a failed 2017 Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate, was the state’s Trump campaign co-chair until he was fired for attending an anti-RNC rally in October 2016. Stewart champions the preservation of Confederate monuments in the South, and has defended the “heritage” of the Confederate flag. He referred to his Republican primary opponent a “cuckservative.” Stewart was a featured speaker at the alt lite Rally Against Political Violence on June 25 in Washington, D.C. ” ADL
Gavin McInnes VICE Magazine & The Proud Boys Founder, formerly Rebel Media contributor “McInnes, who left VICE in 2008, is a co-founder of the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights (FOAK), the “tactical defensive arm of the Proud Boys, ” a right-wing activist group founded by McInnes and dedicated to “Reinstating a Spirit of Western chauvinism.” McInnes was accused of anti-Semitism in March 2017, when he posted a video on Rebel Media called “Ten Things I Hate about Jews,” which was later retitled “Ten Things I Hate About Israel.” Even after this incident, McInnis has been criticized by the alt right for refusing to promote the conspiracy theory that Jews control the world. McInnis eschews the white supremacist label and describes himself as a “Western chauvinist” who hails “Judeo-Christian values” as superior to all others.” ADL
BBC News – ‘Proud Boys’ back in Canada military after crashing indigenous ceremony.
Jack Posobiec “a conspiracy theorist and author, organized June’s Rally Against Political Violence, after learning that Richard Spencer would be speaking at the Free Speech Rally. He also helmed the DeploraBall, a 2017 inaugural event that attracted many from the alt right and alt lite spheres. He has enthusiastically promoted a range of lies, including the Pizzagate hoax, and attempted to discredit anti-Trump activists by planting an inflammatory “Rape Melania” sign at a protest event. He frequently tweets anti-Muslim sentiments, and has harassed former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin with anti-Muslim slurs online and in person, tweeting, “I screamed ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ at Huma Abedin.” He also posted to Facebook: “Citizen Journalist Jack Posobiec Asks Huma Abedin “Is the Muslim Brotherhood Paying Your Legal Fees?” Posobiec was among the protesters who stormed the stage during New York Public Theater’s controversial run of “Julius Caesar,” shouting, “You are all Goebbels! You are all Nazis like Joseph Goebbels… you are inciting terrorists,” and, “The blood of Steve Scalise is on your hands!” Posobiec has clashed verbally with white supremacist Richard Spencer, who called Posobiec’s Rally Against Political Violence “pathetic.” Posobiec was until recently the Washington correspondent for right-wing Rebel Media.” ADL
Kyle Prescott “is an advocate and recruiter (mainly on social media) for the Proud Boys, a right-wing activist group founded by Gavin McInnes and dedicated to “Reinstating a Spirit of Western chauvinism.” The Proud Boys claim to be “anti-racist, pro-First Amendment, pro-Second Amendment.” They “venerate the housewife and glorify the entrepreneur.” Prescott believes that the left (which he describes as “race-baiters and social justice warriors”) is responsible for most political violence. Prescott attended June’s Rally Against Political Violence.” ADL
Lucian Wintrich “is a conservative activist and White House correspondent for the The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing blog sometimes associated with the alt right, and known for promoting conspiracy theories and propaganda. During the 2016 campaign, Wintrich organized a “Twinks4Trump” photo series featuring provocative pictures of men wearing “Make America Great Again” caps. The photos were featured at the Wake Up! LGBT party at the 2016 Republican National Convention, which Wintrich helped organize. Wintrich called the event “a huge success…with incredible speakers,” including Islamaphobes like Pamela Geller and far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who told party-goers, “First, we should acknowledge that Islam is the problem…if you allow Islam to be planted on your soil, don’t be afraid that you will harvest sharia law, because Islam and sharia law [are] exactly the same.” In the past, Wintrich identified with the alt right, but told Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker, “For a while, alt-right was the perfect catchall for anti-establishment conservatism. A lot of us are still frustrated that Richard Spencer ruined the term for the rest of us.” Wintrich spoke at June’s Rally Against Political Violence.” ADL
Andrew Torba, “Gab” Social Network: “The market is owned and controlled and operated by the oligarchy of Twitter and Facebook and Google,” said Gab’s founder, Andrew Torba. “The reality is hate speech is free speech,” Torba added, citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent. With predominantly left-leaning companies, many of them in San Francisco, setting the boundaries on what speech isn’t acceptable on for-profit platforms, “that’s a huge opportunity to sit here and defend the Internet that I grew up on,” he said.” LA Times
“We call ourselves ‘the Fight Club.’ You don’t come to us for warm and fuzzy,” said Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s executive chairman and one of its guiding editorial spirits. He adds, “We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the permanent political class. We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.” Washington Post January 27, 2016.
Paul Ryan is a traditional Koch libertarian conservative. The Alt-Right movement has anarchistic attitude, sassy humor and much more blatant hate speech than a traditional Republican. That’s why they call them “Cuckservatives”, a derivation of the middle English word “Cuckhold”. The attitude continued into the White House, as much infighting was observed in the first 6 months as struggles between ideologies resulted in a rapidly shifting power structure.
Many of the Alt-Right voices in 2017 were teenagers during 9/11 and frustrated young adults during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. The middle-aged Alex Jones of Infowars.com is a conspiracy theorist and has promoted 9/11 conspiracies among many others. He, like many others, breeds distrust of our Intelligence and Institutions and fuels the anger towards them.
“Readers of The Right Stufflong knew that founder “Mike Enoch” had two main interests: technology and white supremacy.Posts on the neo-Nazi site have included discussion of “a new blogging platform built on node.js,” In January, Enoch was outed as Mike Peinovich, a Manhattan-based software engineer. Nonetheless, “alt-techies,” as Spencer and others call them, do appear to play a role in a movement that first incubated in the backwaters of the internet and eventually spread online with the rise of Trump. Some heroes of the far right are associated with tech: They include former Breitbart News “tech editor” Milo Yiannopoulos; the infamous neo-Nazi hacker Andrew Auernheimer (a.k.a. Weev); and the video gaming vlogger Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, whose “Pewdiepie” YouTube channel featuring Nazi-themed jokes has 54 million subscribers. (Last month Kjellberg apologized for the jokes and said he is not a Nazi.) The DeploraBall, a gathering of far-right activists and conspiracy theorists during Trump’s inauguration, was co-organized by software investor Jeff Giesea and attended by tech billionaire and Trump backerPeter Thiel. San Francisco-based tech entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin is known for launching the pro-authoritarian “neoreactionary” movement and reportedly has been in contact with Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon. (Yarvin denies this.) Giesea and Yarvin, both of whom I interviewed, reject the “alt-right” label for its associations with white nationalism, yet they share the movement’s disdain for the race and gender politics of the left. ” Mother Jones
Alt-Right Publications
Andrew Anglin, founder of Daily Stormer, Southern Poverty Law Center is fighting back
r_4Chan on /Pol/(politically incorrect) Meme Warriors and Strategists. Declared War on Macron and then the hacked and leaked emails were outsmarted by French intelligence during the media blackout period of their elections. These are the Pepe puppets. They have morphed into another forum as well, having been discovered by “normies”. Originally a gamer forum, notorious for being abusive to women. Includes many members of the tech community, and the industry has come under criticism for its prejudicial behavior against women.
8chan“8chan, also known as InfiniteChan and ∞chan, is an anonymous image board that allows users to create and moderate their own custom boards. The site gained a large influx of new users following the controversial banning of all GamerGate related threads on 4chan in September 2014.” KnowYourMeme
r_The_Donald includes members of the Trump Campaign. Meme Warriors and Strategists
“hostility toward women and people of color thrives on 4chan and on Reddit, the social sharing site whose political and gaming forums /r/the_donald and /r/kotakuinaction are popular with the alt-right. In 2014, 4chan and Reddit users launched an elaborate campaign of rape and death threats against female video game developers that became known as Gamergate. They found champions in Yiannopoulos, who argued that the true victims were the men whose gaming culture was being destroyed by “feminist bullies” and the “achingly politically correct” tech press, and in Mike Cernovich, a blogger who has trumpeted the neuroticism and other alleged weaknesses of women as well as what he claims to be the criminal proclivities of certain ethnic groups. When former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao last year banned five “harassing subreddits,” including one called ShitNiggersSay, the move unleashed weeks of bigoted trolling (a.k.a. “shitposting”) and digital vandalism on the site—and a migration to a Reddit copycat site, Voat. (More recently, similar migrations took place after Reddit banned /r/altright and discussion of the fake-news scandal #PizzaGate)…Chuck Johnson, who runs the pro-Trump site Got News from his home in Fresno, California, and claims to have received funding offers from wealthy tech investors, points to an obvious outlet for closeted alt-techies: “A lot of these people see a sort of ostracism takes place [after they question the value of diversity], and they either rebel against it internally or they go online and they have a different identity and they shitpost on Reddit.” Mother Jones
FL Group-Iceland BV (Bank) investment into Trump SoHo
Alexander Mashkevich–Trump SoHo investor
Sam Kislin-Tamir Sapir’s business partner in electronics retail, Fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani
Julius SchwarzBayrock’s executive vice presidentMay 2007 letter obtained by FORBES. Khrapunov and Bayrock Group created KazBay B.V. in the Netherlands in 2007, with the legal advice of Bracewell & Giuliani.
The world order we know is already over, and Russia is moving fast to grab the advantage. Can Trump figure out the new war in time to win it? By MOLLY K. MCKEW POLITICO January 01, 2017
Some call it a Global War on Liberal Democracies. Rich authoritarians who can’t get enough, at peoples’ expense. It sure seems like they’re all friends, doing business and laundering each other’s money. They use established religion to gain more power, and in the case of Russian Chabad, to conduct mob activities via its established network.
THE TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME NETWORK are the ones who deal in drug, sex and human trafficking, arms dealing,and more. Semion Mogilevich is the FBI’s most wanted man, hunted by Robert Mueller, James Comey, Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr for decades. The Trump Organization has been laundering the Russian mafia’s money since the 80s, and the NY mafia before that. He did a lot of business with the Italian mafia as well. His dad went from whorehouse owner to slum lord. Manafort’s dad was into demolition with mafia ties, and Kellyanne Conway’s grandpa was a hitman for the NJ mob. Ironically, Giuliani was a mob buster when he took down many of New York’s “Five Families” and became Mayor in 1989. He prosecuted “the Mafia’s international heroin and cocaine ring in the “Pizza Connection” case” before signing off on a Mogilevich associate, Felix Sater‘s deal with Trump, convicted criminal blood diamond smuggler Lev Leviev and Alex Sapir in Bayrock.
SANCTIONS for the Occupation of Crimea and the Global Magnitsky Act Russia needs sanctions dropped in order to complete the largest business deal ever, between Rosneft and ExxonMobil, referenced in the Steele Dossier with a pending 19.5% stake for Team Trump. Exxon’s lifelong CEO/employee Rex Tillerson, former US Secretary of State, broke tradition by meeting with Turkey’s Erdogan without an interpreter.The House passed the Sanctions bill, but Trump has not signed it and the office which enforces sanctions has been closed. Trump did sanction Nicaragua and Turkish men for detaining Christian minister Andrew Brunson, followed by Khashoggi’s death on their soil and the minister’s release, but not before bringing up the release of Gulen, whom Michael Flynn was charge with taking $500,000 for taking in a kidnapping coup. Turkey wants Fethullah Gulen. Russia wants Bill Browder who created The Magnitsky Act sanctions discussed during the June 9, 2016, meeting and pivotal to this day because they threaten the personal wealth of Putin, the Oligarchs, and others. Saudi Arabia brutally murdered Jamal Khashoggion October 2, 2018. Putin tried to take control of INTERPOL, who has arrested Browder on numerous occasions at Putin’s request.
The FSB (Former KGB) and RISS, the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies think tank devised a plan to weaken our democracy and manipulate a right-wing government into power. Steve Bannon‘s “The Movement”, political consulting, is attempting to spread right-wing authoritarianism globally. He was Director of Cambridge Analytica, closed May 1, 2018, whose parent company, SCL (Social Limited), is involved with the Trump 2020 campaign and others internationally. The RNC will absorb the Trump 2020 Campaign. Brexit was its trial before the Trump Campaign, Ukraine before that. Robert Mercer invested in Cambridge Analytica, the Trump and Cruz campaigns, and more. Russia has done this with the help of Paul Manafort in Ukraine and Turkey; Brexitand separatist movements, and attempted to throw the French election towards LePen with Alt-Righttrolls and a hacked and altered email dump. Montenegro and unknown numbers of elections have been influenced in the same manner.
Conspiracy: The secret meetings and identifying the players who arranged, participated, and had knowledge of the Russian plan to influence the US election.
The Money Trail: Money laundering of Russian oligarchs through the Trump Organization and associates including Paul Manafort, Felix Sater of Bayrock. Russian campaign financing of key Republicans made possible by Citizens United, and also via the NRA (National Rifle Association). The most powerful Russian mobster is Semion Mogilevich. His lieutenant was Felix Sater’s father, who established the Russian mob in Brighton Beach. Felix Sater was busted for a pump and dump scheme during an historic unification of the Five Families of NYC and the Russian mob. Trump’s mentor was NY mafia consigliere Roy Cohn, and Trump Tower was built using mob concrete with the mob labor union looking the other way while Trump hired Polish immigrants to do the demolition prep. Many Italian Mafia and Russian criminals have been Trump property owners and tenants. Trump has a long history of business ties to people from former Soviet states. Sater went to Russia and became an FBI informant. When he returned to the US, Felix Sater formed Bayrock with the FL Group. One of his primary funding partners has been Bayrock, which built Trump Soho and many other Trump-branded properties, Bayrock is under investigation in the Netherlands for money laundering and tax evasion. Deutsche Bank: Several members of the Trump and Kushner families hold accounts at DB. Mueller has requested information. The Bank of Cyprus is connected to many questionable transactions, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross led it through the financial crisis. FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) investigation for money laundering. In March, 2015, Trump Taj Mahal settled for a civil money penalty of $10,000,000 for having “willfully violated the program, reporting, and recordkeeping requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act and its implementing regulations”.
Propaganda, Disinformation and Active Measures-Hybrid Warfare, The Russians have broken it down and made it a science. The goal is to cause division, get favorable candidates elected, and dominate from within. Social and Right Wing Media: Hacking and release of emails and information through Wikileaks and DC Leaks dumps of DNC / Clinton hacked emails. Having returned from Russia himself, now-guilty cooperating witness Michael Flynn spread Pizzagate conspiracies from Podesta emails to weaken Clinton. Alt-Right Meme Warriors on Reddit and Gab funded by American tech billionaire Peter Thiel (who has since left “liberal silicon valley”) with now-fired from Breitbart and disgraced hate speech provacateur Milo Yiannopoulos as the conduit; Russian Bots and Trolls employed by the Internet Research Agency posing as American Trump supporters and protestors; and the US social (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc) & traditional media and Trump Campaignwhich furthered Russian-generated propaganda. The Hamilton 68 dashboard tracks Russian bots real-time. Russians have invested in these companies.
Trump suggested a joint US-Russia cyber security task force at the G20 Summit which would entail sharing our system with them so they could hack us even more. At the end of January 2018, the heads of the FSB and RISS had a meeting with CIA Dir. Pompeo and DNI Dan Coats, despite one of them being on the sanctioned list and prohibited from entering the US.
July 10, 2017: White House Press Briefing Started Clinton Russian Hacking Rumors, Again “Don Jr. took a very short meeting from which there was absolutely no follow-up. Frankly, I think something that may make sense is looking at the Democrat National Committee coordinated opposition research directly with the Ukrainian Embassy. This is not an accusation, that’s an on-the-record action that they took. So if you’re looking for an example of a campaign coordinating with a foreign country or a foreign source, look no further than the DNC who actually coordinated opposition research with the Ukrainian Embassy. And no one in this room to my knowledge really had a big problem with that. The only thing I see inappropriate about the meeting was the people that leaked the information on the meeting after it was voluntarily disclosed. “
Rachel Maddow ShowGOP Operative Peter Smith created scandals for Bill Clinton similarly to how Flynn has for Hillary. He tried to obtain the 33,000 Clinton emails on behalf of Flynn.
“In one case, investigators found there had been a manipulation of voter data in a county database but the alterations were discovered and rectified, two sources familiar with the matter tell TIME. Investigators have not identified whether the hackers in that case were Russian agents.
The fact that private data was stolen from states is separately providing investigators a previously unreported line of inquiry in the probes into Russian attempts to influence the election. In Illinois, more than 90% of the nearly 90,000 records stolen by Russian state actors contained drivers license numbers, and a quarter contained the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, according to Ken Menzel, the General Counsel of the State Board of Elections.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Intelligence Committees, and the Department of Defense are investigating the Russian interference in the 2016 Election. “Keith Olbermann – nonetheless confirmed last night, Tuesday, May 9th, that subpoenas were issued from the Eastern District of Virginia against associates of General Flynn.” Patribotics
The US Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which tracks money laundering worldwide and is sharing information with the investigation. The FinCEN is under Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
US Justice Preet Bharara was fired in January, after being personally assured by Trump in November after the election that he would not. Bharara was investigating Trump’s money laundering connections from Russians through his real estate. His jurisdiction was the headquarters of Trump and therefore the court for multiple lawsuits and ALSO presided over the Money Laundering Division in the Southern District of New York. Two days before going to trial, Jeff Sessions dropped the case.
The Inspector General at the Defense Department was the first to officially investigated Michael Flynn, the announcement of which was followed by Jeff Sessions recusing himself from that investigation. The Inspector General at Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department started by investigating Clinton’s emails but has not stated if Sessions has recused himself from the Paul Manafortinvestigation.
“New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermanas well as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. also have been examining real-estate transactions by Mr. [Paul] Manafort, who has spent and borrowed tens of millions of dollars in connection with property across the U.S. over the past decade” WSJ
“A member of the Federal Election Commission is calling on the agency to investigate whether Russian agents paid for Facebook ads to spread damaging stories about Hillary Clinton ahead of last fall’s presidential election. “I think there is potential there for finding a violation, but I don’t want to suggest that I have prejudged anything that could potentially come before me,” said FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic appointee to the commission. Her assertion comes as agency staff is already moving to investigate a related complaint filed in December by a pair of watchdog groups against President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.” Politico There are more. 17 US Intelligence agencies and the Netherlands.
“John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, described on Tuesday a nerve-fraying few months last year as American authorities realized that the presidential election was under attack and feared that Donald J. Trump’s campaign might be aiding that fight. Mr. Brennan, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, said he was concerned by a series of suspicious contacts between Russian government officials and Mr. Trump’s associates. The C.I.A. learned about those meetings just as it was beginning to grapple with Russian hackers and propagandists trying to manipulate the presidential race.” May 23, 2017 NY Times
June 2, 2017 Trump Reviewing Whether to Block Comey Testimony to Senate “Independent analysts have said they don’t believe Comey, now a private citizen, can be stopped if he is intent on telling his story.”Bloomberg
May 26, 2017: NSA CHIEF Admiral Mike Rogers Admits Donald Trump Colluded with Russian “According to multiple reports, the president approached top intelligence bosses to coax them into joining Trump’s personal war with Comey. In particular, Trump is reported to have asked Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence (DNI), and Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, to go public in denying that Team Trump had any ties to Russia during the 2016 election campaign. Admiral Rogers anecdotally flatly denied Trump’s request, which—if true—was inappropriate, unethical and dubiously legal, while Coats, a Trump appointee who’s only been in the DNI job since mid-March, likewise refused to back the president against the FBI. This was a stunning setback for Trump, who seems to view our nation’s top security officials as his personal employees who ought to follow his presidential whim rather than the law and the Constitution, which all of them take an oath to defend.” Observer Exclusive
Following are different resources of compiled information written as evidence has been revealed: Salon, 4/9/17
THE CHRISTOPHER STEELE DOSSIER The current investigation became widely known upon release of the 35-page memo which was authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. “was hired between June and November last year by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research consultancy to look into Trump’s links with Russia.” Read the original “Golden Showers” intelligence report here courtesy Buzzfeed, released a month later. A second Steele memo was drafted December 13, 2016, including intelligence which had continued to come in unsolicited after the November election. Court docs embedded in The GuardianBuzzfeed
The Christopher Steele/Orbis memos reference Source A, Russian Foreign Ministry who had been feeding Trump intelligence on opponents including Clinton for several years, confirmed by Source D. Source B, an active top-level Russian intelligence officer “who asserted that the TRUMP operation was both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Its aim was to sow discord and disunity both within the US itself, but more especially within the Transatlantic alliance which was viewed as inimical to Russia’s interests. ” In June 2016, Source B asserted there was enough “embarrassing material on the now Republican presidential candidate to be able to blackmail him if they so wished.” Source B confirmed a dossier of “kompromat” on Hillary Clinton but it was mainly recorded phone calls “and focused on things she had said which contradicted er current position on various issues.”.”Source C, a Senior Russian Financial Official said the TRUMP operation should be seen in terms of PUTIN’s desire to return to Nineteenth Century ‘Great Power’ politics anchored in countries’ interests rather than the ideals-based international order established after World War Two.” “Source D, a close associate of Trump who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow, and who reported, also in June 2016, that this Russian intelligence had been “very helpful.” Source E (most likely hotel staff) confirmed the Moscow Ritz-Carlton Presidential Suite “Golden Showers” prostitute party in 2013 and introduced Source F, a female hotel staffer who worked there at the time. “Source G, a senior Kremlin official, confided that the CLINTON dossier was controlled exclusively by chief Kremlin spokesman, Dmitriy PESKOV, who was responsible for compiling/handling it on the explicit instructions of PUTIN himself.”
One of the main tactics used by the Kremlin to control politicians is through “Kompromat”: compromising material and dossiers kept on individuals under the control of Dmitriy Peskov and/or Department K of the FSB. Steele
Putin controlled a think tank to sway the US Elections, and the knowledge thereof started the FBI Investigations called the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies or RISS [en.riss.ru/] “Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin. The overt propaganda and covert hacking efforts reinforced each other, according to the officials. Both Russia Today and Sputnik heavily promoted the release of the hacked Democratic Party emails, which often contained embarrassing details.” Reuters Exclusive
“Notorious Mercinary” Erik Prince founded Blackwater Security and made headlines during the Iraq war with his company’s abuses and “conviction of killing Iraqi citizens, including children, in the notorious 2007 Nisour Square gun battle.” Bloomberg He is brother to Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, the their father, Edgar Prince’s auto parts manufacturing The Prince Corporation sold in 1996 to Johnson Controls for $1.35 billion. They grew up in Holland, MI, and their father “was a major contributor to the Family Research Council, whose mission is to “advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview”.[4] Critics argue that the organization advocates against LGBT rights, abortion, divorce, embryonic stem-cell research, and pornography.[5][6]” Prince which joined Trump’s campaign as a major financial backer in August 2016.
He’s under investigation for money laundering and involvement with Chinese intelligence in a Lybian deal with current corporation FSB, which supplies African and conflict-zone aviation, evacuation and paramilitary support. China is heavily invested in Africa for its mining and natural resources. Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services. He is currently or planning to train the People’s Liberation Army using former US Special Ops trainers, on behalf of the Chinese government in Africa, while Bannon and Trump say the US is heading towards a trade or real war with China.
January 11, 2016, The Seychelles Meeting, arranged by the UAE Crown Prince. Afterwards, Erik Prince met with Kirill Dmitriev, per the Testimony. Note: Prince was invited to testify by Kush Patel, major force behind the “Nunes Memo” The Atlantic. Patel and Presley went to London in search of Christopher Steele, and in early November before the Prince testimony, Patel circulated an internal memo “urging Nunes to hold top officials at the Justice Department and the FBI in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents related to the Obama administration’s alleged use of the dossier to surveil Trump associates during the transition period, one of the sources told me. That memo was first reported by Fox News in November.” The Atlantic
New York Times: Trump Aides Recruited Businessmen to Devise Options for Afghanistan — “President Trump’s advisers recruited two businessmen who profited from military contracting to devise alternatives to the Pentagon’s plan to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, reflecting the Trump administration’s struggle to define its strategy for dealing with a war now 16 years old.”
The Atlantic: The ‘Blackwater 2.0’ Plan for Afghanistan — “Here’s a crazy idea floating around Washington these days, outlandish even by today’s outlandish standards: The United States should hire a mercenary army to “fix” Afghanistan, a country where we’ve been at war since 2001, spending billions along the way. The big idea here is that they could extricate U.S. soldiers from this quagmire, and somehow solve it.”
Wall Street Journal: The MacArthur Model for Afghanistan — “Afghanistan is an expensive disaster for America. The Pentagon has already consumed $828 billion on the war, and taxpayers will be liable for trillions more in veterans’ health-care costs for decades to come. More than 2,000 American soldiers have died there, with more than 20,000 wounded in action. For all that effort, Afghanistan is failing. The terrorist cohort consistently gains control of more territory, including key economic arteries. It’s time for President Trump to fix our approach to Afghanistan in five ways.”
FYI: Fellow Mercer associate Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Assistant to the President Christopher Liddell, and Sebastian Gorka, Former Breitbart writer and current Deputy Assistant to Trump and National Security Aide, formed an additional advisory group to potentially supersede the NSC called the Strategic Initiatives Group in January 2017. Reed Cordish also joined the SIG. Per reports, Robert Mercer has the largest private arsenal in the United States. Steve Bannon and other devotees of “The Fourth Turning”, want a huge war as a cleansing process, after which an idealized, structured society emerges (See his film “Generation Zero” on the Steve Bannon page).
“He’s a rogue chairman,” said one of Prince’s close associates, who has monitored his attempts to sell mercenary forces in Africa. That source, who has extensive knowledge of Prince’s activities and travel schedule, said that Prince was operating a “secret skunkworks program” while parading around war and crisis zones as FSG’s founder and chairman. “Erik wants to be a real, no-shit mercenary,” said the source. “He’s off the rails exposing many U.S. citizens to criminal liabilities. Erik hides in the shadows … and uses [FSG] for legitimacy….“Erik is always pressing the limits as to what is possible,” said the close associate of Prince’s. In 2010, Prince sold most of his equity in the companies that fell under the Blackwater umbrella. Claiming that left-wing activists, Democratic politicians, and lawsuits had destroyed his companies, he left the United States and became a resident of Abu Dhabi. The remnant of his network was renamed Academi LLC. Federal prosecutors eventually attempted to prosecute Prince’s former companies, culminating in a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement to settle a lengthy list of U.S. legal and regulatory violations committed from 2005 through 2008 when Prince was in charge, including ITAR violations.” ITAR is International Traffic in Arms Regulations, issued by the State Department’s (currently under Rex Tillerson) Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.” The Intercept
NOTORIOUS MERCENARY ERIK PRINCE IS ADVISING TRUMP FROM THE SHADOWS The InterceptJeremy Scahill January 17, 2017 “Prince has long fantasized that he is the rightful heir to the legacy of “Wild Bill” Donovan and his Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA. After 9/11, Prince worked with the CIA on a secret assassination program, in addition to offering former SEALs and other retired special operators to the State Department and other agencies for personal security…The Trump presidency could result in Prince working for both Beijing and the White House. The Blackwater founder has also endorsed some of Trump’s overtures to Russia, saying: “Think about it: If FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, can deal with Stalin to defeat German fascism in World War II, certainly the United States of America could work with Putin to defeat Islamic fascism. We don’t have to agree with the Russians on everything, or even on a lot, but we can at least agree that crushing ISIS in the Middle East is a very good idea.” Prince described Democrats as “anti-Catholic, anti-Evangelical,” saying the DNC hacks and leaks revealed “the disregard, the disdain they have for the average American voter and citizen.” Prince has a close relationship with Breitbart News and Steve Bannon, Trump’s senior counselor and chief strategist. Prince has appeared frequently — and almost exclusively — on Breitbart Radio. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s nominee for education secretary and she has all but vowed to embark on a crusade to push a privatization and religious agenda in education that mirrors her brother’s in military and CIA affairs. Prince has long been a contributor to the campaign of fellow Christian warrior Mike Pence, and he contributed $100,000 to the pro-Trump Super PAC Make America Number 1. Prince’s mother, Elsa, pitched in another $50,000. That organization, run by Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire hedge funder Robert Mercer, was one of the strongest bankrollers of Trump’s campaign. According to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in December Prince attended the annual “Villains and Heroes” costume ball hosted by Mercer. Dowd wrote that Palantir founder Peter Thiel showed her “a picture on his phone of him posing with Erik Prince, who founded the private military company Blackwater, and Mr. Trump — who had no costume — but joke[d] that it was ‘N.S.F.I.’ (Not Safe for the Internet).” The Intercept
The controversial Blackwater founder says he is setting up two bases in China, but his company says “this does not involve armed personnel.” Aram Roston “In December (2016), Frontier Services Group, of which Prince is chairman, issued a press release that outlined plans to open “a forward operating base in China’s Yunnan province” and another in the troubled Xinjiang region, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority. When Frontier later told its board it was shifting into security services — largely to assist China’s international development policy — the development disgusted two American executives at Prince’s Hong Kong company. Gregg Smith, the former CEO of Frontier, said he was ready to quit last March if Erik Prince was not removed from the company. Then, at a board meeting late that month, he said a company official made clear that Frontier would be providing security services in support of Chinese government objectives. “That was the final straw,” he told BuzzFeed News. Retired US Admiral William Fallon, a Frontier board member, was at the same board meeting. He resigned too when he heard that the firm was providing security services. “That wasn’t what I signed up for,” he said in an interview. Former executives said that Frontier’s “forward operating bases” will be training former People’s Liberation Army soldiers to work as discreet non-uniformed soldiers for hire. The former associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Prince “is making Frontier Services a full-on private military company.” President Donald Trump has talked tough about China. To be sure, he recently reaffirmed that the United States will formally recognize only mainland China and not Taiwan, a crucial point for Beijing. But Trump has installed a sharply anti-China critic as the head of his National Trade Council. Before winning the presidency, Trump called China an “enemy.” Trump adviser Stephen Bannon, who interviewed Prince on Breitbart frequently, predicted last year that the US will be at war with China “in the South China Sea in five to 10 years.” And even if no hot war breaks out, many experts believe Trump is gearing up for a trade war with the country that manufactures much of the world’s goods (including some Trump brand products.) During the campaign, Prince donated $100,000 to the Trump Victory Committee, which supported both Trump’s election bid and the Republican Party. Jeremy Scahill, a journalist who has long covered Prince, recently wrote that the businessman is advising the Trump Administration. Just four days before the election, Prince gave an interview to Breitbart radio, part of the media empire that Bannon used to run, in which Prince pushed an unfounded theory that the NYPD had been about to announce arrest warrants in the Clinton investigation but was blocked by the Justice Department, and that Hillary Clinton had been to a “sex island” with a convicted pedophile “at least six times.” Prince’s bizarre claims were prominently displayed on Breitbart’s website leading up to the election and were widely distributed on right wing websites.” Buzzfeed
Supported by former Ted Cruz backer Robert Mercer, a new player enters the fray. BloombergBy Joshua Green and Zachary Mider
June 21, 2016: The RobertMercer-led Super-Pac “Make America Number One” aka “Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC” with Kellyanne Conway, president of Keep the Promise PAC, led by long-time Clinton hater David Bossie, president of Citizens United, made headlines appealing to Republican donors who don’t like Trump after their candidate Cruz dropped out. Bloomberg
“Blackwater Founder said to Have Advised Trump Team” Bloomberg “In one informal discussion in late November, Prince spoke openly with two members of Trump’s transition team on a train bound from New York to Washington. He boarded the same Acela as Kellyanne Conway and they sat together. Joining the conversation at one point was Kevin Harrington, a longtime associate of Trump adviser Peter Thielwho is now on the National Security Council. They discussed, in broad terms, major changes the incoming administration envisioned for the intelligence community, as recounted by a person on the train who overheard their conversation. A longtime critic of government defense and security policies, Prince advocated a restructuring of security agencies as well as a thorough rethink of costly defense programs, even if it meant canceling existing major contracts in favor of smaller ones, said a person familiar with the matter. Prince is no longer talking to those in the administration, said the person close to him, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were intended to remain private. His influence waned after Flynn was ousted as National Security Adviser in February over concerns about his own disclosures and conversations with the Russian ambassador. And Prince has no relationship with Flynn’s successor, General H. R. McMaster.”
April 3, 2017, The Washington Post “Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel” “Prince is best known as the founder of Blackwater, a security firm that became a symbol of U.S. abuses in Iraq after a series of incidents, including one in 2007 in which the company’s guards were accused — and later criminally convicted — of killing civilians in a crowded Iraqi square. Prince sold the firm, which was subsequently re-branded, but has continued building a private paramilitary empire with contracts across the Middle East and Asia. He now heads a Hong Kong-based company known as the Frontier Services Group……The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions. Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian. Prince was an avid supporter of Trump. After the Republican convention, he contributed $250,000 to Trump’s campaign, the national party and a pro-Trump super PAC led by GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, records show. He has ties to people in Trump’s circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December. ” Washington Post Continued
Erik Prince in the Hot Seat March 24, 2016 “Erik Prince, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case. What began as an investigation into Prince’s attempts to sell defense services in Libya and other countries in Africa has widened to a probe of allegations that Prince received assistance from Chinese intelligence to set up an account for his Libya operations through the Bank of China. The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, is also seeking to uncover the precise nature of Prince’s relationship with Chinese intelligence. Despite the provenance of FSG’s funding and Prince’s history of bad publicity, Prince was able to recruit an impressive line-up of former U.S. military and intelligence officers to run the company. Key to Prince’s ability to retain such personnel, given FSG’s ties to China, has been the firm’s strictly circumscribed mission, which does not include military-related services. FSG is a publicly traded aviation and logistics firm specializing in shipping in Africa and elsewhere. The company also conducts high-risk evacuations from conflict zones. Prince has described his work with FSG as being “on the side of peace and economic development” and helping Chinese businesses to work safely in Africa. Behind the back of corporate leadership at FSG, Prince was living a double life. Working with a small cadre of loyalists — including a former South African commando, a former Australian air force pilot, and a lawyer with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Israel — Prince sought to secretly rebuild his private CIA and special operations enterprise by setting up foreign shell companies and offering paramilitary services, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept and interviews with several people familiar with Prince’s business proposals. Several of the proposals for private security services in African nations examined by The Intercept contained metadata in the digital files showing Prince and his inner circle editing and revising various drafts. Since 2014, Prince has traveled to at least half a dozen countries to offer various versions of a private military force, secretly meeting with a string of African officials. Among the countries where Prince pitched a plan to deploy paramilitary assets is Libya, which is currently subject to an array of U.S. and United Nations financial and defense restrictions…The Libyan proposal, reviewed by The Intercept, was code-named Operation Lima. It offered the Libyans an array of military equipment and services — including weaponized vehicles, helicopters, boats, and surveillance airplanes — to help stabilize eastern Libya. The ground force, according to a person involved with the plan, would consist of a troop of former Australian special operations commandos...By May 2015, Prince had rebranded himself and claimed a legitimate public reputation as FSG’s chairman. Without the approval of FSG’s management, he returned to Libya offering a freshly repackaged proposal. Prince’s private force would operate in Libya for the stated purpose of stopping the flow of refugees to Europe…One person involved in Prince’s plan said the anti-migration force was seen as a vehicle for Prince to build a “backdoor” for so-called kinetic, or lethal, operations in Libya — a form of mercenary mission-creep. “During the day, you do interdiction of migrants — not kinetic,” said the person involved in the plan. “But those routes are used by weapons smugglers and drug traffickers at night. Insurgents too. Erik’s guys can then be offered to the Libyans to help with their other problems. That’s how you get kinetic.” By then, the U.S. government was already investigating Prince for possible weapons deals in Africa, according to the former senior U.S. intelligence official and the former intelligence official briefed on the matter. In the course of the surveillance operation for that investigation, U.S. intercepts revealed Prince appearing to discuss efforts to open bank accounts in China to help his Libyan associates. “Money laundering for Libyan officials using a Chinese bank — that is the issue that pushed it over the edge” for the Justice Department, said the second former intelligence official. The U.S. spies monitoring Prince soon discovered that he had traveled to the Chinese-controlled peninsula of Macau in an effort to open a bank account, according to two people familiar with the investigation.Later, Prince traveled to Beijing, where he met with Chinese agents from the Ministry of State Security. In January (2016), Prince returned to Macau and opened an account at the Bank of China, according to several sources, including the second former intelligence official and the source with close connections to Macau’s banking community. “It was not a personal account,” said the former U.S. intelligence official briefed on the investigation. “He was doing it for the purpose of what is considered now — in the investigation — money laundering on behalf of the Libyans.” The Intercept
WALLACE: I’m asking a direct question: Was there any contact in any way between Trump or his associates and the Kremlin or cutouts they had?
PENCE: I joined this campaign in the summer, and I can tell you that all the contact by the Trump campaign and associates was with the American people. We were fully engaged with taking his message to make America great again all across this country. That’s why he won in a landslide election.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: — if there were any contacts, sir, I’m just trying to get an answer.
PENCE: Yes. I — of course not. Why would there be any contacts between the campaign? Chris, the — this is all a distraction, and it’s all part of a narrative to delegitimize the election and to question the legitimacy of this presidency. The American people see right through it.
And here he was the same day on “Face the Nation”:
DICKERSON: Just to button up one question, did any adviser or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?
MIKE PENCE: Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”
Ivanka Trump– Jared Kushner’s Wife. Based on behavioral and circumstantial evidence, the Italian-Russian mob princess and Jewish mob prince want to inherit and control the world with their friends, please decide for yourself. The Trump administration’s every move has favored Putin’s long-range plan to weaken the US in every way it can and further the deep international mob corruption. Ivanka and her brothers were on their way to jail under Cy Vance in 2014 at SDNY, but there was a payoff.
Deutsche Bank and Mazars CPA cases at SDNY are under Cy Vance, but this time the Trump Organization financials will be released to the Court. In 2008, Trump Defaulted on a Deutsche Bank loan, so Jared Kushner recommended his private banker Rosemary Vrablic, whose boss was William Broeksmit. Broeksmit was Ukraine-born and committed suicide by hanging in 2014, leading his son to discover documents, work with the FBI, and write the book Dark Towers (Harper Collins). Interview with Dark Towers author David Enrich: Narativ Live with Zev Shalev: The Truth About Trump and Deutsche Bank Part 1Part2
2012 Doral Resort in Miami- $100 million Deutsche Bank loan
2015 Washington, DC, Old Post Office Hotel conversion – $170 million
Without a properly conducted Security Clearance, Kushner runs shadow foreign policy with friendly dictators and mobsters. That’s because he knows them all on a personal basis. That should tell you something right there:
Kushner Middle East Peace Plan – United front between N Africa against Iran-Turkish power alliance bordering Southern former Soviet Bloc-(The “-Stans”) to challenge existing organizations and agreements. Kushner and MBS- Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman are tight, and the plan hinges upon cooperative arms deals and Israel ceasing West Bank annexation, observing the events surrounding mid-August 2020. The plan seems to have been inked at the Seychelles meeting with Erik Prince, George Nader, and others. Kushner gave MBS a list of potential foes within the House of Saud and a mass round-up and internment at the Ritz Carlton Hotel followed. Meanwhile, June 2017 found Qatar behind a blockade against them by the UAE and Saudi Arabia as Kushner sought bailout refinancing for his 666 5th Ave, NYC, office building. Middle East EyeMarch 19, 2018 “Nader said this group of states could become a force in the region “that the US government could depend on” to counter the influence of Turkey and Iran, according to two sources briefed on the meeting. Nader brought togetherMohammed bin Salman, who was then deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia; Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi; Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, president of Egypt; Prince Salman, crown prince of Bahrain; and King Abdullah of Jordan onto the yacht. Their respective states, plus Libya which was not represented at the secret summit, would form the nucleus of pro-US and pro-Israeli states.” July 20, 2019Rep. Cummins’ Oversight report Corporate and Foreign Interests Behind White House Push to Transfer U.S. Nuclear Technology to Saudi Arabia; 7 days later, Cummings’ home was broken into. – IP3-Saudi nuclear power & weapons technology, Weapons to the UAE. The Med-East Pipeline–Papadopoulos–Flynn– Israel–Greece–Italy
Michael Flynnadviser to IP3 2015-2016, informed business partners about future meetings with Putin and Saudi Crown Prince MBS & offered to use the contacts to further IP3 Judge Sullivan: [Flynn] “sold out your country.” Unmasking requests to the NSA began November 30, 2016 by Samantha Power, US Amb. to the UN. Flynn worked with Trump’s adviser friend Tom Barrack, under investigation in the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn):
As Donald J. Trump was preparing to deliver an address on energy policy in May 2016, Paul Manafort, his campaign chairman, had a question about the speech’s contents for Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a top campaign fund-raiser and close friend of Mr. Trump.
“Are you running this by our friends?” Mr. Manafort asked in a previously undisclosed email to Mr. Barrack, whose real estate and investment firm does extensive business in the Middle East. Mr. Barrack was, in fact, coordinating the language in a draft of the speech with Persian Gulf contacts including Rashid al-Malik, an Emirati businessman who is close to the rulers of the United Arab Emirates [MBZ].
Tom Barrack-(Lebanese son of Culver City, CA grocer) Colony Capitalrec’d. $1.5 billion incl. $474 million from sovereign wealth funds from theSaudis and UAEout of $7 billion total that Colony raised, under investigation in the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn); Kushner blocked Barrack from becoming a special Middle East envoy & super ambassador to Central and South America;Longtime Trump Friend Under The Microscope For Mideast Ties, Inauguration Role NPRFebruary 21, 2019 Scott Horsley; Barrack Chairman of Inaugural Committee; Confidential Memo: Company of Trump Inauguration Chair Sought to Profit From Connections to Administration, Foreigners The memo outlines how Colony, the company founded by Tom Barrack, an investor who chaired the inaugural, aimed to exploit its connections to Donald Trump. Federal prosecutors are conducting a wide-ranging probe into the nonprofit that ran the inaugural. by Justin Elliott, ProPublica, and Ilya Marritz, WNYC February 5, 2019
ABC News reviewed documents of theInaugural Committeethat spent $104 million of the $107 million raised, more than $1.5 million at the DC Post Office-Trump International Hotel during the Transition: $130,000 for customized seat cushions at 2 dinners, $10,000 to provide makeupto the servers, $2.7 million for a Frank Sinatra rendition of “New York, New York” with Trump pal Steve Wynn’s Las Vegas showgirls, $26 million to Melania Trump‘s California event planner friend, Stephanie Winston-Wolkoff, WIS Media Partners, $1.62 million personal commission (Obama’s 2009 inauguration, which spent about $51 million of the $53.2 million raised; Trump also donated $5 million to the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and the Smithsonian Institute, etc.)-MORE
Lev Leviev-Long-time friends with the Israeli Diamond mogul, financier of Chabad and illegal Israeli West Bank settlements with the Kushners, both friends with Benjamin Netanyahu, daughter sold part of the former NY Times building to Kushner and is friends with Ivanka Trump
Deutsche Bank–Jared Kushner recommended his family’s private banker, Rosemary Vrablic, for Trump when he was desperate
Jared Kushner–Netanyahu is a family friend, friendly with MBS
Kushner Middle East Peace Plan – United front between N Africa against Iran-Turkish power alliance bordering Southern former Soviet Bloc-(The “-Stans”) Middle East EyeMarch 19, 2018 “Nader said this group of states could become a force in the region “that the US government could depend on” to counter the influence of Turkey and Iran, according to two sources briefed on the meeting. Nader brought togetherMohammed bin Salman, who was then deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia; Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi; Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, president of Egypt; Prince Salman, crown prince of Bahrain; and King Abdullah of Jordan onto the yacht. Their respective states, plus Libya which was not represented at the secret summit, would form the nucleus of pro-US and pro-Israeli states.”
Strategic Adviser to Trump, Strategic Initiatives Group, White House Office of American Innovation, Son-In-Law, Real Estate heir
Significant business associates include Beny Steinmentz, Steve Roth of Vornado Realty Trust
While he is being investigated, the long-term effects of Jared Kushner’s presence have yet to be seen. One of the big ones is his relationship to the Sinclair-Tribune merger, which is now delivering biased “must run” news into 72% of US households. In December 2016, Kushner gave Sinclair special access.
“Wendi Deng Murdoch, the ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch, first introduced Zhukova to Ivanka Trump a decade ago. Then in 2010, Thrive Capital, the venture firm founded by Joshua Kushner, which included funds from older brother Jared, invested in Artsy, an online platform for art discovery and collecting, and brought in Wendi Murdoch and Zhukova as co-investors.”
“Congressional Democrats from Maryland are asking for thousands of pages of documents to review the business practices of the apartment rental company owned by Jared Kushner, son-in-law and senior adviser to President Donald Trump.
In a letter Friday, Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen and Reps. Elijah E. Cummings, C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, John Sarbanes and Anthony Brown told Kushner’s firm that it must abide by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations because its tenants receive federal rental subsidies through the Housing Choice voucher program.
The Kushner Cos. own 17 apartment complexes in Maryland, most of them in Baltimore County. The lawmakers, who represent areas with Kushner properties, want documents that detail the New York-based company’s voucher contracts with HUD, inspection reports, lawsuits filed by the firm against former tenants and information about any potential conflicts of interest for Kushner.
The Baltimore Sun posted a story online this week detailing the firm’s legal efforts to collect unpaid rent from former tenants, including requesting body attachments, the controversial practice in which judges order the arrest of civil defendants for allegedly failing to appear in court.
The Sun has reported that the Kushner Cos. have filed more than 1,200 civil actions against former tenants in Maryland for unpaid debts, actions that have included requests to have renters arrested.
The Sun has reported that three of the company’s 17 apartment complexes in Maryland have received $6.1 million in HUD Housing Choice voucher payments on behalf of 268 tenants. The White House told the Sun in February that Kushner would not participate in any policy decisions related to the voucher program to avoid the potential for conflicts of interest.
The lawmakers cite The Sun’s reporting and a magazine article by The New York Times and ProPublica that alleged substandard living conditions in Kushner properties.
“If these reports are accurate, they raise very serious and troubling concerns about whether Kushner Companies and its subsidiaries are complying with HUD’s housing quality standards to ensure the safety and health of their own tenants,” they write.
A “That goes to the heart of requests from Maryland’s Congressional Democrats about the business practices of the apartment rental company owned by Kushner and his family business, the Kushner Companies.” Washington Journal
Kushner met at Trump Tower with Russian attorney on June 9, 2016, right after Trump won the Republican nomination, accompanied by Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and Donald Trump, Jr., who called the meeting. Trump, Jr. admitted to the New York Times the purpose was to get compromising information on Clinton from the Russian source.
While his father-in-law has been filed suit for violations of Emoluments Clauses by DC and MD, and Kushner has been officially under investigation for Russian connections since May 2017, Kushner’s financial savior of the 666 Fifth Ave. $1.8 Billion vanity over-bid, Steve Roth of Vornado Realty Trust, is one of the finalists in the $1.7 Billion construction of a new FBI headquarters.
“Virginia Congressman Gerald Connolly said the White House ties to Vornado [Realty Trust] create a conflict of interest. Since Trump hasn’t divested from his company, “that shifts the ethical burden to his business partners,” Connolly said. “We’re in a position where once again he shrugged off his responsibilities and sloughed it off to someone else.” Connolly, who represents an area in Virginia vying for the new headquarters, called on Vornado to drop out of the bidding. “Vornado is run by Steven Roth, who has been advising Donald Trump on his plans to revamp the nation’s infrastructure. He also is consulting with the White House Office of American Innovation, which is being led by Kushner. Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University, said the relationship between Vornado and the White House makes any government deal with the real estate company suspect. “This would absolutely pose an apparent, and, potentially, an actual conflict of interest,” Schooner said in an email. “I cannot imagine any modern-era precedent for the president (and his advisor and son-in-law) not recognizing that this is a problem and shutting this down before it gets any worse.” Chicago Tribune
$1.2 Billion Mortgage Due February 2019 on 666 Fifth Ave, NYC
Kushner’s White House role ‘crushed’ efforts to woo investors for NYC tower“Today, 666 Fifth Avenue appears to be the most troubled of the projects Kushner left behind for his family to manage. With one-fourth of its offices empty, lease revenue does not cover monthly interest payments, according to lending documents. A $1.2 billion mortgage, with escalating interest rates, comes due in 18 months. A ratings agency has classified a $115 million portion of the loan as “troubled,” and company officials decline to say whether it will be fully repaid.” Washington Post September 13, 2017
“Qatar is facing an ongoing blockade led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and joined by Egypt and Bahrain, which President Trump has taken credit for sparking. Kushner, meanwhile, has reportedly played a key behind-the-scenes role in hardening the U.S. posture toward the embattled nation.
That hard line comes in the wake of the previously unreported half-billion-dollar deal that was never consummated. Throughout 2015 and 2016, Jared Kushner and his father, Charles, negotiated directly with a major investor in Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, known as HBJ for short, in an effort to refinance the property on Fifth Avenue, the sources said.
Trump himself has unsuccessfully sought financing in recent years from the Qataris, but it is difficult to overstate just how important the investment at 666 Fifth Avenue is for Kushner, his company, and his family’s legacy in real estate. Without some outside intervention or unforeseen turnaround in the market, the investment could become an embarrassing half-billion-dollar loss. It’s unclear precisely how much peril such a loss would put Jared’s or his family’s finances in, given the opacity of their private holdings.
HBJ, a former prime minister of Qatar who ran the country’s $250 billion sovereign wealth fund, is a billionaire and one of the world’s richest men. He owns a yacht worth $300 million called Al Mirqab, the same name he gave to the private investment firm that Kushner pitched. The former emir of Qatar summed up HBJ’s power with a quip: “I may run this country, but he owns it.”
HBJ ultimately agreed to invest at least $500 million through Al Mirqab, on the condition that Kushner Companies could raise the rest of a multibillion refinancing elsewhere.” The Intercept
Beny Steinmentz, BSG Resources
Detained 12/2016 & 8/14/17
Brother & Father of Kushner Real Estate Co-Developer
Israeli Diamond, Mining, Real Estate Magnate: Money Laundering, Bribery, Obstruction of Justice, etc. blames Soros
August 14, 2017:Israeli Billionaire Beny Steinmetz Detained in InvestigationNY Times “investigation into money laundering, obstruction of justice and bribery…an Israeli diamonds, mining and real estate magnate, is already under scrutiny by law enforcement authorities in Switzerland, Guinea, He was previously detained and questioned in Israel in December. Since 2013, the United States Justice Department has been investigating Mr. Steinmetz’s company, BSG Resources, over potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Guinean government has claimed that BSG Resources obtained an iron ore mining concession by paying more than $8 million in cash through a representative to the then-wife of the country’s president.
Israeli investigation appears to be more expansive, based on an official statement that said that authorities were investigating “a number of people on suspicion that they acted systematically together with the main suspect in order to create and present fictitious contracts and deals, among other things in thefield of real estate in a foreign country, for the purpose of transferring funds and money laundering.”
Mr. Steinmetz is also under indictment in Romania, as part of a broad investigation into money laundering and real estate there.
In April, The New York Times reported that a firm that claimed to invest money for Mr. Steinmetz’s brother and longtime business partner, Daniel, along with his son Raz, had partnered with Kushner Companies, the family real estate firm of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, on dozens of apartment buildings around Manhattan and Jersey City.
The Kushner Companies said its deals were with Beny Steinmetz’s nephew Raz, and not with Beny Steinmetz.
On Monday, Beny Steinmetz gave a statement in court. “This is how totalitarian states behave,” Israeli media reported him as saying. “This is like a dictatorship that decides and marks people.”
As he has done previously, he blamed his multinational legal issues on the billionaire hedge fund titan George Soros, who he has said directed a smear campaign against him and his companies. In April, two of his firms sued Mr. Soros in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Mr. Steinmetz was detained along with four others, including Tal Silberstein, a political consultant who has worked for Ehud Barak, former Israeli prime minister, and other Israeli leaders. Israeli media reported that David Granot, the chief executive of Bezeq, a telecommunications company, was also questioned.
Police officials said their investigation was being conducted with international cooperation and said each of those involved was suspected of different violations. Some of their homes and offices were searched Monday morning, officials said.
“As far as we understand, at issue are questions about events that occurred in 2011. Now, it is 2017,” he said, adding that his client denied all the accusations against him.”
President Trump’s son-in-law, a top adviser, had help building a real estate empire from a member of one of Israel’s wealthiest families. By JESSE DRUCKER
Jared Kushner is called “The Secretary of Everything”: Strategic Initiatives Group, White House Innovations Director, Key Contact for 24 countries, Peace negotiator for Israelis and Palestinians, liaison to China, the Muslim community and the Senate Judiciary Committee on criminal justice. Resigned from over 200 family-run business positions because of conflicts but still benefits. As MidEast Peace Negotiator, a $5 million unsecured line of credit from Israel Discount Bank is also a conflict.IBTimes
White House Office of American Innovation: “Chris Liddell, a former chief financial officer of both Microsoft and General Motors; Reed Cordish, a former Baltimore real estate developer; and Matt Lira, a veteran Capitol Hill staffer. Liddell and Cordish share a West Wing office. ...[Kushner’s] credited with successfully overhauling the Trump campaign’s theretofore wobbly data and digital operation.” Politico
Founding Editor of Gawker, Editor NY Observer: “My response to a right-wing blogger who called me a kook and a loser for stating that Donald Trump is a liar / water is wet: pic.twitter.com/pAp18w2x3W “Let me tell you a story, Doug: my opinion about Trump is formed by, among other things, actual real-life interaction the family and having covered the business he’s in, where he was such a notorious liar that a friend of his once said of him, “he’d lie to you about what time of day it is, just for he practice.” And that was a FRIEND. So when I was the editor of the New York Observer and Jared Kushner and I were going back and forth about how the paper should cover him. I told Jared that I was particularly appalled by his father-in-law’s birtherism stance, which I viewed as cynical and racist. He rolled his eyes and said, “he doesn’t really believe it, Elizabeth. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it.” And sadly, he was apparently right. But let’s be clear: he was talking about you, Doug. Trump did not con Democrats; he conned–and is still conning–his base. So you have every right to your gullibility and I won’t try to deprive you of it, but personally, I’ld rather know what the hell is going on.”— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) May 28, 2017GQ
May 25, 2017 DNC calls for suspension of Kushner’s security clearance amid FBI scrutiny The Hill
Democrat Cory Booker, NJ, doesn’t support suspension of Kushner security , while having takes $61,000+ from Kushner dating to 2009 and attended his wedding to Ivanka. “Booker also pushed back against those calling for Trump’s impeachment, saying, “I’m not going to rush to impeachment.” IBTimes
May 26, 2017: Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret communications channel with Kremlin Washington Post “Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications. The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.”
NPR’s All Things Considered May 26, 2017
Seth Abramson’s Explanation of Kushner’s Unreported Meetings
(THREAD) We don’t know if Kushner’s Senate letter is true, or if he’ll revise it repeatedly like his SF-86. But here’s what’s wrong with it. pic.twitter.com/HbV9Otardb
(8) Kushner merely says he can’t remember those calls. He is not flatly denying them because the evidence they were made is *overwhelming*.
(9) The calls matter because they suggest a) Kushner invited Kislyak to breach international protocol and attend Trump’s “Mayflower Speech.”
(10) They *also* suggest b) the December meeting was possibly at Kushner’s request and on topics Kushner forecast to Kislyak—not just Syria.
(11) There’s every reason to think the Trump campaign—and Kushner, given that he organized the event—invited Kislyak to the Mayflower Hotel.
(12) Even if Dmitri (Center for the National Interest) invited Kislyak and *never told the Trump campaign* who’d attend, we have a problem.
(13) If Kislyak were simply a guest of the CNI, there is *no reason whatsoever* for political aides to Donald Trump to be at that VIP event.
(14) Indeed, we can’t even say Trump himself was a “VIP,” inasmuch as his campaign had set up the whole affair at the Center the day before.
(16) So either (a) Jared invited Kislyak to the NPC early in April and then had someone call Kislyak to tell him to come to the CNI instead,
(17) or (b) the Trump campaign found out Kislyak was going to the CNI, so they *cancelled* at the NPC and *invited themselves* to the CNI.
(18) In either case, there is *no explanation* for Sessions, Manafort, Kushner, and other Trump aides attending the VIP event at the CNI.
(19) So when Kushner admits chatting with Kislyak at the VIP event and saying—in effect—listen up, *this is our policy*, it’s extraordinary.
(20) In campaigns, it’s “OK” to have a bizarre pro-Russia policy agenda. It’s *not* OK to make promises to foreign agents about that agenda.
(21) Kushner should *never* have been at that VIP event. Kislyak should *never* have been at that VIP event. Don’t let Kushner normalize it.
22) So: Kushner admits to Kislyak contact in April/November but implies 7 officials are lying in saying he called him in those months also.
(23) As for the “Trump/Agalarov Summit” in Summer 2016 Kushner makes every—legally speaking—”self-serving statement” he could possibly make.
(24) Of *course* he claims he never read the email chain. It’s nearly impossible to prove what someone read or didn’t, so why not say that?
(25) As long as Kushner sent no emails about the meeting—which he *wouldn’t* have—or got rid of any emails he did, he’s “in the clear” here.
(26) But Kushner needs a “self-serving statement” to explain his presence at the meeting—which is, of course, easily provable—so he has one.
(27) Did it really take over ten minutes of sitting in a meeting about “Russian adoptions” for Kushner to decide he didn’t need to be there?
(28) Either way, his text to his secretary created documentation he (may have) left the meeting—suggesting he knew he needed a paper trail.
(29) Is it possible that he was just trying to get out of the meeting? Yes. But he’d have acted the *same* if this were a collusive meeting.
(30) As a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator, I’m saying that that text is neither inculpatory *nor* exculpatory.
(31) I’ll note that sending a text after 10 minutes *doesn’t* mean you left then. And “not recalling” any docs doesn’t mean there were none.
(32) Above all, please remember this: Kushner promised he would do anything he possibly could to help out the Senate Intelligence Committee.
(33) Instead he (a) refused to testify publicly, which they wanted; (b) refused to testify under oath, which they wanted; and (c) refused…
(34) …to talk to the full Committee rather than just their *staff*, which was perhaps the most preposterous of the three demands he made.
(35) And what did he give those Senate staffers? A bunch of “I don’t recall” excuses and some non-exculpatory details—don’t be fooled. {end}
(PS) When I say the “Mayflower Speech” was “at the CNI” of course I mean a venue controlled—on that day—by CNI, not the National Press Club.
(PS2) There’s no evidence the NPC was willing to host a VIP hour ambassadors from hostile nations breached international protocol to attend.
(PS3) At the NPC, the NPC (not the CNI) would’ve technically been the host. At the Mayflower, CNI was the host. They could what they wanted.
(PS4) So the CNI *had* to have set up the VIP event at the Mayflower *the day before*—when they learned Trump had *cancelled* the NPC event.
(PS5) In other words, Trump’s campaign precipitated the very VIP event at the Mayflower *neither it nor the Russians* should have attended.
(PS6) Don’t forget Kushner makes demands of the Intel Committee as he’s on the hook for the *felony* of making false statements on an SF-86.
(PS7) In the law, it’s almost impossible to imagine a defendant dead-to-rights on a “false statement” felony refusing to testify under oath.
(PS8) Had Kushner testified publicly under oath to the full Committee, he’d be saying the SF-86 thing was a mistake. Instead, he acts shady.
(PS9) Media must remember: self-serving statements made by defendants *must* be reported as such, not as simply “facts” about what happened.
(PS10) If you delete the self-serving statements and non-inculpatory/exculpatory data from Kushner’s statement, what do you have? *Nothing*.
(NOTE) I’m *not* spinning a theory about Kushner here. I’m saying this *is* how a criminal attorney and investigator looks at his statement.
(DOCS1) Here’s a statement (h/t @kylegriffin1) from Senator Wyden (D-OR) of the Senate Intel Committee about Kushner’s letter to the Senate:
Blank Slate@blankslate2017Jul 24 “I have not relied on Russian funds” = I borrowed $200 million, but that’s still less than half of the $1 billion I took from other crooks.
