Woah. White House officials told the WB “this was ‘not the first time’ under this admin that a presidential transcript was placed into this code-word level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive—rather than national security sensitive—information.”

https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1177204511783497734

https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/1177204377679015936

Trump, Giuliani, and Manafort: The Ukraine Scheme

The effort by President Trump to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son had its origins in an earlier endeavor to obtain information that might provide a pretext and political cover for the president to pardon his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to previously undisclosed records.

These records indicate that attorneys representing Trump and Manafort respectively had at least nine conversations relating to this effort, beginning in the early days of the Trump administration, and lasting until as recently as May of this year. Through these deliberations carried on by his attorneys, Manafort exhorted the White House to press Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit individuals, both in the US and in Ukraine, who he believed had published damning information about his political consulting work in the Ukraine. A person who participated in the joint defense agreement between President Trump and others under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including Manafort, allowed me to review extensive handwritten notes that memorialized conversations relating to Manafort and Ukraine between Manafort’s and Trump’s legal teams, including Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

... snip

New information in this story suggests that these two, seemingly unrelated scandals, in which the House will judge whether the president’s conduct in each case constituted extra-legal and extra-constitutional abuses of presidential power, are in fact inextricably linked: the Ukrainian initiative appears to have begun in service of formulating a rationale by which the president could pardon Manafort, as part of an effort to undermine the special counsel’s investigation.

... snip

The records I have reviewed also indicate that on at least three occasions, Rudy Giuliani was in communication with Manafort’s legal team to discuss how the White House was pushing a narrative that the Democratic National Committee, Democratic donors, and Ukrainian government officials had “colluded” to defeat Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential bid. (This story has since been debunked as baseless, though that has not prevented Trump, Giuliani, and other surrogates in conservative media from repeatedly pushing the story.)

In particular, the records show that Manafort’s camp provided Giuliani with information designed to smear two people: one was a Ukrainian journalist and political activist named Serhiy Leshchenko, whom Manafort believed, correctly, of helping to uncover Manafort’s secret payments from Yanukovych; another was Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American political consultant and US citizen, whom Manafort suspected, mistakenly in this case, was also behind the exposé. The records also show that Giuliani and attorneys for Manafort exchanged information about the then US ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who Giuliani believed had attempted to undercut his covert Ukrainian diplomacy and fact-finding; the records are unclear as to whether it was Giuliani or Manafort’s attorney who first initiated their discussion about her.

More: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/09/25/trump-giuliani-and-manafort-the-ukraine-scheme/

HOLY SHIT. Trump’s extortion of Ukraine isn’t about Biden. It’s about Donbas. Ukraine pulled its troops, ceding it to Russia; then Trump released the aid. The Biden thing is a red herring. This is Trump dealing for Putin!

With the new Ukrainian president suddenly withdrawing his troops from eastern Ukraine & Putin reinforcing his troops there, the deal our tax dollars ( Trump’s so-called “military aid” ) funded is complete. That’s called a quid pro quo w/ extortion, treason & other felonies.

Russia sent another resupply convoy to its army invading Ukraine in Donbas. It's the 84th such delivery of matériel since Putin's War began in 2014. The Russians again disguised the convoy as "humanitarian aid" but the trucks were not inspected by any competent authority.

https://twitter.com/earvland/status/1175093247988752384

https://twitter.com/ChrisAlbertoLaw/status/1175053669362020354

Why did Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet fly to Riyadh on the eve of the 2016 election?

https://twitter.com/NoahShachtman/status/1175033705271910405

Why did Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet fly to Riyadh on the eve of the 2016 election?


*Insider previously reported that Jeffrey Epstein's private jet flew from Paris to somewhere over the Arabian Peninsula on November 7, 2016. The jet returned to Paris 48 hours later.

*Newly located flight data, discovered by the journalist Eric Rosenwald, shows that Epstein's Gulfstream GV-SP landed in Riyadh at King Khalid International, the main airport of the Saudi Arabian capital.

*Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom Epstein has claimed to be close friends, was in Riyadh at the same time, holding meetings with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

*Bezos and MBS did not answer questions about whether they met the accused sex trafficker around the same time. Bezos attended at least two dinners with Epstein, in 2004 and 2011.

*The presence of Epstein's jet in Riyadh provides additional evidence of the financier's ties to the Saudi kingdom.

... snip

"For about six months, I got a notification every time that his plane was spotted in Plane Finder's system, and I knew it was in Riyadh on Election Day," Rosenwald told Insider. "I didn't know what to do with it."

Epstein's jet was in Riyadh at the same time as Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

There isn't enough information to precisely reconstruct the 48 hours Epstein's jet spent in Riyadh, and Rosenwald's data doesn't show whether Epstein was a passenger on either leg of the flight. Such information likely turned up in a recent subpoena issued to Epstein's pilots, but has not yet been made public. Still, it is reasonable to suppose that Epstein was flying aboard his own private jet.

Two people of note were in Riyadh at roughly the same time.

The first person is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, who at the time served as the kingdom's Minister of Defense and Second Deputy Prime Minister. On November 8, the state-owned Saudi Press Agency reported that bin Salman, also known as MBS, and his father, the Saudi king, bestowed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., with the Order of King Abdulaziz, a civilian award for distinguished service to Saudi Arabia.

The second person is Jeff Bezos, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Amazon. On November 9, the day Epstein's jet returned to Paris, MBS held an unrelated meeting with Bezos, several Amazon executives, and two Saudi ministers. The Saudi Press Agency said they "discussed fields of cooperation and investment opportunities available according to the Kingdom's Vision 2030," the crown prince's signature economic initiative.

More: https://www.insider.com/epstein-riyadh-saudi-arabia-private-jet-2019-9?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=topbar&utm_term=desktop&referrer=twitter

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1174849840414633987

VP Pence met with Ukraine's Zelensky a few weeks ago in Poland, sitting in for Pres. Trump, who couldn't make the trip. The meeting was in a windowless hotel room. Bolton sat silent, Sec. Perry there, too, as pool reporters were brought int. Zelensky kept bouncing his knees...

I was the pool reporter in the room. VP Pence did not respond to questions, including questions from reporters about whether the Trump administration would still allocate $250 million in planned security aid to Ukraine.

As Bolton looked on, VP Pence said that he could assure Zelensky "that we will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine on your security, on territorial integrity," but didn't get into details.

Zelensky said his administration is poised to "defeat corruption."

A day later, VP Pence took questions at a news conference. Pay attention to this response to a question from AP's @colvinj
. Full remarks at the link.

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1174852491617415169

Whistleblower complaint about President Trump involves Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter


By Ellen Nakashima ,
Shane Harris ,
Greg Miller and
Carol D. Leonnig
September 19 at 8:04 PM

A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.

The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.

Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.

That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign. Lawmakers have demanded a full transcript and a list of participants on the call.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/whistleblower-complaint-about-president-trump-involves-ukraine-according-to-two-people-familiar-with-the-matter/2019/09/19/07e33f0a-daf6-11e9-bfb1-849887369476_story.html

EXCLUSIVE: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin served in an official capacity for a business run by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most infamous associates.

https://twitter.com/NoahShachtman/status/1173388953006870529

Steven Mnuchin’s Mysterious Link to Creepy Epstein Model Scout

The treasury secretary’s name shows up on official records for a company formed in the 1980s by Jeffrey Epstein’s close friend, the model scout Jean-Luc Brunel.

In the late 1980s—before he was a member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, or even a high-rolling hedge fund manager—Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin served in an official capacity for a business run by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most infamous associates.

In official records, Mnuchin is listed as the official state point of contact for Next Management Corporation, a company formed in 1988 by modeling-industry insiders Jean-Luc Brunel and Armand Brunel. At the time, Brunel had just been the subject of a 60 Minutes documentary accusing him of drugging and raping at least three models. Later, he would be accused by two women of supplying girls to Epstein to be sexually abused. (Brunel has denied the allegations.)

Records accessed by The Daily Beast list Mnuchin as the New York Department of State process for Next Management Corporation. According to department officials, the DOS process is the person who files a company’s registration papers and receives lawsuits and other official documents on their behalf—usually a lawyer or some other legal representative.

A Treasury Department official said Mnuchin did not know he was listed as the DOS Process for Next Management Corp. before The Daily Beast’s inquiry. He said it was “not clear” how Mnuchin wound up serving in that role, and added that the Secretary not recall ever meeting either Brunel brother and has never done business with either of them.

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/steven-mnuchins-mysterious-link-to-creepy-epstein-model-scout-jean-luc-brunel

Scoop: Steve Bannon used cell-phone location data for people who had been inside Roman Catholic churches in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2018 to target them with get-out-the-vote ads.

https://twitter.com/joshua_eaton/status/1152191948096245760

Reminder ; Bannon was serving on the board of Cambridge Analytica in 2016 before serving on the Trump campaign. Mike Flynn was an advisor to C/Analytica. Kusher & Don Jr ran Parscale's fake news/microtargeting op. Manafort gave Ru internal polling (targeting data)

https://twitter.com/911CORLEBRA777/status/1152307733036556288

Catholics in Iowa went to church. Steve Bannon tracked their phones.

Campaigns have been using cell-phone location data for years. Did Bannon take it too far?

Steve Bannon and the conservative group CatholicVote used cell-phone location data for people who had been inside Roman Catholic churches in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2018 to target them with get-out-the-vote ads, ThinkProgress has learned.

Bannon, a former senior White House aide, made the claim in a deleted scene from the new documentary about him, The Brink. This scene has not been previously published.

“If your phone’s ever been in a Catholic church, it’s amazing, they got this data,” Bannon told director Alison Klayman as they sat in his Washington, D.C., home on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections.

“Literally, they can tell who’s been in a Catholic church and how frequently,” Bannon added. “And they got it triaged.”

More: https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-steve-bannon-geofencing-data-collection-catholic-church-4aaeacd5c182/

Kirkland & Ellis LLP Law Firm:

- Acosta worked there.
- Brett Kavanaugh worked there.
- William Barr worked there.
- John Bolton worked there.
- They defended Epstein and got him off.

https://twitter.com/pacelattin/status/1149696973206745088

And Kirkland and Ellis represents Alfa Bank which was the bank pinging the DeVoss and Trump Tower servers, and also Semion Mogilevich’s plaything. Mob mob mob. K and E also represent the Russian mob.

https://twitter.com/Dale116dot7/status/1149802862282567681

Theres also Robert S Khuzami - who is apparently Deputy United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, former Director of the Division of Enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission and former General Counsel of Deutsche Bank...

https://twitter.com/SmellOfMonkey/status/1149720531924639749

Mark Filip, DAG who signed off on the Epstein non-prosecution agreement works there now.
https://twitter.com/InvisibleMomma/status/1149799544194027521

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1149292029517664257
https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1149293553882947585
https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1149294695308304384


1/ Tough love:

You know who benefits from the House civil war being waged by AOC?

Donald Trump, that's who.

The new class of Democrats has more Katie Porters and Conor Lambs than AOCs, but hey, it's just the majority of the only body you control at stake, and the Presidency.

2/ You don't want to hear it. You don't want the understand it. I promise you, my TL is about to turn into a tu quoque nightmare.

And yet, I persist.

You control *one* house of *one* branch and that one house needs to be absolutely unified and focused.

3/ So choose one:

A) a grinding legislative and strategic program where no one gets everything they want but that holds together a caucus full of new members from swing districts and serves as a counterweight to Trump.

B) Burn down Pelosi, feed Trump, and lose.

4/ The choice isn't "AOC or Nancy"...the choice is "Nancy or Trump."

But by all means, y'all do you.

5/ And before you accuse (which you will, no matter what I say, but here's to it):

This isn't me being critical of a progressive or a woman or a woman of color or blah blah blah. This isn't a conservative or GOP critique. This is *just* politics.