The Bonnie and Clyde of US politics - by Publius Tacitus

Appears that Clinton Campaign Colluded with Ukraine and McCain in Bid to Destroy Donald Trump.

When the story of foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election is finally told it will have little to do with Russia and a lot to do with how Democrats, some Republicans and critical parts of the intelligence and law enforcement community colluded in an effort to discredit Donald Trump and undermine his ability to function as President. What puzzles me is why the media is acting surprised with the latest news confirming that Hillary Clinton's campaign financed the infamous Trump Dossier. Thank you Captain Obvious. Who else would have commissioned such an effort once the Republican primary battle was settled?

Reporters from the Washington Post,  while not breaking new ground, provided clear documentary evidence to confirm the suspicion:

Marc Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington, D.C., firm, to conduct the research. Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.

Elias and his law firm, Seattle-based Perkins Coie, retained the firm in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’ research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.

The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’ research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.

Fusion GPS gave Steele’s reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and DNC, and who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele.

Let me remind you of the basic facts about the Dossier--It consists of 13 separate reports. The first is dated 20 June 2016. That date is important because it shows that it took a little more than two months for Fusion GPS to generate its first report on Trump's alleged Russian activities. If Fusion GPS already had something in the can then I would expect them to have put something out in early May. Eleven more reports were generated between 26 July and 19 October 2016. That tracks with the letter from Perkins Coie that the engagement by the Clinton Campaign ended at the end of October.

But there is a big problem and unanswered question--The Dossier includes a final report that is dated 13 December 2016. Who paid for this? Was it John McCain?

McCain??!! Why do I bring him up. Do you recall the case of Aleksei Gubarev?

I wrote previously about Aleksej Gubarev, a Cypriot based chief executive of the network solutions firm XBT Holdings, who filed suit against Christopher Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, for defamation over their role in the publication of the Trump Dossier (which first  appeared in Buzzfeed).

Aleksej Gubarev, claims he and his companies were falsely linked in the dossier to the Russia-backed computer hacking of Democratic Party figures. Gubarev, 36, also is seeking unspecified damages from Buzzfeed and its top editor, Ben Smith, in a parallel lawsuit filed in Miami. 

 

Lawyers for Christopher Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence in the United Kingdom filed a response with the British court. Rowan Scarborough obtained a copy of the document and posted it on-line in April. The defense document is both illuminating and damning (I don't know how I missed this when it came out in April). This is a sworn legal document and it presents the following facts:

 

1. Orbis Business Intelligence was engaged by Fusion GPS sometime in early June 2016 to prepare a series of confidential memorandum based on intelligence concerning Russian efforts to influence the U.S. Presidential election process and links between Russia and Donald Trump (the first memo was dated 20 June 2016).

 

2. Fusion GPS is run by three former Wall Street Journal reporters: Glenn Simpson; Tom Catan; and Peter Fritsch. (According to the New York Times, Fusion GPS was originally hired by a Republican donor – who has not been publicly identified – to dig up dirt on Trump in 2015. After Trump won the nomination, the firm began working with Democrats and honed in on Trump's links to Russia.)

 

3. Senator John McCain, accompanied by David Kramer (a Senior Director at Senator McCain's Institute for International Leadership), met in London with an Associate of Orbis, former British Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood, to arrange a subsequent meeting with Christopher Steele in order to read the now infamous Steele Dossier. 

 

4. David Kramer and Christopher Steele met in Surrey on 28 November 2016, where Kramer was briefed on the contents of the memos.

 

5. Once Senator McCain and David Kramer returned to the United States, arrangements were made for Fusion GPS to provide Senator McCain hard copies of the memoranda.

 

6. After Donald Trump was elected, Christopher Steele prepared an additional memorandum (dated 13 December 2016) that made the following claims:

• Michael Cohen held a secret meeting in Prague, Czechoslovakia in August 2016 with Kremlin operatives.
• Cohen, allegedly accompanied by 3 colleagues (Not Further Identified), met with Oleg SOLODUKHIM to discuss on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow's secret liaison with the Trump team more generally.
• In Prague, Cohen agreed (sic) contingency plans for various scenarios to protect the operation, but in particular what was to be done in the event that Hillary Clinton won the Presidency.
• Sergei Ivanov's associate claimed that payments to hackers had been made by both Trump's team and the Kremlin.

[Note--Michael Cohen denies he was ever in Prague.]

7. Christopher Steele passed a copy of the December memo to a senior UK Government national security official and to Fusion GPS (via encrypted email) with the instruction to give a hard copy to Senator McCain via David Kramer.

Here is the key takeaway. After the Clinton Campaign and the DNC ended their relationship with Fusion GPS, why did John McCain and his staffer enter the picture and start receiving derogatory information about Donald Trump? Was there any communication or coordination between John McCain and Hillary Clinton's people regarding the findings of Fusion GPS? Or was this a unilateral move by McCain?

The Washington Post reporters claim that, "After the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified." Who told the FBI about the Fusion GPS effort and the Steele reports? Was it McCain? Was it the Clinton campaign? Was it someone connected with the CIA or the NSA? There are some significant unanswered questions.

This takes on greater importance once you comprehend how entangled Hillary Clinton was with foreign governments. The story about Hillary Clinton's role in helping approve the sale of U.S. uranium to a Russian company involves a lot of money flowing into Clinton coffers:

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

 The story does not stop there. There also is Ukraine. This story was first reported by Politico:

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia.

 Smearing Russia with disinformation appears to be at the heart of the story that alleges Putin ordered and directed the hacking of the DNC emails. It is no coincidence that the firm and person behind that story, CrowdStrike and Dmitri Alperovich respectively, don't like Putin and Russia. 

. . .the only evidence that a break-in even occurred comes from a private cyber-security firm, CrowdStrike Inc. of Irvine, California, that the DNC hired to look into the breach.

Since when do the cops rely on a private eye to look into a murder rather than performing an investigation of their own? CrowdStrike, moreover, turns out to be highly suspect. Not only is Dmitri Alperovich, its chief technical officer, a Russian émigré with a pronounced anti-Putin tilt, but he is also an associate of a virulently anti-Russian outfit known as the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank funded by the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukrainian World Congress, the U.S. State Department and a variety of other individuals and groups that have an interest in isolating or discrediting Russia.

The Atlantic Council puts out a stream of anti-Kremlin articles and reports with scary headlines like “Distract Deceive Destroy: Putin at War in Syria” and “Six Immediate Steps to Stop Putin’s Aggression.”

Since the Atlantic Council is also a long-time supporter of Hillary Clinton, this means that the Clinton campaign relied on a friendly anti-Putin cyber-sleuth to tell it what everyone involved wanted to hear, i.e. that the Kremlin was at the bottom of it all. If this strikes you as fishy, it should.

The peeling of the onion only has begun. Still to be exposed in greater detail are the activities of the CIA, under John Brennan, and the NSA, under Mike Rogers, in searching for and disseminating information that would damage Trump and prevent him from taking office. I am told by knowledgeable friends that there is plenty of fire behind this smoke.

While the mainstream media is trying desperately to ignore this story, the weight of evidence of foreign meddling aided and abetted by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is growing. The effort to smear Trump is losing steam, which may be a partial explanation for the hysteria demonstrated by Senators Corker and Flake yesterday. They are throwing wild verbal punches with a clear air of desperation and fear. The truth is that as this investigation of Fusion GPS unfolds that mainstream establishment Republicans, like McCain, will have political blood on their hands. Not likely to be a pretty picture in Washington, D.C.

Comments

[Anna]

“Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier
Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.
Michael Sussmann, a lawyer from the same firm that hired Fusion GPS on order of Democrats, hired the Crowdstrike cyber-outlet to investigate the leak of DNC emails. Crowdstrike and the DNC denied the FBI access to the relevant servers but asserted that "Russian hacking" was the source of the leak.
McCain had already been involved in distributing the report…”
Looks and sounds like a treasonous anti-government activity.

Here is another interesting angle: “Mr. Steel, the ex-MI6 spy 'who worked with murdered Alexander Litvinenko' [and who made the "discovery" that it was the Kremlin that hit the triple agent] flees his £1.5m home 'fearing for his life' leaving his pet with neighbors after being outed as the man behind the dirty dossier on Donald Trump.” – What a remarkable man! Nicely paid and always on call.

[DianaLC]

I am always upset that the fourth estate is so corrupted now with partisan thinking that no one wants to investigate in detail what BC was doing with the help of his friend Espstein.

We read a few lines in the news, and then like the proverbial "sound and fury" it is heard no more.

The Clintons should have been pariahs a long time ago.

[Anna]

"...the FBI, CIA, NSA are prohibited from interfering in domestic political affairs."
This is critical statement for the ongoing Russiagate affair. It would be great to know the details of the (alleged) prohibition.

[robt willmann]

The immediately preceding main post by Col. Lang brought up the Washington Post article of 24 October, which article has caused some discussion in the mass media, and the main post above references the article.

What is the Washington Post newspaper doing revealing that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid for research that led to the Russia "dossier"? The article looks and feels like a "modified limited hangout". But for whose benefit? That would be for H. Clinton and the DNC, of course.

The article does three things: 1) it says that the Hillary campaign and the DNC "helped fund" the so-called research; 2) it lays it all off on the Perkins Coie law firm and a lawyer there, Marc Elias; and 3) it lets the present DNC and the Clinton campaign play dumb and say that they known nothing about Fusion GPS and the dossier (paragraphs 10-12).

By putting the monkey on the back of the Perkins Coie law firm, the WashPost tries to prevent any questions being directed at the Hillary campaign and the current DNC.

1. Elias "retained Fusion GPS" … "to conduct the research".

2. The law firm "retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC".

3. The Clinton campaign and the DNC, "through the law firm", continued to fund Fusion GPS through the end of October 2016.

4. Fusion GPS "gave Steele's reports and other research documents [what are those?] to Elias".

5. It is "unclear how or how much [both how and how much!] of that information was shared with the campaign and the DNC", and "who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele. One person close to the matter said the campaign and the DNC were not informed by the law firm of Fusion GPS's role" (ROFL). Huh? What? "I know nozzing, man!"

6. Elias, "acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, agreed to pay for the work to continue".

You can see from this little list what the Washington Post is doing. It is publicly describing that one line of attempted defense as the issue heats up is the attorney-client privilege, and it says as much--

"Those people [!] said that it is standard practice for political campaigns to use law firms to hire outside researchers to ensure their work is protected by attorney-client and work-product privileges".

Well, I am not sure that trying to hide behind the attorney-client privilege is as clear-cut as the WashPost and "those people" are saying. To begin with, an attorney-client relationship has to exist as defined by the ethics and disciplinary rules of the Bar association in the applicable state, as further interpreted by appellate court decisions, and possibly state laws. If push comes to shove, there are other issues that come into play about whether a communication is covered by the privilege.

This brings us to a curious sentence in the article: "Some of the details [regarding what?] are included in a Tuesday letter sent by Perkins Coie to a lawyer representing Fusion GPS, telling the research firm that it was released from a client-confidentiality obligation". The letter was apparently sent the same day, 24 October, that the article was published.

Notice the term the WashPost uses -- "client-confidentiality obligation". Because of a time squeeze right now, maybe more on this later.

On 25 October, the newspaper published a kind of hodgepodge explanation about the 24 October article, entitled "The Clinton camp and DNC funded what became the Trump-Russia dossier: Here’s what it means"--

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/25/the-clinton-camp-and-the-dnc-helped-pay-for-that-trump-russia-dossier-heres-what-it-means/?utm_term=.f7eea50dcbd5

[Eric Newhill]

PA,
That cuts both ways. He was sentence for corruption, indicating that wheeling and dealing is not totally tolerated and that Ruskies would have to obtain the uranium fair and square via purchase of the company that controls it.

[different clue]

DianaLC,

I believe I read recently the theory that for the WP and/or the NYT to even be permitted to write anything about possible Putin/Nazarbayev bribery to the Clinton Foundation in return for greenlighting the Uranium One deal . . . indicates that somebody has decided that Clinton has reached the end of its public usefulness, and they are sending Clinton the message that it needs to retreat into private obscurity or there will be more revelations to come and then investigations to come after that.

[different clue]

Pacifica Advocate,

Perhaps JamesT is implying that the Inner Establishment has decided that Clinton is more an embarrassment than an asset, and they are beginning to warn her that she needs to retreat quietly into private obscurity. And this is just a warning example of the many things the Inner Establishment "could" direct its MSM to discuss in public if the Clintons won't go quietly.

What if the Inner Establishment decides that the National Enquirer-type story about Clinton's flights on the Air Pedo Express to Epstein Island need to begin showing up in the New York Times? Is that what it will take to convince the Clintons to disappear from public view and quietly count and spend their money in private?

[Sam Peralta]

All

In reading this post by Publius Tacitus and the comments on this thread, particularly the comments of David Habakkuk, I am convinced that there is something very fishy in the actions of the leadership of our intelligence agencies and the role of the UK intelligence agencies.

Do folks here have an inkling of what they are up to here and why they were motivated to do what they did?

[Pacifica Advocate]

>>>You're suggesting that Russia was threatening to invade a sovereign country if Uranium One wasn't approved?!!?

No. I'm suggesting that Kazakhstan is as suscept to Russian meddling and purchase as Mexico is to American meddling and purchase.

This seems an easy and quite solidly established concept for me to accept; can you politely explain to me why it is so difficult for you?

[blue peacock]

Well, it wasn't McCain or Ted Cruz or Jeb who funded Fusion GPS initially, but a Wall St billionaire hedge fund guy. They ended the contract before Steele was hired, which happened after Hillary & DNC started paying them.

Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS.

The Free Beacon funded the project from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, whereupon it withdrew funding and the project was picked up by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The original arrangement between the Free Beacon and Fusion GPS involved opposition research into multiple Republican candidates, not just front-runner Donald Trump.

Sources close to the Free Beacon stress that the project, when the Free Beacon funded it, had nothing to do with Russia and did not involve Christopher Steele, the former British spy who gathered anti-Trump dirt in Russia. Steele was retained by Fusion GPS when the project was funded by Democrats, and not in its initial phase, when the Free Beacon was involved.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-27/republican-group-helped-finance-trump-dossier-revealed

[Pacifica Advocate]

>>>He was sentence for corruption, indicating that wheeling and dealing is not totally tolerated....

He was sentenced for corruption, and that only indicates that the ruling Kazakh junta was displeased with him.

You really have absolutely no idea how that place is run, do you? Think "Banana Republic"--50s-era Nicaragua or El Salvador--but with less brutality.

[pcmooney]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/27/conservative-website-funded-initial-fusion-gps-trump-opposition-effort.html

[DianaLC]

That is very interesting. Publius Tacitus is correct about the Clintons. These two are low life grifters and who somehow made it to the top of society, like the two people he compares them to: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

I don't know if you've seen the well-known movie starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, but after all of todays's revelations in the news, I've been replaying in my mind the last scene in that movie when Bonnie and Clyde meet their end.

I guess I wouldn't want that horrific a fate for the Clintons, but I would sure like to see them removed from public life and living in shameful obscurity.

[DianaLC]

That is very interesting. I would sure like to see both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton do just as you wrote--become nothing but obscure private citizens.

I think, however, that there will be many people who have had personal ties with them who may prefer for them to meet the fate of the people Publius Tacitus has compared them to: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

After today's news reports I do think that their public life will become very difficult.

[Eric Newhill]

PA,
Yes, I'm sure Kazakhstan is subject to corruption just as are the governments Mexico and the United States.

What you are not getting is that Kaz. officials already exercised corruption by dealing with Uranium One pre-Russian ownership. I don't care what you think about corruption, vicious strongmen, whatever....the uranium rights belonged to Uranium One. You are suggesting that kaz. would simply ignore the UO deal and re-sell the same uranium to Russia. I don't accept that anymore than I would accept you telling me that Mexico would confiscate a US owned maquiladora and sell it to Japan.