Moose & Squirrel v Boris & Natasha: what's the deal with the rooskies and trumpland?

[TheGreatBuzz]

And why is the current justice department fighting this?

[China]

 

 

[China]

Donald Trump and Mark Meadows' last-minute plan to declassify an FBI file and tip off a conservative journalist: NYT

 

In the final days of his presidency, then-President Donald Trump approved Mark Meadows's plan to get a set of redactions approved on a file of FBI information so that it could be declassified and handed over to a sympathetic journalist, per The New York Times.

 

According to The Times, former chief of staff Mark Meadows had Trump's blessing to seek out the declassification of the binder containing unreleased information about the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

 

Crossfire Hurricane, the code name for the FBI investigation into the purported links between Russian officials and Trump associates, became the Mueller probe in 2017.

 

The binder detailed the FBI's methods in the investigation. It contained a series of text messages between two former FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which had been disparaging about Trump, per The Times. The hundreds of messages sent in the lead-up to the 2016 election included a description of Trump as an "idiot."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Ball Security]

 

 

[China]

On 10/22/2021 at 11:36 AM, China said:

The amount of corruption is staggering...

 

Ex-Giuliani Ally Gained Easy Access to Trump's Orbit, Texts Show

 

The messages, written in Russian and shared on WhatsApp in October 2018, were celebratory.

 

“How is Washington?” Andrey Kukushkin asked in a message to an associate, Igor Fruman.

 

“Everything is great!!” Fruman wrote back. “We are taking over the country!!!!” Soon after, Fruman’s business partner, Lev Parnas, provided some evidence: a picture of himself, beaming as he stood between Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

 

 

Three years later, Parnas and Kukushkin are on trial in Manhattan, accused of funneling foreign money into U.S. political campaigns in an attempt to buy favorable treatment for a fledgling marijuana business.

 

Parnas and Fruman, who pleaded guilty in the case in September, are perhaps best known for their roles assisting President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as he led a shadow campaign in 2018 and 2019 to pressure Ukraine to investigate President Joe Biden, then a leading Democratic presidential candidate.

 

But a trove of messages presented at the trial show how easily Parnas and Fruman ingratiated themselves into Trump’s orbit using campaign contributions and the promise of more to follow. Almost immediately, the messages suggest, they used their new proximity to power as currency to advance their own business interests.

 

There is little doubt that Parnas genuinely wanted to help Republican candidates. But the messages suggest he saw the donations largely as a pathway to political connections, and that he and Fruman used those connections to persuade Kukushkin and Andrey Muraviev, a Russian tycoon, to give them more money.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Giuliani’s Former Associate, Lev Parnas, Reports To Prison

 

Lev Parnas, a key figure in former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, has begun to serve his 20-month sentence for campaign-finance and wire fraud.

 

Parnas is currently housed at a minimum-security satellite camp at the federal correctional institution in Otisville, New York. Parnas first appeared in the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ inmate locator in the past couple of week. Parnas’ son Aaron, an attorney and pro-Democrat influencer, confirmed the website’s listing: “He has begun his sentence.”

 

In October 2021, Parnas, a Ukrainian-American, was convicted of conspiring to make political contributions on behalf of Russian oligarch Andrey Muraviev. In March, Parnas pleaded guilty to participating in a wire fraud conspiracy. Among the beneficiaries was a pro-Trump super PAC.

 

In August, Parnas and the government came to an agreement that the restitution he owes totals $1.8 million.

 

In 2020, Parnas claimed that then-President Trump “knew exactly everything that was going on” with his efforts to entice Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Trump-hyped special counsel John Durham ends “deep state” probe with a whimper: report

 

The Durham probe into the federal government's investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign's contacts with Russian agents is ending with a whimper.

 

The New York Times reports that the grand jury convened by prosecutor John Durham to hear evidence has expired, and sources tell the paper that there are no plans to convene another.

 

Durham and his attorneys are preparing a final report into their inquiry, which lost the only case that it brought to trial when former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI.

 

As the Times notes, the end of Durham's probe is sure to disappoint former President Donald Trump.

 

"When John H. Durham was assigned by the Justice Department in 2019 to examine the origins of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign's ties to Russia, President Donald J. Trump and his supporters expressed a belief that the inquiry would prove that a 'deep state' conspiracy including top Obama-era officials had worked to sabotage him," the paper writes. "Now Mr. Durham appears to be winding down his three-year inquiry without anything close to the results Mr. Trump was seeking."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Ex-FBI Agent Who Probed Trump’s Russia Ties Is Under Investigation for Russia Ties

 

A former FBI agent who once investigated then President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia is now under investigation for his own relationship with a Russian oligarch, Insider reports. Court documents allege investigators are looking into ties between Oleg Deripaska and Charles McGonigal, who once led counterintelligence at the FBI’s New York City field office. Deripaska is a billionaire oligarch and Kremlin aide who was at the center of allegations in 2016 that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign. The investigation appears to center around McGonigal’s work with a shady consulting firm owned by Deripaska, Spectrum Risk Solutions, which he did not disclose. Failing to disclose it may land McGonigal in hot water with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Even if cleared of any violations, however, a witness subpoena says prosecutors are also looking into whether McGonigal had ties to the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and whether he may have received “payments or gifts” from the governments of Kosovo, Montenegro, and Albania.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

So was Trump in NY last week, with some of the classified docs he still has?

 

Putin Ally Teases Secret Meetings ‘That Could Destroy’ America

 

Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei disclosed on Monday that he attended a series of confidential meetings with European and American leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week.

 

“Those were meetings with Europeans and Americans. They asked us to keep our conversations confidential,” Makei said, according to Belarusian state news agency Belta.

 

The foreign minister of Belarus, a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s even as Russia wages war in Ukraine, declined to elaborate on the substance of the meetings. Makei only alluded vaguely to the idea that the meetings would be damaging to the United States should their contents leak out into the public eye.

 

“Belarus has probably reached such a potential that the information about the meeting… might destroy even such a superpower as the United States,” Makei said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

Court Clerk Says Trump Attorney Didn’t Properly Sign Notice of Appeal in Failed Hillary Clinton RICO Lawsuit

 

An attorney for former President Donald Trump on Tuesday filed the precursor to a long-promised appeal in a rubbished racketeering lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and a number of political foes from the 2016 election cycle.

 

However, the document wasn’t properly signed, the court clerk’s office indicated almost immediately.

 

A terse notice of appeal submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida reads accordingly: “Notice is hereby given that the plaintiff, Donald J. Trump, appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from the Order of the Hon. Donald M. Middlebrooks entered on Sept. 8, 2022 . . . in the instant action.”

 

Attached was a copy of a check and a receipt for $505 to cover the cost of transmitting the lower court record to the circuit court of appeals.

 

The district clerk of court’s office quickly spat back a deficiency notice. It says the relevant documents “were filed conventionally that should have been filed electronically” — they appear on the docket as scans of paper documents rather than as PDF text files — and as “missing required signature(s)” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(a).

 

The case was widely criticized when it was filed and fared no better after judicial scrutiny at the district court level. Clinton and the other defendants quickly pointed out that Trump’s myriad allegations and causes of action were time-barred by the applicable statutes of limitation.  Trump’s attorneys attempted unsuccessfully to argue that the statutes of limitations should be tolled during Trump’s entire presidency because he was too preoccupied with the demands of his job to file the case while he was still in the White House.

 

Clinton impresario John Podesta, who was also a named defendant, even used Trump’s tweets against him in his requests to jettison the case.

 

Even if the claims weren’t time-barred, the defendants asserted that Trump was wrong on the law.

 

The government successfully substituted itself as a defendant for many of the original named parties, and Judge Middlebrooks dismissed the entire proceeding in spectacular fashion on Sept. 9.

 

One of the named defendants has since moved for sanctions; Trump’s attorneys defended their case by saying key portions of it were lifted from an indictment filed by Special Counsel John Durham against Igor Danchenko. Danchenko was not named as a defendant in Trump’s RICO case, and his criminal case — he allegedly lied to the FBI — currently remains unresolved.

 

The papers filed Tuesday promise an appeal, but as of the time of this report, no concomitant paperwork has been filed before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the requisite appellate bench that would hear the case.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[EmirOfShmo]

 

[China]

On 10/13/2022 at 1:07 AM, China said:

Court Clerk Says Trump Attorney Didn’t Properly Sign Notice of Appeal in Failed Hillary Clinton RICO Lawsuit

 

An attorney for former President Donald Trump on Tuesday filed the precursor to a long-promised appeal in a rubbished racketeering lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and a number of political foes from the 2016 election cycle.

 

However, the document wasn’t properly signed, the court clerk’s office indicated almost immediately.

 

A terse notice of appeal submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida reads accordingly: “Notice is hereby given that the plaintiff, Donald J. Trump, appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from the Order of the Hon. Donald M. Middlebrooks entered on Sept. 8, 2022 . . . in the instant action.”

 

Attached was a copy of a check and a receipt for $505 to cover the cost of transmitting the lower court record to the circuit court of appeals.

 

The district clerk of court’s office quickly spat back a deficiency notice. It says the relevant documents “were filed conventionally that should have been filed electronically” — they appear on the docket as scans of paper documents rather than as PDF text files — and as “missing required signature(s)” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(a).

 

The case was widely criticized when it was filed and fared no better after judicial scrutiny at the district court level. Clinton and the other defendants quickly pointed out that Trump’s myriad allegations and causes of action were time-barred by the applicable statutes of limitation.  Trump’s attorneys attempted unsuccessfully to argue that the statutes of limitations should be tolled during Trump’s entire presidency because he was too preoccupied with the demands of his job to file the case while he was still in the White House.

 

Clinton impresario John Podesta, who was also a named defendant, even used Trump’s tweets against him in his requests to jettison the case.

 

Even if the claims weren’t time-barred, the defendants asserted that Trump was wrong on the law.

 

The government successfully substituted itself as a defendant for many of the original named parties, and Judge Middlebrooks dismissed the entire proceeding in spectacular fashion on Sept. 9.

 

One of the named defendants has since moved for sanctions; Trump’s attorneys defended their case by saying key portions of it were lifted from an indictment filed by Special Counsel John Durham against Igor Danchenko. Danchenko was not named as a defendant in Trump’s RICO case, and his criminal case — he allegedly lied to the FBI — currently remains unresolved.

 

The papers filed Tuesday promise an appeal, but as of the time of this report, no concomitant paperwork has been filed before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the requisite appellate bench that would hear the case.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Judge Tosses John Durham Charge Against Igor Danchenko That Trump’s Lawyers Hoped Would Repel Sanctions in Failed Clinton RICO Case

 

A federal judge on Friday dismissed the first of five counts special counsel John Durham sought against Russian information analyst Igor Danchenko. The charge in question was recently described by Donald Trump’s attorneys as a critical portion of a so-called “methodically complied” civil complaint against Hillary Clinton and a long list other defendants Trump dubiously accused of racketeering conspiracy in connection with the 2016 presidential campaign.

 

A federal judge in Florida, U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, threw out Trump’s civil RICO case against Clinton and all of the other defendants named, but Trump’s attorneys have pointed to Durham’s indictment of Danchenko to defend themselves against a request for sanctions filed by Clinton co-defendant Charles Halliday Dolan Jr.

 

Danchenko was accused of five counts of lying to the FBI. The first of those five counts alleged that Danchenko lied to the FBI when he claimed he had not communicated with a public relations executive (since identified as Dolan) “about any material contained” in so-called “Company Reports” (also known as the Steele Dossier, which concerned “Trump’s purported ties to Russia”). Rather, Durham asserted, “in truth and in fact, and as the defendant well knew, PR Executive-1 [read: Dolan] was the source for an allegation contained in a Company Report dated August 22, 2016 and was otherwise involved in the events and information described in the reports.”

 

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, a George W. Bush appointee who is presiding over Danchenko’s trial, “said in court Friday that Danchenko’s answer to the FBI interviewer ‘was literally true’ and that Durham’s case on that specific charge was too weak to send to the jury,” CNN reported.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[EmirOfShmo]

 

[Ball Security]

Ehh, Federal prosecutions have a low success rate anyway.  Right? Riiiggghht???

[China]

Rudy Giuliani’s Russian Spy Pal Charged With Money Laundering

 

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT has charged a Russian spy who fed Rudy Giuliani bogus dirt on the Biden family with money laundering over his alleged attempt to secretly buy two luxury Beverly Hills condos. 

 

Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian member of parliament who the Trump administration accused of being “an active Russian agent for over a decade,” allegedly used a shell corporation to hide his ownership of the condos and move the $4 million used to buy them, according to a criminal complaint. 

 

“While participating in a scripted Russian disinformation campaign seeking to undermine U.S. institutions, Derkach simultaneously conspired to fraudulently benefit from a Western lifestyle for himself and his family in the United States,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael J. Driscoll said in a press release accompanying the charges. 

 

The Trump administration sanctioned Derkach shortly before the 2020 election on the grounds that he was “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who had “waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives” to influence the presidential election.  

 

Derkach featured prominently in efforts by Rudy Giuliani to spread bogus conspiracy theories that former Vice President Joe Biden pressuring Ukraine to commit to anti-corruption measures was a secret plot to quash a criminal investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian company where Biden’s son, Hunter, served as a board member. 

 

Giuliani publicly met with Derkach during a 2019 trip to Ukraine, where the then Trump lawyer was soliciting dirt about the Bidens in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

On 7/19/2022 at 2:52 PM, China said:

Trump responds to Pulitzer rejection of demand to revoke reporting awards

 

Former President Trump on Monday cast the Pulitzer Prize board’s rejection of his demand to revoke awards given to The New York Times and The Washington Post as “running cover” for “the biggest reporting failure in modern history.”

 

The board earlier Monday said it would not fulfill multiple requests by Trump to rescind awards to the staff of the two newspapers in 2018 for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election because it saw no reason to do so.

 

“The Pulitzer Board has taken away any shred of credibility it had left with its ‘response’ regarding the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, which was awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for blatant fake news,” Trump said in a statement.

 

“Instead of acting with integrity and providing transparency, the Pulitzer Board is running cover for the biggest reporting failure in modern history: the fake Russia Russia Russia collusion hoax,” he added.  

 

Trump then suggested that the only Pulitzer the two newspapers should be awarded was if a new category called “disinformation” was created.

 

“The truth is that the 2018 Pulitzer Prize was handed out for reporting that merely parroted political disinformation—disinformation that we know was fabricated by foreign operatives and my political opponents,” Trump said.

 

“If the Pulitzer Prize has become a blatant acknowledgement of false, liberal political propaganda, then the Pulitzer Board should just say so,” he added.

 

The board said it conducted a review and found no reason to revoke the news outlets’ rewards. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

Quote

Trump Vows To Sue In 2 Weeks To Snatch Washington Post, NYT Pulitzers

 

Donald Trump announced at his Texas rally Saturday that he is going to “sue” within two weeks to snatch away Pulitzer Prizes from The Washington Post and The New York Times for coverage of the Kremlin’s interference in America’s 2016 presidential election.

 

“Within the next two weeks, we’re suing the Pulitzer organization to have those prizes taken back,” Trump crowed at a rally in Robstown, where he stumped for MAGA candidates.

 

He said Pulitzer Prizes should be going to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Trump sues Pulitzer board for defamation in defending winning Russia collusion stories

 

Former President Trump sued the Pulitzer Prize board on Wednesday for defamation, arguing a statement by the group that concluded a review conducted of previous claims he’d made defamed him.

 

Trump had threatened to file the suit for months after the board issued the allegedly defamatory statement, which announced the conclusion of two independent reviews requested by Trump and others over Pulitzers that had been awarded for stories about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

 

The board ultimately rejected Trump’s request to revoke the 2018 national reporting awards, which were given to the staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post, saying the reviews concluded “no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”

 

Trump’s suit, which was filed in an Okeechobee County, Fla., court and reported earlier by Fox News, alleges the board acted with actual malice in issuing the statement with the aim of damaging Trump’s reputation, asking for an unspecified amount of damages.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

30 minutes ago, China said:

 

 

 

Trump sues Pulitzer board for defamation in defending winning Russia collusion stories

 

Former President Trump sued the Pulitzer Prize board on Wednesday for defamation, arguing a statement by the group that concluded a review conducted of previous claims he’d made defamed him.

 

Trump had threatened to file the suit for months after the board issued the allegedly defamatory statement, which announced the conclusion of two independent reviews requested by Trump and others over Pulitzers that had been awarded for stories about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

 

The board ultimately rejected Trump’s request to revoke the 2018 national reporting awards, which were given to the staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post, saying the reviews concluded “no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”

 

Trump’s suit, which was filed in an Okeechobee County, Fla., court and reported earlier by Fox News, alleges the board acted with actual malice in issuing the statement with the aim of damaging Trump’s reputation, asking for an unspecified amount of damages.

 

Click on the link for the full article

As I understand it, in order to file such a suit, plaintiff must swear, under oath, that the statements made against him are untrue. 
 

I look forward to the lawyers for the Post and the Times deposing Trump, under oath, about the truth of the things said in the articles. 
 

I also observe that the courts have ruled that, since Trump is the plaintiff, the Fifth Amendment does not apply. 

[China]

On 11/13/2020 at 10:38 PM, China said:

'Are We Getting Invaded?' U.S. Boats Faced Russian Aggression Near Alaska

 

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The crew of the Bristol Leader was laying out its long cod-catching line well within U.S. fishing territory in the Bering Sea when a voice crackled over the VHF radio and began issuing commands: The ship was in danger, it said, and needed to move.

 

The warnings, coming in a mixture of Russian and accented English from a plane buzzing overhead, grew more specific and more urgent. There was a submarine nearby, the voice said. Missiles were being fired. Leave the area.

 

Other U.S. fishing vessels that were scattered over 100 miles of open sea were getting similar messages. Capt. Steve Elliott stood dumbfounded on the trawler Vesteraalen as three Russian warships came barreling through, barking orders of their own. On the ship Blue North, commands from a Russian plane led Capt. David Anderson to contact the U.S. Coast Guard, wondering how to protect his crew of 27.

 

The Russian military operations in August inside the U.S. economic zone off the coast of Alaska were the latest in a series of escalated encounters across the North Pacific and the Arctic, where the retreat of polar ice continues to draw new commercial and military traffic. This year, the Russian military has driven a new nuclear-powered icebreaker straight to the North Pole, dropped paratroopers into a high-Arctic archipelago to perform a mock battle and repeatedly flown bombers to the edge of U.S. airspace.

 

As seas warmed by climate change open new opportunities for oil exploration and trade routes, the U.S. Coast Guard now finds itself monitoring a range of new activity: cruise ships promising a voyage through waters few have ever seen, research vessels trying to understand the changing landscape, tankers carrying new gas riches, and shipping vessels testing new passageways that sailors of centuries past could only dream of.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

[Bang]

Oh, but hey, look at the border.

Mexicans looking for jobs.

 

The horror.
Over the summer they also 

• Performed large scale exercises aimed at practicing destruction of a carrier group within sight of the Hawaiian coast, including firing cruise missiles.
• Teamed up with China for several joint operations showcasing their cooperative ability in several land based exercises, and
• In conjunction with the Chinese Navy formed a flotilla that encircled Japan.

Now, they also went ahead and invaded Ukraine and showed their ass, but we should be hyper vigilant. The squeeze play is highly likely with China using Russian belligerence as a buffer for them to take Taiwan.

It is very serious.

 

~Bang

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Bang

[Cooked Crack]

 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

It’s raining Russians….

[EmirOfShmo]

I read that it was Window Cancer...

[Dan T.]

Shouldn't this be a bigger story?

[TradeTheBeal!]

8 minutes ago, Dan T. said:

Shouldn't this be a bigger story?

It should be and it should also be that Bernie Sanders planned on doing the exact same thing.