It’s always about the Sudetenland… one part of the story goes through Central Europe
Biglygate now has so many moving parts, the novel and movie rights negotiation will be quite complex.
Without getting too lost in the data weeds, the overlap of Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and a variety of activities is becoming somewhat clearer amidst the disinformation facilitated by CNN.
Expect the lies to remain constant as we move forward, because if there’s anything that now seems obvious is that probably the only lies that count are the ones for which you get convicted of perjury.
Needless to say, more will become clearer as the #TrumpRussia actions now have a shape that cannot be erased like so many folks are deleting emails from their phones.
(january)
An alleged computer hacker being held in the Czech Republic is at the centre of an international legal tussle between the United States and Russia amid lingering disquiet over Moscow’s alleged interference in the recent US presidential election.
Yevgeniy Nikulin, 29, faces extradition requests from both countries after being detained by Czech police on an Interpol arrest warrant issued by US authorities.
Nikulin, a Russian citizen, was arrested in a restaurant in Prague on 5 October shortly after arriving in the city during a holiday with his girlfriend.
This should have an interesting outcome regardless of where Nikulin winds up. Even as he was nabbed in October, he’s still imprisoned. And despite the often cray-cray messaging of Louise Mensch, the details that come from some relentless airplane tracking will become more clarified by various federal agencies with greater resources.
(March)
One bit of journalistic malfeasance committed by CNN was that they rubbished the dossier’s claims on Michael Cohen without doing independent journalistic research of their own.
It is disappointing that American media would treat the one as proving the other. CNN spoke with reverence of a ‘second Michael Cohen’ as if that somehow meant the first one could not have left the United States.
A Twitter account I now believe to be a peddler of disinformation tried to feed out the line that Cohen had an Israeli passport with a single day’s difference, explained by the time difference, and that he used this.
Now, it is certainly possible that there is only one Michael Cohen who was in Prague on an Israeli passport rather than an American one. But ‘Michael Cohen’ is a common enough name. And the dossier alleged that Cohen was meeting Russian intelligence in order to arrange payment for hackers of the election.
It is a fact, indeed, that a Russian hacker, Yvgeny Nikulin, came to Prague to be paid on October 5th and was picked up there by Cezch intelligence on a red warrant from the FBI.
How likely is it that a lawyer representing Donald Trump and meeting with Russian intelligence, to pay off hackers that had attacked the US election on behalf of Russia, would have any stamps in his passport of any country? He would be trying for secrecy, and even if Mr. Cohen is a risible fool, as he is, adamantly denying he had ever been to Prague:
- I have never been to Prague in my life. #fakenews
and then telling the Wall Street Journal that he had been to Prague in 2001; even if, as I say, Mr. Cohen was a bombastic fool, Russian intelligence were not fools, and they would, presumably, take good care to get Mr. Cohen into and out of the United States without any stamp in any passport he might legitimately own; and with no record of exit or entry into the United States…
Mr. Cohen’s Apparent Relationship With Pro-Russian Twitter Trolls Fits One Allegation Made in the Dossier
When I started talking to Mr. Cohen on Twitter asking about his whereabouts on August 19-22, immediately a bunch of fake Putinbot accounts, some with Ukranian IP addresses, started to @ me. Mr. Cohen would also himself RT these accounts. In particular they started making excuses for Cohen‘s whereabouts. One Russian troll RTed things like this.
The dossier alleges that Mr. Cohen paid a company that ran a bot net out of Russia, which infected Democrats and others with viruses. He certainly regularly retweets Putinbots who seem to know him well, and to be directly connected to the Trump administration.
He said to me he would meet me around the first week of March. Others tweeted and instantly deleted that Cohen was at a Chris Christie fundraiser when he said he was in LA.
(March)
The internet is tightly controlled in Russia.
Cyber criminals have to answer to Putin.
Mr. Peter Chayanov is the head of a firm called Hostkey, which hosts mail spammers and other malware and hacking tools, despite offering web space to Wikileaks.
Wikileaks chose to use a Russian hacker to host their site – and they knew that he was connected to Vladimir Putin and operated with the blessing of Putin’s government.
But it is much worse for Wikileaks – and the internet in general – even than it looks. In order not to bury the lede, I will report what appear to be the conclusions of the web developers and hackers on Twitter discussing Laurelai’s story, and then report on how they appeared to have arrived there.
* Wikileaks has handed Chayanov access to everything stored on its site and servers
* The Russian hacker and spammer can ‘monitor traffic’
* He can tell who is reading anything on the Wikileaks site anywhere in the world
* The Russian hacker has access to all documents that have been sent to Wikileaks
* He can probably bust the anonymity of any computer or user who thought they were anonymously donating to Wikileaks
* It is not reasonable to suggest that this hacker is other than linked with Russia’s GRU – if he has it, they have it
* Through Julian Assange and his website, it appears that the Russian hacker and his government can track any readers of the Wikileaks site and any donors of material to it, thus allowing Russia to ‘blackmail’ anyone who ‘sent secrets’ to Wikileaks as a ‘whistleblower’.
Who will also wind up in an Ecuadorean embassy, since they probably don’t have taco bowls.
Mikhail Kalugin, was withdrawn from Washington to avoid exposing his involvement in US presidential election operations.
“Moscow feared his heavy involvement in the US presidential election operation, including the so-called veteran's pensions ruse, would be exposed in the media there,” it stated.
It was referring to allegations that Russia's Federal Security Service funneled payments disguised as pension benefits into the US. This money was then allegedly used to fund a hacking operation.
Mr Kalugin was withdrawn from his role in the economic section of Russia's Washington embassy in August 2016, and subsequently returned to Moscow.
www.independent.co.uk/...
A Steele report, dated Sept. 14, 2016, said Kalugin was involved in moving “tens of thousands of dollars” to cyber hackers and other operatives through a system that distributes pension benefits to Russian military veterans living in the United States.
One of the sources familiar with the federal investigation gave credence to parts of that statement, saying: “The Russian embassy was known to funnel payments and make contacts with current Russian citizens, former Russian citizens who are now American citizens, and American citizens.”
Steele quoted his sources as saying Russia had used its consulates in New York, Washington and Miami as conduits to disguise money flowing to its operatives as pension payments. Russia, however, doesn’t have a consulate in Miami.
The possibility of such an arrangement didn’t surprise Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University in Virginia.
“Russian pension funds historically are poorly monitored, and vulnerable to manipulations by individuals who have been associated with the government,” said Shelley, who has written extensively about Russian corruption and money laundering.
www.mcclatchydc.com/…
Kushner and Trump: Taped At Secret Trump Tower Meetings With Russians?