Comrade Trump

[Walter Sobchak]

Not to discourage frank, but I hope he keeps plugging away on the narrative that fringe Russian websites & social media accounts control the American political system.

Who can forget how a Buff Bernie in a Speedo tilted the 2016 election in favor of Trump?

[frank ryan]

This has been posited by a lot of people, it's interesting and disturbing to hear about it from KGB guy. My primary problems with Trump have always been national security concerns.

‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.

Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.



Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.

Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.

Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.

Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.

According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.

Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.

The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.

...

Trump’s election win in 2016 was again welcomed by Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. But the Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, found the Trump campaign and transition team had at least 272 known contacts and at least 38 known meetings with Russia-linked operatives.

Shvets, who has carried out his own investigation, said: “For me, the Mueller report was a big disappointment because people expected that it will be a thorough investigation of all ties between Trump and Moscow, when in fact what we got was an investigation of just crime-related issues. There were no counterintelligence aspects of the relationship between Trump and Moscow.”

He added: “This is what basically we decided to correct. So I did my investigation and then got together with Craig. So we believe that his book will pick up where Mueller left off.”

Unger, the author of seven books and a former contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said of Trump: “He was an asset. It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.”

“Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.”

[Uncle Ted]

I thought Trump was dead... I haven't seen him post anything on twitter for like forever.

[Applejack]

I thought Trump was dead... I haven't seen him post anything on twitter for like forever.

Good to see that Trump and you are still alive.

Have you followed the false flag assault on the U.S. capitol??? Damn antifa....

[frank ryan]

Didn't know where to stick this, but the DOJ under shitbag Barr monitored reporters' phone calls . The reporter was looking Trump camp. connections with Russia.

I'm sure our libertarians will be upset

News organizations and First Amendment advocates have long decried the government practice of seizing journalists’ records in an effort to identify the sources of leaks, saying it unjustly chills critical newsgathering. The last such high-profile seizure of reporters’ communications records came several years ago as part of an investigation into the source of stories by a reporter who worked at BuzzFeed, Politico and the New York Times. The stories at issue there also centered around 2017 reporting on the investigation into Russian election interference.

It is rare for the Justice Department to use subpoenas to get records of reporters in leak investigations, and such moves must be approved by the attorney general. The letters do not say precisely when the reporters’ records were taken and reviewed, but a department spokesman said the decision to do so came in 2020, during the Trump administration. William P. Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general for nearly all of that year, before departing Dec. 23, declined to comment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...a01_story.html

[BlueK]

Didn't know where to stick this, but the DOJ under shitbag Barr monitored reporters' phone calls . The reporter was looking Trump camp. connections with Russia.

I'm sure our libertarians will be upset





https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...a01_story.html

It's pretty bad. Unfortunately not surprising the Trump DOJ would be hostile to the First and Fourth Amendments.

[Uncle Ted]

We now know that it was all bullish*t created by the democrats...

Eyes turn to Hillary Clinton, not Trump in the Russiagate scandal

So there you have it.

Russiagate, the collective delusion that Donald Trump was secretly a Russian agent aided and abetted by the Kremlin, the topic of uncountable inches of Washington Post and New York Times copy and the entire primetime lineup of MSNBC, was a dirty trick by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Not just part of it. All of it. One of the most diabolical, successful misinformation campaigns ever concocted.
[...]
A made-up story

Now another piece of Russia, Russia, Russia is kaputski. A computer server operated by Trump’s company was secretly communicating with a Russian firm, claimed Slate magazine and endless Twitter threads of would-be tech experts.

But as special counsel John Durham outlines in his latest indictment, that was just a story made up by tech executive Rodney Joffe, who desperately wanted a job with the Clinton administration. He hacked Trump’s servers, cherry-picked privileged Internet data he had access to, and molded it to look like something nefarious.
[...]
Beyond outrageous

Of course, Hillary didn’t get what she wanted — the presidency. But her operatives didn’t stop, going on CNN to give “very concerned” interviews about a theory they knew was bull. All to undermine Trump’s presidency. It would take three years for the Mueller report to finally put the lie to rest, and we’re now, five years out, at the point where Durham is detailing the full conspiracy.
[...]

https://nypost.com/2022/02/13/eyes-t...agate-scandal/

The funny thing about all of this is how many on this board ate all this totally fabricated sh*t up like it was apple pie with blue bell ice cream.

[BlueK]

Thanks Ted, glad to know Trump wasn't owned by Putin the whole time. The brazen cyberattacks didn't really happen or maybe were for our own good. The removal of sanctions didn't happen and he never pushed Trump into screwing with our relationships with countries that actually like us. Good to know.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Thanks Ted, glad to know Trump wasn't owned by Putin the whole time. The brazen cyberattacks didn't really happen or maybe were for our own good. The removal of sanctions didn't happen and he never pushed Trump into screwing with our relationships with countries that actually like us. Good to know.

Trump clearly admired Putin. I think he was jealous and would love to rule in the USA in the same fashion.

Oh, and it appears that many of the details on this new story are not panning out.

[Northwestcoug]

We now know that it was all bullish*t created by the democrats...


https://nypost.com/2022/02/13/eyes-t...agate-scandal/

The funny thing about all of this is how many on this board ate all this totally fabricated sh*t up like it was apple pie with blue bell ice cream.

Ted, before you breathlessly quote a NY post editorial, please try to keep up with the facts:

The conservative media also skewed what the filing said. For example, Mr. Durham’s filing never used the word “infiltrate.” And it never claimed that Mr. Joffe’s company was being paid by the Clinton campaign.

Most important, contrary to the reporting, the filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era. According to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the Yota analysis, the data — so-called DNS logs, which are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet — came from Barack Obama’s presidency.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/u...mp-russia.html

[Jeff Lebowski]

Ted, before you breathlessly quote a NY post editorial, please try to keep up with the facts:



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/u...mp-russia.html

The funny thing about all of this is how Uncle Ted ate all this totally fabricated sh*t up like it was apple pie with blue bell ice cream.

[Uncle Ted]

Ted, before you breathlessly quote a NY post editorial, please try to keep up with the facts:



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/u...mp-russia.html

The above NYPost story doesn't say anything about Mr. Joffe or his company being paid by the Clinton campaign. He was apparently promised a fat cybersecurity job if Hillary became the president, however. Of course, Clinton bought and paid for the bogus Steele dossier. Nice that the NYTimes confirms that the hacked data came from Obama administration. They admit that the Dems were spying on the Drumpf campaign, most likely illegally.

LOL... The NYTimes just doesn't want to give their Pulitzer price back for reporting fake news:

Washington Post, New York Times should give back their Pulitzers for Russia-Trump ‘reporting’

With the entire Russiagate affair exposed as a Clinton campaign fabrication, it’s the clear duty of The Washington Post and New York Times to give back the Pulitzers they won for “reporting” the fake news.

Clinton campaign cash ordered up the “Steele dossier,” with Democratic operatives providing some of the rumors and a cynical Russian exile asking buddies to supply rank speculation for the rest.

Other Clintonites actually hacked Trump computers, including White House ones after he took office, to create another smear, as Special Counsel John Durham’s latest filing revealed.

That’s all there ever was: A Team Clinton scheme to make her e-mail scandal look tame by comparison, and so win the 2016 election, followed by a longer drive to cripple the new president. It was a true “war on democracy,” abetted by the two papers in endless, breathless “reporting.”

Their Pulitzer awards say the papers “dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign.” Now everyone knows they only “dramatically furthered” a smear.

Show a shred of decency, and give your Pulitzers back.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/14/washin...ump-reporting/

[PaloAltoCougar]

The above NYPost story doesn't say anything about Mr. Joffe or his company being paid by the Clinton campaign. He was apparently promised a fat cybersecurity job if Hillary became the president, however. Of course, Clinton bought and paid for the bogus Steele dossier. Nice that the NYTimes confirms that the hacked data came from Obama administration. They admit that the Dems were spying on the Drumpf campaign, most likely illegally.

LOL... The NYTimes just doesn't want to give their Pulitzer price back for reporting fake news:


https://nypost.com/2022/02/14/washin...ump-reporting/

at the opening phrase, "With the entire Russiagate affair exposed as a Clinton campaign fabrication," which is patently absurd. It's also nice that Ted relies on Rupert Murdoch's sensationalistic tabloid to pass judgment on the journalistic quality and integrity of the New York Times and Washington Post.

[Uncle Ted]

LOL... You are not expected to understand:

Oh, So That's Why The New York Times Didn't Cover Latest Durham Bombshell

When a new motion was filed by John Durham on Friday night that included information about Hillary's Clinton's campaign and its activities toward Donald Trump's campaign, the mainstream media largely said "meh" and ignored the development (though Townhall did not, and Vespa's story is here). Well now The New York Times is trying to defend its decision...by insulting its readership.
[...]
So what was The Times' excuse? The revelations, according to national security and legal policy correspondent Charlie Savage, "tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time."
[...]
Savage's assault on the intelligence of The Times' readers goes on to claim that all the coverage from Townhall and other conservative outlets is bunk, but even that claim doesn't make sense given Monday's White House press briefing in which Karine Jean-Pierre did nothing to cast doubt on the revelations. If the entire narrative around the latest Durham bombshell was fake, wouldn't she have pointed that out instead of saying the White House "can't speak to" the revelations? And if the stories coming from the development were baseless, wouldn't some of the mainstream outlets that remained silent have rushed exculpatory evidence to air in defense of Hillary Clinton and her campaign — including Biden's current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan?

As it turns out, even The Times' piece that seeks to defend Hillary Clinton's campaign and its activities couldn't avoid the shady nature of what Durham's team apparently uncovered. As Savage points out in his piece:

The filing was ostensibly about potential conflicts of interest. But it also recounted a meeting at which Mr. Sussmann [a Clinton Campaign lawyer] had presented other suspicions to the government. In February 2017, Mr. Sussmann told the C.I.A. about odd internet data suggesting that someone using a Russian-made smartphone may have been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.

Mr. Sussmann had obtained that information from a client, a technology executive named Rodney Joffe. Another paragraph in the court filing said that Mr. Joffe’s company, Neustar, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House, and that he and his associates “exploited this arrangement” by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Mr. Trump.

It's been a long time since The Gray Lady has been printing anything but "All the News That Fits the Narrative," but a desperate attempt to tamp down questions about what the Clinton campaign was up to after those questions were already being asked in the White House briefing room is not going to quell interest in the latest revelations.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spence...shell-n2603300

[Northwestcoug]

The above NYPost story doesn't say anything about Mr. Joffe or his company being paid by the Clinton campaign. He was apparently promised a fat cybersecurity job if Hillary became the president, however. Of course, Clinton bought and paid for the bogus Steele dossier. Nice that the NYTimes confirms that the hacked data came from Obama administration. They admit that the Dems were spying on the Drumpf campaign, most likely illegally.

LOL... The NYTimes just doesn't want to give their Pulitzer price back for reporting fake news:


https://nypost.com/2022/02/14/washin...ump-reporting/

heres a helpful quick Twitter thread Ted. It’s from a CATO writer (that’s a libertarian resource so you might not know about it):

Embedded Tweet