"That's none of your business." Wanna bet?

Mueller investigators seek documents from the White House

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller's team of investigators is seeking information from the White House related to Michael Flynn's stint as national security adviser and about the response to a meeting with a Russian lawyer that was attended by President Donald Trump's oldest son, The Associated Press has learned.

Mueller's office has requested a large batch of documents from the White House and is expected to interview at least a half-dozen current and former aides in the coming weeks. Lawyers for the White House are in the process of trying to cooperate with the document requests.

Though the full scope of the investigation is not clear, the information requests make evident at least some of the areas that Mueller and his team of prosecutors intend to look into and also reveal a strong interest in certain of Trump's actions as president.

A person familiar with the investigation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation said investigators want information on, among other topics, a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr. attended with a Russian lawyer as well as on the administration's response to it.

A statement provided to journalists in July, which the White House has said Trump had a hand in drafting, said the meeting was primarily to discuss a disbanded program that used to allow American adoptions of Russian children, but emails released days later by Trump Jr. show that he arranged the encounter with the expectation of receiving damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Investigators also are interested in White House actions involving Flynn, such as what officials knew about an FBI investigation into him and how they responded to word that his Russian contacts had been scrutinized. Flynn was forced out as national security adviser in February after White House officials concluded he had misled them about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates has said she warned White House counsel Don McGahn in January that that deception left Flynn and the White House in a compromised position, and that she expected McGahn to take action. That conversation took place two days after FBI agents had interviewed Flynn. But Flynn was not asked to resign until several weeks later, following news reports that said he had discussed sanctions during the transition period with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

Former FBI Director James Comey has said that Flynn was facing an FBI criminal investigation "of his statements in connection with the Russian contacts and the contacts themselves. And so that was my assessment at the time."

Comey has also said that Trump, in a private Oval Office encounter in February, told him that he hoped he would end the FBI investigation into Flynn. Trump has denied that. Comey's own firing in May is also under investigation for potential obstruction of justice, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel and oversees his work, has been questioned by investigators about the circumstances of that event, according to people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment. Mueller was appointed in May to investigate potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, and potential crimes arising from that probe. Investigators in July raided the home of Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in a search of tax and banking records and in recent months have served subpoenas related both to Manafort's business dealings and those of Flynn.

Mueller's team of investigators includes prosecutors with experience in organized crime, national security and complex financial fraud cases. The primary prosecutor on the White House investigation is James Quarles, who came with Mueller from the WilmerHale law firm and was involved in Watergate prosecutions.

Among the aides expected to be interviewed in coming weeks are McGahn, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former chief of staff Reince Priebus.

https://www.mail.com/int/news/us/552910 ... e-hero1-10

This Steve Benen commentary is a HUMDINGER!!!!! ~ ~ some "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

In Russia scandal, Trump’s actions are under Mueller’s microscope
09/21/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen

There was a point in the not-too-distant past at which the Russia scandal focused on events that unfolded during the 2016 election cycle. As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation moves forward, it’s increasingly obvious that the probe’s focus includes examining all kinds of things Donald Trump has done since taking office.

The Rachel Maddow Show, 9/20/17, 9:00 PM ET
Following the path from Manafort to Mueller's investigation

As Rachel explained on last night’s show, reporting from the New York Times and the Washington Post has moved the ball forward significantly, just over the last 12 hours.


I’ve heard from a few readers who were struck by the on-screen visual Rachel featured, highlighting the areas of interest to Mueller and his team, based largely on the Post’s reporting, so here’s your clip-and-save version: The special counsel has asked for:

1. Internal communications and documents related to Mike Flynn’s FBI interview in January.
2. Documents related to Flynn`s conversations with the Russian ambassador in December.
3. Records on acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ warnings to the White House about Flynn.
4. Materials related to Flynn’s departure from the White House.
5. Communications on Trump’s campaign foreign-policy team, which may have included at least one suspected Russian agent.
6. Documents related to Trump’s meetings with former FBI Director James Comey before his firing.
7. Records of internal White House discussions about Comey’s firing.
8. Documents related to external White House communications about Comey’s firing.
9. Documents related to Sean Spicer’s comments about Comey the week before his firing.
10. Materials related to Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russian officials the day after Comey’s firing.
11. Records related to last summer’s Trump Tower meeting between top members of Trump’s team and Putin-connected Russians.
12. Documents related to the White House’s response to media inquiries about the Trump Tower meeting.
13. Any email or document the White House holds that relates to Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman.

Remember when there was a question about whether or not Trump’s actions were themselves the subject of a federal investigation? That no longer appears to be in doubt.

The Rachel Maddow Show, 9/20/17, 9:25 PM ET
Trump campaign Kremlin connection seen in Manafort e-mails: WaPo

And in case all of this weren’t quite enough, there’s also the latest revelations about Manafort’s associations and communications during the campaign. From a separate Post piece:


Remember when we made a fuss about Team Trump changing the Republican Party’s 2016 platform to make it more pro-Russia? All of that led to the latest revelations.

I guess Trump’s talking point about no one on his team communicating with Russians during the campaign is no longer operative.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/russia-scandal-trumps-actions-are-under-muellers-microscope#break

This just keeps expanding ...

Republican Congressman Just Got Busted Meeting With The Same Russian Lawyer As Trump Jr.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya during a 2016 trip he took to Moscow, reports Foreign Policy.

Veselnitskaya is the same Moscow surrogate that met with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner during an originally undisclosed meeting at Trump Tower.

Previously revealed emails show that Trump Jr. explicitly attended the meeting to acquire dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians. His meeting with the Russian attorney took place two months after Rohrbacher’s meeting.

Rohrbacher has long been a point of interest in the investigation into Russian interference in the American election and internal politics. He’s long been a Pro-Russia, Pro-Putin shill. Specifically, Rohrbacher has been working hard to repeal the Magnitsky Act, a sanctions bill leveled against Russia in retaliation for its human rights violations.

Repealing the act is one of Putin’s major American policy priorities. Rohrbacher has also gone out of his way to advocate for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has been working overtime as a Russian propaganda mouthpiece recently. The FBI even warned Rohrbacher that Russian spies were trying to recruit him, reports The New York Times.

The meeting with Rohrbacher was revealed by Veselnitskaya during an interview with a Pro-Russian news agency in Crimea, the portion of Ukraine that Russia invaded and annexed in 2014. Ostensibly, she met with the Republican congressman to discuss the Magnitsky Act. Trump Jr. claims that she tried to discuss the same issues during their meeting.

Rohrabacher’s spokesman confirms that the previously undisclosed meeting did indeed take place.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will get to the bottom of all this shadiness eventually, but for now, suffice to say the American people are not getting anything even close to the full picture. Russia is actively trying to undermine our democracy and disenfranchise our citizens, and we have a right to know who was complicit — or continues to be complicit — in their illiberal efforts.

http://verifiedpolitics.com/republican- ... -trump-jr/

The Trump-Russia dossier: why its findings grow more significant by the day

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/07/trump-russia-steele-dossier-moscow

As US officials investigate potential collusion between Trump and Moscow, the series of reports by the former UK intelligence official Christopher Steele are casting an ever darker shadow over the president

by Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday 7 October 2017 06.30 BST

Nine months after its first appearance, the set of intelligence reports known as the Steele dossier, one of the most explosive documents in modern political history, is still hanging over Washington, casting a shadow over the Trump administration that has only grown darker as time has gone by.

It was reported this week that the document’s author, former British intelligence official, Christopher Steele, has been interviewed by investigators working for the special counsel on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Senate and House intelligence committees are, meanwhile, asking to see Steele to make up their own mind about his findings. The ranking Democrat on the House committee, Adam Schiff, said that the dossier was “a very important and useful guide to help us figure out what we need to look into”.

The fact that Steele’s reports are being taken seriously after lengthy scrutiny by federal and congressional investigators has far-reaching implications.

Originally commissioned by a private firm as opposition research by Donald Trump’s Republican and then Democratic opponents, they cite a range of unnamed sources, in Russia and the US, who describe the Kremlin’s cultivation over many years of the man who now occupies the Oval Office – and the systematic collusion of Trump’s associates with Moscow to help get him there.

The question of collusion is at the heart of the various investigations into links between Trump and Moscow. Even a senior Republican, Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, admitted this week it was an open question.

Burr said his committee needed to talk Steele himself to assess the dossier properly and urged him to speak to its members or staff. According to an NBC report on Friday, Steele had expressed willingness to meet the committee’s leaders.

In his remarks this week, Burr said his committee had come to a consensus in supporting the conclusions of a US intelligence community assessment in January this year that Russian had conducted a multi-pronged campaign to interfere in the 2016 election, in Trump’s favour.

It is a finding that echoes the reports that Steele was producing seven months earlier. Trump has called the assessment a “hoax”, but there is no sign the three agencies that came to that conclusion, the CIA, FBI and NSA, have had any second thoughts in the intervening months.

“Many of my former CIA colleagues have taken [the Steele] reports seriously since they were first published,” wrote John Sipher, a former senior officer in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service on the Just Security website.

“This is not because they are not fond of Trump (and many admittedly are not), but because they understand the potential plausibility of the reports’ overall narrative based on their experienced understanding of both Russian methods and the nature of raw intelligence reporting.”

Sipher emphasised the “raw” nature of the reports, aimed at conveying an accurate account of what sources are saying, rather than claiming to be a definitive summary of events. There are spelling mistakes and rough edges. Several of the episodes it described remain entirely unverified.

But as every passing month brings more leaks, revelations in the press, and more progress in the investigations, the Steele dossier has generally gained in credibility, rather than lost it.

Trump Tower meeting
One of the more striking recent developments was the disclosure of a meeting on 9 June 2016 in Trump Tower involving Trump’s son, Donald Jr, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with a Russian lawyer closely tied to the government, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

After the meeting was first reported on 8 July this year, the president’s son claimed (in a statement dictated, it turned out, by his father) that it had been about adoptions of Russian children by Americans.

The next day that was exposed as a lie, with the publication of emails that made it clear that Veselnitskaya was offering damaging material on Hillary Clinton, that an intermediary setting up the meeting said was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.

“If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer,” Donald Trump Jr replied.

Just 11 days after that meeting – but more than a year before it became public – Steele quoted a source as saying that “the Kremlin had been feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton”, for several years.

A later report, dated 19 July 2016, said: “Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between them and the Russian leadership.”

The report said that such contacts were handled on Trump’s end by his then campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who participated in the 9 June Trump Tower meeting.

Manafort has denied taking part in any collusion with the Russian state, but registered himself as a foreign agent retroactively after it was revealed his firm received more than $17m working as a lobbyist for a pro-Russian Ukrainian party. He is a subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and in July the FBI raided his home in Virginia.

Other key protagonists in the Steele dossier have surfaced in subsequent disclosures and investigation. Two of them, an Azeri-Russian businessman Araz Agalarov and his son Emin, are described in emails released by Donald Trump Jr as offering to serve as intermediaries in passing on damaging material on Clinton and is reported to have help set up the Trump Tower meeting.

Carter Page
Another key figure in the Steele dossier is Carter Page, an energy consultant who Trump named as one of his foreign policy advisors. Steele’s sources describe him as an “intermediary” between Manafort and Moscow, who had met a Putin lieutenant and head of the Russian energy giant, Rosneft, and a senior Kremlin official, Igor Diveykin.

Page denied meeting either man on his trips to Moscow, which he has said were for business purposes and not connected to his role in the Trump campaign.

Nonetheless, he has become a focus of investigation: it was reported in April that that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued an order last year for his communication to be monitored. To obtain the order, investigators would have to demonstrate “probable cause” to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. Page has said he welcomed the news of the order as it demonstrated he was being made a scapegoat of the investigation.

Elsewhere, a Steele memo in September 2016 mentions a “Mikhail Kulagin” who had been withdrawn from the Russian embassy in Washington because of his “heavy involvement in the US presidential election operation”.

There was no diplomat of that name at the mission, but there was a Mikhail Kalugin; five months later, it emerged that he had left the embassy in August 2016.

McClatchy reported he was under investigation for his role in Russia’s interference in the campaign. The BBC reported that the US had identified Kalugin as a spy.

Facebook
More recently, there has been a slew of revelations about the role of disinformation spread by Russians and other eastern Europeans posing as Americans on social media. The New York Times reported that hundreds and possibly thousands of Russian-linked fake accounts and bots on Facebook and Twitter were used to spread anti-Clinton stories and messages.

Facebook disclosed that it had shut down several hundred accounts that it believes were fabricated by a Kremlin-linked Russian company to buy $100,000 in ads that often promoted racial and other divisive issues during the campaign.

This week, Facebook handed over to Congress 3,000 ads bought by a Russian organisation during the campaign, and it was reported that many of those ads, some of them Islamophobic, were specifically targeted on swing states, Michigan and Wisconsin.

A Steele memo from August 2016 states that after Russia’s hand had been discovered in the hacking of Democratic party emails and passing them to WikiLeaks for publication, another avenue of influence would be explored.

The memo says “the tactics would be to spread rumours and misinformation about the content of what already had been leaked and make up new content”.

The Russian official alleged by Steele’s sources to be in charge of the operation, Sergei Ivanov – then Putin’s chief of staff – is quoted as saying: “The audience to be targeted by such operations was the educated youth in America as the PA [Russian Presidential Administration] assessed that there was still a chance they could be persuaded to vote for Republican candidate Donald Trump as a protest against the Washington establishment (in the form of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton).”

The Steele dossier said one of the aims of the Russian influence campaign was to peel off voters who had supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries and nudge them towards Trump.

Evidence has since emerged that Russians and eastern Europeans posing as Americans targeted Sanders supporters with divisive and anti-Clinton messages in the summer of 2016, after the primaries were over.

Unsubstantiated claims
There are other details in the Steele dossier that have echoed in subsequent news reports, but there are also several claims and accounts for which no supporting evidence has emerged.

The startling claim that Trump was filmed with prostitutes while staying at a Moscow hotel in November 2013, when he was staging the Miss Universe contest there, has not been substantiated in any way.

Nor has the allegation that Trump’s lawyer and vice-president of the Trump Organisation, Michael Cohen, travelled to Prague in August 2013 to conspire with a senior Russian official. In a letter to the House intelligence committee, Cohen said he never went to Prague and took issue with a string of other claims in the dossier.

It has however emerged that Cohen was involved in exploring a real estate deal in Moscow for the Trump Organisation while the campaign was in full swing. He has been summoned to appear in open hearing before the Senate intelligence committee later this month.

The Steele dossier, its author and the firm who hired him, Fusion GPS, have become favoured targets for Trump’s loyalists on Capitol Hill. They point to the fact that the genesis of the documents was a paid commission to find damaging facts about Trump.

But the dossier has not faded from view. Instead, it appears to be growing in significance as the investigations have gathered pace.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/07/trump-russia-steele-dossier-moscow

There was significant media attention on this over the weekend, and the general consensus is that this "offer to pay" the legal fees of WH staff and aides comes perilously close to an admission of guilt ~ FTR, having spent my entire working life at a major law firm, I can attest that $430,000 [which is itself a strange amount to land on] will not go far ... especially given the sheer number of staff and aides needing legal representation ~ ~ Sooz

Why it matters if Trump pays his aides’ legal bills
10/23/17 10:12 AM
By Steve Benen

Despite his considerable wealth, Donald Trump is not paying for his own legal team. As the investigation into the Trump-Russia scandal continues, the president has several attorneys representing his interests, but it’s the Republican National Committee – and by extension, its donors – paying the tab.

The same is reportedly true of Donald Trump Jr., who helps lead the president’s private enterprise, and who’s supposed to be steering clear of politics altogether.

And what about the officials throughout the White House who also face legal scrutiny? Up until very recently, it’s been assumed they’re on their own, but the Washington Post reported that they may have a rich benefactor: their boss.


Axios’ original report on this used the words “pledge” and “promise” to describe the president’s intention to defray the costs of his aides’ legal representation.

I’m highlighting the specific verbs because Trump’s credibility in this area is something of a joke. This is, after all, a president who’s been caught lying about contributions to veterans’ charities. Sure, he may say he’s prepared to use his own money to help cover the legal costs of his team, but what Trump says and what Trump does often have little to do with one another.

But just for the sake of conversation, let’s say the “plan” is legitimate. Let’s assume that Trump will follow through on this vow, grab his checkbook, and start writing checks to his staffers’ law firms. That brings us back to Walter Shaub’s concerns.

Given the circumstances, this need not be seen as a story about magnanimity. In the Russia scandal, the sitting president is in legal jeopardy – there’s every reason to believe he’s under investigation for obstruction of justice, for example – and those around him are, at a minimum, potential witnesses who may be able to shed light on Trump’s alleged wrongdoing.

And that’s where the trouble kicks in. What happens if officials in the West Wing have information to share that may be damaging to the president, who also happens to be paying for these officials’ legal counsel?

In other words, we don’t know if Trump is prepared to start writing personal checks to help his team because he wants to help them or if he wants to help himself. It’s not hard to imagine the president thinking that he can perhaps buy his aides’ silence by opening his wallet and discouraging them from “flipping.”

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-it-matters-if-trump-pays-his-aides-legal-bills

Given Grabem's reputation regarding keeping promises to pay this or that, if I were a staffer I wouldn't sleep any easier thinking the boss had my back.

Trump Quotes Fox News to Claim He Is a 'Victim' of the Russian Dossier Mueller's Team Is Using
Dossier Has Not Been Proven False, Some of It Has Been Proven Accurate

The Russian dossier is back in the news. Remember the document that was written by a former British MI6 intelligence officer that alleges Trump has been compromised by the Russians for years and they have damning evidence they could use to blackmail him?

On Tuesday The Washington Post reported what was already common knowledge: The DNC and the Clinton campaign paid for some of the research that was included in the dossier.

Every campaign does opposition research. This is not news.

Trump and Republicans are insisting the dossier is fake but several points of it have been verified as accurate. The rest remain to be verified. It does not appear any portion of the dossier has been officially disproven. Special counsel Robert Mueller and his team have interviewed Christopher Steele, the former intelligence officer who wrote the dossier. Mueller's team reportedly is using the dossier to help guide their investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.

Wednesday morning Trump tweeted what he says is a quote from Fox News, that he is a "victim" of the dossier, which is nonsense.



On January 10, minutes after CNN published a report revealing the existence of the Russian dossier, Buzzfeed published the actual Russian dossier.

In late October Mother Jones first reported on existence of memos which comprise the Russian dossier. Here's what Mother Jones says is included in just the first memo:



The dossier also includes salacious allegations of sex acts purportedly orchestrated and witnessed by Trump, aka the "pee tape," which is how some news outlets now describe the entire dossier.

live link at source

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.co ... m+Is+Using

More on Uranium One

http://verifiedpolitics.com/congressman ... dictments/

Wednesday morning Trump tweeted what he says is a quote from Fox News, that he is a "victim" of the dossier, which is nonsense.

Bank robber to judge: Hey, I'm the victim here. If it hadn't been for the cops catching me I would have got away.

Donald Jr really is the dumb one isn't he?

Incriminating Details About Putin’s Connection To Trump Jr.’s Russian Lawyer Meeting Just Emerged

BY ROBERT HAFFEY

With special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between Trump and Russia picking up steam, the presidential loyalists within the Republican Party are going into full damage control mode.

Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) appeared on Fox today to push some convoluted conspiracy that Democrats were the ones that really colluded with the foreign adversary and Trump himself tweeted out support of a paranoid theory about Hillary Clinton and a uranium deal earlier today.

Despite their best efforts to distract though, damning details continue to emerge regarding interactions between members of the Trump team and Russia. Previously, it was revealed that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with Russian attorney Natalia V. Veselnitskaya for the express purpose of obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Veselnitskaya brought information she claimed to have obtained in the course of her work as a private attorney that allegedly showed Democrats, including Clinton, accepting donations from an American company which had participated in illegal stock transactions, which in turn supposedly proved Democrats accepted “dirty money.”

The New York Times now reports that interviews and records show that she discussed her materials with the Prosecutor General, a high-ranking official in the Russian Federation, despite her claims to the contrary. There are noted similarities, included verbatim passages, between the documents she showed to the Prosecutor General, and the memo he, in turn, delivered to staunchly pro-Russia Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) shortly afterward.

In other words, she collaborated directly with Moscow on the information she was trying to pass along to the Trump team.

Her insistence that she went to the Trump Tower meeting as a completely independent actor seems patently untrue. It seems more and more likely that she was working as a direct surrogate for Moscow. If that is indeed the case, Donald Trump Jr. knowingly met with agents of a hostile foreign power, marking a grave betrayal of the American people.

http://verifiedpolitics.com/incriminati ... t-emerged/

Wee Jared seems to have dropped off the edge our flat earth.

As if Russian connections weren't bad enough ...

Poll finds 18 percent of voters believe Hillary Clinton has 'ties to Lucifer'



Hillary Clinton must have another private server to hide her emails to Satan according to the 18 percent of voters in a recent poll who believe the Democratic nominee for president has "ties to Lucifer."

The Public Policy Polling poll of 1,276 likely voters nationwide found that 18 percent of them believed that Clinton is friendly with the Lord of the Flies. Another 21 percent were "not sure," probably pending clouds of locusts emerging from her mouth.

more (including links, pics, and vid) at site

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/ ... o-10679668

What I personally find MOST alarming is the number of "loons" [and I use that word intentionally as I know it's a favorite of the SheTroll] and conspiracy theorists seem to be mushrooming ~

Sooz

A mushroom is a parasitic fungus, innit?

Which Lucifer? The guy in the tv series is kind of cool.

in a sense we all have ties to Lucifer. not much of an indictment, imo.

i was referring to the conventional image.

Donald Trump-Russia dossier prompted by Republican-linked site Washington Free Beacon
By Steve Peoples and Zeke Miller The Associated Press

A conservative website with strong ties to the Republican establishment triggered the investigation into Donald Trump‘s past that ultimately produced the dossier that alleged a compromised relationship between the president and the Kremlin.

The Washington Free Beacon on Friday confirmed it originally retained the political research firm Fusion GPS to scour then-candidate Trump’s background for negative information, a common practice known as “opposition research” in politics. Leaders from the Free Beacon, which is funded largely by Republican billionaire Paul Singer, insisted none of the early material it collected appeared in the dossier released later in the year detailing explosive allegations, many uncorroborated, about Trump compiled by a former British spy.

vid at site

“During the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton,” wrote the site’s editor-in-chief, Matthew Continetti, and chairman Michael Goldfarb. They continued: “The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele.”

Earlier in the week, reports revealed that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee continued funding Fusion’s work after the original GOP source lost interest.

Trump this week called it a “disgrace” that Democrats had helped pay for research that produced the document. But the original source of the research remained a secret.

The president himself hinted that he knew the Republican source earlier in the week, but he refused to share it. The White House had no immediate comment Friday night about the Free Beacon’s involvement.

The Washington Free Beacon was initially founded as a project of the conservative non-profit group Center for American Freedom, as an alternative to liberal news sites run by progressive nonprofits. The Center for American Freedom was organized as a 501(c)4 and did not reveal its donors, but Singer was the sole funder of the site as recently as 2014, according to a Republican political veteran familiar with the site. The veteran spoke on condition of anonymity to detail the newspaper’s financial background.

another vid

The Free Beacon first retained Fusion to investigate Trump in the fall of 2015 and ended its relationship after Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination in late spring of 2016, according to a person close to Goldfarb, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.

The website and its leaders have strong ties throughout the Republican establishment. Goldfarb was deputy communications director on John McCain’s presidential campaign. Singer was backing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential bid at the time of the Free Beacon’s involvement. And one of Singer’s closest associates, Republican operative Dan Senor, served as Speaker Ryan’s chief adviser during the 2012 president campaign.

A representative to Singer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rubio denied any knowledge of the Fusion research or the dossier this week.

“As far as whether it was my campaign, it wasn’t and I’ll tell you why,” he told CNN. “I was running for president. I was trying to win. If I had anything against Donald Trump that was relevant and credible and politically damaging, I would’ve used it. I didn’t have it.”

and another

The document, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, emerged this year as a political flashpoint in the broader debate over Trump’s ties to Russia.

A person close to Singer said the billionaire was not aware of Steele’s involvement or the dossier until earlier this year when it was published. The person was not authorized to share internal discussions.

Law enforcement officials have worked to corroborate the dossier’s claims. James Comey, FBI director at the time, advised Trump about the existence of the allegations, and Steele has been questioned as part of an ongoing probe into possible co-ordination between Russia and the Trump camp.

and again

The U.S. intelligence community has determined that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the Russian interference and whether it was tied to Trump’s campaign.

The House Intelligence Committee will help verify whether the Free Beacon had any involvement with Steele or his dossier, according to Jack Langer, a spokesman for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes.

and one more vid

“The Beacon has agreed to co-operate with the House Intelligence Committee to help the Committee verify this assertion,” Langer said.

In a statement Saturday, Langer said an agreement had been reached that will secure the committee’s access to Fusion GPS bank records necessary for its investigation. The committee had sought the records through a subpoena.

SOURCE

I honestly thought that headline said "Washington Free Bacon"...

Only if Trump makes you think of "pigs at the trough"?

sooooweee!

I sooooo hope this comes back to bite the DiC in the ass! ~ what a vindictive jerk he is ~ ~ some "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Trump’s ouster of U.S. Attorney Dana Boente matters
10/30/17 04:04 PM
By Steve Benen

In March, Donald Trump summarily fired 46 U.S. Attorneys, without warning or explanation. Of particular interest was Preet Bharara, who had jurisdiction over Trump Tower, and who’d been specifically told he could stay on at his post.

Then, for reasons the White House hasn’t shared, the president and his team changed their minds, and showed Bharara and dozens of his fellow federal prosecutors the door, without having any of their successors lined up.



Trump did not, however, replace literally all of the Obama-era U.S. Attorneys: Dana Boente was allowed to stay on. Late last week, as NBC News reported, that changed, too.


At first blush, this may not seem especially important. After all, presidents routinely appoint their own slate of federal prosecutors, so it may seem as if Boente is just part of a larger pattern.

But there’s more to this one: Boente, like Bharara, was in a position to investigate the president when Trump decided unexpectedly to fire him.

Rachel noted on Friday’s show, for example, that Boente was the person former FBI Director James Comey reported to when, according to Comey, Trump was trying to pressure him as part of the investigation into the Russia scandal. It’s led to some speculation that Boente could even be a potential witness in the matter.

But even putting that aside, as Rachel also noted on Friday’s show, it was Dana Boente’s office from which we saw the subpoenas related to Paul Manafort. It was Dana Boente’s office from which we saw the subpoenas related to Mike Flynn. It was Dana Boente’s office that has been handling the investigation into WikiLeaks – and potentially charges associated with WikiLeaks.

And it was through Dana Boente’s office where Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who’s overseeing the federal investigation into the Trump-Russia scandal, first started using a grand jury.

Dana Boente, in other words, has been at the center of a legal/political hurricane, and from what we know, he did not want to leave his post. Trump ousted him anyway.

This is the same president who’s taken the unprecedented step of meeting privately with prospective federal prosecutors before nominating them to posts where Trump may personally face legal jeopardy.

I realize there are a lot of scandals swirling around Trump World right now, but if you’re overlooking the president’s handling of these U.S. Attorneys, you’re missing a jarring controversy for which there is no good explanation.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-ouster-us-attorney-dana-boente-matters