1950

1951

Bigger derail, steak or star trek? Hmm.
**
(It only takes one GOP MoC to trigger an ethics probe on Nunes.)


1952

Senate Intelligence Committee briefing: https://www.c-span.org/video/?426177-1/senators-richard-burr-mark-warner-brief-reporters-russia-probe

1953

The quiet, understated professionalism just expressed by Richard Burr and Mark Warner–who are running the Senate investigation of the same stuff Nunes is pretending to investigate on the House side–sure was reassuring to watch.

I mean, I don’t like Burr at all, but it’s hard to not get the feeling that he totally understands the gravity of this situation, and is handling it with the degree of professionalism it requires. He and Warner appear to be on the same page, and neither seems to be pulling punches.

1954

Fingers crossed Burr is serious about this. He acts like it. And makes Nunes look a joke; it’s hard to believe they’re part of the same group.

1955

Is it possible Burr is just acting seriously in order to quell the calls for an independent investigation? This whole thing has been such a disaster.

1956

Burr was the one who brought up subpoenas. I mean, it’s possible he’s trying to stave off a special prosecutor…but if the Senate probe turns up some shit, there’s likely to be one anyway.

1957

Absolutely possible. Of course, at some point there’s little difference between acting serious and being serious. They’re committed to interviews and hearings; they’re bringing up names like Manafort and even Kushner; they’re diggigng into minutiae about IC product ownership. Hopefully he’s not acting, and if he is? Hopefully it won’t matter.

1958
1959

Irony

1960

Well, soon NATO/US also need to support Taliban (more), as they are involved in fighting against داعش (Daesh) which is starting to gain a foothold over there.

1961

This one is pretty complex, I recommend reading the whole thing.

He wrote a series of reports for political opponents of Donald Trump about Trump and Russia.

Steele’s “dossier”, as the material came to be known, contains a number of highly contested claims.

At one point he wrote: “A leading Russian diplomat, Mikhail KULAGIN, had been withdrawn from Washington at short notice because Moscow feared his heavy involvement in the US presidential election operation… would be exposed in the media there.”

There was no diplomat called Kulagin in the Russian embassy; there was a Kalugin.

One of Trump’s allies, Roger Stone, said to me of Steele, scornfully: “If 007 wants to be taken seriously, he ought to learn how to spell.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Kalugin was head of the embassy’s economics section.

1962

Trump must be the easiest poodle Putin ever leashed.

1963

That’s a poorly written article that rambles all over the damned place. Kalugin supposedly never met with anyone, so why is he important, let alone worthy of the status of being a “key claim”? And US intelligence coming to the same conclusion that Kalugin is a spy isn’t what I’d call “verified” anyway. The title of the article is click bait. There’s interesting info in there, but the title reads like something important had been uncovered, which isn’t true.

1964

I guess the Senate is finally tired of the House’s bullshit.

1965

1966

(CNN)When President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and aide Jared Kushner voluntarily appears before the Senate intelligence committee, he will describe his interactions with Russians during the transition as a point man “looking for the right person to engage with on Russia,” and nothing more, according to a source familiar with what transpired.

According to this source, neither of Kushner’s meetings – with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov – were about sanctions, which Russian banks have been lobbying against since they were imposed in 2014.

These were “relationship meetings,” the source said. In Kushner’s meeting with Kislyak, the source added, Kushner asked Kislyak to “identify someone who would be a good intermediary as they were trying to figure out who the right person would be to engage with on Russia.”

The source said the transition team – and Kushner in particular – were looking for ways to establish a back channel to Putin, as they had done with other leaders during the transition.

“In the transition they were looking to establish relationships with foreign leaders, and he took dozens of meetings,” according to the source. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius first reported that Kushner was seeking a back channel to Putin.

In their meeting, Kislyak suggested Kushner also meet with Gorkov, whom Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed in February 2016 as chairman of VneshEconomBank, a Russian state development bank that has been under US sanctions since July 2014.

The bank, known as VEB, and its ties to the Russian government could have easily been identified in an internet search. But the Trump transition “had no mechanism for vetting anyone” and it was not done, the source said.

And while Kushner himself could have done a cursory search to find out more about Gorkov, that didn’t happen. “In a more organized transition there would have been someone to vet people before there were meetings,” the source said as explanation, acknowledging “incompetence” in that area of the transition.

The bank’s recent statement that the meeting with Kushner was part of a “roadshow of business meetings” is in clear contrast to Kushner’s view of it. “That wasn’t the purpose of the meeting,” the source said. “That’s ridiculous.”

1967

The Kremlin and the White House have provided conflicting explanations for why President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, met privately with the CEO of a state-owned Russian bank during the transition period.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Tuesday that Kushner’s meeting with Vnesheconombank CEO Sergey Gorkov in late December “was ordinary business,” echoing the bank’s previous claim that it had met with Kushner in his capacity as “the head of Kushner companies.”

“As part of the preparation of the new strategy, executives of Vnesheconombank met with representatives of leading financial institutes in Europe, Asia, and America multiple times during 2016,” the bank told Reuters on Monday night.

“During the talks, the existing practices of foreign development banks and promising trends were discussed,” it added. It also said the meetings took place “with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the United States, including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies.”

That appears to conflict with the White House’s version of events, which is that Kushner met with Gorkov as a representative of Trump’s transition team.

1968

Jesus, are they that incompetent that they can’t even get their stories straight? How f’ing hard is it? It’s not like one of them’s been put in the isolation booth while the other does the big money round on Family Feud.

1969

Senate hearings are live now. Pretty interesting stuff. I’m watching it on the WaPo homepage but assume there are several ways to watch it.