Flynn Splits from Trump Lawyers

NY times ^ | November 23, 2017

[Heff]

A Split From Trump Indicates That Flynn Is Moving to Cooperate With Mueller

[ETL]

Mike Pence on Putin and Russia:

(from the VP debate on Oct 5, 2016)

“When Donald Trump and I observe that, as I’ve said, in Syria, in Iran, in Ukraine, that the small and bullying leader of Russia has been stronger on the world stage than this administration, that’s stating painful facts. That’s not an endorsement of Vladimir Putin — that’s an indictment of the weak and feckless leadership of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.”

PENCE: We’ve just got to have American strength on the world stage. When Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, the Russians and other countries in the world will know they’re dealing with a strong American president.

PENCE: What we’re dealing with is the — you know, there’s an old proverb that says the Russian bear never dies, it just hibernates.

And the truth of the matter is, the weak and feckless foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has awakened an aggression in Russia that first appeared a few years ago with their move in Georgia, now their move into Crimea, now their move into the wider Middle East.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/us/politics/vice-president-transcript.html

[Magnum44]

Agree, sounds like BS

[JohnyBoy]

>Are you trying to claim the special counsel law is illegal?

When used to investigate a President yes. It interferes with the Presidents Constitutional duty to hire and fire executive employees.

[Golden Eagle]

Once again...he can’t do it no matter the circumstances with no repercussions

Legally, he absolutely can force that position, the FBI Director, to be fired, by way of AG or acting AG. Politically, this could lead to impeachment, but only by Congress.

In this case, Comey's firing would only be a small piece in a larger obstruction case, but not solely on its own could it lead to impeachment. Does Mueller have the other necessary pieces? That depends on who controls Congress, so right now, probably not. But that could change at some point, sooner than we'd like unfortunately.

While this plays out, Trump is primarily on the receiving end of things. He needs better control of the DoJ, to help make his case if not put Mueller himself in the crosshairs for past misdeeds. But right now their only mission seems to be keep Trump in check receiving fire as if they work for Mueller, not Trump.

[ETL]

Also from the Oct 5, 2016 first VP debate...

QUIJANO (Moderator): I want to turn now to Syria. Two hundred fifty thousand people, 100,000 of them children, are under siege in Aleppo, Syria. Bunker buster bombs, cluster munitions, and incendiary weapons are being dropped on them by Russian and Syrian militaries. Does the U.S. have a responsibility to protect civilians and prevent mass casualties on this scale, Governor Pence?

PENCE: The United States of America needs to begin to exercise strong leadership to protect the vulnerable citizens and over 100,000 children in Aleppo. Hillary Clinton’s top priority when she became secretary of state was the Russian reset, the Russians reset. After the Russian reset, the Russians invaded Ukraine and took over Crimea.

And the small and bullying leader of Russia is now dictating terms to the United States to the point where all the United States of America — the greatest nation on Earth — just withdraws from talks about a cease-fire while Vladimir Putin puts a missile defense system in Syria while he marshals the forces and begins — look, we have got to begin to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership.

It begins by rebuilding our military. And the Russians and the Chinese have been making enormous investments in the military. We have the smallest Navy since 1916. We have the lowest number of troops since the end of the Second World War. We’ve got to work with Congress, and Donald Trump will, to rebuild our military and project American strength in the world.

But about Aleppo and about Syria, I truly do believe that what America ought to do right now is immediately establish safe zones, so that families and vulnerable families with children can move out of those areas, work with our Arab partners, real time, right now, to make that happen.

And secondly, I just have to tell you that the provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength. And if Russia chooses to be involved and continue, I should say, to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.

There’s a broad range of other things that we ought to do, as well. We ought to deploy a missile defense shield to the Czech Republic and Poland which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pulled back on out of not wanting to offend the Russians back in 2009.

QUIJANO: Governor, your two minutes are up.

PENCE: We’ve just got to have American strength on the world stage. When Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, the Russians and other countries in the world will know they’re dealing with a strong American president.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/us/politics/vice-president-transcript.html

[ETL]

Trump says NATO is obsolete but still ‘very important to me’

January 16, 2017

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said NATO was obsolete because it had not defended against terror attacks, but that the military alliance was still very important to him, The Times of London reported.

“I took such heat, when I said NATO was obsolete,” Trump told the newspaper in an interview. “It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying Trump is right.”

Trump added that many NATO members were not paying their fair share for U.S. protection.

“A lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States,” Trump said. “With that being said, NATO is very important to me. There’s five countries that are paying what they’re supposed to. Five. It’s not much.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-nato-obsolete-still-very-important-004548554—finance.html?ref=gs

_______________________________________________________________________________

Feb 9, 2017:

Exclusive: In call with Putin, Trump denounced Obama-era nuclear arms treaty - sources

By Jonathan Landay and David Rohde

February 9, 2017

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the call.

When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said.

Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. ...”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-call-putin-trump-denounced-obama-era-nuclear-171036908.html?ref=gs

or,

https://web.archive.org/web/20170209182918/https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-call-putin-trump-denounced-obama-era-nuclear-171036908.html?ref=gs

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

Hoping this is Q Anon’s Iron Eagle, a guy named Doug gets turned down but then saves the day later.

Though it may not be something good.

Won’t believe something bad of Flynn here unless and until I see it.

[JohnyBoy]

> While this plays out, Trump is primarily on the receiving end of things. He needs better control of the DoJ, to help make his case if not put Mueller himself in the crosshairs for past misdeeds. But right now their only mission seems to be keep Trump in check receiving fire as if they work for Mueller, not Trump.

Mueller’s effectively in charge of the DOJ with no executive oversight. It’s an entirely unconstitutional situation which if allowed to play out to its lawfare coup end will be the death of the Republic.

[FreeReign]

Mueller’s effectively in charge of the DOJ with no executive oversight. It’s an entirely unconstitutional situation which if allowed to play out to its lawfare coup end will be the death of the Republic.

Exactly right.

[Golden Eagle]

I thought little Bobby Mueller was hired to investigate if PRESIDENT Trump “colluded” with the Russkis the way Clintoon colluded with Lynch on the Phoenix tarmac. Why the hell is he going after these people? That should be somebody else’s job.

Because Mueller is effectively the current AG of the United States, and he's hostile to the current President. You're not the only one having a hard time coming to grips with it, either, because it's so patently absurd that it's actually happening right now.

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

This is straight out of 1984.

[ETL]

I thought little Bobby Mueller was hired to investigate if PRESIDENT Trump “colluded” with the Russkis the way Clintoon colluded with Lynch on the Phoenix tarmac.

From Breitbart...

Oct 31, 2017

“President Donald Trump ridiculed the “fake news” reaction to the indictment of Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates.

“The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was “no collusion” and events mentioned took place long before he came to the campaign,” Trump said. ...”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/10/31/donald-trump-fake-news-working-overtime-russia-investigation/

______________________________________________________________

The Manafort Indictment: Not Much There

Andrew C. McCarthy
October 30, 2017

Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign).

Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy.

There are twelve counts in all, but those are the two major allegations. The so-called conspiracy against the United States mainly involves Manafort’s and Gates’s alleged failure to file Treasury Department forms required by the Bank Secrecy Act. Specifically, Americans who hold a stake in foreign bank accounts must file what’s known as an “FBAR” (foreign bank account report) in any year in which, at any point, the balance in the account exceeds $10,000.

Federal law also requires disclosure of foreign accounts on annual income-tax returns. Manafort and Gates are said to have controlled foreign accounts through which their Ukrainian political-consulting income sluiced, and to have failed to file accurate FBARs and tax returns. In addition, they allegedly failed to register as foreign agents from 2008 through 2014 and made false statements when they belatedly registered. ...”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453244/manafort-indictment-no-signs-trump-russia-collusion

Backup link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171031174246/http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453244/manafort-indictment-no-signs-trump-russia-collusion

[Golden Eagle]

Looks like we all made the same post at the same time, which is the logical conclusion of what is happening in the big picture. All the rest of this fluff going on in this thread is just idle speculation of what is happening down in the weeds.

[JohnyBoy]

>This is straight out of 1984.

Torture the family to get the man to confess. It’s it’s right out of the Nazi or Soviet handbook as well. It’s pure evil.

General Rommel was told to take his own life or the SS would go after his family.

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

Where did you get this information from, you say sources, but what sources? Didn’t see it in the New York Times article when I looked, am I missing it there?

[ETL]

Michael Flynn, besides his close ties to KGB Putin, was a life-long DEMOCRAT. That is extremely telling, given the far left shift of the party over the past few decades.

[Democratic-Republican]

All of you claiming that president hillary Clinton can fire an fbi director no matter the circumstances and face no repercussions just amaze me.

Ummm, no problem with that whatsoever. I would practically expect nothing less, including all the US Attorneys like they did do. Then I would expect the spineless Congress to take a dive for things like Ruby Ridge and Waco, like they did do. It is a lawless government indeed.

But restoring lawful order certainly does not mean becoming more unlawful by denying the President, including Hillary ability to fire their employees. Knowing her, she would not just fire FBI director, but her sycophants would threaten and bribe ( and kill ) witnesses. That is where you bust them, not this fiction of obstruction and unconstitutional attempt at limiting the President.

This is what the corrupt 'radical Republican' Congress did to Andrew Johnson, almost exactly with the Tenure Of Office Act and almost removed him. The crass attempt was damaging to the President and later determined invalid by the Supreme Court in a similar case. Listen carefully, there is no possible restriction, no debate, on the President firing the FBI director.

So the enemy is thereby reduced to saying yeah he can fire him but it smells like obstruction to me, which goes nowhere in law, and dies in the House, especially now as the dead bodies pile high from sex scandals.

But like nixon...he may get nailed on the cover up..in this case..obstruction

The scandal was about the coverup, true, but not his potential impeachment, at least we can never be sure. Remember, when Goldwater and the others visited him the supposedly said 'certain impeachment' so he should resign. I'm not so sure that they would go there and suggest he resign if it was so certain, and I highly doubt 67 Senators in 1974 would convict him, maybe 1977 yes. Nixon just won the 3rd biggest landslide ever, massive, coast to coast, and there would have been a big bloody fight and lots of collateral damage to Congress for that coup which was conveniently avoided by his resignation and pardon. Don't read wikipedia which just parrots the Washington Compost tidy little bow-wrapped story about his support vanishing. It was inside-the-beltway groupthink then and still is today.

I remember Nixon voters becoming very angry over this coup. I guarantee you that if a tougher guy than Ford had ran in 1976 then Carter would have been beaten ( surprisingly Ford narrowly lost ) but then again, we would not have gotten Reagan in four years later had 1976 not given us Carter. In other words, the so-called 'vanishing support' would have shown up in spades and delivered payback. Looking back, I believe the pardon was solely to tamp down the cries of coup and to restore regular order in the District Of Criminals. This is why so many of us called Nixon a coward for resigning rather than fighting the communist (D)ummycrats. The damage he did was enormous in empowering the enemy. But he had terrible advisers, primarily no-one to stop him from believing a coverup was remotely a good idea.

Point is, many people are repeating the exact same beltway groupthink they did then. They really have no clue down there what we think of them. And the New York Slimes and Washington Compost makes sure that they remain in the dark. If you are not a troll ( c'mon, you gotta admit these posts of yours sure look that way ) then you are probably someone just paranoid and supremely worried they will pull another Nixon coup. It is surely mathematically possible given the (D)ummie plus (R)ino herds grazing the swamp, and Trump's base is surely in less proportion than Nixon's was, however, don't take the wrong lesson from Nixon up front from the Enemedia. We'll simply never know if he could have survived, and his voters sure as hell believed it at the time.

Trump is likely the smartest person in that office yet, and most streetwise, and he was tight with Roy Cohn which means he knows all about Tailgunner Joe and the domestic enemy and Enemedia cabal who took him down, and he knows Roger Stone and others who are well acquainted with the silent coup. All these lessons are known to him. Stop worrying, or stop trolling. They won't get him on this fantasy. Now if he fires Mueller or defies the stupid Ninth Circus rulings, then all bets are off. But those carefully planned traps are freakin obvious to anyone with a brain.

[ETL]

Paul Manafort

Viktor Yanukovych

Lobbying for Viktor Yanukovych and involvements in Ukraine

[Paul] Manafort worked as an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of [Putin stooge] Viktor Yanukovych (and his Party of Regions during the same time span) from December 2004 until the February 2010 Ukrainian presidential election[47][48][49] even as the U.S. government ... opposed Yanukovych because of his ties to Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.[21]

Manafort was hired to advise Yanukovych months after massive street demonstrations known as the Orange Revolution overturned Yanukovych’s victory in the 2004 presidential race.[50]

Borys Kolesnikov, Yanukovich’s campaign manager, said the party hired Manafort after identifying organizational and other problems in the 2004 elections, in which it was advised by Russian strategists.[48]

Manafort rebuffed U.S. Ambassador William Taylor when the latter complained he was undermining U.S. interests in Ukraine.[34]

According to a 2008 U.S. Justice Department annual report, Manafort’s company received $63,750 from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions over a six-month period ending on March 31, 2008, for consulting services.[51]

In 2010, under Manafort’s tutelage, the opposition leader put the Orange Revolution on trial, campaigning against its leaders’ management of a weak economy. Returns from the presidential election gave Yanukovych a narrow win over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 demonstrations.

Yanukovych owed his comeback in Ukraine’s presidential election to a drastic makeover of his political persona and, people in his party say, that makeover was engineered in part by his American consultant, Manafort.[48]

In 2007 and 2008 Manafort was involved in investment projects with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecoms company) and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash (redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City).[52]

The Associated Press has reported that Manafort negotiated a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics, business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting in 2005.[53]

In 2013 Yanukovych became the main target of the Euromaidan protests.[54]

After the February 2014 Ukrainian revolution (the conclusion of Euromaidan) Yanukovych fled to Russia.[54] On March 17, 2014, the day after the Crimean status referendum, Yanukovych became one of the first eleven persons who were placed under executive sanctions on the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN) by President Obama, freezing his assets in the US and banning him from entering the United States.[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][a]

Manafort then returned to Ukraine in September 2014 to become an advisor to Yanukovych’s former head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Serhiy Lyovochkin.[49]

In this role he was asked to assist in rebranding Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.[49] Instead, he argued to help stabilize Ukraine, Manafort was instrumental in creating a new political party called Opposition Bloc.[49] According to Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky, “He thought to gather the largest number of people opposed to the current government, you needed to avoid anything concrete, and just become a symbol of being opposed”.[49]

According to Manafort, he has not worked in Ukraine since the October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[66][67]

However, according to Ukrainian border control entry data, Manafort traveled to Ukraine several times after that election, all the way through late 2015.[67]

According to The New York Times, his local office in Ukraine closed in May 2016.[28]

According to Politico, by then Opposition Bloc had already stopped payments for Manafort and this local office.[67]

In an April 2016 interview with ABC News Manafort stated that the aim of his activities in Ukraine had been to lead the country “closer to Europe”.[68]

Ukrainian government National Anti-Corruption Bureau studying secret documents claimed in August 2016 to have found handwritten records that show $12.7 million in cash payments designated for Manafort, although they had yet to determine if he had received the money.[28]

These undisclosed payments were from the pro-Russian political party Party of Regions, of the former president of Ukraine.[28] This payment record spans from 2007 to 2012.[28] Manafort’s lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Manafort didn’t receive “any such cash payments” as described by the anti-corruption officials.[28]

The Associated Press reported on August 17, 2016 that Manafort secretly routed at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012 on Party of Regions’ behalf, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party’s efforts to influence U.S. policy.[11]

Associated Press noted that under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department, which Manafort reportedly did not do.[11] The lobbying firms unsuccessfully lobbied U.S. Congress to reject a resolution condemning the jailing of Yanukovych’s main political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.[69]

Financial records certified in December 2015 and filed by Manafort in Cyprus showed him to be approximately $17 million in debt to interests connected to interests favorable to Putin and Yanukovych in the months before joining the Trump presidential campaign in March.[70]

These included a $7.8 million debt to Oguster Management Limited, a company connected to Russian oligarch and close Putin associate Oleg Deripaska.[70] This accords with a 2015 court complaint filed by Deripaska claiming that Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million in relation to a failed Ukrainian cable television business.[70]

An additional $9.9 million debt was owed to a Cyprus company that tied through shell companies to Ivan Fursin, a Ukrainian Member of Parliament of the Party of Regions.[70] Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni maintained in response that “Manafort is not indebted to Mr. Deripaska or the Party of Regions, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign.”[70]

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Manafort, via Kiev-based operative Konstantin Kilimnik, offered to provide briefings on political developments to Deripaska, though there is no evidence that the briefings took place.[71][72]

According to alleged leaked text messages between his daughters Manafort was also one of the proponents of violent removal of the Euromaidan protesters which resulted in police shooting dozens of people during 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots.

In one of the messages his daughter writes that his “strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered”.[73]

Manafort has rejected questions about whether Russian-Ukrainian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, with whom he consulted regularly, might be in league with Russian intelligence.[74]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Lobbying_for_Viktor_Yanukovych_and_involvements_in_Ukraine

___________________________________________________________

Viktor Yushchenko

During his campaign for the presidency in 2004, Yushchenko became seriously ill from dioxin poisoning in an apparent assassination attempt; his face was left permanently disfigured and pockmarked.

Mass protests, which became known as the Orange Revolution, followed a runoff round in which Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, backed by Kuchma and generally considered pro-Russian and cool toward western Europe as compared with Yushchenko, had been declared the winner.

The Supreme Court, after invalidating that result, ordered a second runoff to be held in December 2004. Yushchenko was officially confirmed as the winner the following month.

As president, Yushchenko quickly encountered difficulties. He faced a fuel crisis beginning in May 2005, and in September he replaced his entire cabinet, accusing it of incompetence. In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Yushchenko’s party finished third, and eventually he was forced to approve the nomination of Yanukovych for prime minister.

A power struggle between Yushchenko and Yanukovych escalated in early 2007, when parliament passed laws that seriously curtailed Yushchenko’s authority. In particular, the new legislation ended the president’s right to reject parliament’s choice of prime minister.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Viktor-Yushchenko

_______________________________

From 2014

Yushchenko, hero of Ukraine's Orange Revolution warns Europe that Putin won't stop at Crimea

by Matthew Schofield - McClatchy Foreign Staff
March 27, 2014

Many Ukrainians believe you need look no further than the face of Viktor Yushchenko to understand Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Once smooth and ruggedly handsome, it still bears the scars from an assassination attempt when someone slipped dioxin into Yushchenko's food. ..."

Read more here:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24765781.html#storylink=cpy
______________________________________________

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

How does what Flynn Jr. did warrant the death penalty? Looks like death penalty for tweeting almost.

Sorry to be making 3 responses to your post here, I just find the information alarming.

Have been trying to ignore this investigation as the severity of what is being attempted is horrific.

What do you make of the claim that Mueller isn’t targeting Trump?

Why is Trey Gowdy seemingly content with Mueller’s investigation, at least that was my interpretation of his reply to a question, I am kind of paraphrasing him here, and that was prior to this information I believe?

[Democratic-Republican]

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I [RummyChick] really do not understand what you are saying.

Good luck with that LoL.

Yeah, right!

What they ( probably not RummyChick ) really are complaining about is Obstruction of Deep State or Obstruction of Business as Usual and nothing more. And they will pull every rabbit out of their hat to prove it.

The Russian Hoax rabbit was the greatest trick yet, and will hopefully be the fuel that burns them to the ground.

I like our current situation. It is far more than we were all expecting two years ago battling the crybabies back then. If Trump plays this perfectly, the District Of Criminals will never be the same.