And it Begins:Special Prosecutor To Investigate Trump And Russia

[oneforthebus]

Just how delusional are you people? i mean really...do you just repeat what Fox news and Limbaugh feed you?

Trump has been laundering money for Russians before. It's documented and Mueller asked for the records.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-taj-mahal/

Normally, if a gambler cashes out $10,000-plus in a single day, the casino must fill out a form listing their name, physical address, Social Security number, and birthdate. The casino has 15 days to send the form to the IRS.
According to a dozen anti-money laundering experts, casinos often run into these problems. But getting caught with 106 violations in the casino's opening years is an indicator of a serious problem, they said.
The violations date back to a time when the Taj Mahal was the preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn, according to federal investigators who tracked organized crime in New York City. They also occurred at a time when the Taj Mahal casino was short on cash and on the verge of bankruptcy.

Failing to report 106 casino winnings is now "laundering money for Russians". You're hilarious.

You think Donald Trump was personally involved in filling out forms for his casinos? Good lord, the straws you and CNN will grasp at.

 

[Steeltime]

Trump has been laundering money for Russians before. It's documented and Mueller asked for the records.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-taj-mahal/

Normally, if a gambler cashes out $10,000-plus in a single day, the casino must fill out a form listing their name, physical address, Social Security number, and birthdate. The casino has 15 days to send the form to the IRS. According to a dozen anti-money laundering experts, casinos often run into these problems. But getting caught with 106 violations in the casino's opening years is an indicator of a serious problem, they said.
The violations date back to a time when the Taj Mahal was the preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn, according to federal investigators who tracked organized crime in New York City. They also occurred at a time when the Taj Mahal casino was short on cash and on the verge of bankruptcy.

Jesus, you are the stupidest, laziest, fat-***, welfare-queen, tax-robbing, bloated, ignorant, mumu-wearing, ****-eating, lowlife dumbfuck ever to walk the earth, aren't you?

He is engaged in Russian money laundering because gamblers give fake information to a casino to avoid paying taxes?? News alert - gamblers give fake information to casinos TO AVOID PAYING ************* TAXES, you ******* dimwit, bile-inducing, disgusting, XXXXXL wearing, ***-sniffing, goat-licking litterbox.

 

[Elfiero]

So you're lazy and perfectly fine with being led by your nose. Just be in line with popular opinion around here and keep your neck above water. Got it.

The funny thing to me is they claim I have no thoughts of my own, and yet all I read on here from the Trumptards including Bus is regurgitated damage control talking points from the usual Reich wing talking heads. I had a long drive today to a neighboring state, so I got to listen to the usual suspects on talk radio try to pass this off as Mueller has failed so he had to come up with something and charged Manafort with something having nothing to do with the campaign......ignoring Papadopoulos or downplaying his lying about a "meaningless" conversation.

Let's here what a real legal expert has to say about this situation, not drug addled Limbaugh, or mental midget Hannity.

Robert Mueller’s Show of Strength: A Quick and Dirty Analysis


By Susan Hennessey, Benjamin Wittes
Monday, October 30, 2017, 2:24 PM

The first big takeaway from Monday morning’s flurry of charging and plea documents with respect to Paul Manafort Jr., Richard Gates III and George Papadopoulos is this: The president of the United States had as his campaign chairman a man who had allegedly served for years as an unregistered foreign agent for a puppet government of Vladimir Putin, a man who was allegedly laundering remarkable sums of money even while running the now-president’s campaign, a man who allegedly lied about all of this to the FBI and the Justice Department.

The second big takeaway is even starker: A member of President Trump’s campaign team admits that he was working with people he knew to be tied to the Russian government to “arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government officials” and to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of hacked emails—and that he lied about these activities to the FBI. He briefed President Trump on at least some of them.

Before we dive any deeper into the Manafort-Gates indictment—charges to which both pled not guilty to Monday—or the Papadopoulos plea and stipulation, let’s pause a moment over these two remarkable claims, one of which still must be considered as allegation and the other of which can now be considered as admitted fact. President Trump, in short, had on his campaign at least one person, and allegedly two people, who actively worked with adversarial foreign governments in a fashion they sought to criminally conceal from investigators. One of them ran the campaign. The other, meanwhile, was interfacing with people he “understood to have substantial connections to Russian government officials” and with a person introduced to him as “a relative of Russian President Vladimir Putin with connections to senior Russian government officials.” All of this while President Trump was assuring the American people that he and his campaign had "nothing to do with Russia."

The release of these documents should, though it probably won’t, put to rest the suggestion that there are no serious questions of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in the latter’s interference on the former’s behalf during the 2016 election. It also raises a profound set of questions about the truthfulness of a larger set of representations Trump campaign officials and operatives have made both in public and, presumably, under oath and to investigators.

And here’s the rub: This is only Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s opening salvo.

As opening salvos go, it’s a doozy.

Let’s start with the surprise unsealing of the Papadopoulos plea agreement and stipulation of fact. Papadopoulos first became publicly affiliated with the Trump campaign in March 2016. That month, Trump faced significant pressure to announce foreign policy advisers after numerous Republican foreign policy and national security experts publicly vowed never to work for him. In response, Trump produced a list of names of purported experts, a list that included both Papadapoulos and Carter Page.

The Washington Post reported in August of this year that Papadopoulos, between March and May of 2016, had “offered to set up ‘a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump,’” but that the campaign had rebuffed his numerous attempts. It turns out he did a lot more than that.

His guilty plea is for lying to FBI investigators in a Jan. 27, 2017, interview regarding his conduct and contacts. As we’ve discussed in the past, it isn’t uncommon for false statements to the FBI to be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 offenses in these sorts of cases. Proving that someone is lying is often easier than proving that the underlying offense violates the law. Here, for example, Papadopoulos’s underlying activity—working with Russian government officials to obtain “dirt” on Clinton and set up a Putin-Trump meeting—may have been legal, if wholly disreputable. Lying about it, however, is a crime. We can assume that Mueller had the goods on Papadopoulos beyond lying to the bureau in some manner. The lying, after all, is merely the charge he pleaded to in the context of a plea deal in which prosecutors have cut him a break.

That said, the Papadopoulos stipulation offers a stunningly frank, if probably incomplete, account of what occurred during the spring of 2016 in the Trump campaign. To wit, during that period, Trump campaign officials were actively working to set up a meeting with Russian officials or representatives. And from a very early point in the campaign, those meetings were explicitly about obtaining hacked, incriminating emails.

It isn’t clear which emails the various parties might have been discussing here. There are, after all, the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee, which first became public on June 14, 2016, though the breach had occurred more than a year earlier. There are the hacked emails of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, a breach that occurred on March 19, 2016, but that did not become public until Oct. 9, 2016. There are also the purported 30,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department, a matter dating to 2015, which may not have ever been hacked but which Trump campaign folks clearly believed had been. There is also possibly some other category of alleged emails that wasn’t a matter of public discussion. But it’s clear that Trump campaign officials were after emails and, well, let’s just say they didn’t go to the FBI when they found themselves in conversations with Russian officials about them.

The stipulation also contains some rather damaging information about President Trump himself. Papadopoulos says he attended a “national security” meeting on March 31, 2016, at which Trump himself was present, along with his other foreign policy advisers. In that meeting, Papadopoulos told the group that he had connections to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Putin. This means that Trump either knew or should have known about his campaign’s effort to interface with Russia, even as news of various criminal hacking and attempts to interfere with the U.S. election were becoming public.

The Manafort-Gates indictment is, in a different way, also dramatic. The amount of money allegedly at issue in breathtaking. According to Paragraph 6 of the indictment, “more than $75,000,000 flowed through the offshore accounts” that Manafort and Gates controlled. Eighteen million of these dollars are specifically alleged to have been laundered. This money laundering “to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities” allegedly took place through the entire period of Manafort’s service in the Trump campaign.

Manafort’s alleged unregistered foreign agency on behalf of Ukraine and its Party of Regions, by contrast, reportedly ended in 2014, when then-Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych was ousted. So President Trump can at least claim that his campaign manager is not under indictment for being an unregistered foreign agent at the time he was running Trump’s campaign.

But that’s about the only good news in the indictment for the president. Because Manafort is alleged to have lied about his foreign-agent status and made false statements into this year. In other words, at the same time Papadopoulos admits he was working Russian government officials for Clinton emails and for a Trump-Putin meeting, Manafort was allegedly still laundering the money he had obtained by illegally representing one of Putin’s allied strongmen.

In the wake of the document releases, Trump turned to Twitter to dismiss it all:

We offer no prediction as to how this will play politically or whether such antics will carry any water with Republicans who must be feeling a little uneasy today.

We will say this: Mueller’s opening bid is a remarkable show of strength. He has a cooperating witness from inside the campaign’s interactions with the Russians. And he is alleging not mere technical infractions of law but astonishing criminality on the part of Trump’s campaign manager, a man who also attended the Trump Tower meeting.

Any hope the White House may have had that the Mueller investigation might be fading away vanished Monday morning. Things are only going to get worse from here.



Susan Hennessey is the Executive Editor of Lawfare and General Counsel of the Lawfare Institute. She is a Brookings Fellow in National Security Law. Prior to joining Brookings, Ms. Hennessey was an attorney in the Office of General Counsel of the National Security Agency. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of California, Los Angeles.



Are you starting to get a clue Trumptards? Here is one more..........



THE MAN IS SO STUPID HE PUTS IT ON NATIONAL TV............LMAO ...CLUELESS....

 

[Elfiero]

Jesus, you are the stupidest, laziest, fat-***, welfare-queen, tax-robbing, bloated, ignorant, mumu-wearing, ****-eating, lowlife dumbfuck ever to walk the earth, aren't you?

He is engaged in Russian money laundering because gamblers give fake information to a casino to avoid paying taxes?? News alert - gamblers give fake information to casinos TO AVOID PAYING ************* TAXES, you ******* dimwit, bile-inducing, disgusting, XXXXXL wearing, ***-sniffing, goat-licking litterbox.

No.... you bumbling tampon fetcher/toilet scrubber/toner changer. THEY DIDN'T FILE THE PAPERWORK YOU ******* IMBECILE......WHY DID THEY NOT FILE IT AT LEAST 106 TIMES? WHY?

 

[Elfiero]

Failing to report 106 casino winnings is now "laundering money for Russians". You're hilarious.

You think Donald Trump was personally involved in filling out forms for his casinos? Good lord, the straws you and CNN will grasp at.

Mueller must be as equally stupid as CNN and I...............................

 

[oneforthebus]

Mueller must be as equally stupid as CNN and I...............................

He's looking at all of the Trump Organization's financial dealings. If this is the worst thing he's found in all of Trumps numerous businesses I think Trump is going to throw himself a party. These are freaking paperwork errors.

Oh Russian mobsters frequented there. Of course, we aren't reporting that these missed reports are on the winnings of Russian mobsters, but they were there. Around the same time. So there must be a connection.

Seriously?? This is so thin it's laughable.

 

[Steeltime]

No.... you bumbling tampon fetcher/toilet scrubber/toner changer. THEY DIDN'T FILE THE PAPERWORK YOU ******* IMBECILE......WHY DID THEY NOT FILE IT AT LEAST 106 TIMES? WHY?

Let me try to explain the most basic ******* facts ever to you, the stupidest, inbred, food-stamp hogging, gastric-band stretching, cheating, basket full of used toilet paper.

That means 106 different gamblers won over a span of [how many years, *****??], and gave false info to casino employees.

So, your theory - and it is yours, you stupid, ignorant, dimwit, dumbfuck, ***-sniffing, dog-humping shitbag - is that (1) Trump owns a billion dollar casino, (2) Trump sets up his casino staff in on the deal, (3) has his croupier somehow, in view of the pit bosses, and on video, win in some rigged gambling, to the tune of [how many dollars, fuckweasel???], in front of other gamblers who could and would have benefited from the rigged game [who the **** does not bet with the hot shooter, you fat ****, dumb-****, dimwit, shitweasel???], (4) so that the gamblers can then win [how much?? Go ahead, ******, details matter, more than the amount of butter you put on your breakfast muffin. And pancakes. And eggs. And bacon. And more eggs. And toast], (5) at which point they cash in the winnings with fake information?

Is that about right?

Hey, let me explain something, you bloated, Macy's-float imitating, tax-stealing, stupid, ignorant **** - casinos make money because the odds are in their favor. No, really, google the ****. Literally every game - blackjack, slots, craps, roulette, what-the-****-ever - is designed to make the casino money.

Millions. No, tens of millions. No, hundreds of millions over the course of a couple of years.

But a casino owner needs to launder [how much, fuckwad??], and make what, a few hundred thousand? A million? 2 million?

WHAT? YOU STUPID ****, CASINO OWNERS MAKE A MASSIVE AMOUNT MORE THAN THAT BY RUNNING A ******* CASINO.

You really are this stupid. You ignorant ****, stop cutting-and-pasting some idiotic **** from whatever ***-licking lefty web site you frequent, and think you can post that stupid **** in an echo chamber. No, fart-sniffer, I will gash you.

Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again ...

Don't go away mad. Just douse yourself in gasoline and light a match. Or even better, douse yourself in gasoline and let me light the match.

Oh, and P.S., you ******* thief. How about upgrading your welfare queen status by becoming an actual contributor who helps pay for the site? Yes, I am talking to you, you hypocritical, lying, sponging, lowlife. Pay your ******* share, or die. Oh, **** it, just die.

 

[madinsomniac]

In my experience working in, then managing an off track betting parlor from my late teens till i was 30, i can safely say people pull tax fraud religiously... you find one of a dozen jobless, worthless slugs who never actually file taxes, offer them 5 to 10%... they sign and outside of the manditory withholding, nothing more ever comes from it... keeps some of the bettorsin a lower bracket

 

[Tibs]

Ha ha ha. Still nothing... Just don't make an argument unless you're willing to back it up. Once again, your "opinion" that Trump has been involved in tax fraud and money laundering has no basis in fact. Until you produce a shred of anything that says otherwise, it will remain wild speculation.

Not sure why I bother responding. I've posted numerous links and articles over the years that highlight and pinpoint Trump's murky real estate deals and illicit business connections. The fact he's kept his tax returns hidden, his long list of bankrupcies and failed businesses. The list goes on. It's the primary reason I've opposed Trump from the beginning. You act like you're hearing this for the first time. That's why I write 'do your homework'. This board is not the place to come to unearth facts and information or to learn about the state of things. It's a place - at best - to discuss these issues and argue varying viewpoints.

This should help get you started, on your journey to get to know your President.

Trump’s Russian Laundromat
https://newrepublic.com/article/143...ses-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.

Here’s A Closer Look At Donald Trump’s Disturbingly Deep Ties To Russia
http://fortune.com/2017/05/17/donald-trump-russia-2/

The Original Russia Connection
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/felix-sater-donald-trump-russia-investigation.html

Felix Sater has cut deals with the FBI, Russian oligarchs, and Donald Trump. He’s also quite a talker.

Donald Trump's 'mafia connections' blocked his bid to open Sydney casino 30 years ago
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/16/tru...d-bid-to-open-sydney-casino-30-years-ago.html

Donald Trump’s deep connections to dirty Russian money: The trail leads back more than 30 years
https://www.salon.com/2017/07/14/do...s-a-trail-that-leads-back-more-than-30-years/

As Craig Unger’s new investigative report makes clear, Russian mob money financed Trump’s business for years

Trump's business network reached alleged Russian mobsters
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...es-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/

Trump, Russia and a Shadowy Business Partnership
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/arti...ssia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock

An insider describes the Bayrock Group, its links to the Trump family and its mysterious access to funds. It isn't pretty.

 

[oneforthebus]

I'll give everyone the cliff notes to all of Tibs links: Trump sold condos to Russians, made licensing deals with Russians, and had Russians gambling in his casinos, but there is no evidence that Trump had any knowledge of or was involved in any criminal activity.

Unger makes clear that he can find no evidence that Trump was ever involved in criminal activity

To date, no one has documented that Trump was even aware of any suspicious entanglements in his far-flung businesses, let alone that he was directly compromised by the Russian mafia or the corrupt oligarchs who are closely allied with the Kremlin.

It’s entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters

 

[IndySteel]

That has nothing to do with anything. The question is did a hostile foreign government interfere in our elections and did either of the presidential campaigns knowingly participate in - or even passively accept - that interference?

.

No, you ******* moron. The answer is clearly no. In the case of Trump. Hillary did collude with Russia in purchasing the fake dossier. That is the only collusion. Your side lost. Let it go. You imbeciles make Algore voters look like sane, rational people who accept defeat graciously.

 

[IndySteel]

Mueller must be as equally stupid as CNN and I...............................

He is. And you forgot Tibs.

 

[Superman]

holy ******* ****.
it's illegal to accept money from Russians?

this is eye-opening.

 

[Superman]

the man has no dignity.

 

[ZonaBurgh]

Not sure why I bother responding. [/I]

None of us are. So when do the impeachment hearings start?

 

[oneforthebus]

holy ******* ****.
it's illegal to accept money from Russians?

this is eye-opening.

It's illegal to talk to Russians, meet with Russians, and live near Russians too. Or at least it's dark and shady anyway.

Unless you're a Clinton of course. Then it's ok to take a $500,000 speaking fee from Russian banks while your wife is Secretary of State involved in sanction negotiations.

 

[deljzc]

Isn't it actually a good sign that this low-level campaign worker said he could get dirt from the Russians and the higher ups in the campaign said "we don't want it"?

That's kind of what the whole George Papadopoulus thing is in a nutshell, right? You have this kind of sleezy kid (under 30 years old) who looks (by all accounts) very self-serving trying to find dirt on Hillary to give himself name recognition. He self promotes all sorts of "what ifs" with sketchy contacts. He writes numerous e-mails to the campaign heads telling them he can set up "meetings" here, "meetings" there. He pipes up at a meeting with Trump and says he can get a meeting with Putin himself.

And time and again, the campaign heads don't bite. They don't pursue any of it. They basically tell him, "go do this with low-level guys if you want, but sounds like a fools errand".

That's kind of what head campaign people are supposed to do.

 

[Steelr4evr]

It's illegal to talk to Russians, meet with Russians, and live near Russians too. Or at least it's dark and shady anyway.

Unless you're a Clinton of course. Then it's ok to take a $500,000 speaking fee from Russian banks while your wife is Secretary of State involved in sanction negotiations.

This stuff has always been a diversion away from those true criminals. It's also a tactic to deligitimize the president. They've been obstructing and completely disrespecting the voice of the people long before he ever took the oath of office. The future of that office is completely ****** now thanks to them. What goes around comes around.I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime.

 

[IndySteel]

Ha ha, I love it!

The biggest story yesterday, the one that has the Dems in a dither, is Podesta running from his firm. What he know about Crooked Dems is…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017
….earth shattering. He and his brother could Drain The Swamp, which would be yet another campaign promise fulfilled. Fake News weak! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017

 

[madinsomniac]

I mean maybe there is some bombshell waiting to explode, but right now its all side stuff that is heavily spun... my guess is tge Dems are just trying to get Donnie to blow his top and fire mueller... that lets them play up the idea there is some connection and trump is covering it up... its ot a bad plan if thats their angle... but if he doesn't bite and they don't have anything this goes really poorly for tgem

 

[Smash]

While I didn't vote for Trump myself. I don't know anyone who voted for im due to anything they read in a facebook ad. There is decades of information about what a terrible person Hillary is, dating back to before social media even existed. Then there is her incredibly unlikeable persona and horrid debating skills. It's why she lost the nomination to Barry and also why she lost to Trump.

When will Mueller indict Zuckerberg? Taking money from a foreign entity to influence an American election? Collusion with Podesta/hrc/dnc/russia?

 

[Spike]

COLLUSION: FBI and Hillary Camp Paid For Fusion GPS Steele Dossier – Steele’s Travel Expenses

The 2016 presidential campaign of Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paid for the Fusion GPS dossier alleging Russian ties with the presidential campaign of Republican Donald Trump and sordid phony personal smears of Trump.

The Post reported that Clinton campaign and DNC lawyer Marc Elias and his law firm Perkins Coie paid Fusion GPS to continue researching Trump after a Republican donor who originally funded the research pulled out in April 2016.

Hillary Clinton claims she didn’t know about the Russia dossier that her campaign actually paid for until after Buzzfeed published the 35-page document in January of 2017.

In fact Hillary’s team lied for nearly a year about funding the anti-Trump dossier.

According to the Washington Post, the FBI agreed to pay the British Spy who compiled the garbage dossier after the election to continue to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia. The FBI pulled out of this arrangement once the author of the dossier, Christopher Steele was publicly identified in media reports.

That’s right. The FBI arranged to pay Hillary’s oppo researchers.

Now this…

Paul Sperry of the New York Post reported, “FBI picked up the tab for Steele dossier along with Hillary; FBI paid Steele’s travel and other expenses.”

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/201...ong-hillary-fbi-paid-steeles-travel-expenses/

 

[Steeltime]

It's illegal to talk to Russians, meet with Russians, and live near Russians too.

This guy must be in a lot of trouble:

 

[Elfiero]

holy ******* ****.
it's illegal to accept money from Russians?

this is eye-opening.

What is fascinating to me in a "watching a car crash...errrr....train crash" kind of way is how you Trumptards are not even slightly phased by the fact that the campaign manager of the current POTUS was laundering money(18 million) for agents of Vladamir Putin, and that Trump for years had been receiving money from Russian investors who were suddenly anxious to buy as much Trump properties as they could.......just out of nowhere.......nowhere.

I mean really I know most of you are not very bright....but, REALLY? No curiosity?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! We all know what's coming next........even you "patriots"

Just listen to Trump cry and complain while he dangles the Hillary red herring......wake up.

Cenk nails it here.

 

[oneforthebus]

What is fascinating to me in a "watching a car crash...errrr....train crash" kind of way is how you Trumptards are not even slightly phased by the fact that the campaign manager of the current POTUS was laundering money(18 million) for agents of Vladamir Putin, and that Trump for years had been receiving money from Russian investors who were suddenly anxious to buy as much Trump properties as they could.......just out of nowhere.......nowhere.

I mean really I know most of you are not very bright....but, REALLY? No curiosity?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! We all know what's coming next........even you "patriots"

Just listen to Trump cry and complain while he dangles the Hillary red herring......wake up.

Cenk nails it here.

If he's guilty and anyone produces any evidence of that I'll be the first to admit it. Not sure why that's so hard for you guys to understand. If it's so clear and obvious that he's a criminal WHY has no one ever investigated him or prosecuted him for any of this stuff before? Yeah, yeah, I know, we don't get to look at his tax returns but the IRS does. He's this immersed in criminal activity all these years but no one ever noticed until now? One of the most famous billionaires on the planet?

Try to think rationally for once.