Post-match: The Post Presidency :: Trump Faces The Music Thread

This was something that was a bit of a theme in Bill Browder's book (Magnitsky Act guy).

Basically lots of Americans, especially in fields like law, PR, reputation management and oppo research, worked for Putin stooges and pre-'16 it wasn't really policed. An example he gave was of a Russian woman who was very active in these litigations in DC who turned up at the Trump Tower "adoption meeting. "Adoption" was basically a code for fighting the Magnitsky act (i.e seizures of corrupt money) and was likely the quid pro-quo sought. So various American law firms and professional service consultants worked for her - and she is clearly a Putin operative at the end of the day.

As we also saw in London. it was very easy for the Kremlin to corrupt westerners in this way, or gain influence - and there is deniability. e.g Boris had tight ties to a pro-putin oiligarch but how do you prove anything?

Flynn and Manafort is the first example where anything was done about this. And even then, theoretically so long as you declare your interests, you can do this.

 

No. Nothing like that.

I am waiting for people like Weismann or Strozk to weigh in on this.

But remember that Operation Crossfire Hurricane was led by Pete Strozk in '16 (this later became the Mueller investigation). So while this isn't great, we know the FBI was worried about all this stuff way back in early summer '16 and had an open investigation since the 'coffee boy papadopolous' issue was raised by a friendly nation

I think this more raises issues of corruption at that field office

 

That stuff was investigated and nothing came of it. It was detailed at the Clinton Witch hunt trial brought by Durham,

 

Thinking through this a bit, Strzok and Crossfire Hurricane were based out of Washington.

So IMO this is about the corruption of the New York field office and what was going on there. The Clinton stuff. But it is also interesting in light of what came later, the whole Giuliani connection - wherever there are Russian agents, Rudy is close at hand!

In late July 2016, according to his May 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, CIA director John Brennan convened a group of officials from the CIA, NSA and FBI to investigate Russian interference.[26][27] In a July 2017 interview, Brennan described this group effort as a "fusion cell".[28] According to his later testimony, Brennan gave the FBI leads involving "contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign" that were beyond the CIA's mandate to pursue. He said this information "served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred".[29]​

 

I was just thinking yesterday in light of the McCarthy/Twitter news, how Taibbi trashed whatever was left on his reputation as an author at the temple of Musk. I guess for money? Or did he see it as his chance to be relevant?

I enjoyed his book about Goldman Sachs, but in light of this stuff, I would not wonder how much of it he just invented or misrepresented.

@nicephoras long maintained that Taibbi talked a load of horse shit about the subprime loan crisis

 

I really miss @nicephoras. Back when I first started posting in this forum (close to two decades ago) he was consistently one of my favorite posters.

 

His contrarian act worked much better in the Obama era because everyone hates Wall Street and imagines there was some vast conspiracy

The material is better covered in books like The Big Short

 

Hopefully he will come back one day!

 

Remember there was a russian gangster who lived in Trump Tower who was an actual FBI informant after he got busted for some felonies? I forget that guys name. He came up a lot in the Mueller era

 

And at the upper levels of government. I was listening to a podcast interview by a guy who wrote a book about Gen Kelly. He said that Kelly described his time as trying to riegn in feral cats (my phrase), and worst offender was Trump. He had not expected Trump to be the leader of the chaos, just effected by the people around him. And as time went on, he tried everything to try and reign in Trump, but nothing worked. And when he got desperate, he realized that he had nobody else he could call for advice. He also said he planned to quit, but knew that a yes-man would replace him (and this was during the North Korea threats/insults which led to a love affair).

In short, even though Kelly was a 4 star, he was unprepared for the shit show that Trump intentionally created.

Now, I was listening to that and there is some revisionism going on, and a lack of introspection, but painted a picture that other have also painted about the chaotic departure form the norm.

 

True, but for all things Russia, he was (is) the guru.