7/18/18: Who’s sweating profusely today when it comes to the Russia investigation? If you’ve been busy shampooing the dog, several shoes dropped this week. On Friday Special Counsel Robert Mueller dropped combat boots on a dozen Russian military officers charged with influencing the election in 2016.
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“I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.”
Candidate Trump
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The White House immediately released a statement saying: Hey, no Americans were indicted for collusion with said Russians! But the White House knew plenty and Trump and his team were praying that Americans heading for the beach or the pool would be too busy slathering on sunscreen to take note. According to the indictment at least one unnamed Trump associate had a series of contacts with Guccifer 2.0, now conclusively shown to be a Russian front. Roger Stone has admitted that unnamed Trump associate is “probably” him. (See: 6/17/18.)
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Ms. Butina. |
What other shoes dropped? On Sunday, the F.B.I. arrested Maria Butina, a young Russian. She was charged with working as an unregistered foreign agent, one step removed from an espionage charge. For at least three years Butina is alleged to have acted on U.S. soil in the interests of the Russian Federation. Purportedly a gun-rights activist back home, she wormed her way into the graces of the N.R.A. It may have helped that according to court records she was willing to trade sex in return for access. We know the N.R.A. paid her way to this country more than once so she could speak on gun rights. Her public stance was in favor of private ownership of guns by Russian citizens.
Butina also went to the trouble to speak on at least one American campus and called Putin “a dictator and a tyrant.”
That at least was true.
Strangely enough, her criticism never led to arrest whenever she returned home. We now know that she rubbed shoulders with a variety of top Republican movers and shakers. She also rubbed other body parts. In one photo, the attractive redhead from Siberia stands smiling next to Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin. In another, she looks fetching in pearls, with N.R.A. president Wayne LaPierre gaping by her side.
In July 2015 she was in the audience at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. By chance or design she was called on to ask then-candidate-Trump a question. What would his position toward Russia be, she asked, if he were elected?
Would the sanctions be lifted?
“I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin…I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK?” Trump told her. “And I mean, where we have the strength. I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think we would get along very, very well.”
In August she was back home when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, was visiting. The congressman says he can’t remember much about the young lady. Yes, Butina did arrange a breakfast with Alexander Torshin, but all he, your good old congressman, had was tea and toast.
Because…you know…the waistline.
No, seriously, Rohrabacher said the breakfast was of “no
consequence,” which is probably a good way to cover your ass, if you broke
bread with a Russian spy and her Russian spy master.
If you do a little digging, you understand why Rohrabacher might be feeling the heat. He is said to have met in early 2016 with Natalia Veselnitskaya. She’s the Russian lawyer who took part in the Trump Tower meeting that June, a meeting which is of key interest to Mueller’s team. (See: 7/13/18.)
Well, now, what did Rep. Rohrabacher think about the indictment of Maria, this poor little girl! “It’s ridiculous. It’s stupid,” he fumed. “She’s the assistant of some guy who is the head of the bank and is a member of their Parliament. That’s what we call a spy? That shows you how bogus this whole thing [the Mueller investigation] is.”
Actually, that “some guy who is the head of the bank” is a seriously shady character. Torshin is one of 24 individuals and 14 Russian companies sanctioned by the Treasury Department in May.
They ended up on that list because they were individuals and entities that had benefitted “from [ties with] the Putin regime and play a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities.”
So, yes, Mr. Rohrabacher – we’re talking malign Russian
activities. And you’re just slinging the bull.
Who exactly will be squashed by all the falling shoes we cannot yet know. Several Americans would be wise to scurry for cover. We know Torshin is an ally of Putin. This latest indictment (not directly tied to the Mueller investigation, but of obvious interest) makes clear that Torshin was giving Butina orders. Both became life members of the N.R.A., which even the head of the N.R.A. would admit is not a great look.
Rohrabacher may be in trouble. Some say he’s the congressman in Paragraph 43 of the latest Mueller indictment. (See: 7/13/18.)
Longtime Republican fixer, Paul Erickson, is likely to get whacked with a size-22 shoe. For some reason he formed a company with Butina in South Dakota in 2016. That company is the subject of a fraud investigation. Erickson is not named in the indictment but is thought to be the unnamed political operative with whom she was said to be coordinating activities. Erickson, almost twice her age, and Butina were shacking up and Erickson had been helping her do homework while she studied (under a student visa gained by lying on her application) at American University.
“Everything has to be quiet and careful.”
From the official indictment, we know Torshin was telling Butina to play the long game during the 2016 campaign. He advised her “not [to] burn out prematurely.” She admitted she was tired of living with Erickson. (She was also tired of offering to have sex with other men high up in conservative ranks in order to gain political access.) She responded via Twitter: “Only incognito!” That is, she was operating in secret. “Right now everything has to be quiet and careful.”
“In the F.B.I. affidavit,” The New York Times reports, Ms. Butina assured some unnamed person, likely Erickson, “that the Kremlin had approved her efforts [emphasis added] to connect members of the Trump team with allies or associates of Vladimir Putin. ‘All that we needed was “yes” from Putin’s side.’”
Later she wrote again to her American contact, “My dearest president [Putin, not Trump] has received ‘the message’ about your group initiatives.”
That exchange came in March 2016. So, you can understand why the F.B.I. might have been suspicious. We now know Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos met with what he thought were Russian agents offering dirt on Hillary Clinton that same month. Later he lied about it.
Stone met his Russian in May. Eventually, he denied meeting with any Russians in testimony before Congress.
Torshin tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin that month.
In June 2016, Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner took a secret meeting with individuals they knew were Russian agents.
We know Torshin scored a short meeting with Don Jr. at an N.R.A. convention in May
2016. We know Butina and Torshin attended President Trump’s inauguration. In
February 2017, she and Torshin organized a delegation of a dozen Russians to
attend the National Prayer Breakfast and hear the Putin Pal President speak.
Torshin scored a meeting at the White House later that year. At the last
minute, his meeting with Trump was canceled when a White House security aide noticed
that Torshin was under investigation for money laundering in Spain.
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ON MONDAY, Mueller’s team swatted a big cockroach with a wingtip. Mueller asked a judge for immunity for up to five witnesses to testify in the coming trial of former Trump campaign manager Manafort. That means there are five people who may be compelled to give testimony as witnesses. They are to be granted “use immunity,” which means nothing they say can be used against them.
They will not be able to plead the Fifth.
Is it still possible that President Trump will be absolved of
all crimes during his campaign? I taught history for decades. I go only with
facts I think are proven. He could be innocent. He could be nothing more than a
poor dupe. I can’t deny, however, that I think a Nike Mag 2016 basketball shoe
(cost: $26,000) may be hovering over his orange,
hair-spray-helmeted head.
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“I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that I’ve known to be a straight shooter.”
F.B.I. Director Wray
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F.B.I. DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY sits down in front of an audience at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado. He’ll be taking questions from moderator Lester Holt of NBC. For the third time, over the course of more than a year, including this past May and in June 2017, Wray makes it clear he does not believe the Russia investigation is a witch hunt.
In the wake of the president’s recent statements in Helsinki, that he believes Putin, then he doesn’t, then he kind of does, you sense exasperation and a real hint of doubt about the innocence of the president in Director Wray’s response. “I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that I’ve known to be a straight shooter.”
Remember now. Wray was Trump’s pick to head the F.B.I. He just backed up Mueller 100 percent.
Holt wonders: “There have also been stories that you threatened to resign. Have you ever hit a point on that issue of sources and methods or anything else when you said, this is a line?”
Wray replies, “I’m a low-key, understated guy, but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of. I’ll just leave it at that.”
BLOGGER’S NOTE (8/22/19): Patrick Byrne, CEO of
Overstock.com, resigns from the company and admits having an
on-and-off sexual relationship with Ms. Butina for three years. This was at the
same time Ms. Butina was living with longtime Republican fixer Paul Erickson.
Byrne says he only did it for the sake of the
country. That was the only reason he had sex with the young redhead. He
sacrificed patriotic semen for us all.
Byrne told an interviewer on Fox Business News,
where no story is too stupid to fly, that the F.B.I. encouraged him to boink
the babe.
It was part of a “soft coup” (no pun intended) to
undermine Donald J. Trump! “There is a Deep State, like a submarine, lurking
just beneath the waves at periscope depth, watching our shipping lanes,” he
claimed. “And a nuclear icebreaker named the USS Bill Barr has snuck
up on them and is about to ram them at midship.”
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