"Ex-aide says she refused Trump hush money, calls him racist" by Josh Dawsey Washington Post August 10, 2018
WASHINGTON — Omarosa Manigault Newman was offered a $15,000-a-month contract from President Trump’s campaign to stay silent after being fired from her job as a White House aide by Chief of Staff John Kelly last December, according to a forthcoming book by Manigault Newman and people familiar with the proposal, but she refused, according to the incendiary new book, ‘‘Unhinged: An Insider Account of Trump’s White House,’’ which also depicts Trump as unqualified, narcissistic, and racist. Excerpts of the book were obtained by The Washington Post.
How did the Washington ComPost obtain them? Someone gave them to them. Obtained makes it seem like they had to work for it.
After she was fired, Manigault Newman wrote, she received a call from Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, offering her a job and the monthly contract in exchange for her silence.
The proposed nondisclosure agreement allegedly said Manigault Newman could not make any comments about Trump or his family; Vice President Mike Pence or his family; or any comments that could damage the president.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the book ‘‘is riddled with lies and false accusations.”
“It’s sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the president during her time in the administration,’’ Huckabee Sanders said.
The allegations threaten to become another political headache for the administration akin to a separate controversial book earlier this year by journalist Michael Wolff, ‘‘Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,’’ which detailed a wayward White House and prompted broad denunciations from Trump and his aides.
Yeah, he had his 15 minutes and then the book was gone.
The White House had initially planned on trying to avoid commenting on the Manigault Newman’s book to keep it from getting more attention, White House aides said.
For months while in the White House, Manigault Newman said, she spent time searching for a rumored tape of Trump saying the N-word on tape as host of ‘‘The Apprentice.’’ Her book does not provide evidence that such a tape exists. Manigault Newman also says that other aides in the White House kept tabs on rumors of the tape.
There is no tape?
‘‘By that point, three sources in three separate conversations had described the contents of this tape,’’ she writes. ‘‘They all told me that President Trump hadn’t just dropped a single N-word bomb. He’d said it multiple times throughout the show’s taping during off-camera outtakes, particularly during the first season of ‘The Apprentice.’ ’’
Problem with the charge is we would have heard about this long before now.
There is no tape?
Manigault Newman is expected to appear on ‘‘Meet the Press’’ on Sunday morning and will then go on a longer publicity tour.
Looks $elf-$erving to me.
Her book is the first insider account from a White House aide that is not largely flattering toward the president. Manigault Newman, who was the highest-ranking black employee in the White House, calls Trump a ‘‘racist, misogynist, and bigot.’’
But she hung around and worked for him.
Whether the book paints an accurate depiction of Trump’s conduct or amounts primarily to a disgruntled tome from a reality TV star-turned-White House aide is in dispute.
So she can sell books and be in the ma$$ media spotlight.
White House aides have long described Manigault Newman as a problematic employee who exploded at other West Wing aides.
Oh, she had anger issues, too?
Manigault Newman held one of the highest-paid positions in the West Wing for a year, securing the job as an ‘‘assistant to the president’’ after starring as a famed villain in his TV show, ‘‘The Apprentice,’’ and working for the Trump Organization.
Manigault Newman does not offer evidence for some of her most explosive charges but also extensively taped her conversations in the White House, according to people familiar with the tapes, who requested anonymity.
WHAT!!!
She taped conversations but has no evidence?
Manigault Newman questions Trump’s mental state, describes him as unstable, and portrays him as unable to control his impulses while describing the extensive lengths that staff members have gone to in attempts to keep him in line.
‘‘All we need to remember is that Trump loves the hate,’’ she writes. ‘‘He thrives on criticism and insults. He delights in chaos and confusion. Taking to Twitter to call him names only fuels him and riles his base. To disarm him, starve his ego; don’t feed into it.’’
Like what you and the ma$$ media are doing?
--more--"
You dig a little deeper and you find this:
"Before becoming famous on “The Apprentice,” Manigault served in the Clinton administration and had publicly embraced liberal views."
So she has a political ax to grind as well.
"Black conservatives reel after Omarosa resigns" by Astead W. Herndon and Annie Linskey Globe Staff December 16, 2017
WASHINGTON — When the White House senior staff convened Friday for a regular briefing, there was not one black person among the roughly 30 people gathered, and few minorities overall.
The departure Wednesday of Omarosa Manigault, the former assistant to the president and longtime Trump confidant, gained headlines for its bizarre circumstances — she reportedly tried to gain access to the president’s private residence before her White House security pass was revoked, but her sudden absence also casts a fresh spotlight on the startling lack of racial diversity in Trump’s administration.
Now, many black conservatives are worried that Manigault’s departure means they’ve lost their only avenue to influence the president. No potential replacements have yet emerged, and a timetable for replacing her was not clear Friday.
I think you black conservatives got snookered!
African-American representation is especially thin among the ranks of roughly 125 “commissioned officers’’ within the White House, high-ranking staffers designated as assistant, deputy assistant, and special assistant to the president. There are only three black staff members with the commissioned officer rank, according to an administration official who asked not to be named because the official was not permitted to release personnel information. The White House would not provide a list of those black staffers.
The list does include Ja’Ron Smith, a midlevel black staffer, who was promoted this week to be special assistant to the president, which is the lowest commissioned rank and below the level at which Manigault served.
“Whether it’s because Omarosa left or whether it was an image issue, Ja’Ron deserves the opportunity,” said Gianno Caldwell, a black Republican political strategist and Fox News contributor. “He’s smart and incredibly strategic and has a skill set that is unmatched.”
A hallmark of the Trump administration’s first year has been its struggle to connect with black communities, with the president seeming to go out of his way at times to offend nonwhites. Trump offered a partial defense of white supremacists after a riot in Charlottesville, Va., attacked prominent black lawmakers including Representative Maxine Waters, and used vulgar language to attack black athletes protesting police brutality.
Related: Blacks' approval of Trump reaches a high of 21% and NAACP charges 'racism'
Someone isn't connecting, that's for sure.
Manigault, a fiery former reality television star, was often a divisive personal figure within the administration, and would get into personal spats with colleagues and reporters, but officials close to the White House have also said she used her personal relationship with the president to advocate for greater inclusion of minority voices and organizations.
But now they like her!
That voice is now gone.
“She was the one bringing black folks to the table,” said Caldwell. “That was her great benefit.”
Caldwell said that Manigault had “great influence” with Trump from her long relationship with him well before he was involved with politics, and it began with Trump’s reality television show, “The Apprentice.”
I'm waiting for the other shoe.
Outside the West Wing, there is a smidgen more diversity within the administration. White House officials point to Trump’s Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, who is black; Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta, who is Hispanic; Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is Asian-American; and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is Indian-American.
A Globe survey of White House personnel making more than $100,000 showed few minority staff overall.
There was one black person, Leah LeVell, among the dozens of staff who handle press and communications in the Trump White House, but she recently left for another job. There is an Indian-American in a senior communications role — Raj Shah is the principal deputy press secretary.
The White House declined to comment for this story. At a press briefing Thursday, press secretary Sarah Sanders would not provide numbers about the racial diversity of White House staff, though she asserted that the administration was committed to the concept.
“We have a really diverse team across the board at the White House,” Sanders said. “Something that we strive for every day is to add and grow, to be more diverse and more representative of the country at large, and we’re going to continue to do that.”
Katrina Pierson, the black woman who once served as Trump’s national campaign spokeswoman during election season, was considered for a slot in the White House, but she turned it down.
Pierson said she’s unconcerned with the lack of diversity among Trump’s top staffers.
“Optics really only matter in politics,” Pierson said in an interview. “I think what people really care about is the policy that’s coming down the pipe . . . so I’m not really concerned at all.”
YUP!
Manigault had several signature issues during her time in the White House, including supporting historically black colleges and universities and protecting Haitian immigrants, according to people familiar with her role. It also included behind-the-scenes advocacy for more racial diversity among new hires in the administration.
One example is Earl Matthews, a black, Harvard-trained lawyer whom Manigault pushed to be the Army’s general counsel.
Instead, to the dismay of some in the White House, the Trump administration tapped two white candidates. The first, Ryan Dean Newman was blocked by Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, because of his opposition to including women in the military draft, according to Defense News.
The administration then turned to James E. McPherson, who is also white. His nomination was approved by the Armed Services Committee last month and appears to be on a glide path for confirmation by the full Senate.
Another bone of contention has been Smith, the newly promoted black special assistant to the president. Smith was an aide to Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and joined the Trump White House in January.
Smith is known as a policy wonk and is frequently cited by black conservatives as their most trusted person in the White House. He joined the administration in January and was promised that he would have a commissioned officer rank and salary, according to a senior White House official. Instead, he received a midlevel job and was paid $83,000 — a far cry from senior policy officials and in the bottom half of White House salaries overall.
She fooled ya'!
Smith’s hefty portfolio includes working on issues such as urban affairs, transportation, and criminal justice reform, according to a Trump administration official.
Many felt Manigault, though not always successful, could make the case for diversity in the administration, sometimes bypassing traditional order and speaking to the president himself.
When Trump was criticized for not adequately condemning white supremacists in Charlottesville in August, it was Manigault who relayed the concerns of black staffers, officials said. She also advocated for Haitian immigrants to be spared deportation under the temporary protected status program.
“I appreciated the fact that she started and tried to be a voice for black organizations,” Caldwell said, but Manigault’s rapid ascension to the senior levels of the White House was always a point of controversy, even in the country’s small, close-knit circle of black conservatives. Some felt she was emblematic of an administration that valued personal relationships over expertise and that her penchant for drama weighed the administration down.
Oh, really?
And now she has a big book out!
Before becoming famous on “The Apprentice,” Manigault served in the Clinton administration and had publicly embraced liberal views.....
I'm sorry, what?
--more--"
Related:
"Omarosa Manigault Newman, one of the president’s prominent African-American supporters, was not well liked by some White House advisers, including Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser; and John F. Kelly, the current chief of staff, according to multiple White House officials, and several people familiar with Newman’s departure said she had been sending articles to Trump without Kelly’s approval....."
So Kelly got a posse together and rode her out of town.
Might want to get that one checked out.
**********
Maybe the mole was Manafort:
"Jury told official who OK’d Manafort loans sought Trump job" by Stephen Braun and Chad Day Associated Press August 10, 2018
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A New York bank executive testified Friday that Paul Manafort received more than $16 million in loans after the bank’s chairman expressed interest in joining President Trump’s Cabinet if he won the 2016 election.
The testimony in the former Trump campaign chairman’s financial fraud trial came after proceedings were halted for hours by mysterious backstage discussions between the judge and attorneys for both sides.
Prosecutors now say they will wrap up their case against Manafort on Monday. Defense lawyers have not said whether they expect to call any witnesses after that.
It was a strange interruption in nine days of proceedings that have been sometimes dramatic and featured tense exchanges between prosecutors and admittedly impatient US District Judge T.S. Ellis III as he has pushed the government to speed up its case.
Ellis recessed the trial without explanation after huddling with his bailiff and attorneys from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office and Manafort’s lawyers for more than 20 minutes.
At one point, Ellis left the courtroom and headed toward the jury room. After bringing court back into session, he reminded jurors several times that they weren’t to discuss the tax evasion and bank fraud case at all. That included telling them to not even comment on the attire of any witnesses.
Is the stage being set for a mistrial?
The exchange came during a day in which jurors heard detailed testimony about Manafort’s bank loans and about his New York Yankees luxury season ticket purchases — paid for from an offshore account that prosecutors say he concealed from the IRS.
Dennis Raico, an executive at Federal Saving Bank who testified under an immunity agreement, detailed for jurors how he grew uncomfortable by the actions of bank chairman Stephen Calk in the handling of Manafort’s loans.
Then he is a discredited witness.
Prosecutors have said that despite red flags, Calk pushed through the loans for Manafort because he wanted a job in the Trump administration.
During his testimony, Raico told jurors that Calk discussed roles in the Trump campaign ahead of approving the loans and later specifically referenced being a candidate for secretary of the Treasury or Housing and Urban Development in messages he wanted Raico to pass to Manafort.
Raico said he didn’t relay Calk’s messages because he thought they were inappropriate.
What does this have to do with Russian collusion and interference in the vote?
The developments Friday came after jurors had endured testimony that sometimes ventured into the tedium of bank and tax records.
The prosecution is the first to emerge from Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, but neither Manafort nor Gates has been charged in connection with their Trump campaign work.
The prosecution has called more than 20 witnesses, including Gates, and introduced a trove of documentary evidence as sought to prove Manafort defrauded banks and concealed millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts from the IRS.
The bank fraud and tax evasion charges against Manafort are not related to the campaign or Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Mueller sought Manafort’s indictment using his authority to investigate evidence that arises on other crimes.
That it taken it for granted and at face value that they did.
During the trial, prosecutors have avoided any mention of the broader inquiry. Manafort, who might be able to assist investigators in determining whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice, has not said whether he would cooperate with Mueller in exchange for a lighter sentence.....
Yeah, that way Mueller can stitch together several episodes, encounters, and pieces of evidence, like the tweets, to build a case like a, you know, "conspiracy theorist" would!
He's been after him for a long time on this obstruction charge to the point of leaking to the pre$$, "the questions provide the most detailed look yet inside Mueller’s investigation, which has been shrouded in secrecy since he was appointed nearly a year ago. The document was provided to the Times by a person outside Trump’s legal team. Mueller’s endgame remains a mystery, even if he determines the president broke the law. A long-standing Justice Department legal finding says presidents cannot be charged with a crime while they are in office."
That's the point, to get him out.
--more--"
Honestly, I don't care about this anymore.
Giuliani says Trump is going to have that one removed.
*********
Trump had a Stone in his shoe?
"A lifelong political scrapper, Roger Stone is fighting for his own legal future" by Alan Feuer New York Times August 11, 2018
As a flamboyant veteran of Washington and New York City politics, campaign strategist Roger J. Stone Jr. has been in any number of knock-’em-down scrapes over the years, reaching back four decades to his early days as a self-described “dirty trickster” in the Nixon administration, but now Stone, a veteran adviser to President Trump who has long cut a piratical figure on the political scene, appears to be engaged in his stiffest fight yet: the one for his own legal future.
Nixon was an unindicted co-conspirator, remember?
On Friday, a stream of developments in the special counsel investigation underscored his peril. An old friend — a former procuress from New York whom Stone has employed as an administrative worker — testified about him to the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the inquiry. Another old friend, a New York City radio host, has been subpoenaed to appear before the same grand jury. And one of his close aides was held in contempt of court for ignoring his own subpoena, though the order was stayed.
For months now, Stone, 65, has been a key focus of the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, into whether any Trump associates worked with Russian operatives who were secretly trying to tip the election in Trump’s favor. Stone is central to that question because he appeared to have advance knowledge of some of the moves that Russian hackers were making.
Stone dismissed the latest series of events on Friday afternoon, insisting that none of the three people knew anything about possible collusion with the Russians.
“None of my associates have any such knowledge, and the ongoing attempt to interrogate them appears to be an effort to fabricate some other ‘crime’ to pressure me into testifying against the president,” he said. “It really has the smell of a witch hunt.”
They are doing the same to Manafort.
What if there is nothing to testify to?
Stone once said in a speech that he had “communicated with” Julian Assange, the founder of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, and predicted that a trove of information about Hillary Clinton would be published before the 2016 election. And on Twitter, he seemed to correctly predict the release of e-mails — stolen by Russian hackers — sent and received by John D. Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.
That is the New York Times version, and there is no proof to it -- especially when the Shadow Brokers exposed that the CIA can plant server fingerprints to frame whomever they like.
Beyond that, the veracity and authenticity of the trove the ma$$ media fail to examine is not disputed. Say what you want about Wikileaks and where they got the stuff, but it's all true.
Stone has also acknowledged that before the 2016 election, he traded private messages with Guccifer 2.0, the mysterious online figure that was instrumental in helping WikiLeaks release the e-mails and other political documents that eventually proved damaging to Clinton’s presidential bid.
From the way the information was received it looks like it was transmitted by thumb drive and that would signify a leak, not a hack.
In an indictment unsealed last month, Mueller charged that Guccifer 2.0 was in fact a front for Russian intelligence officers. The indictment also said that a person “in regular contact with senior members” of Trump’s campaign had communicated with Guccifer 2.0. Government officials have identified that person as Stone.
CIA has them, too, or have you so quickly forgotten Valerie Plame?
Btw, how could they identify Stone as the contact but not find the Clinton e-mails, etc. The NSA had long been scooping up all communications by then, so where are they?
Each of the three people linked to Stone who either appeared before, or have been called to testify in front of, the grand jury have circuitous connections to the Russia investigation.
Here we go.
The former procuress, Kristin M. Davis, who is best known by her tabloid nickname, the “Manhattan Madam,” used Stone as a political consultant in 2010 when she started a protest run for New York governor. Stone has also employed her on and off in his office for years.
Oh, procuress was an elite and polite way of saying whorehouse Madam and pimp.
Neither Davis nor her lawyer, Daniel Hochheiser, returned phone calls Friday seeking comment on her grand jury appearance.
The radio host, Randy Credico, a left-wing gadfly who has had his own failed bids for office, met Stone in the early 2000s when they worked together on a campaign to liberalize New York’s drug laws. Last year, Credico was identified as the intermediary between Stone and Assange of WikiLeaks. On Friday, Credico’s lawyer, Martin Stolar, said his client was scheduled to appear before the Russia grand jury on Sept. 7.
Stone’s aide, Andrew Miller, received his own subpoena to appear before the Russia grand jury this year, and his lawyers have been trying to quash it it ever since. According to news reports, that effort failed Friday when Miller failed to show up for the grand jury and was held in contempt.
--more--"
Here is how they tried to set him up:
"Trump associate Roger Stone reveals new contact with Russian national during 2016 campaign" by Manuel Roig-Franzia and Rosalind S. Helderman The Washington Post June 17, 2018
MIAMI - One day in late May 2016, Roger Stone - the political dark sorcerer and longtime confidant of Donald Trump - slipped into his Jaguar and headed out to meet a man with a Make America Great Again hat and a viscous Russian accent.
The man, who called himself Henry Greenberg, offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in the upcoming presidential election, according to Stone - who spoke about the previously unreported incident in interviews with The Washington Post. Greenberg, who did not reveal the information he claimed to possess, wanted Trump to pay $2 million for the political dirt, Stone said.
‘‘You don’t understand Donald Trump,’’ Stone recalled saying before rejecting the offer at a restaurant in the Russian-expat magnet of Sunny Isles, Florida. ‘‘He doesn’t pay for anything.’’
Unless you are a porn star.
Later, Stone got a text message from Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign communications official who’d arranged the meeting after Greenberg had approached Caputo’s Russian-immigrant business partner.
‘‘How crazy is the Russian?’’ Caputo wrote according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted ‘‘big’’ money, Stone replied: ‘‘waste of time.’’
Named Greenberg?
Looks like Stone sniffed out the trap immediately.
Two years later, the brief sit-down in Florida has resurfaced as part of special counsel Robert Mueller III’s sprawling investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, according to Caputo. Caputo said he was asked about the meeting by prosecutors during a sometimes-heated questioning session last month.
My print copy then tells me that in a separate development, President Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani suggesteds Trump may pardon Manafort after Mueller's probe, and that also Sunday an FBI agent who was removed from Mueller's team after sending anti-Trump text messages said he is willing to testify before Congress (that would be Peter Strzok, the scapegoat and fall guy for the nest of illegality and politicization over at the DoJ).
The web Globe stayed at the meeting:
Stone and Caputo, who did not previously disclose the meeting to congressional investigators, now say they believe they were the targets of a setup by U.S. law enforcement officials hostile to Trump.
That is what it is looking like now, yeah. The Obama team used a phony dossier from a political campaign to obtain warrants to spy on and attempt to infiltrate the Trump campaign, and they used the national security apparatus and law enforcement agencies to do it. It's Nixon's Watergate on steroids. He only used the agencies to try and cover up a political crime.
They cite records - independently examined by The Post - showing that the man who approached Stone is actually a Russian national who has claimed to work as an FBI informant.
Interviews and additional documents show that Greenberg has at times used the name Henry Oknyansky. Under that name, he claimed in a 2015 court filing related to his immigration status that he had provided information to the FBI for 17 years. He attached records showing that the government had granted him special permission to enter the United States because his presence represented a ‘‘significant public benefit.’’
Like the blind sheik who was alleged to be behind the first WTC attack in 1993. CIA got him a waiver.
There is no evidence that Greenberg was working with the FBI in his interactions with Stone, and in his court filing, Greenberg said that he had stopped his FBI cooperation sometime after 2013.
Greenberg, in text messages with The Post, denied that he had been acting on the FBI’s behalf when he met with Stone.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller’s office.
WTF?
The meeting took place two months earlier than federal officials have said a counterintelligence operation was officially opened and before WikiLeaks began releasing hacked Democratic emails.
Oh, the GOVERNMENT LIED AGAIN, great!
It came in the same time period as other episodes in which Russian interests approached the Trump campaign. A few weeks earlier, Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was told in London that the Russians had dirt on Clinton. And it was two weeks before the sit-down between Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who he had been told could offer information that would hurt Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father.
And then, of course, there was the infamous meeting commissioned by Don Jr.:
"Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor. At the time, the emissary was also promoting a secret plan to use private contractors to destabilize Iran. The meetings, which have not been reported previously, are the first indication that countries other than Russia may have offered assistance to the Trump campaign....."
I'm sorry, NYT, SAY AGAIN?
The contractor is Erik Prince (brother of Betsy DeVos) of Blackwater fame, the specialist is Joel Zamel, whose company employs several Israeli former intelligence officers specializing in collecting information and shaping opinion through social media and was paid up to $2 million, and the emissary would be the infamous Israeli fixer and interventionist George Nader, a convicted pedophile with a shadowy past, who frequently met with Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn.
Sorry to interrupt.
Trump and his allies have said the meetings were inconsequential, and there was no collusion.
Stone and Caputo’s interactions with Greenberg mean that at least 11 Trump associates or campaign officials have acknowledged interactions with a Russian during the election season or presidential transition. Those interactions have become public in the year and a half since a Trump spokeswoman said that no one associated with the campaign had communications with Russians or other foreign entities.
It is not clear how seriously investigators are taking the Florida meeting. Caputo said that prosecutors during his interview seemed to have intense interest in the interaction as well as the role of Greenberg.
Reached by phone, Greenberg, 59, initially denied Stone’s account of a meeting.
‘‘This is wrong information,’’ Greenberg said.
Later, in text messages to a Post reporter, Greenberg changed his story, acknowledging that he’d met with Stone and providing a skeletal account of the encounter that matched Stone’s in some ways. Unprompted, Greenberg used essentially the same language as Stone to describe Stone’s reaction: ‘‘Trump will never pay for anything.’’
How can you believe a liar?
Stone may be a sleazy, slimy operator, but he's consistent in his story and it has proved out.
Stone said Greenberg was alone at the meeting, but Greenberg said he was accompanied by a Ukrainian friend he identified only as Alexei, who he said had been fired from a job with the Clinton Foundation, a global charitable organization founded by Hillary Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton. A Clinton Foundation spokesman said the foundation has never employed a man with the first name of Alexei.
It was a pay-for-play extortion racket run under the rubric of the State Department, and this is like a reverse Omarosa!
‘‘He was very upset, and he wants to tell his story,’’ Greenberg said in a text. ‘‘He told Mr. Stone what he knew and what he want.’’
The corruption and looting, or the fact that the Clinton's kept most of the money.
Greenberg denied that he asked for money, saying that it was his friend who spoke with Stone.
Trump and his allies previously accused the FBI of unfairly targeting his campaign following revelations that another FBI informant, Cambridge University professor Stefan A. Halper, approached Papadopoulos and two other campaign advisers starting in July 2016 to gather information about their possible ties to Russia.
Yeah, who remembers Halper?
‘‘If you believe that (Greenberg) took time off from his long career as an FBI informant to reach out to us in his spare time, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I want to sell you,’’ Caputo said in an interview.
In a separate interview, Stone said: ‘‘I didn’t realize it was an FBI sting operation at the time, but it sure looks like one now.’’
The Florida meeting adds another layer of complexity to Stone’s involvement in the Russia probe. For months, as several of Stone’s employees and associates have been subpoenaed or have appeared before the Mueller grand jury, it has been clear that the special counsel has been scrutinizing repeated claims by Stone that he communicated with WikiLeaks via a back-channel source before the group’s 2016 release of hacked Democratic Party emails.
Stone has said it’s possible he will be indicted, speculating that Mueller might charge him with a crime unrelated to the election in order to silence him. He said he anticipates that his meeting with Greenberg could be used in an attempt to pressure him to testify against Trump - something he says he would never do.
Turns out this one is benign.
Caputo’s attorney on Friday sent a letter amending his House testimony, and he plans to present Caputo’s account of the Greenberg incident to the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Justice, which has announced it is examining the FBI’s use of informants during the Russia probe. Stone said his attorney has done the same.
Documents and interviews reveal a quirk-filled story that spans three decades and two continents. It touches down in locales as distinct as a hipster Miami art gallery and a riverfront construction site. But, like so much of the drama swirling around the 2016 election, its roots lie far away from American ballot boxes - in the Russian capital of Moscow.
Though they never met, both Caputo and Greenberg lived heady existences in Moscow in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a period when the city had a frisson of artistic and creative energy that Caputo compares to ‘‘Paris of the 1920s, but with Kalashnikovs.’’ Caputo had moved to Russia to develop a Rock-the-Vote-style campaign for Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Greenberg was already a familiar figure in the city’s social whirl. He married a Russian actress and moved to Los Angeles. Court records show that, after being charged in 1994 with assault with a deadly weapon, he entered a plea in which he was convicted without accepting guilt.
According to a declaration he filed in court, Greenberg spent almost two years in the custody of the U.S. immigration service. He said he decided in 2000 to return to Russia, where, according to interviews and local media coverage, he resumed a glamorous life.
So that is how the FBI convinced him to become an informant.
For a time, he shared an apartment at a fashionable Moscow address with John Daly, a producer of hit films including ‘‘Terminator,’’ and he was well known by expats from the Moscow club scene.
‘‘He was an up and down kind of guy. Charming. Very ingratiating and personal,’’ said Edward Bass, a movie producer who spent time with Greenberg in Moscow in that time.
According to accounts in Russian media, he was arrested in 2002 and charged with a decade-old $2.7 million fraud. The Moscow Times reported that authorities found three passports with false names in his apartment and photographs that appeared to show him posing with movie directors Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone.
The Post was unable to determine the outcome of the case from public records. Greenberg denied wrongdoing, saying he was not convicted, and the case was closed.
Greenberg returned to the United States, according to immigration records that he submitted as part of his federal court filing in 2015.
He attached to the statement government documents outlining his immigration history.
Between 2008 and 2012, the records show, he repeatedly was extended permission to enter the United States under a so-called ‘‘significant public benefit parole.’’ The documents list an FBI agent as a contact person. The agent declined to comment.
Was it Strzok? Or Bruce Orr?
Immigration lawyer David Leopold, former president of American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the documents described an immigration history generally consistent with Greenberg’s claims that he had been allowed to enter the United States to assist law enforcement.
In a 2015 court declaration, Greenberg - using the last name Oknyansky - said he’d been giving information to the FBI since returning to Russia from the United States in 2000.
Then they sent him over as a spy and then used him to try and entrap the Trump campaign!
‘‘Wherever I was, from Iran to North Korea, I always send information to’’ the FBI, he wrote. ‘‘I cooperated with the FBI for 17 years, often put my life in danger. Based on my information, there is so many arrests criminal from drugs and human trafficking, money laundering and insurance frauds.’’
OMG, they sent him to Iran and North Korea, too!
Greenberg did not respond to questions about his use of multiple names but said in a text that he had worked for the ‘‘federal government’’ for 17 years.
‘‘I risked my life and put myself in danger to do so, as you can imagine,’’ he said.
When is the movie out?
By May 2016, Greenberg was in the midst of an eventually unsuccessful zoning fight to open a restaurant on the Miami River, according to public records. He showed up without an invitation at a gallery opening organized by Caputo’s public relations firm, according to Caputo’s business partner, Sergey ‘‘George’’ Petrushin.
Greenberg approached Petrushin and invited him to check out the possible restaurant site the next day, Petrushin said. According to Petrushin, Greenberg eventually said that he knew Petrushin was partners with Caputo and that he had information he wanted to share that would be helpful to Trump’s campaign.
Petrushin called Caputo, and handed the phone to Greenberg to make his pitch.
At the time, Caputo said, Russia was not a major campaign issue, and the man’s accent raised no red flags for him.
‘‘I said, ‘Let me get somebody to vet it for you,’’’ Caputo recalls saying.
Caputo knew just the guy: Roger Stone.
Stone had spent decades trying to persuade Trump to run for president. In the spring of 2016, Stone was no longer with the campaign - but he remained in touch with Trump and some in his orbit.
When Stone arrived at the restaurant in Sunny Isles, he said, Greenberg was wearing a Make America Great Again T-shirt and hat. On his phone, Greenberg pulled up a photo of himself with Trump at a rally, Stone said.
‘‘We really want to help Trump,’’ Stone recalled Greenberg saying during the brief encounter.
By Greenberg’s account, he had limited contact with Stone, sitting at a nearby table while his friend Alexei conducted the meeting. ‘‘Alexei talk to Mr. Stone, not me,’’ he wrote. He added that he believes Alexei has moved back to Ukraine, and they are not in contact.
When Caputo followed up with Stone via text to ask if ‘‘anything at all interesting’’ took place, Stone responded with a single word: ‘‘No.’’
--more--"
Must be something to his story because they tried to poison him.
Think of the stories he could tell you if you sat down with him for an hour:
"Asked why Infowars, the conspiratorial news and opinion site, was a better news network than CNN, Stone said CNN “had ceased to be a news organization” and that “big media was in bed with the establishment.” Infowars famously said that the killing of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a “completely fake” hoax.
Is that why they just shut Alex down?
And when asked whether the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job, Stone said there are questions that “need to be explored.” He also said President Trump agreed with him on that point. Trump “shares your curiosity about 9/11, and I think he believes there are a number of unanswered questions,” Stone told a member of the audience who identified herself as a member of the DC 9/11 Truth Commission. “Why the third building collapsed is one that I have wondered.”
Now I can see and understand the hysterical vitriol of the mouthpiece ma$$ media and deep state. If the truth of that inside job false flag ever got out.... whew!
What it proves is Trump knows.
Other Stone statements: the unfounded claim that immigrants will soon infiltrate America’s “open borders” and bring rape and crime. He said The Washington Post left out “inconvenient facts” about the Watergate scandal to unfairly shame Nixon. Stone also said there was no question former president Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the JFK assassination....."
Next thing you know they will be blaming Trump for the duck boat and 9/11 (In fact, Nancy just did).
If the stakes are that high, Mueller should talk to Omaro$a (where is Michael Wolff now?). Kelly pushed her out, but she did not ‘‘go quietly.’’ Before Trump entered the presidential race she was backing Hillary Clinton and there is some mystery behind this, but I'm sure her book will be a “a stunning tell-all and takedown.” If I were Trump I would block Twitter and Facebook, but maybe it is too late. He's already provided testimony (not under oath, of course. Just thought I would throw that in there. Kind of important, from a point of law perspective).
The sharks are circling, but "many targets simply pay to make the nuisance go away, even when the claims are bogus." That would bring you back to Stormy Daniels and the shadowy business empire of Trump's fixer, often operating in the backwaters of the financial and legal world with a father-in-law who was born in Ukraine and helped his son-in-law get the money-laundering cabbie concern going. Looks like Trump was wrong about him flipping.
Btw, whatever happened with the AT&T, Novartis, Vekselberg, and Schneiderman cases anyway?
Went away when he did, huh?
Trump is still gunning for the FBI over Russia. Flynn is part of Jaredgate, which is why the probe is veering off into parts unknown and why we get the issues of race and granola back.
Report finds police mishandled Charlottesville rally
Looks like a LIHOP, and there is nothing funny about murder.
I don't know what is the solution.
"Russia’s former economics minister was handed an eight-year prison sentence Friday after being convicted of accepting a $2 million bribe from one of President Vladimir Putin’s top associates. The high-profile trial of Alexei Ulyukayev has been widely seen as part of infighting between Kremlin clans. Ulyukayev was a key member of a group of liberal-minded technocrats in the Cabinet, while his accuser, Igor Sechin, is the most prominent representative of the hard-line flank of the Russian elite. Sechin heads Russia’s largest oil producer, Rosneft, and his clout is second only that of Putin. The 61-year-old Ulyukayev is the highest-ranking Russian official to be arrested in more than two decades. The case was viewed by many as Sechin’s personal vendetta against Ulyukayev, who had been critical of a Rosneft privatization plan proposed by Sechin....."
He wasn't the Alexei that met with Stone and Greenberg, was he?
