Tag: JEB BUSH

(FROM THE DEEP STATE) – POMPEO TO HIRE ANTI-TRUMPER AS STATE DEPT SPOKESPERSON

Pompeo To Hire Anti-Trumper As State Dept Spokesperson

Morgan Ortagus a neocon who worked for Jeb Bush super PAC

 | Infowars.com – APRIL 3, 2019

The State Department is preparing to hire anti-Trumper and former Jeb Bush supporter Morgan Ortagus as the department’s new spokesperson, according to reports.

Ortagus, who worked for a super PAC tied to Jeb Bush, had described Donald Trump as “disgusting” in 2016 shortly after he was elected.

“You have somebody who makes fun of people with mental and physical disabilities. That’s disgusting; there’s no other way around it,” she said. “Quite frankly, I don’t want someone with the temperament of a middle school pubescent boy in the president’s office.”

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She had also criticized Trump’s foreign policy approach.

“In his gut, he does not think that Americans should be, quote unquote, the policemen of the world,” she said in April 2016.

“I don’t see it that way. I think that America is the glue that holds the world together…So there were points that I agreed with him today, but overall, I fundamentally disagree with his isolationist approach to foreign policy.”

From CNN:

“Former Fox News contributor Morgan Ortagus, the expected pick to become the next State Department spokesperson, repeatedly criticized President Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, a CNN review found.”

“Ortagus publicly lambasted then-candidate Trump over what she called his “isolationist foreign policy approach,” and blasted behavior she qualified as ‘disgusting’ and ‘not serious.’”

“However, she quickly reinvented herself as a vocal Trump supporter after he secured the party’s nomination and has remained a key TV surrogate for the administration over the last two years.”

Ortagus, a former Fox News contributor, is set to replace Heather Nauert after she was tapped to become the UN ambassador.

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President Trump Bashes ‘Illegal Takedown That Failed,’ Hints That Republicans Will Investigate The Hoaxers

By

President Donald Trump was magnanimous in victory as the Robert Mueller investigation formally cleared him of Russia collusion and obstruction of justice, according to attorney general William Barr. Trump hinted that investigators will now look into “the other side,” as Rep. Devin Nunes prepares to probe the Democrats who cooked up the media hoax in an effort to divert attention from their Uranium One dealings with the Russian government.

Trump told reporters that the idea of Russia collusion is “the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” while White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that Trump and his supporters are “vindicated” and Rudy Giuliani trolled Adam Schiff with a call for an apology.

“It’s a shame that the country had to go through this,” President Trump said.

The Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who set up Don Trump Jr. for a meeting in Trump Tower as part of a Fusion GPS plot was operating out of the Washington offices of Cozen O’Connor, a law firm run by an anti-Trump former Obama administration official whose super PAC donated to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential election.

Veselnitskaya’s work from the Cozen O’Connor office provides more evidence of a Democrat and establishment Republican effort to set up the Trump campaign for a future Russian collusion case. Veselnitskaya was allowed into the United States by the Obama Department of Justice while the former Obama official who runs Cozen O’Connor publicly warned then-candidate Trump that if he became president he would be investigated by the DOJ for contacts with foreign leaders. Veselnitskaya reportedly had dinner meetings with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson the day before she met in Trump Tower and also the day after she went inside Trump Tower.

Big League Politics has confirmed that a Cozen O’Connor partner who lives in the same apartment building as James Comey’s friend Daniel Richman — who leaked classified information to the press on Comey’s behalf — spoke with Richman during the period that Comey and the Fusion GPS team were trying to obtain FISA warrants on Trump Tower.

CAP

Let’s break down the facts of an Obama administration official’s involvement in the Trump Tower plot:

Russian and U.S. citizen Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military veteran, was present at Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower after leading a lobbying push supposedly to repeal the Magnitsky Act. Akhmestshin is believed by insiders to be linked to Russian government intelligence, a fact that the Washington Post seized on when reporting that he met with Don Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower. A nonprofit group focused on promoting Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya’s cause to lawmakers actually hired Cozen O’Connor, which the law firm confirms.

The Washington Post reported (emphasis added):

“In the spring of 2016, as the presidential race was heating up, Akhmetshin and lobbyists he hired sought meetings on Capitol Hill to make their case against the sanctions law. Akhmetshin hired former Democratic congressman Ron Dellums, along with a team of lobbyists from the law firm of Cozen O’Connor.
Steve Pruitt, a business colleague speaking on Dellums’s behalf, said his involvement was brief and ended when he determined that Congress was unlikely to change the law.

In June, after visiting Trump Tower in New York, Veselnitskaya came to Washington to lend a hand in the lobbying effort.

She attended a meeting of the team at the downtown offices of Cozen O’Connor, where she spoke at length in Russian about the issues but confused many in the room, who had not been told previously about her involvement, according to several participants.”

Washington Post passage ends

Cozen O’Connor managing partner Howard Schweitzer is listed here on a DOJ form from an investigation into the breaking of lobbying laws by Russians trying to repeal the Magnitsky Act — which was just a front to get Russians in the room with Don Jr. We know now that Natalia Veselnitskaya was actually operating out of the Cozen O’Connor offices.

CAP

Schweitzer worked as general counsel for the Export-Import Bank under George W. Bush and was chief operating officer of the TARP bailout program under both Bush and Obama from 2008-2009.

“In October 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appointed Howard as the first COO of TARP. In this position, Howard led program execution and built the TARP infrastructure. He served as a key point person regarding the financial crisis through the presidential transition and continued to serve as TARP COO under Secretary Timothy Geithner until August 2009,” reads Schweitzer’s Cozen O’Connor bio.

“He served as chief operating officer of the TARP in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations,” reads Schweitzer’s bio for a Politico piece he wrote in August 2016 headlined “7 Reasons Why Trump Would Hate Being President.”

Schweitzer’s virulently anti-Trump piece for Politico tries to make the case that Trump was “sabotaging his own bid for the White House.” Schweitzer said that if Trump became president then “He’ll be investigated to death” by Congress and the Justice Department for his business dealings and “relationships with foreign leaders.”

The narrative was being set.

The Philadelphia-based Cozen O’Connor law firm also has a political action committee that donated to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, in addition to Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Martin O’Malley. In the 2018 election cycle, the Cozen O’Connor PAC donated more money to Hillary Clinton’s dormant campaign.

Here is Veselnitskaya seated behind Obama ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul at a June 2016 congressional hearing focused on Russia.

Cozen O’Connor’s connections to the anti-Trump “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot are wide-ranging, and show up in unexpected places.

James Comey’s friend, Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, leaked classified information that Comey gave him. During this leaking period, Richman was apartment-building neighbors with a partner at the Cozen O’Connor law firm that strategized with Fusion GPS operative Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian plant who set up Don Jr. in Trump Tower.

Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, led by Glenn Simpson, were part of John Brennan and Peter Strzok’s CIA-led “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot aimed at President Donald Trump and the Trump campaign.

“Yes, he is my neighbor,” Amy Wenzel, a partner at Cozen O’Connor, confirmed in a phone conversation with Big League Politics, confirming that they spoke. They live near each other in a Brooklyn high-rise.

The Washington Post’s release of Trump Tower documents shows the crowd surrounding non-sexual honeypot Natalia Veselnitskaya. The crowd of conspirators knew they were damaging Trump by setting up the meeting.

The Post confirms British-citizen music promoter Rob Goldstone’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he described the conspirators’ push to get the meeting despite the fact that they knew it would create trouble for the Trump campaign.

The Post reports:

“Rob Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between President Trump’s son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material on Clinton, overriding Goldstone’s own warnings that the meeting would be a bad idea.

“He said, ‘it doesn’t matter. You just have to get the meeting,’ ” Goldstone, a British citizen, testified.

The intensity with which Agalarov and his father, the billionaire Aras Agalarov, sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for congressional inquiries and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was revealed in more than 2,500 pages of congressional testimony and exhibits released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.”

Washington Post passage ends

Natalia Veselnitskaya is also inextricably linked to the case against Paul Manafort.

The Russian attorney partner of Paul Manafort who was named as a defendant in new Robert Mueller charges is also linked to the Russian spy Natalia Vesenilskaya, who attended a meeting with Don Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower.

According to Mueller’s new charges, Manafort’s Russian partner Konstantin Kilimnik tried to intimidate or coerce witnesses in Manafort’s upcoming money laundering trial. That puts Konstantin Kilimnik at the center of the Mueller effort to find obstruction of justice in Trump-World (Mueller is giving himself until September 1 to try to find obstruction of justice, after finding no Russian collusion involving Trump).
So who is Konstantine Kilimnik? It turns out that Kilimnik is linked to Veselnitskaya, the Fusion GPS agent, according to Senate documents.

Here is how ProPublica described Kilimnik: “Konstantin Kilimnik: Manafort, who worked for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine before running Trump’s campaign, had an employee in Kiev named Konstantin Kilimnik who U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence, according to Politico. Kilimnik served in the Russian army and learned English at a school that experts say often trains spies. Kilimnik denied being a spy to The Washington Post. Manafort had dinner with Kilimnik last August in New York, just before he was forced out of the Trump campaign amid growing questions about his work in the Ukraine, the Post reported.”

Documents reveal Kilimnik’s ties to Veselniskaya. Let’s take a look at United States Senate Judiciary Committee documents questioning Veselniskaya in October. Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Veselniskaya if she knew a handful of characters believed to be conspirators in the case.

Grassley and Feinstein specifically asked Veselnitskaya if she knew Konstantin Kilimnik.

Here is page 4 of the documents, naming Kilimnik:

Current Attorney General Jeff Sessions was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as senator from Alabama.

Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower provided some of the basis for warrants to surveil Trump Tower and for other FBI surveillance measures on the Trump campaign.

The fact that Veselnitskaya, a lawyer herself, was in the meeting with Trump Jr. and Kushner opened the president’s son and son-in-law up to being qualified as “target associations” for law enforcement under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed during the Bush administration.

Veselniskaya’s link to suspected conspirator Kilimnik is now coming under scrutiny.

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WATCH: Jeb! Calls For Republican Challenger To Trump In 2020

Republican presidential hopefuls Donald Trump (L) and Jeb Bush high five during the Republican Presidential Debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California on September 16, 2015. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump

By AMANDA PRESTIGIACOMO

Former 2016 presidential hopeful and Florida governor Jeb Bush called for a Republican to challenge President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election bid, for the good of conservatives and for the country.

During an appearance on the podcast “The Axe Files,” hosted by CNN senior political commentator and former Barack Obama presidential campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, Bush said Republicans “ought to be a given a choice” in 2020.

“I think someone should run. Just because Republicans ought to be given a choice,” Bush told Axelrod, according to CNN.

Trump has a “has a strong, loyal base and it’s hard to beat a sitting president,” he noted. “But to have a conversation about what it is to be a conservative I think is important.”

“And our country needs to have competing ideologies that people — that are dynamic, that focus on the world we’re in and the world we’re moving towards rather than revert back to a nostalgic time,” Bush added.

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As noted by CNN, Axelrod brought up a 2020 Republican challenger to Trump in the context of Bush’s own support of Governor Larry Hogan (R-MD). The Republican’s January inauguration speech sparked reports of Hogan throwing his hat in the ring come 2020 campaign time.

Hogan is “at the top of a list of leaders that I admire today because what’s happening here in Annapolis is the antithesis of what’s happening in Washington, DC, these days,” Bush said of Hogan.

“I didn’t realize I was part of his pre-campaign,” explained the former 2016 candidate. “I kind of got a sense that maybe this was an opening, at least, for (Hogan) to consider (a presidential run).”

Hogan told CNN that he has spoken to people about potentially running in 2020. “People are talking to me about it,” he said. “I’m flattered people are saying that and including me in those discussions. My focus, my plan right now is to stay here for four years and do the best job I can in Maryland, but I’ve said, ‘You never say never.’ Who knows what’s going to happen.”

Tensions between Bush and Trump often boiled during the battle for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Trump famously branded Bush as “low energy” and mocked him for getting his “mommy” involved in the race; Bush denounced Trump as an unserious bully, among other jabs between the two.

In January 2016, for example, Trump mocked Bush for having his mother Barbara Bush appear in a campaign ad for him. “Just watched Jeb’s ad where he desperately needed mommy to help him. Jeb — mom can’t help you with ISIS, the Chinese or with Putin,” Trump posted to Twitter.

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Trump also tied the “low energy” descriptor to Bush as often as possible, such as this tweet from March, 2016: “Low energy Jeb Bush just endorsed a man he truly hates, Lyin’ Ted Cruz. Honestly, I can’t blame Jeb in that I drove him into oblivion!”

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Bush said Trump was a “candidate of chaos,” a “bully,” and “not a serious candidate” during a 2015 CNN appearance.

Bush’s appearance on “The Axe Files” is set to air on Saturday.

WATCH:

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HOAX: Adam Schiff and Natalia Both Met With Fusion GPS…Here’s How The Plot Went Down

By Patrick Howley

The Russia collusion hoax is on its last legs as the Senate Intelligence Committee finds no evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump’s team and the Russians. Despite charging Roger Stone with process crimes, to which Stone pleads not guilty, Robert Mueller has come up empty in his mission to fulfill Hillary Clinton’s media narrative hoax, which she concocted as the 2016 election began to slip away from her. (READ: CIA Whistleblower Says Hillary Clinton Laundered Russian Money Through Uranium One).

It turns out that Adam Schiff met with a co-founder of Fusion GPS, the “Dirty Dossier” research firm, in Aspen last summer, according to veteran investigative journalist Jon Solomon.

Natalia Veselnitskaya was charged with obstruction of justice to prevent her from coming back to the United States to testify in the Robert Mueller-related cases because her statements have already contradicted Mueller’s narrative, according to high-level FBI sources.

Veselnitskaya, who is now in Russia, was charged for making a “misleading declaration” in a civil money-laundering case. Veselnitskaya’s indictment was filedin federal court in Manhattan and unsealed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, formerly led by anti-Trump activist Preet Bharara and still dominated by his underlings.

Now Veselnitskaya can’t return to the United States to contradict the Michael Cohen-focused case, because she would be arrested upon her arrival in this country. So what could Veselnitskaya spill if she testified? For one thing, Fusion GPS has tried to claimno knowledge of Veselnitskaya’s Trump Tower meeting, despite the fact that Veselnitskaya had dinner with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson the night before the meeting and also the night after the meeting.

Veselnitskaya’s appearance on Fox News, in which she discussed her relationship with Glenn Simpson, did not sit well with the Operation Crossfire Hurricane conspirators. Particularly her quote, “But my meeting was not at all connected with Mrs. Hillary Clinton.”

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney who signed the Veselnitskaya indictment, was recused from the Michael Cohen case by Department of Justice officials working under Rod Rosenstein. Berman is identified in the press as a Trump appointee but he is actually a Jeff Sessions appointee.

Here is what an FBI insider tells us:

“Mueller’s team of partisans has a problem.  They want to get Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner so they are working hard to prove that Jr and Kushner lied about the June 9th 2016 Trump Tower meeting.  The Special Counsel has their version (Fusion GPS’ version) of what happened in the meeting but Veselnitskaya and Manafort’s versions don’t support their version. They tried to squeeze Manafort into reciting their version but in the end he resisted. So they claimed to the Judge that Manafort lied in his proffer to them. Veselnitskaya already met with Senate investigators and gave testimony about the meeting. This testimony doesn’t fall in line with the Special Counsel’s version so they have to discredit her and keep her from coming to the U.S. for any future hearings hence the strange indictment today by holdovers of Preet Bharara.

The Trump Tower meeting, facilitated by Fusion GPS and debriefed by Fusion GPS, was an original attempt to get candidate Trump to make commitments to Russia regarding the subversion of the Magnitsky Act.  This was the original purpose of the entrapment but candidate Trump didn’t fall for it. So they didn’t want a good set-up to go to waste.

Veselnitskaya only mentioned dirt on Hillary as a rouse to get the Trump campaign to meet with her regarding the Magnitsky scheme. Fusion GPS, Brennan and Comey were trying to set Trump up to commit a serious crime related to Russia but they were unsuccessful.  After Trump was elected they dug through all of their attempts to find something useful and realized they could spin several setup meetings with Trump Campaign officials as somehow being related to hacked emails. This is proven by the fact that all the meetings were conducted by people associated with the CIA (Halper and Mifsud) and the FBI (Fusion GPS and Henry Greenburg).  It is also proven by the fact that the FISA warrants obtained by the FBI never had any mention of Hacked emails.”

FBI source’s statement concludes

Stone’s lawyer Grant Smith wrote the following in a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes: “By way of example, as you know, back in June I sent this Committee a letter regarding a longtime FBI informant named Gennadiy Vasilievich Vostretsov who, under the alias “Henry Greenberg”, was sent to approach my client in May 2016 with claims of having access to information that could impact the election. Mr. Stone not only immediately and forcefully declined to participate in anything this FBI informant was proposing, but never saw or spoke to the informant again. Mr. Stone believes it highly likely that Mr. Vostretsov/Greenberg’s status as an FBI informant was not “former”, and that Vostretsov/Greenberg was, in fact, actively working on behalf of the FBI at the time of their meeting, acting upon a calculated effort to entrap Mr. Stone and, further, to infiltrate and compromise the Trump effort. Notably, Vostretsov was admitted to the country nine separate times on an FBI Informant’s visa.”

My reporting on Natalia and the Fusion GPS plot against President Trump has changed the face of the news cycle:

The Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who set up Don Trump Jr. for a meeting in Trump Tower as part of a Fusion GPS plot was operating out of the Washington offices of Cozen O’Connor, a law firm run by an anti-Trump former Obama administration official whose super PAC donated to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential election.

Veselnitskaya’s work from the Cozen O’Connor office provides more evidence of a Democrat and establishment Republican effort to set up the Trump campaign for a future Russian collusion case. Veselnitskaya was allowed into the United States by the Obama Department of Justice while the former Obama official who runs Cozen O’Connor publicly warned then-candidate Trump that if he became president he would be investigated by the DOJ for contacts with foreign leaders. Veselnitskaya reportedly had dinner meetings with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson the day before she met in Trump Tower and also the day after she went inside Trump Tower.

Big League Politics has confirmed that a Cozen O’Connor partner who lives in the same apartment building as James Comey’s friend Daniel Richman — who leaked classified information to the press on Comey’s behalf — spoke with Richman during the period that Comey and the Fusion GPS team were trying to obtain FISA warrants on Trump Tower.

I reported from outside Cozen O’Connor headquarters in Washington, D.C.

CAP

Let’s break down the facts of an Obama administration official’s involvement in the Trump Tower plot:

Russian and U.S. citizen Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military veteran, was present at Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower after leading a lobbying push supposedly to repeal the Magnitsky Act. Akhmestshin is believed by insiders to be linked to Russian government intelligence, a fact that the Washington Post seized on when reporting that he met with Don Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower. A nonprofit group focused on promoting Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya’s cause to lawmakers actually hired Cozen O’Connor, which the law firm confirms.

The Washington Post reported (emphasis added):

“In the spring of 2016, as the presidential race was heating up, Akhmetshin and lobbyists he hired sought meetings on Capitol Hill to make their case against the sanctions law. Akhmetshin hired former Democratic congressman Ron Dellums, along with a team of lobbyists from the law firm of Cozen O’Connor.
Steve Pruitt, a business colleague speaking on Dellums’s behalf, said his involvement was brief and ended when he determined that Congress was unlikely to change the law.

In June, after visiting Trump Tower in New York, Veselnitskaya came to Washington to lend a hand in the lobbying effort.

She attended a meeting of the team at the downtown offices of Cozen O’Connor, where she spoke at length in Russian about the issues but confused many in the room, who had not been told previously about her involvement, according to several participants.”

Washington Post passage ends

Cozen O’Connor managing partner Howard Schweitzer is listed here on a DOJ form from an investigation into the breaking of lobbying laws by Russians trying to repeal the Magnitsky Act — which was just a front to get Russians in the room with Don Jr. We know now that Natalia Veselnitskaya was actually operating out of the Cozen O’Connor offices.

Schweitzer worked as general counsel for the Export-Import Bank under George W. Bush and was chief operating officer of the TARP bailout program under both Bush and Obama from 2008-2009.

“In October 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appointed Howard as the first COO of TARP. In this position, Howard led program execution and built the TARP infrastructure. He served as a key point person regarding the financial crisis through the presidential transition and continued to serve as TARP COO under Secretary Timothy Geithner until August 2009,” reads Schweitzer’s Cozen O’Connor bio.

“He served as chief operating officer of the TARP in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations,” reads Schweitzer’s bio for a Politico piece he wrote in August 2016 headlined “7 Reasons Why Trump Would Hate Being President.”

Schweitzer’s virulently anti-Trump piece for Politico tries to make the case that Trump was “sabotaging his own bid for the White House.” Schweitzer said that if Trump became president then “He’ll be investigated to death” by Congress and the Justice Department for his business dealings and “relationships with foreign leaders.”

The narrative was being set.

The Philadelphia-based Cozen O’Connor law firm also has a political action committee that donated to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, in addition to Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Martin O’Malley. In the 2018 election cycle, the Cozen O’Connor PAC donated more money to Hillary Clinton’s dormant campaign.

Here is Veselnitskaya seated behind Obama ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul at a June 2016 congressional hearing focused on Russia.

Cozen O’Connor’s connections to the anti-Trump “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot are wide-ranging, and show up in unexpected places.

James Comey’s friend, Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, leaked classified information that Comey gave him. During this leaking period, Richman was apartment-building neighbors with a partner at the Cozen O’Connor law firm that strategized with Fusion GPS operative Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian plant who set up Don Jr. in Trump Tower.

Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, led by Glenn Simpson, were part of John Brennan and Peter Strzok’s CIA-led “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot aimed at President Donald Trump and the Trump campaign.

“Yes, he is my neighbor,” Amy Wenzel, a partner at Cozen O’Connor, confirmed in a phone conversation with Big League Politics, confirming that they spoke. They live near each other in a Brooklyn high-rise.

The Washington Post’s release of Trump Tower documents shows the crowd surrounding non-sexual honeypot Natalia Veselnitskaya. The crowd of conspirators knew they were damaging Trump by setting up the meeting.

The Post confirms British-citizen music promoter Rob Goldstone’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he described the conspirators’ push to get the meeting despite the fact that they knew it would create trouble for the Trump campaign.

The Post reports:

“Rob Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between President Trump’s son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material on Clinton, overriding Goldstone’s own warnings that the meeting would be a bad idea.

“He said, ‘it doesn’t matter. You just have to get the meeting,’ ” Goldstone, a British citizen, testified.

The intensity with which Agalarov and his father, the billionaire Aras Agalarov, sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for congressional inquiries and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was revealed in more than 2,500 pages of congressional testimony and exhibits released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.”

Washington Post passage ends

Natalia Veselnitskaya is also inextricably linked to the case against Paul Manafort.

The Russian attorney partner of Paul Manafort who was named as a defendant in new Robert Mueller charges is also linked to the Russian spy Natalia Vesenilskaya, who attended a meeting with Don Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower.

According to Mueller’s new charges, Manafort’s Russian partner Konstantin Kilimnik tried to intimidate or coerce witnesses in Manafort’s upcoming money laundering trial. That puts Konstantin Kilimnik at the center of the Mueller effort to find obstruction of justice in Trump-World (Mueller is giving himself until September 1 to try to find obstruction of justice, after finding no Russian collusion involving Trump).
So who is Konstantine Kilimnik? It turns out that Kilimnik is linked to Veselnitskaya, the Fusion GPS agent, according to Senate documents.

Here is how ProPublica described Kilimnik: “Konstantin Kilimnik: Manafort, who worked for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine before running Trump’s campaign, had an employee in Kiev named Konstantin Kilimnik who U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence, according to Politico. Kilimnik served in the Russian army and learned English at a school that experts say often trains spies. Kilimnik denied being a spy to The Washington Post. Manafort had dinner with Kilimnik last August in New York, just before he was forced out of the Trump campaign amid growing questions about his work in the Ukraine, the Post reported.”

Documents reveal Kilimnik’s ties to Veselniskaya. Let’s take a look at United States Senate Judiciary Committee documents questioning Veselniskaya in October. Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Veselniskaya if she knew a handful of characters believed to be conspirators in the case.

Grassley and Feinstein specifically asked Veselnitskaya if she knew Konstantin Kilimnik.

Here is page 4 of the documents, naming Kilimnik:

Current Attorney General Jeff Sessions was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as senator from Alabama.

Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower provided some of the basis for warrants to surveil Trump Tower and for other FBI surveillance measures on the Trump campaign.

The fact that Veselnitskaya, a lawyer herself, was in the meeting with Trump Jr. and Kushner opened the president’s son and son-in-law up to being qualified as “target associations” for law enforcement under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed during the Bush administration.

Veselniskaya’s link to suspected conspirator Kilimnik is now coming under scrutiny.

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Jeb Bush On Syria: ‘Donald Trump Is Bad For Israel… Hopefully Our President Will Reverse His Decision’

By Chris Menahan

Failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Wednesday on Twitter that he hopes President Trump will “reverse his decision to abandon Syria” because it’s “bad for Israel.”

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He linked to an article from the New York Times by neocon Bret Stephens which said “that the ultimate long-term threat to Israel is the resurgence of isolationism in the U.S.”

“What Israel most needs from the U.S. today is what it needed at its birth in 1948: an America committed to defending the liberal-international order against totalitarian enemies, as opposed to one that conducts a purely transactional foreign policy based on the needs of the moment or the whims of a president.”

Stephens said the idea “neoconservatives always put Israel first” is an “invidious myth”:

Contrary to the invidious myth that neoconservatives always put Israel first, the reasons for staying in Syria have everything to do with core U.S. interests. Among them: Keeping ISIS beaten, keeping faith with the Kurds, maintaining leverage in Syria and preventing Russia and Iran from consolidating their grip on the Levant.

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President Trump said Wednesday that we give Israel billions of dollars every year and they can defend themselves.

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From the Times of Israel:

Speaking with reporters, Trump was asked about criticism that the move could put Israel in jeopardy by allowing Iran to expand its foothold in Syria.

“Well, I don’t see it. I spoke with Bibi,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I told Bibi. And, you know, we give Israel $4.5 billion a year. And they’re doing very well defending themselves, if you take a look.”

“So that’s the way it is,” Trump said, according to a White House transcript.

“We’re going to take good care of Israel. Israel is going to be good. But we give Israel $4.5 billion a year. And we give them, frankly, a lot more money than that, if you look at the books — a lot more money than that. And they’ve been doing a very good job for themselves,” he added.

Stephens’ column made no mention of the billions in foreign aid America gives Israel every year.

 

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Weekly Standard Goes Belly Up, Actual Conservatives Celebrate

By

A formerly-relevant conservative magazine has shut down after two years of #NeverTrump commentary finally drove the majority of its readership away.

“All good things come to an end. And so, after 23 years, does The Weekly Standard. I want to express my gratitude to our readers and my admiration for my colleagues. We worked hard to put out a quality magazine, and we had a good time doing so. And we have much more to do. Onward!” said Bill Kristol, formerly Weekly Standard’s editor-at-large and the publication’s most prominent personality.

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Kristol is known for ditching the GOP over the nomination of President Donald J. Trump in favor of the globalist establishment. Weekly Standard’s former readers left for more in-touch media sources and never forgave him. After 23 years in business, the publication became obsolete in just two years.

The conservative world reacted on Twitter, mostly celebrating the death of a rag that worked against the interests of conservatives who support Trump.

“The Weekly Standard folded because conservatives are tired of being force fed bullsh*t from out-of-touch, outdated elitists that think their opinions (& that of legacy media in general) are superior to everyone else’s. You won’t see a single ounce of pity coming from me over it,” said Richard Armande Mills.

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“Tonight, I will toast to the end of the Weekly Standard. In fact I’m gonna toast right now. And at lunch. And at Christmas parties tonight. Basically, fuck those guys,” said former Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam.

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“Cut the fake mourning. The Weekly Standard died several years ago when it told loyal readers like me to fuck off. Don’t pretend it that it was just too principled for us brutes. It told us to fuck off. And we did. So now it’s fucked. Ahoy,” said Bconservative author Kurt Schlictter.

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This reporter had some thoughts too:

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There were rumors that the magazine might merge with Washington Examiner, but that deal never came to fruition. The last issue of Weekly Standard will be published on Dec. 24.

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