It’s interesting how the dossier that implicates Trump with Putin came to be and why we should all be very concerned about who and what is now controlling the US Executive Branch of government.
Steele had known Russia as a young spy, arriving in Moscow as a 26-year-old with his new wife and thin diplomatic cover in 1990. For nearly three years as a secret agent in enemy territory, he lived through the waning days of perestroika and witnessed the tumultuous disintegration of the Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin’s mercurial and often boozy leadership. The K.G.B. was onto him almost from the start: he inhabited the spy’s uncertain life, where at any moment the lurking menace could turn into genuine danger. Yet even at the tail end of his peripatetic career at the service, Russia, the battleground of his youth, was still in his blood and on his operational mind: from 2004 to 2009 he headed M.I.6’s Russia Station, the London deskman directing Her Majesty’s covert penetration of Putin’s resurgent motherland.
And so, as Steele threw himself into his new mission, he could count on an army of sources whose loyalty and information he had bought and paid for over the years. There was no safe way he could return to Russia to do the actual digging; the vengeful F.S.B. would be watching him closely. But no doubt he had a working relationship with knowledgeable contacts in London and elsewhere in the West, from angry émigrés to wheeling-and-dealing oligarchs always eager to curry favor with a man with ties to the Secret Service, to political dissidents with well-honed axes to grind. And, perhaps most promising of all, he had access to the networks of well-placed Joes—to use the jargon of his former profession—he’d directed from his desk at London Station, assets who had their eyes and ears on the ground in Russia.
How good were these sources? Consider what Steele would write in the memos he filed with Simpson: Source A—to use the careful nomenclature of his dossier—was “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure." Source B was “a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin." And both of these insiders, after “speaking to a trusted compatriot," would claim that the Kremlin had spent years getting its hooks into Donald Trump.
Source E was “an ethnic Russian" and “close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump."
This individual proved to be a treasure trove of information. “Speaking in confidence to a compatriot," the talkative Source E “admitted there was a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between them [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership." Then this: “The Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to the WikiLeaks platform." And finally: “In return the Trump team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/NATO defense commitments in the Baltic and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine.
Then there was Source D, “a close associate of Trump who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow," and Source F, “a female staffer" at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel, who was co-opted into the network by an Orbis “ethnic Russian operative" working hand in hand with the loquacious Trump insider, Source E.
These two sources told quite a lurid story, the now infamous “golden showers" allegation, which, according to the dossier, was corroborated by others in his alphabet list of assets. It was an evening’s entertainment, Steele, the old Russian hand, must have suspected, that had to have been produced by the ever helpful F.S.B. And since it was typical of Moscow Center’s handwriting to have the suite wired up for sound and video (the hotel’s Web site, with unintentional irony, boasts of its “cutting edge technological amenities"), Steele apparently began to suspect that locked in a Kremlin safe was a hell of a video, as well as photographs.
Steele’s growing file must have left his mind cluttered with new doubts, new suspicions. And now, as he continued his chase, a sense of alarm hovered about the former spy. If Steele’s sources were right, Putin had up his sleeve kompromat—Moscow Center’s gleeful word for compromising material—that would make the Access Hollywood exchange between Trump and Billy Bush seem, as Trump insisted, as banal as “locker-room talk." Steele could only imagine how and when the Russians might try to use it.
One of the premier western experts on the Putin government and Russian intelligence services seems pretty convinced that Trump and Putin are working closely together and have been for a long time. All the actions of Trump while in office also support this.
Nice to know that the US president is a traitor eh?
So we can take from their silence that trump’s supporters here agree that he is in fact in bed with Putin.
They certainly offer nothing at all to counter the evidence provided by some of the most qualified people that Trump is in fact Putin’s lapdog.
Senate committee to vote on releasing Fusion GPS testimony
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 08/24/17http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/347785-senate-judiciary-to-vote-on-whether-to-release-dossier-guys-testimony
The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on whether to release the transcripts of a closed hearing with the co-founder of the firm that commissioned the controversial dossier on President Trump.
"It will take a vote of the committee to do it, but I presume that they will be released," Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said at a Mount Ayr, Iowa, town hall meeting on Wednesday, The Washington Examiner reported.
Glenn Simpson, whose opposition research firm Fusion GPS commissioned the dossier, was questioned in a closed door hearing on Tuesday about the funding and sources behind the dossier.
The dossier, created by former British spy Christopher Steele, contained salacious information about connections between Trump and Russia, much of it unverified.
The president has denied the contents of the document. …
Guess the Republicans were once again blowing it up Amerika’s skirt.
Trump-Russia dossier firm wants testimony made public
The founders of the research firm behind the Trump-Russia dossier are sharing what they told Congress in over 21 hours of testimony,
and they are demanding Republicans set the record straight. January 3rd, 2018 Duration: 8:03
http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/trump-russia-dossier-firm-wants-testimony-made-public-1128291907976
January 2, 2018 By Aaron Blake
Republicans’ Steele dossier conspiracy theory was dealt a big blow this weekendhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/02/republicans-steele-dossier-conspiracy-theory-was-dealt-a-big-blow-this-weekend
At a November House hearing featuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) offered a detailed conspiracy theory tying the Steele dossier to the origins of the Russia investigation. “We know the Clinton campaign and the [Democratic] National Committee paid for . . . the dossier," Jordan began. “And it sure looks like the FBI was paying the author of that document.
And it sure looks like a major political party was working with the federal government to then turn an opposition research document that quoted some National Enquirer story into an intelligence document, take that to the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court so that they could then get a warrant to spy on Americans associated with President Trump's campaign. That's what it looks like."
At the time, Sessions himself dismissed Jordan's dot-connecting and shunned calls for a new investigation. And now this theory has been dealt another significant blow.
The New York Times on Saturday added to the narrative of how the Russia investigation came to be. And more importantly, it filled in details of how it came to focus on potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
The Times reported that George Papadopoulos . . .
DAY 355
Curated by @matt_kiser
https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/today/?utm_source=WTF+Just+Happened+Today?&utm_campaign=4de2b937af-
Dianne Feinstein released the full transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The head of the research firm behind the dossier of allegations against then-candidate
Trump told congressional investigators that someone from inside Trump's network had also provided the FBI with corroborating information during the campaign.
Simpson had asked the committee last week for the transcript to be made public, but Republican leaders declined.
Feinstein released the transcript today with "no agreement" from committee Republicans. (CNBC / Washington Post / Politico)
? Excerpts from the Fusion GPS testimony.
Excerpts from the Fusion GPS testimony by Glenn Simpson to the Senate Judiciary Committee
General Discussion
Jan 9, 2018 - jamditis
Some highlights from the Fusion GPS transcript that Sen. Dianne Feinstein unilaterally dropped today:
Seven references to “mafia" links.
20 references to Putin links.
Trump repeatedly said he and his buildings were worth less than people and agencies imagined.
The intelligence community seems to think Trump’s being blackmailed.
The specific reason for the blackmail has to do with “Russians having cameras in all the luxury hotel rooms."
LINK TO FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3/9/3974a291-ddbe-4525-9ed1-22bab43c05ae/934A3562824CACA7BB4D915E97709D2F.simpson-transcript-redacted.pdf38
EXCERPTS:
Page 69: WITNESS: “You know, Russian organized crime is very different from Italian organized crime. It’s much more sort of a hybrid kind of thing where they’re involved in politics and banking and there’s even a lot of connections between the mafia and the KGB or the FSB and cyber crime, things that the Italians sort of never figured out. Stock fraud in particular was the big thing in the U.S. In any event, all of that entered into my thinking when I saw that Donald Trump was in business with Felix Sater in the Trump Soho project and a number of other controversial condo projects."
The thing that really makes so much of this suspicious, beyond just the subject itself, is how so many otherwise semi-normal Repubs are doing an about face and supporting the clown potus. Lindsay Graham comes to mind, McCain too on various issues. Here’s my theory - drumpf has been a billionaire for a long time, in an industry that isn’t exactly known for honesty. And we know he’s a real ends justify the means type. I wouldn’t put it past him to have, ahem, “friends”, that work for him that do his bidding. For example, “Hey Bill, this is the Donald. This Graham guy needs to get in line. Can you pay him a visit, hint hint nudge nudge”.
The thing that really makes so much of this suspicious, beyond just the subject itself, is how so many otherwise semi-normal Repubs are doing an about face and supporting the clown potus. Lindsay Graham comes to mind, McCain too on various issues. Here's my theory - drumpf has been a billionaire for a long time, in an industry that isn't exactly known for honesty. And we know he's a real ends justify the means type. I wouldn't put it past him to have, ahem, "friends", that work for him that do his bidding. For example, "Hey Bill, this is the Donald. This Graham guy needs to get in line. Can you pay him a visit, hint hint nudge nudge".
Of course the old boys network is at work and Congresspersons are just a human as the rest of us... which means that more than few have assumed the Agentic State.
https:// www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.
Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on "obedience" - that they were just following orders from their superiors.
Which means that no matter what trump does now they will support him because they have turned over almost all personal responsibility to this asshole.