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Stormy Daniels lawyer ties Russian oligarch to Trump lawyer Cohen - but same oligarch also linked to Clintons, Podesta

Jim Hoft
Gateway Pundit
Tue, 08 May 2018 16:11 UTC
hillary clinton veksleberg
Michael Avenatti, the attorney for Stormy Daniels, alleged on Tuesday that a Russian oligarch paid Trump Attorney Michael Cohen $500,000 for "insights" into the Trump administration. The deposits were made in the months following the 2016 election.


NBC News reported:
Stormy Daniels' attorney claimed Tuesday that President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen received $500,000 from a company controlled by a Russian oligarch, deposited into an account for a company also used to pay off the adult film actress.

Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, also detailed other transactions he said were suspicious, including deposits from drug giant Novartis, the state-run Korea Aerospace Industries, and AT&T - which confirmed it paid Cohen's company for "insights" into the Trump administration.

If true, Avenatti's claims, made in a dossier posted to Twitter, could add a new dimension to the federal investigation into Cohen.
Avenatti offered no proof for his allegations.

It is also not clear how the porn star's attorney would discover the private information.

Comment: Typical opportunistic mud-slinging. There isn't a politician in the U.S. that isn't connected to some shady Russian oligarch. But notice how just the mention of a "Russian connection" is enough to get headlines. This is standard operating procedure, people - get over it. Now how about devoting just 1/5th of the energy wasted on Russian connections to finding Israeli connections. Israel is the foreign nation with a stranglehold on American policy making, not Russia.

As for the actual claims in this case:
An attorney for the Renova affiliate, Columbus Nova, said it hired Cohen as a business consultant and that Vekselberg had no involvement in the payments. Cohen, his attorney, and the Republican National Committee - for which Cohen is a deputy finance chairman - did not respond to requests for comment.

Avenatti's document said the money was paid to Essential Consultants, the same company Cohen used to pay a $130,000 settlement to buy Clifford's silence in October 2016. The document said Essential also received funds from other major companies, some of which had business before the federal government.
...
Vekselberg has reportedly been interviewed by investigators working for Robert Mueller, the special counsel looking into alleged collusion between Russia and Trump's team during the 2016 election campaign. Vekselberg has not been accused of any wrongdoing. CNN subsequently reported on Tuesday that he was specifically asked by Mueller's investigators about the alleged payments to Cohen.

The 61-year-old Vekselberg amassed a fortune through his Renova conglomerate, which spans energy, heavy industry and finance, probably making him Russia's ninth-richest person. He has remained in the Kremlin's favour and was last year given a state honour by Putin.
...
An attorney for Columbus Nova, Richard Owens, said in an email that the company was owned by Americans and that Vekselberg had no involvement in the payments to Cohen.

"After the inauguration, the firm hired Michael Cohen as a business consultant regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures," said Owens.


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Footprints

Foot in mouth: Japanese leader Shinzo Abe served dessert in a shoe at Netanyahu dinner


RT
Tue, 08 May 2018 08:34 UTC
Shinzo Abe Netanyahu
© Pool / Reuters
Japanese leader Shinzo Abe and his wife were dished up dessert in a shoe during dinner at the Israeli prime minister's residence.The culturally offensive move has been slammed by diplomats from both countries.

"This was a stupid and insensitive decision," a senior Israeli diplomat who had previously served in Japan told newspaper Yediot Aharonot. "It is equivalent to serving a Jewish guest chocolates in a dish shaped like a pig," he said, adding "there is nothing more despised in Japanese culture than shoes."

"No culture puts shoes on the table," a Japanese diplomat told the Hebrew newspaper. "If this is meant to be humor, we do not find it funny. I can tell you that we are offended for our prime minister," the diplomat said.

Abe and his wife dined with Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu on May 2, during Abe's second official visit to Israel. The meal was prepared by Israeli celebrity chef Segev Moshe.

Comment: Even if it wasn't a cultural faux pas, it's a rather unappealing way to serve dessert - or anything.

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Map

Austrian vice chancellor: Soros helped flood Europe with refugees


Voice of Europe
Sat, 28 Apr 2018 15:50 UTC
Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (L) and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache in Seggau, Austria, on January 5, 2018.
© Heinz-Peter Bader / Reuters
Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (L) and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache in Seggau, Austria, on January 5, 2018.
In a TV debate, Austrian vice chancellor and FPÖ leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, said that American billionaire George Soros has a strong connection with Europe's migrant crisis.

During the debate between the leader of the FPÖ and Christian Kern, who is leader of the SPÖ, Soros was an emotionally charged subject, Austria's Der Standard reports.

While talking about Soros, Strache said that "the involvement of Soros in supporting the movement of refugees to Europe is not a rumour, but a fact".

Kern replied: "What Strache does turns my stomach. Soros's image of an enemy is made by neo-Nazis and you use that on him. They transcend the boundaries of decency and morality." The SPÖ leader accused the FPO leader of anti-Semitism in connection with Soros.

The vice chancellor called the allegations "absurd" and "low-class" and spoke of "bad allegations". Strache said Kern tries to "poison the well". Criticism of Soros is legitimate and justified, like the criticism that came from the Israeli prime minister.

Comment: Christian Kern must be an idiot, or a conniving manipulator. That "neo-Nazis" see Soros as an enemy does not make everyone who sees him as an enemy a neo-Nazi, nor does it imply that he is NOT an enemy. It's a low-class trick that only an intellectually stunted propagandist would make. In fact, if we're going to make Nazi comparisons, it's right out of the Goebbels handbook.

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Георгиевская ленточка

From rumbling robots to hypersonic missiles: Russia celebrates it 73rd Victory Day parade


RT
Wed, 09 May 2018 10:48 UTC
Victory Day may 8 2018
© Grigoriy Sisoev / Sputnik
The traditional Victory Day military parade in Moscow showcased some of Russia's most advanced weapons, including a hypersonic missile, Arctic-rated anti-aircraft systems and a new strike drone.

The parade marking the 73rd anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in WWII (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War) was divided into three parts. For the first one, each part of the Russian military service, as well as fellow civilian paramilitary units, provided troops to show off their synch-marching skills.


Comment: Watch the full video of the parade:



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Attention

The Deep State's arrogant mishandling of the landmine that is Trump

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review
Tue, 08 May 2018 15:13 UTC
trump
© Yuri Gripas/Reuters
President Trunp and First Lady Melania Trump walk from the Oval Office at the White House, Februrary 5, 2018.
Explosives require careful handling. Sometimes they blow up in your face.

After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency.

Give it credit, the Washington apparat quite imaginatively pulled out all the stops: implanting Obama holdover appointees all over the Trump executive branch; filing lawsuits and judge shopping; organizing the Resistance; pursuing impeachment writs; warping the FISA courts; weaponizing the DOJ and FBI; attempting to disrupt the Electoral College; angling for enactment of the 25th Amendment or the emoluments clause; and unleashing Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley, and many in Wall Street to suffocate the Trump presidency in its infancy.

But now the administrative state's multifaceted efforts are starting to unwind, and perhaps even boomerang, on the perpetrators. If a federal judge should end up throwing out most of the indictments of Paul Manafort on the rationale that they have nothing much to do with the original mandate of the special counsel's office, or if Michael Flynn's confession to giving false statements is withdrawn successfully because the FBI politicized its investigation and FISA courts were misled in approving the surveillance of Flynn, then the Mueller investigation will implode.
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Nuke

The untold story of the Iran nuclear scare: Gareth Porter on the fake intel and lies about Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program

Andrew Cockburn
Harper's
Tue, 06 May 2014 13:39 UTC
gareth porter
In all the discussion of Iran's nuclear program, the consequent international economic blockade directed by the United States, and the ongoing negotiations to resolve the issue, Washington's official history of the program has rarely been challenged. In Manufactured Crisis, The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare (Just World Books), award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter traces the true history of the program, as well as how and by whom the official narrative was constructed. I put six questions to Porter about his book.

1. Although the Iraqi nuclear "threat" was discredited as an utter fraud years ago, the idea that across the border Iran has sought, at least in the past, to build a nuclear weapon has long been widely accepted in political and media circles. Are you saying that the claim of secret work on nuclear weapons is equally fraudulent, and that the Iranians have never had a nuclear-weapons program?

Yes. In Manufactured Crisis, I show that the claim of an Iranian nuclear-weapons program has been based on false history and falsified records. The description of the Iranian nuclear program presented in official documents, in commentaries by think-tank "experts," and in the media bears no resemblance to the essential historical facts. One would never know from the narrative available to the public over the years that Iran had been prepared in the early 1980s to rely entirely on a French-based company for enriched uranium fuel for its Bushehr reactor, rather than on enriching uranium itself. Nor would one learn that the Reagan Administration sought to strangle Iran's nuclear program, which was admitted to have presented no proliferation threat, in its cradle by pressuring Germany and France to refuse to cooperate in any way. The significance of that missing piece of history is that Iran was confronted with a choice of submitting to the U.S. effort to deprive Iran of its right to a peaceful nuclear program under the Non-Proliferation Treaty or else acquiring its own enrichment capability.
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Russian Flag

Long live Trump! Russia strikes gold as oil prices skyrocket following US withdrawal from Iran Deal


Sputnik
Wed, 09 May 2018 15:07 UTC
oil tanker
© AFP 2018 / ATTA KENARE
Shortly after President Donald Trump announced that Washington was quitting the Iran nuclear deal, the US Treasury pledged to pursue efforts to significantly reduce purchases of Iranian crude oil.

The oil price has skyrocketed to its highest in more than three years, just 12 hours after President Donald Trump said that that the US is abandoning the "horrible and one-sided" Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, according to the Financial Times.

During early trading in London on Wednesday, Brent Crude, which serves as a major benchmark price for purchases of oil worldwide, increased by 3.1 percent to 77.20 dollars per barrel, while the US benchmark, WTI, rose by a similar amount, to 70.93. dollars per barrel.
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Airplane

Pompeo meets Kim Jong-Un: Sets date and place for Trump meeting, returns to US with three hostages


Sputnik
Wed, 09 May 2018 15:01 UTC
pompeo kim jong-un

Say chee'!
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on his way back to the United States from North Korea together with three Americans who had been held hostage in the country, President Donald Trump said in a statement on Wednesday.

Trump said that Mike Pompeo was on his way back to the United States from North Korea together with three Americans who had been held hostage in the country.

"Secretary Pompeo and his "guests" will be landing at Andrews Air Force Base at 2:00 a.m. [7:00 a.m. GMT] in the morning. I will be there to greet them. Very exciting!" Trump said in a Twitter message.

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No Entry

Attorney: Deep State has weaponized security clearances to block Trump appointees


Fox News
Wed, 09 May 2018 11:51 UTC
Trump
© Carlos Barria | Reuters
Entrenched bureaucrats are using the vetting process for security clearances as a "weapon" in order to block President Trump's appointees, according to a new Wall Street Journal piece.

In the op-ed, security clearance defense attorney Sean M. Bigley writes about representing a senior Defense Department official who called out "cronyism" at a Pentagon office and faced clearance revocation as a result.

In the course of representing Adam S. Lovinger, Bigley wrote that he has had a "front-row seat to behavior that only a year ago I would have dismissed as a conspiracy theory."
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MIB

US diplomats spied on UN leadership and foreign governments

Robert Booth and Julian Borger
The Guardian
Sun, 28 Nov 2010 11:10 UTC
Ban Ki-moon
© Bernat Armangue/AP
Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.

A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton's name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.

It called for detailed biometric information "on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders" as well as intelligence on Ban's "management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat". A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.
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