To: Brumar89 who wrote (1016531 ) 5/18/2017 10:31:00 PM From: Brumar89 Read Replies (1) | Respond to House leadership sitting around talking - 2016. Laughing that they think Putin is paying Trump:apps.washingtonpost.com secret recording of one of the inner-sanctum conversations in the office of Speaker Paul Ryan."The unknown is frustrating," said one senior GOP aide, referring to the possibility that this wasn't the only private leadership conversation that was secretly recorded.Behind-the-scenes: House leadership sources have pored over the article and are privately discussing theories about where the leak came from:One theory — bolstered by the article's dateline ("Kiev, Ukraine") — is that the Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, or one of his associates, left behind a recording device after meeting earlier that day with Ryan. But of the five senior House GOP sources I've spoken to since the leak, none of them really believe that this leak came from the Ukrainians. Capitol security teams do regular sweeps of leadership offices and my sources aren't aware of recording devices being found.The most widespread theory in House leadership is that the secret recorder and the leaker was Evan McMullin , who as a former leadership aide participated in the June 15 conversation and confirmed the private conversation to the Washington Post . (I am told that the Post, in their back-and-forth with leadership over the story, privately said that the source wasn't McMullin. There's no evidence that he was the leaker and I've reached out to him for comment.Evidence or not , leadership sources are privately worried that McMullin had a tape on while he sat silently through all of their confidential meetings. They're concerned about what leaks could come next.axios.com Jonathan Chait ShareShareTweetSharePin ItEmailCommentPrintWashington Post reported on a 2016 conversation, between members of the House Republican leadership team, concerning Donald Trump’s shady ties to Russia. “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “ No leaks … This is how we know we’re a real family here,” replied House Speaker Paul Ryan.Post acknowledges, that the comments were made in jest. The transcript records laughter all around. But there are several reasons to suspect that McCarthy and Ryan were speaking honestly about their suspicion that Trump received money from Putin. First, spokesmen for Ryan and McCarthy insisted the comments were a joke only after they forcefully denied the conversation ever took place at all and then were told a recording existed. The fallback explanation has less presumptive credibility when the initial explanation has been debunked. people laugh all the time at statements they recognize as completely true. One of those times is when you’re acknowledging that reality is bizarre. (The single most common object of this kind of uncomfortable, incredulous laughter in my experience has been Donald Trump.) Just before sharing his suspicion Trump gets money from Russia, the transcript shows that McCarthy mentioned the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee:McCarthy: The Russians hacked the DNC and got the oppo research they had on Trump . [laughs]McCarthy wasn’t laughing because he made up a funny joke about Russian hacking. He was describing an actual event that was true but so strange it was funny. . Rohrabacher is known in Congress for his fervent defenses of Putin and Putin’s interests. This long Politico story from November describes some of Rohrabacher’s positions, meetings with some of the shadiest members of Putin’s inner circle, and, in particular, his dogged pursuit of one item of special priority to Putin. (Rohrabacher worked to remove the name of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was killed after exposing massive corruption by Putin, from a global anti-corruption law. ) The subtext of the article — indeed, the only way to make sense of it — is that everybody on all sides believed Rohrabacher was getting money from Russia in some form or fashion. No other coherent explanation could be found for his dogged insistence on a cause that had no merit whatsoever from the perspective of the United States.[ With both Trump and Rohrabacher maybe the saying 'If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck' applies. If someone always acts like they're compromised by Russia, then they most likely are. ] Trump has all kinds of financial connections to Russia and the Putin regime. Numerous reporters have found that, after Trump’s bankruptcies and other risky behavior made him untouchable for most standard lenders, he became dependent on Russia for capital. Just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported a new example: VEB, a Russian bank essentially controlled by Putin, financed Trump’s hotel in Toronto.http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/the-case-for-why-paul-ryan-really-thinks-russia-pays-trump.html
