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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (225132)	2/6/2022 12:07:48 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 360759

It goes on. And on. And on. Excellent description of Wittes' article. He never gets around to discussing the core point: that Hillary hired Putin to get dirt on Trump. And all of that dirt turned out to be phony, unsurprisingly. Tom

To: Sam who wrote (225132)	2/20/2022 12:23:42 PM
From: Thomas M.	1 Recommendation Recommended By i-node Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 360759

Manafort had zero contact with Russian intelligence, according to Mueller: A critical disclosure by the Mueller team during its investigation – but unmentioned in both the final Mueller and Senate reports – directly contradicts the Senate’s assessment. After Mueller accused Kilimnik of having unspecified Russian intelligence "ties" in 2017, Manafort's legal team made multiple discovery requests for any communication between Manafort and "Russian intelligence officials." In April 2018, Manafort’s attorneys revealed that the special counsel replied that "there are no materials responsive to [those] requests." The Mueller team's response marked a tacit admission that as of 2019, the FBI did not consider Kilimnik a Russian agent. realclearinvestigations.com Tom

To: Sam who wrote (225132)	2/20/2022 1:54:25 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 360759

Peter Strzok – the top FBI counterintelligence agent who opened the investigation – wrote in early 2017: "We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials." realclearinvestigations.com Tom

To: Sam who wrote (225132)	2/20/2022 6:21:36 PM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 360759

From 1995 to 2005, Kilimnik held a senior role at the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute, a U.S.-government organization that pursues American foreign policy objectives abroad. After leaving the IRI, Kilimnik became a "valuable resource" for officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, with whom he was "in regular contact." realclearinvestigations.com Tom

To: Sam who wrote (225132)	2/20/2022 8:07:32 PM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 360759

Kilimnik was tapped to "arrange meetings between Department of State officials and senior Ukrainian politicians." He served as "the primary point of contact" for multiple U.S.-Ukrainian talks. This included arranging a call between President Yanukovych and Vice President Joe Biden in November 2013. Kilimnik had "close proximity to" two key officials running U.S. policy in Ukraine, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. Kilimnik, according to the Senate panel, attended multiple meetings with both officials and even served as a translator for at least one session with Nuland. Kilimnik's contacts with U.S. officials extended beyond Kiev to Washington, D.C. During a trip to the U.S. in May 2016, the report notes, he met with a number of State Department officials, including Jonathan Finer, the chief of staff to then-Secretary of State John Kerry. Wow, Obama's State Department was deeply intertwined with Russian intelligence!!! Alternatively (and more accurately), working with Kilimnik is not suspicious behavior. It's quite normal. Tom

To: Sam who wrote (225132)	2/20/2022 9:18:43 PM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 360759

The State Department and its Kiev embassy were routinely trading information with a man the Senate report now portrays as an asset of a hostile foreign power. In addition to treating him as a valuable political intelligence source, State Department officials often shared their private insights with Kilimnik. Obama's State Department asked Kilimnik for help: In December 2015, the Obama State Department and its ambassador in Kiev were upset over a negative story about then-Vice President Joe Biden ahead of his visit to Ukraine. So a U.S. embassy official turned to a "sensitive source" for help. "Thank you very much for looking into this and very sorry to ask," U.S. embassy official Alexander "Sasha" Kasanof wrote businessman Konstantin Kilimnik in a Dec. 6, 2015 email. "Ambassador very unhappy about the article, though agree it stinks to me to (sic) of people we know very well." A few lines later, Kasanof's email offered Kilimnik some valuable inside skinny about the Obama administration's assessment of a sensitive meeting between indicted fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Dmitri Firtash's associate Yuriy Boyko and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. "I thought Boyko did quite well, in fact," Kasanof wrote. "Don't know that he convinced Nuland on everything (incl. DF intentions), but his performance was much less Soviet and better than I thought would be. So job well done!" And they gave Kilimnik info: In addition to treating him as a valuable political intelligence source, State officials often shared their private insights with Kilimnik, a Ukrainian consultant close to the American lobbyist Paul Manafort. For instance, Eric Schultz, a former U.S. embassy official in Ukraine who by 2016 had become U.S. ambassador to Zambia, gave his frank personal assessment after President Obama named Marie Yovanovitch to be the new chief U.S. diplomat in Kiev and George Kent to be her top deputy. "He's ok i think — though yes, very pro-Ukraine," Schultz wrote of Kent in an email from his personal Gmail account in May 2016 to Kilimnik, using mostly lower-case letters. As for Yovanovitch, Schultz added: "she's not (doesn't handle pressure and can be difficult) but then she might be more Russian oriented than you realize. she never learned Ukrainian when she was in kyiv before but speaks good Russian.” justthenews.com Tom

To: Sam who wrote (225132)	2/20/2022 11:12:50 PM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 360759

Manafort and Kilimnik tried to steer Ukraine away from Russia and towards the EU: In the years before Yanukovych's ouster in February 2014, Manafort led a lobbying campaign for a Ukrainian-European Union economic agreement explicitly aimed at pushing Ukraine away from Russia and into the Western orbit. Manafort's goal, he explained in several memos to Kilimnik and other colleagues, was to "[encourage] EU integration with Ukraine" so that Kiev does not "fall to Russia." Manafort sought to promote "constant actions taken by the Govt of Ukraine to comply with Western demands" and "the changes made to comply with the EU Association Agreement – which Russia staunchly opposed. If Kilimnik were a Russian intelligence officer, his key role in an influence campaign to move Ukraine away from Russia would have been the perfect opportunity to engage in sabotage. But there is no evidence of this. Instead, Kilimnik played an integral role in Manafort's lobbying efforts across Europe. In short, during the same period that the SSCI posits that Kilimnik was acting as an intelligence officer on Russia's behalf, he was deeply involved in Manafort's efforts to advance the U.S. government's agenda in Ukraine. realclearinvestigations.com Tom