Tag: what does Putin have on Trump?

Kremlin-linked businessman boasted he knew about president’s ‘relationships with women’ in Moscow and hotel bosses talked about elevator tape of Trump with two ‘hostesses’ Senate Intel report reveals – but says Putin’s spies did NOT have kompromat

The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s final Russia report lays out new claims about Donald Trump‘s ‘relationships with women in Moscow’ – including new allegations about a ‘tape’ of the future president in a luxury hotel elevator.

The explosive 1,000 page report caps off a multi-year investigation where investigators concluded that Russia sought to influence the 2016 campaign and that some officials in Trump’s orbit welcomed the assistance. 

The fifth volume in the probe, which began after Trump’s 2016 victory, points to the role played by Trump’s disgraced former campaign chair Paul Manafort, who is currently serving a 7 1/2 year sentence on fraud and corruption charges. It accuses Manafort of collaborating with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and feeding internal Trump campaign information to Konstantin Kilimnik, who it identifies for the first time as a Russian intelligence officer. Democrats on the committee wrote in their own addendum that Kilimnik ‘may have been connected’ to the Russian military intelligence unit that carried out the 2016 election hacking of Democratic emails.  Continue reading.

Trump directed the CIA to share intel on counterterrorism with the Kremlin despite no discernible reward: Ex-intelligence officials

AlterNet logoU.S. intel officials have been alleging that according to their sources, the Russian government offered a bounty to Taliban extremists if they would kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Just Security discussed these allegations with some former Trump Administration officials, trying to gleam some insight into what President Donald Trump and his officials knew about Russian government activity in Afghanistan.

“Why would the Russian government think it could get away with paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers?,” Just Security’s Ryan Goodman writes. “One answer to that question may be the extraordinary response that Moscow received when the Trump Administration learned of a precursor to the bounty operation. From mid-2017 and into 2018, Pentagon officials became increasingly confident in intelligence reports that the Kremlin was arming the Taliban, which posed a significant threat to American and coalition forces on the ground in Afghanistan.”

President Donald Trump and his administration have had much better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin than President Barack Obama did. And according to Goodman, “Trump directed the CIA to share intelligence information on counterterrorism with the Kremlin despite no discernible reward, former intelligence officials who served in the Trump Administration told Just Security.” Continue reading.

Trump’s New Russia Problem: Unread Intelligence and Missing Strategy

New York Times logoHigh-level clearance is not required to see that the list of Russian aggressions in recent weeks rivals some of the worst days of the Cold War.

The intelligence finding that Russia was most likely paying a bounty for the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan has evoked a strange silence from President Trump and his top national security officials on the question of what to do about the Kremlin’s wave of aggression.

Mr. Trump insists he never saw the intelligence, though it was part of the President’s Daily Brief just days before a peace deal was signed with the Taliban in February.

The White House says it was not even appropriate for him to be briefed because the president only sees “verified” intelligence — prompting derision from officials who have spent years working on the daily brief and say it is most valuable when filled with dissenting interpretations and alternative explanations. Continue reading.

Suspicions of Russian Bounties Were Bolstered by Data on Financial Transfers

New York Times logoAnalysts have used other evidence to conclude that the transfers were most likely part of an effort to offer payments to Taliban-linked militants to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan.

American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty program that detainees described during interrogations.

Investigators also identified by name numerous Afghans in a network linked to the suspected Russian operation, the officials said — including, two of them added, a man believed to have served as an intermediary for distributing some of the funds and who is now thought to be in Russia. Continue reading.