Tag: Russia

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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Holds Significant Business Ties To Russia

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross

Ruh-roh…

According to the New York Times, yet another high ranking person in the Donald Trump orbit, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, has large financial ties to Russia, including members of Vladimir Putin’s own family.

After becoming commerce secretary, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. retained investments in a shipping firm he once controlled that has significant business ties to a Russian oligarch subject to American sanctions and President Vladimir V. Putin’s son-in-law, according to newly disclosed documents.

The shipper, Navigator Holdings, earns millions of dollars a year transporting gas for one of its top clients, a giant Russian energy company called Sibur, whose owners include the oligarch and Mr. Putin’s family member. Despite selling off numerous other holdings to join the Trump administration and spearhead its “America first” trade policy, Mr. Ross kept an investment in Navigator, which increased its business dealings with Sibur even as the West sought to punish Russia’s energy sector over Mr. Putin’s incursions into Ukraine.

Partnerships used by Mr. Ross, whose private equity firm has long been the biggest shareholder in Navigator, have a 31 percent stake in the company. Though his personal share of that stake was reduced as he took office in February, he retained an investment in the partnerships valued between $2 million and $10 million, and stood to earn a higher share of profits as general partner, according to his government ethics disclosure and securities filings.

Mr. Ross’s stake in Navigator has been held by a chain of companies in the Cayman Islands, one of several tax havens where much of his wealth, estimated at more than $2 billion, has been tied to similar investment vehicles.

The information came from a cache of leaked files from Appleby, one of the world’s largest offshore law firms.

Considering Trump said no one in his campaign or administration had any connections to Russia, there sure are a LOT of people with connections to Russia…

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News Round-Up: October 31, 2017

(via Instagram)

Some news items you might have missed:

• Steve Pena (above) plans to “walk like an Egyptian” this Halloween. I’d follow his Pharaoh…

• Both chambers of Congress have now unanimously condemned Chechnya for anti-LGBTQ violence as President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson remain silent.

• In related news, Russia and Egypt are fighting to remove language in Principal 6 of the Olympic Charter which calls for banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Both countries have been involved in anti-LGBTQ actions in past months.

• Marques Brownlee unboxes the new iPhone X – check out his thoughts below. Hubby Michael and I have both ordered the X as we haven’t upgraded our iPhones in years.

• While the majority of news outlets were covering yesterday’s indictments of three Trump campaign officials, several Fox News employees were embarrassed by their network’s obvious lack of coverage. At one point on Monday morning, Fox News was actually taking time to report on a hamburger emoji – “Look, the cheese is under the burger!!!”

• A new study indicates gay men (and straight women) are twice as likely to be attracted to guys with the same eye color as their father due to “sexual imprinting.” I do not fall into that category as my father had stunning ice blue eyes, but my hunky hubby Michael has beautiful brown eyes.

• No trick, total treat from 7-time Grammy Award winner Toni Braxton as she drops her new single, “Deadwood,” from her forthcoming album, Sex and Cigarettes, scheduled for a January release.

• One more Halloween post: “Super” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada arrived at work today dressed as “Clark Kent.” #WinnerWinnerWinner

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Lewandowski: If Paul Manafort Or Roger Stone Colluded To Influence Election, They Should Go To Jail For Life

Corey Lewandowski

Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s first campaign manager for the 2016 presidential campaign, publicly announced Tuesday that if Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, or anyone connected to the campaign colluded to influence the 2016 election, he hopes they “go to jail for the rest of their lives.”

From the Washington Examiner:

Lewandowski was responding to reports that Manafort, who became campaign manager after Lewandowski was fired, was wiretapped as part of a federal investigation into Manafort’s dealing with Ukraine. Reports say the surveillance, obtained through a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant, was in effect at a time when Manafort was in communication with President Trump.

“I think if anybody, and I’ve said this, if Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, or Rick Gates or Carter Page, or anybody else attempted to influence the outcome of the U.S. election through any means that’s inappropriate — through collusion, coordination, or cooperation — I hope they go to jail for the rest of their lives. It’s very simple. Our election process is too serious, our democracy is too important to allow people to try and try and have influence from the outside for their own gain,” Lewandowski said during an event at George Washington University.

Lewandowski went on to defend Donald Trump saying he was by Trump’s side for 18 hours a day for the first 18 months of the campaign and he never heard Trump mention “anything to do with Russia.”

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Russian Politician On TV: Of Course We Have Compromising Info On Donald Trump

Nikita Isaev

I’m just gonna leave this right here.

From The Independent:

A Russian politician has threatened to “hit Donald Trump with our Kompromat” on state TV.

Speaking on Russia-24, Nikita Isaev, leader of the far-right New Russia Movement, said the compromising material should be released in retaliation over the closure of several Russian diplomatic compounds across the US.

When asked whether Russia has such material, Mr. Isaev, who is also director of the Russian Institute of Contemporary Economics, replied: “Of course we have it!”

Mr. Trump has been plagued by allegations of Russian collusion since his election campaign.

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News Round-Up: August 31, 2017

Andres Camilo (L) and Max Emerson (R)

Some news items you may have missed:

• Max Emerson and his boyfriend Andres Camilo have posed for a sexy, sultry photo shoot by Daniel Jaems for the Obsession series (above). More at Attitude.

• There are more out college football players today than ever before.

• Those “regular moms” in the recent hideous anti-same-sex marriage ad in Australia turn out to be liars, crackpots and “ex-gay” therapy advocates. #NoSurprise

• The Trump administration has ordered three Russian diplomatic facilities in the U.S. closed (NYC, SF, DC) “in the spirit of parity invoked by the Russians” after Russia demanded the U.S. reduce our presence in their country by hundreds of personnel.

• “Dreamers” are uneasy as President Donald Trump weighs whether to pull the plug on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program), a program that protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

• Check out the fun, new music video for Youngr’s acclaimed single “Monsters.” The artist describes the track as “a song for all the day dreamers and doodlers. I wrote this about my childhood at school. I used to draw my maths teacher as a monster whilst counting down the seconds until I could run home and play my drum kit! So if anyone out there is fed up with school or work, put this track on and turn it up.”

Watch below.

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Special Counsel Focusing On How Much Trump Knew About Son’s Meeting With Russian Lawyer

Don Trump Jr. and father

Via HuffPost:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly questioning how much President Donald Trump knew about his son Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyers at Trump Tower and if the president sought to hide the purpose of that meeting, NBC reports.

Trump has denied knowing about the matter until it was revealed by The New York Times. The president did, however, help draft his son’s statement to the press in response to reports about the meeting, according to The Washington Post.

“Even if Trump is not charged with a crime as a result of the statement, it could be useful to Mueller’s team to show Trump’s conduct to a jury that may be considering other charges,” an unnamed source told NBC.

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Trump Asked If Russia Is Security Threat: “I Consider Many Countries As A Security Threat”

During a press conference with the president of Finland, Donald Trump was asked if he considers Russia to be a security threat.

His answer: “Well, I consider many countries as a security threat.”

He. Just. Can’t. Say. It.

During the same press conference, Trump was asked why he pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio during Hurricane Harvey.

“I assumed the ratings would be higher,” he replied.

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Trump Lawyer Emailed Kremlin Directly For Help On Business Deal

For a year, Donald Trump has repeatedly denied having “nothing to do with Russia.”

Here’s just one sample of his denials:

But it turns out the Trumpster actually signed a “letter of intent” to build a “Trump Tower Moscow” four months into his presidential campaign.

From ABC News:

The involvement of then-candidate Trump in a proposed Russian development deal contradicts repeated statements Trump made during the campaign, including telling ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that his business had “no relationship to Russia whatsoever.”

The disclosure from Cohen, who has described himself as Trump’s personal lawyer, came as Cohen’s attorney gave congressional investigators scores of documents and emails from the campaign, including several pertaining to the Moscow development idea.

“Certain documents in the production reference a proposal for ‘Trump Tower Moscow,’ which contemplated a private real estate development in Russia,” Cohen’s statement says. “The decision to pursue the proposal initially, and later to abandon it, was unrelated to the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign.”

In a separate statement texted to ABC News, Cohen added that “the Trump Moscow proposal was simply one of many development opportunities that the Trump Organization considered and ultimately rejected.”

Cohen specifically says in his statement that Trump was told three times about the Moscow proposal.

“To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Trump was never in contact with anyone about this proposal other than me on three occasions, including signing a non-binding letter of intent in 2015,” his statement says.

Also found in the emails was a message from Trump associate Felix Sater to Cohen boasting of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote in an email. “Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

Click image to enlarge

Taking a trip on the way-back machine, we find this tweet from Cohen last December that doesn’t seem to have aged well:

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Trump Blames Congress For “All-Time Low” Russian Relationship, McCain Slaps Back “Thank Putin For Attacking Our Democracy”

Sen. John McCain

A day after Donald Trump signed into law a bill passed with massive bipartisan support in Congress that imposes new sanctions on Russia and curbs the president’s authority to lift them, Trump took to Twitter to complain about the “flawed” legislation.

In addition to imposting new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea, the legislation impairs the president’s ability to lift any sanctions put in place by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling.

Veteran Republican Sen. John McCain didn’t miss a beat responding to Trump, saying any blame for bad blood lies at the feet of Russian President Putin:

And a few more voices from across the political spectrum:

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Trump Signs Russian Sanctions Bill Calling Legislation “Flawed”

President Trump signed the bipartisan sanctions legislation passed in Congress today, but in doing so issued a signing statement explaining his thoughts on the bill.

Last week, Trump’s press secretary announced, “President Donald J. Trump read early drafts of the bill and negotiated regarding critical elements of it. He has now reviewed the final version and, based on its responsiveness to his negotiations, approves the bill and intends to sign it.”

But today, Trump says the legislation is “flawed.”

It’s worth noting the president really didn’t have a choice in signing the bill. The legislation was passed with a veto-proof bipartisan majority. Any veto would have easily been overridden, causing the Trump administration even further embarrassment.

He also offered remarks to reporters in a separate statement which, of course, takes a dig at the GOP-controlled Congress: “Congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking.”

And then there’s the last line: “I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress.”