Well, you know, there are accidents.
And I am sure that should some horrific accident befall any of the people that we send to russia for interrogation, trump will gladly accept putin’s assistance in investigating them.
Nah; he’d just take Putin’s word that it was an accident.
Melanie can handle his assets. I don’t personally know another woman who would want to. (Where’s that ‘vomit’ smilie when you need it??)
The Second Lady might be a good read, but I don’t think I could do it for awhile. Just a bit too on the nose.
The stench grows.
FBI Releases Documents on Former Trump Advisor Carter Page - Surveillance Results (Reuters)
Also included are all the FISA applications approved by all the judges for the FBI to carry on their surveillance.
412 pages.
If you’re a fan of sex-drenched 70s-era potboilers filled with stock stereotypes (not even “characters”), glamorous Americans vs dowdy, dumpy Soviets, and enough cheese to open a specialty store, TSL is the book for you. Just think of it as a better-written Sidney Sheldon and you will be pretty close.
LOL, I’ll be taking a pass on that. Thanks for the warning. 
On second thought, maybe sex-drenched 70s-era potboilers are exactly what we need more of right now. Some Soviet-style bodice rippers.
(Ok, ok, that was the 80s. Close enough.)
TSL was published in 1980, but it is definitely in that Harold Robbins 1970s-era vein.
The Amazon description is a hoot:
"On a state visit to Moscow, Billie Bradford, the beautiful and brilliant wife of the President of the United States, is abducted by the Soviets and replaced by Vera Vazilova, a superbly trained Russian undercover agent and actress who is the First Lady’s physical double.
The impostor’s mission–to induce the President to reveal a U.S. secret that will drastically tip the world balance toward Russia. But one false move–whether before TV cameras or in the White House bedroom–can destroy the entire masquerade.
And in Moscow, Billie also has a mission–to frantically seek ways to escape while daringly leading a Soviet intelligence officer astray about the most intimate area of her married life.
Two women, each playing a treacherous game in a foreign land, each taking a desperate gamble in the arms of the other’s lover–a world-shaking gamble that only one of them can win…"
4 paragraphs, 3 of them promising sex. Love it!
Oh, and if you’re interested in the Trump-era in book form, check out my thread When did you throw away “Trump: the novel” as being too preposterous?".
My goodness, how did I miss that thread? Just made my contribution.
And I may just have to find a copy of The Second Lady. 
The ambassador might come out OK, but I’m pretty sure they just want to kill Bill Browder. At least that’s what Browder claims.
Mostly this shows that Nunes and the rest of the republicans on the House Intelligence committee were lying their asses off when they released their memo.
IOW… confirmation of what we already knew and not an earth shattering surprise.
I wonder what all the redacted bits say?
Probably sources and methods. Like the name of recruited Russian intelligence officers that let the FBI know that Page was being recruited. Stuff like that.
Since it mentions Papadopoulos on line 1 of the start of the presentation of evidence (section II), I imagine that his information is significant chunk of the text.
Which is interesting since we weren’t meant to believe that he was supplying information to the FBI until 2017. But there’s no reason to mention him, completely out of the blue, in October of 2016 out of everyone else on the campaign, unless he’s a component of the rest of the document.
Ummm, wut? Meant to believe?
I’d urge you to review this timeline and click on the Papadopoulos link. You’ll find the information on Papadop has been in the public record for a very long time, and that he first came to the attention of the FBI in May of 2016 via London-stationed Australian diplomat Alex Downer. This has not been a secret. I will grant you there is a lot to keep track of.
But we already knew that.
Weird that the Treasury Department changed its rules on disclosing the donors to groups like the NRA hours after the arrest of a spy with NRA/Russia ties who, by mere happenstance, also met directly with senior officials at the Treasury Department.
A lawyer representing the family of the deceased Russian whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky has been hospitalized in Moscow with serious injuries after falling several stories.
The incident on March 21 happened one day before he was to appear in court in connection with the Magnitsky case.
Magnitsky’s former employer, U.S.-born British investor Bill Browder, said in a statement on March 21 that lawyer Nikolai Gorokhov was “thrown from the fourth floor of his apartment building.”
Russian news reports suggested his fall may have been an accident.
www.rferl.org — March 21, 2017
And just a day before Russian Court seeking damages for Sergei Magnitsky’s family — What a funny coincidence!
MOSCOW — A Russian lawyer who survived after falling from a fourth-floor balcony says his plunge was “no accident” and fears he was targeted because he found key evidence in a $230 million corruption scandal involving high-ranking state officials.
“I am still afraid for my life,” Nikolai Gorokhov told NBC News in his first interview since surviving the 50-foot drop on March 21. “But of course I am more afraid about the safety of my family.”
[…]
Eight people who have been involved in the same case [the Magnitsky wrongful death case] have died in mysterious or violent circumstances, while Gorokhov and another man have survived a combined three suspected assassination attempts.
www.nbcnews.com — July 7, 2017
And…
Kara-Muzra is a well-known critic of the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin. At the time of his most recent poisoning, Kara-Murza was promoting a documentary about his late friend, a fellow activist named Boris Nemtsov. […]
Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, was shot dead in February 2015 on a bridge across from the Kremlin.
Kara-Muzra has long campaigned against Putin and his inner circle. He was a driving force behind the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act.
www.nbcnews.com — Mar 3, 2017
Magnitsky’s former employer, U.S.-born British investor Bill Browder, said in a statement on March 21 that lawyer Nikolai Gorokhov was “thrown from the fourth floor of his apartment building.”
Russian news reports suggested his fall may have been an accident.
www.rferl.org — March 21, 2017
And just a day before Russian Court seeking damages for Sergei Magnitsky’s family — What a funny coincidence!
MOSCOW — A Russian lawyer who survived after falling from a fourth-floor balcony says his plunge was “no accident” and fears he was targeted because he found key evidence in a $230 million corruption scandal involving high-ranking state officials.
“I am still afraid for my life,” Nikolai Gorokhov told NBC News in his first interview since surviving the 50-foot drop on March 21. “But of course I am more afraid about the safety of my family.”
[…]
Eight people who have been involved in the same case [the Magnitsky wrongful death case] have died in mysterious or violent circumstances, while Gorokhov and another man have survived a combined three suspected assassination attempts.
www.nbcnews.com — July 7, 2017
How does that wise old saying go: “Once is Chance, Twice is Coincidence, Third time is a Pattern” …
Kara-Muzra is a well-known critic of the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin. At the time of his most recent poisoning, Kara-Murza was promoting a documentary about his late friend, a fellow activist named Boris Nemtsov. […]
Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, was shot dead in February 2015 on a bridge across from the Kremlin.
Kara-Muzra has long campaigned against Putin and his inner circle. He was a driving force behind the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act.
www.nbcnews.com — Mar 3, 2017
So who is this Magnitsky guy anyways — and why do the people who defend him, and dare to tell his story, keep dying before their time? Or else, end up on the Top of the Putin To-Do List?
Transcript from www.theatlantic.com — July 25, 2017
Bill Browder’s Testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee
“I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.
—
The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways, by suspending American adoptions of Russian children.
[…]
Sergei [Magnitsky] went out and investigated. He came back with the most astounding conclusion of corporate identity theft: The documents seized by the Interior Ministry were used to fraudulently re-register our Russian investment holding companies to a man named Viktor Markelov, a known criminal convicted of manslaughter. After more digging, Sergei discovered that the stolen companies were used by the perpetrators to misappropriate $230 million of taxes that our companies had paid to the Russian government in the previous year.
[…]
Sergei’s captors immediately started putting pressure on him to withdraw his testimony. They put him in cells with 14 inmates and eight beds, leaving the lights on 24 hours a day to impose sleep deprivation. They put him in cells with no heat and no windowpanes, and he nearly froze to death. They put him in cells with no toilet, just a hole in the floor and sewage bubbling up. They moved him from cell to cell in the middle of the night without any warning. During his 358 days in detention he was forcibly moved multiple times.
They did all of this because they wanted him to withdraw his testimony against the corrupt Interior Ministry officials, and to sign a false statement that he was the one who stole the $230 million—and that he had done so on my instruction [Bill Browder]. Sergei [Magnitsky] refused. In spite of the grave pain they inflicted upon him, he would not perjure himself or bear false witness.
[…]
After more than three months of untreated pancreatitis and gallstones, Sergei Magnitsky went into critical condition. The Butyrka authorities did not want to have responsibility for him, so they put him in an ambulance and sent him to another prison that had medical facilities. But when he arrived there, instead of putting him in the emergency room, they put him in an isolation cell, chained him to a bed, and eight riot guards came in and beat him with rubber batons.
That night he was found dead on the cell floor.
[…]
Gee, I wonder what in the world every happened to that $230 Million Dollar corporate identity theft Loot, that Sergei Magnitsky gave his life for — in order to (hopefully) expose the graft and corruption of the Putin-led government? To hopefully stop the Oligarchy-terror and oppression destroying his homeland …
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, May 12, 2017 — www.justice.gov
Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces $5.9 Million Settlement Of Civil Money Laundering And Forfeiture Claims Against Real Estate Corporations Alleged To Have Laundered Proceeds Of Russian Tax Fraud
Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that the United States has settled a money laundering and civil forfeiture action against assets of 11 corporations, including some that own luxury residential and high-end commercial real estate in Manhattan. The Government’s complaint alleged that the defendant corporations laundered some proceeds of a $230 million Russian tax refund fraud scheme involving corrupt Russian officials that was uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in pretrial detention in Moscow under suspicious circumstances and was posthumously prosecuted by Russia.
In the stipulation of settlement filed with U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III today, which is still subject to approval by the Court, one of the defendant corporations, Prevezon Holdings Ltd., agrees to pay $5,896,333.65 to resolve the Government’s claims against all defendants. […]
Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said: “We will not allow the U.S. financial system to be used to launder the proceeds of crimes committed anywhere — here in the U.S., in Russia, or anywhere else. Under the terms of this settlement, the defendants have agreed to pay not just what we alleged flowed to them from the Russian treasury fraud, but three times that amount, and roughly 10 times the money we alleged could be traced directly into U.S. accounts and real estate.”
The Government’s lawsuit alleged as follows:
In 2007, a Russian criminal organization engaged in an elaborate tax refund fraud scheme resulting in a fraudulently obtained tax refund of approximately $230 million from the Russian treasury. As part of the fraud scheme, members of the organization stole the corporate identities of portfolio companies of the Hermitage Fund, a foreign investment fund operating in Russia. The organization’s members then used these stolen identities to make fraudulent claims for tax refunds.
[…]
After perpetrating this fraud, members of the organization undertook illegal actions in order to conceal this fraud and retaliate against individuals who attempted to expose it. After learning of the lawsuits against its portfolio companies, Hermitage retained attorneys, including Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, to investigate. Magnitsky and other attorneys for Hermitage uncovered the refund fraud scheme, and the complicity of Russian governmental officials in it, and were subject to retaliatory criminal proceedings against them. Magnitsky was arrested and died approximately a year later in pretrial detention. An independent Russian human rights council concluded that Magnitsky’s arrest and detention were illegal, that Magnitsky was denied necessary medical care in custody, that he was beaten by eight guards with rubber batons on the last day of his life, and that the ambulance crew that was called to treat him as he was dying was deliberately kept outside of his cell for more than an hour until he was dead.
A $6 Million dollar Fine on a $230 Million dollar Theft, and no Russian defendants ever had to spend a day in US Court (or on the US Front pages either). Not a bad deal, eh — if you can arrangement it.
I suspect Preet Bharara would have NOT settled for pennies on the dollars — if he had not been summarily fired just 2 months before the Prevezon Holdings court date.
The US House Judiciary Committee wants an explanation for the abrupt settlement:
Preet_Bharara_on_Prevezon_Holdings_case_-Congress.JPG
Ms Veslnitskaya was representing the Russian Money Landerers in New York.
Natalia-Veselnitskaya.jpg
Natalia Veselnitskaya — has Kremlin contacts, will travel.
Preet_Bharara_on_Prevezon_Holdings_case-_Congress_3.JPG
— The Citizens left holding the bag.
Letter to AG Sessions (7.12.17) by natasha bertrand on Scribd
That Russian Attorney Might Just Be Part of Why Trump Fired Preet Bharara
by Ronn Blitzer, lawandcrime.com, July 13, 2017
[…] Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice was about to go to trial in a case against Prevezon, a Russian real estate company owned by Denis Katsyv, which was accused of laundering millions of dollars through New York City property. Two days before trial, in May, the case settled. Cases settle all the time, but a few details in this one are raising eyebrows.
For starters, the Katsyv family lawyer just happened to be Natalia Veselnitskaya, the same Russian lawyer who famously met with Donald Trump Jr. [and Kushner, and Manafort] the previous summer, has gotten the attention of Democrats on House Judiciary Committee. The Committee members sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday, asking just what the heck happened.
Well here’s a “funny” co-incidence. And I don’t mean funny in the “I just slipped and fell off my 4th story balcony” Ha Ha … More like, “have we’ve got a deal for you, that you better not refuse”, funny …
WHITE HOUSE: TRUMP WILL CONSIDER LETTING RUSSIA QUESTION INVESTOR, FORMER AMBASSADOR
by ELEANOR MUELLER, politico.com — July 18, 2018
President Donald Trump will consider allowing Russian investigators to question U.S.-born investor Bill Browder, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and others after President Vladimir Putin floated the idea, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.
“He said it was an interesting idea. He didn’t commit to anything,” Sanders said at the daily press briefing. “He wants to work with his team and determine if there’s any validity that would be helpful to the process…It was an idea they threw out.”
Yeah, but her emails.
and PizzaGate