Russiagate update: now including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran!
But seriously, yesterday’s litany of new revelations suggests something substantial is going to drop in the very near future. [NOTE from the publisher: I am old enough to remember Watergate — at its peak, it would take a week or two for this amount of detail to emerge in the Washington Post.]
- Reza Zarrab, that Turkish-Iranian gold trader at the center of an international corruption case who has already entered a guilty plea to a so-far unspecified charge, is set to tell a New York jury the “inside story” of a plot to evade American sanctions on Iran that reached the highest levels of Turkey’s government, a prosecutor said.
- New York State prosecutors investigating former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort’s New York biz activities are scheduling interviews with 10 to 20 of his work associates and lenders, including a banking exec who provided millions in loans on Manafort family properties. Oh, and don’t forget: Trump has no pardon power over state charges…
- On top of that, Politico reported that a Florida lawmaker’s former company used Manafort to pitch Russian-developed technology to U.S. government. “[I]t’s also ingrained with other obscure plot elements worthy of the silver screen, including officials with known ties to the mafia and an untraceable cash flow from Cayman Island investors, according to thousands of pages of regulatory filings.”
- But, but, but, Uranium One! Disgraced ex-National Security Advisor Mike Flynn was promoting an insane nuclear-plant project for Saudi Arabia during his brief White House tenure; project backers drafted memos for President Trump, and Flynn allies continued to push the plan after the Flynn was ousted!
- Did Betsy DeVos’s fascist brother Erik Prince single-handedly violate U.S. sanctions against Russia?
- “President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, is doing business with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, a bombshell new report revealed Tuesday. A large leak of financial documents called the Paradise Papers revealed several weeks ago that Russian billionaire Kirill Shamanov, the son of a close friend of Putin, does business with Ross — but until Tuesday, the exact connection between Shamanov and Putin was unclear.”
- The Daily Beast has deduced from unfulfilled FOIA requests that Michael Flynn’s tenure atop the Defense Intelligence Agency is likely under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
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Reps. Eliot Engel and Elijah Cummings want Thomas Barrack to participate in a transcribed interview by Dec 12 that describes the conversations he had with Flynn and other officials about Flynn’s plan to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East while he was NSA. pic.twitter.com/JHrSXwLl5W
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) November 29, 2017
Something tells me I am going to need another cup of covfefe!
Akiko Nojima is an American-born media producer, artist and tour manager, political activist, and lifestyle dominatrix. She splits her time between Berlin (Bergmannkiez) and Brooklyn (Park Slope).