Russia had (has?) con artist over a barrel

[someoneyouknow]

A senior Justice Department lawyer says a former British spy told him at a breakfast meeting two years ago that Russian intelligence believed it had then-candidate Donald Trump "over a barrel," according to multiple people familiar with the encounter.

The lawyer, Bruce Ohr, also says he learned that a Trump campaign aide had met with higher-level Russian officials than the aide had acknowledged, the people said.

Among the things Ohr said he learned from Steele during the breakfast was that an unnamed former Russian intelligence official had said that Russian intelligence believed "they had Trump over a barrel," according to people familiar with the meeting. It was not clear from Ohr's interview whether Steele had been directly told that or had picked that up through his contacts, but the broader sentiment is echoed in Steele's research dossier.

One of the meetings described to House lawmakers Tuesday was a Washington breakfast attended by Steele, an associate of his and Ohr. Ohr's wife, Nellie, attended at least part of the breakfast.

Ohr also told Congress that Steele told him that Page, a Trump campaign aide who traveled to Moscow that same month and whose ties to Russia attracted FBI scrutiny, had met with more senior Russian officials than he had acknowledged meeting with.

Ohr told lawmakers he could not vouch for the accuracy of Steele's information but has said he considered him a reliable FBI informant who delivered credible and actionable intelligence, including his investigation into corruption at FIFA, soccer's global governing body.

In the interview, Ohr acknowledged that he had not told superiors in his office, including Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, about his meetings with Steele because he considered the information inflammatory raw source material.

He also provided new details about the department's move to reassign him once his Steele ties were brought to light.

Ohr said he met in late December 2017 with two senior Justice Department officials, Scott Schools and James Crowell, who told him they were unhappy he had not proactively disclosed his meetings with Steele. They said he was being stripped of his associate deputy attorney post as part of a planned internal reorganization, people familiar with Ohr's account say.

Sessions and Rosenstein, Ohr was told, did not want him in the post because it entailed White House meetings and interactions, the people said.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-lawyer-bruce-ohr-was-told-russia-had-trump-over-a-barrel-in-2016/

 

[Tigersman]

It's no surprise that Trump is Russia's puppet. During the meetin in Helsinki between Putin and Trump only translators were present. What trump never thought about that Putin being an ex KGB intelligence officer most likely could speak English fluently and most likely could also read and write it. If Putin wanted to advance in the KGB then he would have learned at a minimum English, but most likely German, French, and Chinese and/or Japanese.

 

[LupusDei]

It's no surprise that Trump is Russia's puppet. During the meetin in Helsinki between Putin and Trump only translators were present. What trump never thought about that Putin being an ex KGB intelligence officer most likely could speak English fluently and most likely could also read and write it. If Putin wanted to advance in the KGB then he would have learned at a minimum English, but most likely German, French, and Chinese and/or Japanese.

It's easy to have something on a man like Trump, and he is very much "our guy" for Russians, a man they can understand and relate to. In contrast, they were genuinely afraid of Clinton, I don't quite get why, but it was rather obvious.

Seeing Russian television demagogues drink champagne on live TV with shit-eating grins, celebrating Trump's election night, was sickening. Still, from what I can say, they were just as surprised as the rest of the world, they didn't expect that and had to rework their programming significantly, turning on a heel full Orwellian style.


Btw. There is a strange thing about Putin: he actually worked as KGB operative in West Germany for a while. Contacts there helped him advance in the St. Petersburg mob and become a prime between Yeltsin boys destined to became oligarchs. So, he had to have flawless German, obviously. Yet, when he recently attended a wedding in Austria, his public German was quite bad. Did they send the wrong double there? This is not isolated incident either; the nutcase opinion is that there is as a minimum four men posing as Putin, and the original may be long dead since the cancer surgery in Germany failed.

 

[someoneyouknow]

It's easy to have something on a man like Trump, and he is very much "our guy" for Russians, a man they can understand and relate to. In contrast, they were genuinely afraid of Clinton, I don't quite get why, but it was rather obvious.

1) Clinton publicly called out Putin for the un-democratic elections in Russia, wherein Putin has an opponent put in jail and ballot boxes stuffed.

2) Clinton publicly called out Putin for his invasion of Ukraine and kept hammering away at it.

3) Clinton said she would arm the Ukrainian army so they could defend themselves. Not defensive weapons but weapons to be put in the field, along with various means of support, to help repel the invasion.

That's only three off the top of my head. Go look at her record. She was very gung ho on hammering Putin and Russia. To someone like Putin, who has bragged about the quality of Russian prostitutes, a woman talking down to him and calling him out would not stand. Thus, Putin's intervention to help the con artist.