The Trump / Russia Controversy

[Claeyt]

Breaking Today:

It was revealed today by the AP that Paul Manafort was payed for and developed a strategic plan within a memoranda written for the Putin government to advance Russian political interests throughout Europe, the former Soviet States and the United States. Manafort has repeatedly denied he worked for any Russian interests. AP is reporting that he was payed 10 million dollars per year between 2005 and 2009 by Russian Aluminum Oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is suspected of ties to Russian Intelligence and is a close Putin adviser, to work for Putin's government.

The report states:

"Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government."

https://apnews.com/122ae0b5848345faa881 ... Government

Why is this important?

1. Manafort has repeatedly denied that he worked for any Russian interests and has said he has only worked for pro-Russian Ukrainian interests.

2. Manafort was not registered as a foreign lobbyists or foreign agent during the time he was payed by Deripaska to advance Russian political interests.

3. Deripaska has repeatedly denied that Manafort EVER worked for him including in a 2008 interview when Manafort was currently working for him and had been being payed by him for 3 years.

4. Deripaska had huge business contacts in Moldova including some involved in the Deutsche Bank money laundering scandal. Trump also has connections to Deutsche Bank as he received a 300 million dollar loan during the time that the money laundering scandal was breaking.

5. 6 months after Manafort began to be payed by Dreipaska and secretly working for the Putin Government to advance Russian political interests and pro-Russian news coverage he moved into offices in Trump Tower in early 2006.

http://ny.curbed.com/2016/10/25/1340503 ... dents-list

[Dallane]

[Claeyt]

My favorite part of the new explosive AP article is this part:

Manafort's work with Deripaska continued for years, though they had a falling out laid bare in 2014 in a Cayman Islands bankruptcy court. The billionaire gave Manafort nearly $19 million to invest in a Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable, according to legal filings by Deripaska's representatives. It said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used.

Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Deripaska's representatives openly accused Manafort of fraud and pledged to recover the money from him. After Trump earned the nomination, Deripaska's representatives said they would no longer discuss the case.

This means that Manafort who stopped being payed by Russian Oligarch and Putin confidant Deripaska in 2009 and started working for corrupt pro-Russian Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych soon after then took 19 million from Deripaska to "invest" in a Ukrainian media company. Soon after Manafort took the money, Yanukovych was overthrown by the Euromaiden protests and fled the country to hide in Russia. MANAFORT THEN KEPT THE MONEY.

So a year goes by and Deripaska is understandably pissed at losing 19 million dollars so he claims Manafort defrauded him and ***** SUES HIM in the Cayman Islands where one of Manafort's many shell companies is located. HE THEN ***** DROPS THE LAWSUIT AND FRAUD CLAIM AFTER TRUMP WINS THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION WHILE MANAFORT IS HIS CAMPAIGN MANAGER. You could seriously not write a better movie screenplay than this.

[TotalyMeow]

Yeah, this isn't surprising news as it's been in the news for awhile now that Manafort might have been dealing with Russia more closely and dishonestly than he should have. Trump probably thought he was getting something different when he hired the guy in March as this news didn't start coming out until August. It's probably not a coincidence that Manafort "resigned" from the Trump campaign only a day or two after Trump received his first security briefing.

[Claeyt]

WHAT A ***** DAY:

First, AP reports Manafort secretly worked for the Putin Government to advance their cause in the U.S., Europe and in western media and lied about it repeatedly. This followed revealing reports that he HAD received payments from the 'Black Ledger' and laundered it through Belize just yesterday

https://www.apnews.com/122ae0b5848345fa ... _medium=AP

Then this afternoon former Dairy Farmer and current Republican head of the Intelligence committee Rep. Nunes, who is not a lawyer, received information from pro-Trump Justice Department sources that multiple members of Trump's campaign and Transition team (including possibly himself as he was the Intel transition chair and was responsible for the massive intel failure concerning Flynn) had been caught on FISA warrant wire taps of foreign agents. It's being reported that the source gave it to Nunes because it was about to be revealed by the FBI to the full intel committee and the source possibly wanted him to reveal it to trump so the White House could prepare for it.

After telling Paul Ryan about it, he immediately (and probably illegally) took the info to the White House and revealed the classified intel reports that were being used in an FBI counter-intelligence investigation TO THE PEOPLE BEING INVESTIGATED. He probably illegally did this without giving the info to his Intel committee co-chair or to the FBI. WTF. He then stated that this was through legal wire taps, not at trump Tower, and they were incidental contacts IN A MEDIA SCRUM ON THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN. Federal prosecutors are saying he may possibly be charged with 'Obstruction of Justice'.

https://secure.politico.com/story/2017/ ... ama-236366

Immediately, fellow congressional Republicans stated that Nunes should be removed from the chair of the intel committee and that the only option now is an 'Independent Select Committee'. NO ONE in congress is supporting Nunes's actions.

http://www.msnbc.com/for-the-record-wit ... 4215619769

The co-chair of the committee Rep. Schiff then said he and the FBI director would be asking for the intel shown to Nunes and the name of the person who leaked it in tomorrow's intel committee meeting. Rep. Schiff also revealed that the committee has received in the last 2 days hard evidence and not just circumstantial evidence that there was coordination and contact between the Trump campaign and Russian Intelligence.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/s ... ion-236386

I MEAN CAN THIS GET MORE ***** INTERESTING TODAY.... YES, YES APPARENTLY IT CAN!!!

CNN then reveals the possible hard evidence that Rep. Schiff had hinted at of collusion, contact and coordination between member(s) of the Trump Caimpaign and Russian Intelligence. Apparently the Trump Caimpaign ***** TOLD THEM WHEN TO RELEASE THE HACKED EMAILS AND THERE IS RECORDED CALLS, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AND HARD EVIDENCE THAT THIS HAPPENED.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/22/politics/ ... index.html

And the day ends with Rep. Quigly of the intel committee revealing that AG Sessions lied again about how many times he had met known Russian intelligence figures while he was working for the Trump Campaign and that the intel committee now has proof that Sessions met with the Russians a third time and hid it.

HOLY ***** **** WHAT A DAY. This is no longer a drip...drip..drip. moment. The faucet is ***** open.

As the Ukrainians say, "If the house smells like cooked cabbage and beets, there's probably Borscht somewhere'. - George Bush Sr.- while he was head of the CIA

_____________________________________________________________________________________

we are still far better off with him than we would have been with Hillary.

I'm going to quote you on this a year from now while were in the middle of a massive special prosecutor investigation and hearings upon hearings under a Republican congress. You'll notice that now that we have a Republican President and Republican AG there is no prosecution of Hillary. She did not break the law, she broke departmental rules on email use (as 9 Congressional committees also found). Trump and all the rest have lied to you.

Except that it won't. Do some research, this is what I was referring to when I said that our longevity has decreased in the last few years. Most of the people who would leave Obamacare were forced into it against their wills and will simply voluntarily leave and go back to what they had before. We do not have a healthcare problem in the US. Everyone who truly needs healthcare gets it. The government forcing people to buy a product they don't want didn't change anything for the better for those people. In those few occasional cases where individuals were benefiting from Obamacare and will have a tough struggle without it, we do have other programs to help them. Even crowdfunding is a viable option for an individual with a major medical problem as we are a very generous and charitable nation.

We absolutely have deep problems with out healthcare system, especially compared to all other modern western democracies. The reason Obamacare happened was because what we had before WAS NOT WORKING. We had poor working people with either NO insurance or with extremely bad insurance with huge premiums that only covered catastrophic care going into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Obamacare ended that and many, many other bad things in our healthcare system including high rates for people with pre-existing conditions, higher rates for women than for men, funding for medicaid for the working poor, etc... Everyone who truly needs healthcare can get it, I agree. They can go to the emergency room and not be turned away, but they'll go bankrupt when the do that. The government needs to simply use a single payer system like every other successful healthcare system in the modern world. Crowdfunding to pay for medical bills is not an option. I can't believe you're describing that as a necessary part of our healthcare system. That's idiotic that you think, in this country, the only way for a person to not lose everything, their home, their car, their savings is for them to beg people for money online. That's sick thinking and you should be ashamed that you think so low of other human beings and citizens of this country that you think they should be reduced to begging to simply live healthy.

[TotalyMeow]

Whoever is leaking these things with the names left in need to be fired and prosecuted. The wiretaps might have been legally done on foreign agents, but ever instance of the name of the American being left in is illegal. :/

As for Claeyt's misguided understanding of our medical system, it's true what we had before wasn't working very well, but that was because the government was already too involved (forcing companies to provide medical insurance) and Obamacare just made things worse. Health insurance shouldn't be an everyday thing, it should be something you have for big emergencies like someone got into a horrible car accident or cancer. There are still a few places you can go where they don't accept insurance and as a result their prices are much, much lower. As an example, I went to the an urgent care once with a problem, a place that expected patients to have insurance, and I was charged over $800 plus whatever the prescription was, I think about $40, because I didn't have insurance. Later, with the SAME PROBLEM, I found another urgent care which didn't accept any insurance and my bill from them was $78 including the medicine which they had on hand and gave me.

Yesterday I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and was told it would be $180 dollars on my insurance (which I would pay myself out of the deductable), but if I wanted to pay for it off insurance, it would cost $30. I heard the pharmacist telling the cashier when she went back to see if that was really correct something about the medicine being actually really cheap but the insurance sets the price and sets it really high for some reason, kickbacks maybe.

Now, if the majority of medical costs were that low without an insurance environment, people wouldn't HAVE these problems with medical costs that you are so concerned with. And I don't know if you're a lot younger than your picture looks or if you just have a bad memory for your childhood, but healthcare used to be a lot cheaper back when insurance wasn't quite so commonplace, and when people weren't quite so sue happy. I swear every other commercial these days is lawyers telling people they can get in on huge cash rewards if they jump into lawsuits against medical practitioners and companies, we do need some serious tort reform.

[Claeyt]

Whoever is leaking these things with the names left in need to be fired and prosecuted. The wiretaps might have been legally done on foreign agents, but ever instance of the name of the American being left in is illegal. :/

It is not illegal for for their names to be left in for a host of reasons. Their names being left in happens if they are part of the investigation or if they are important to the information's relevance or if they did something illegal on the incidental wiretap. There are many, many reasons and about 200 people who can unmask the names from intel reports. The largest reason they are unmasked is simply clarity of information. Whichever reason they are always run through the FISA courts or FISA court approved reasons to reveal them. Nunes revealing these investigative documents to the White House as they are being investigated by the FBI is a much bigger deal than the names being there for whatever FISA approved reason.

As for Claeyt's misguided understanding of our medical system, it's true what we had before wasn't working very well, but that was because the government was already too involved (forcing companies to provide medical insurance) and Obamacare just made things worse. Health insurance shouldn't be an everyday thing, it should be something you have for big emergencies like someone got into a horrible car accident or cancer. There are still a few places you can go where they don't accept insurance and as a result their prices are much, much lower. As an example, I went to the an urgent care once with a problem, a place that expected patients to have insurance, and I was charged over $800 plus whatever the prescription was, I think about $40, because I didn't have insurance. Later, with the SAME PROBLEM, I found another urgent care which didn't accept any insurance and my bill from them was $78 including the medicine which they had on hand and gave me.

Yesterday I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and was told it would be $180 dollars on my insurance (which I would pay myself out of the deductable), but if I wanted to pay for it off insurance, it would cost $30. I heard the pharmacist telling the cashier when she went back to see if that was really correct something about the medicine being actually really cheap but the insurance sets the price and sets it really high for some reason, kickbacks maybe.

Now, if the majority of medical costs were that low without an insurance environment, people wouldn't HAVE these problems with medical costs that you are so concerned with. And I don't know if you're a lot younger than your picture looks or if you just have a bad memory for your childhood, but healthcare used to be a lot cheaper back when insurance wasn't quite so commonplace, and when people weren't quite so sue happy. I swear every other commercial these days is lawyers telling people they can get in on huge cash rewards if they jump into lawsuits against medical practitioners and companies, we do need some serious tort reform.

Stop hijacking my thread with healthcare stuff Tmeow. Read this article if you're confused:

http://www.healthsystemtracker.org/insi ... th-system/

Things you can take from this article and other studies:

1. Uninsured rates before Obamacare held steady at around 15% since the 70's. They are at 9% right now due to sign ups during Obamacare which is the lowest uncovered rate in the history of the United States.

2. While actual Medical costs have gone up due to simple things such as an older population and the baby boomers it hasn't gone up as much as insurance rates and drug costs. Worldwide healthcare costs have gone up at a steady rate from the post WWII baby boom internationally as it costs more to take care of the elderly. In the U.S. another reason for healthcare costs rising is the lack of doctors. Although we are similar to Canada in doctors per capita we don't allow internationally trained doctors to practice in the U.S. like most of Europe does. This has been lobbied against by healthcare companies for a generation now and has been blocked by Republicans in congress several times because it would lead to greater immigration if doctors were classified as an essential class of immigrant based on their job title. Also we don't have sustained national state programs to train as many doctors as possible like most of Europe has.

3. Healthcare costs have gone up much more in the United States than in all comparable countries which have gone up generally the same as each other. The 2 reasons for this is the rise in Insurance and the rise in drug costs. Since 2002 drug costs have dropped due to Bush's medicare drug law which drastically cut drug costs for medicare patients but they are still way up since the 70's.

4. Why have Insurance and drug costs gone up so dramatically while actual medical healthcare costs have only gone up somewhat: Profits. Insurance companies have become profit driven publicly traded corporations instead of what they used to be which is privately held pseudo-municipal utilities attached to certain cities/counties/areas and/or certain companies/customers or Healthcare centers attached to state run Universities. Meanwhile, Drug companies have bathed in an orgy of money after the Republicans in congress have made it their goal to not allow the U.S. government to negotiate drug prices for medicaid and medicare patients with drug companies and only allowed the drug companies to set prices with the government. This is the absolute opposite of all other nations with Universal healthcare and why drug prices are so cheap in Canada.

5. The reason Obamacare rates have gone up is because it set a basic level of insurance. This disallowed insurance companies from selling 'garbage plans' to the poor with massive deductibles and minimum basic coverage. The plans were predatory and were marketed for maximum profitability by abusing the lack of knowledge about healthcare by the working poor. The Republicans plan eliminates this basic insurance plan requirement.

Please don't answer this on my Russia thread Tmeow.

[Bleuwulf]

to be fair,you're long winded posts are a bit of a joke (no offense)

I mean you seem like your getting almost excited at the fact theyre supposedly "investigating" the new president.this is so commonplace it wouldn't even merit news if the rabid and moronic Hillaryite sheep weren't so tied in/pandering to the media about the whole "Russian Connection" to A)fling shade on the fact that they LOST and B) Deflect attention from the fact that their conduct during the election was downright Felonious and unconstitutional,and they STILL lost...

The title itself I presume refers to an older story that on visits to Russia, "The Don" had hookers in the same suite as former puppet figurine and his wife and played water sports in that very bed, a story which has already been "debunked" as the rankest form of tabloid sensationalism,nothing more...

IF there WERE serious inquiry into the presidents activities,it would just be the "9/11 inquiry" all over again, i.e. the president and his secretary would be off the record,unrecorded, and reserve (and be afforded the right) to flatly refuse any question that would be politically "awkward" to answer....

This is nothing more than the grand puppet show it's always been,to keep "We The People" divided and distracted,and thus easy to control and manipulate.

#GetWoke

[Dallane]

This is nothing more than the grand puppet show it's always been,to keep "We The People" divided and distracted,and thus easy to control and manipulate.

100x this. The entire hearing of the FBI director was a total **** show on both sides.

[cyko]

I don't know if someone has already asked that before, but why in hell, are politicians spied out in your country, without initially suspicion?

Maybe you got already used to this 1984behaviour, but in not totalitarian states, this is no common behaviour of secret intelligence services. Or at least, they don't talk about it in the media and are applauded by pseudoliberals....


btw, referring to OECD Health Statistics 2015, the public expenditures of the USA in healthcare, were below those of Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, Belgium or Norway. But whole expenditures of the USA (public & private) are at 50 - 100% higher than in any of this countries. This should be watched with the different population numbers in mind, but strongly indicates, that the problems of the US healthcare system, doesn't seem to be related with "Obamacare".
On the contrary, those numbers let me suspect, that the USA needs an even better public health insurance than it already has.

The complete costs of your healthcare system for your national economy, are bloated up by the private expenditures, at least doubling the whole costs. In the other named countries, the private expenditures are only a minor percentage of the whole.

Maybe, it is not the wisest thing, to let the invisible hand of the market control the healthcare sector. All this money which flows in this obviously overexpensive system, should be better spend in Diners, Shops or over parts of your domestic markets (right word? Don't know), which would strengthen the US economy.