1/ Flynn 302 contains interest nugget showing total insolence of outgoing Obama admin to incoming administration. Obama notified Russia of expulsions on Dec 28, but not in press until Dec 29 ~2:15 pm Eastern (e.g. NYT nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/…)
2/ On Dec 28, the day that Russia learned of expulsions, Kislyak sent text to Flynn asking to talk. Flynn, on holiday, didn't reply until next day. (Flynn had not been notified by Obama administration of its Dec 28 actions against Russia.)
3/ Flynn learned of Obama administration actions against Russia from media reports on afternoon of Dec 29.
4/ it sounds like Flynn's discussion with Kislyak was in the morning of Dec 28 (not stated by Mueller) since Flynn 302 says he was "unaware of the then-upcoming actions" [at the time that he was talking to Kislyak on Dec 29].
5/ this chronology indicates that Obama admin was so intent on ambushing Trump transition team that they didn't give Trump team any information. During Dec 29 call, Flynn's only information on expulsions appears to have been from Kislyak's side of story.
6/ people looking back can easily mis-apprehend events. One assumes that Flynn KNEW details of expulsions when he talked to Kislyak on Dec 29, but that does not appear to have been the case.
7/ watch the pea as Mueller Indictment recites chronology. It began with Obama's Dec 28 Executive Order. Mueller stated that the executive order "announced sanctions against Russia." But the order wasn't "announced" on Dec 28. It appears to have been announced ~2:15 pm Dec 29.
8/ Obama announcement made Dec 29 2:12 pm obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-offi…. It announced expulsion of 35 persona non grata, seizure of 2 Russian compounds and sanctions on nine Russian institutions and 4 individuals. If words are important, "sanctions" and expulsions may be distinguished
9/ Mueller indictment says tht Flynn called [Kushner] on Dec 29 prior to calling Kislyak. Transition team (reasonably) didn't want "escalation" as Obama admin laying down poison pills. If call prior to 2 pm (as appears likely), necessarily general only, as they didnt know details
10/ Mueller chronology implies that they knew contents of Obama executive order the previous day, but they didn't.
11/ Mueller indictment said that Flynn then called Kislyak and asked that they "not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner." As noted above, if before 2 pm, Flynn didn't know details, except as Kislyak may have told him.
12/ Flynn 302 say tht agents asked Flynn if discussed "expulsion of Russian diplomats or closing of Russian properties". Kislyak may have told him about these still unannounced actions. But Flynn didn't know about it, had no instructions, not likely that he free-lanced on this.
13/ Agents asked Flynn about discussion of the "expulsions". Flynn said that he "didn't remember. It wasn't 'Don't do anything'". Flynn said that he didn't know about Persona Non Grata (expulsions) until "in media" i.e. afternoon Dec 29.
14/ another nugget from Flynn 302 courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…: the word "sanctions" does NOT occur anywhere in 302. The 302 mentions "expulsions" and "closures", two legs of Obama exec order but didnt mention "sanctions", the technique used by Treasury.
15/ a reminder from Obama executive order obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-offi…: "sanctions" are not the same thing in the order as "expulsions" or "closures". Sanctions were what everyone was used to and expected. The expulsions and closures were unexpected and what FBI asked about.
16/ after clause on Kislyak-Flynn conversation, Mueller indictment stated that Flynn called [Kushner] to report on Kislyak call, including their "discussion of the U.S. Sanctions", though, as noted above, the word "sanctions" does not occur in the 302.
17/ my own interpretation (without huge confidence) is that Flynn, as instructed (and quite reasonably) asked Kislyak to let new admin look at things and, in a general sense, not to escalate, but expected some sore of reciprocal action. On specifics of expulsion + closures, Flynn
18/ would, without question, have wanted to see what Obama admin had done (rather than rely on Kislyak) and to get instructions before commenting to Kislyak on the issues of expulsion and closure which the FBI agents later asked him about.
19/ from the 302 - and this is counterintuitive and requires watching the pea very closely - it doesn't appear that FBI agents actually asked Flynn about "sanctions" (which they might not have distinguished from "expulsions" and "closures".)
20/ Dec 30: Putin saucily decided not to reciprocate with expulsions, but to invite US representatives in Moscow to a party (or similar). Kislyak, trying to build bridges with new admin, called Flynn to say that Russian restraint was due to Flynn's call. Flynn called transition.
21/ 302: agents asked Flynn about Kislyak's follow up call to say that Russia had decided not to escalate. In his best imitation of Hillary (or Comey), Flynn implausibly said that "it was possible but he didn't remember".
22/ Hillary and Comey each said they "did not remember" for hundreds of questions and FBI/DOJ just shrugged their shoulders. However, when Flynn (implausibly) said the same, FBI charged that he "falsely stated that he did not remember a follow-up conversation", one of 2 counts.
23/ on Jan 12, someone in Resistance cabal told David Ignatius that Flynn had talked to Kislyak on Dec 29 archive.is/IFfZl - a huge sensation since Steele Dossier had been published on Jan 10 following leaks from Comey-Brennan-Clapper cabal.
24/ Ignatius speculated on possible violation of Logan Act - a ludicrous conceit concocted by Sally Yates. Ignatius' mention of Logan Act is thus slight (but only slight) pointer towards DOJ or FBI origin of leak.
25/ on Jan 14, WH spox John Earnest didn't see any problem in principle, that "incoming national security adviser may have need to contact representative of foreign government" despite lurid headline: "WH: We Didn’t Coordinate Flynn Call to RussAmbassador cnbc.com/2017/01/14/whi…
26/ Obama had obligation to notify incoming admin of expulsions or even to consult. But maybe Obama didn't notify Trump team because they planned to surveille how Russia contacted transition. Would untoward backchannel be revealed? In fact, Russia contacted Flynn, proper channel.
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Climate United Fund, into which Biden EPA appears to have parked $6.97 billion, is a coalition of three 501(c)(3): Calvert Impact Capital, Community Preservation Corporation and Self-Help Credit Union.
Their EPA work plan here: epa.gov/system/files/d…. Their work plan says that they have managed more than $30 billion in private and institutional capital.
I looked very quickly at the financial statements for each of the three participants.
Calvert Impact assets.ctfassets.net/4oaw9man1yeu/6… shows a 2023 balance sheet with $520 million in portfolio investments and $154 million in cash.
Calvert Impact streams money into a large number of smaller (mostly) non-profits, including for example Artspace boutique homes illustrated below.
Community Preservation Corporation 2023 balance sheet shows $847 million invested in mortgage loans; cash and restricted cash of $342 million, $370 million invested in hedge funds, $101 million in unconsolidated subsidiaries for overall assets of $1.8 billion.
Self-Help Corporation has loans of $3.42 billion, with total assets of $4.49 billion.
All three participants are substantial 501(c)(3) corporations, all three are in the lending business. But their total is nowhere near the $30 billion mentioned in their application. I wonder where the $30 billion comes from.
The business to date of the three participants has been loans. Someone is going to benefit from the infusion of $6.97 billion into these three companies. How will that work? Maybe Kamala Harris can explain.
One-quarter of the Climate United Fund will be spent on "electric transportation" - a topic on which the leader of DOGE is well informed.
They propose "Electric and/or plug-in
hybrid electric passenger vehicles replacing existing ICE cars" - 25,000 – 35,000 passenger vehicles electrified. They also propose "Electric medium duty vans
and trucks replacing existing
ICE fleets" - 500-750 vehicles.
What isn't explained is why three Democrat 501(c)(3)'s have any useful role to play in the acquisition of electric vehicles by ICE? Surely that's something that ICA can administer themselves.
Similarly they propose "Electric heavy-duty trucks replacing diesel trucks" and "Electric school buses replacing diesel buses". Whatever the merits of the scheme, how do the 501(c)(3)'s add value?
Victoria Nuland was appointed to Board of Directors of National Endowment of Democracy, the primary US funding agency for overseas NGOs involved in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria.
One can scarcely help wondering what Nuland's input has been in connection with recent NGO activity in Georgia and Syria.
for people unfamiliar with Victoria Nuland, she has been mentioned dozens of times in previous threads here. x.com/search?q=nulan…
reupping a link to Nuland's notorious conversation with US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in early February 2014, while Maidan insurrection reaching crescendo in Ukraine (precisely as Putin and Russia preoccupied with Sochi Olympics). On February 22, 2014, Yats (Yatsenyuk) Nuland's choice was installed as Prime Minister; Oleh Tiahnybok, leader of the neo-Nazi party, was given a key role in post-coup government, while Klitschko remained mayor of Kyiv, a position that he retained. Precisely as Nuland and Pyatt agreed. Nuland said that Biden would be running point on the operation, which he did, becoming the de facto US regent in Ukraine from 2014-Jan 2017. Worth listening to again. 📷youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6s…… Earlier CA link here x.com/ClimateAudit/s…
Some readers have probably noticed that Microsoft has recently become one of the leading retailers of lurid allegations about "Russian influence operations targeting U.S. elections".
What is being overlooked is the lead author of the Microsoft articles is none other than Clint Watts, the founder (fpri.org/news/2017/08/f…) of the infamous Hamilton 68 dashboard, which was exposed by @mtaibbi in #TwitterFiles 15 (x.com/mtaibbi/status…) as the "next great media fraud".
Taibbi comprehensively exposed the total sham of the Hamilton 68 dashboard. Nonetheless, Clint Watts, the main proponent of the sham Hamilton 68 dashboard, has risen to a more lucrative and more prominent platform at Microsoft, where he continues to propagate the same warmonging claims as he has for more than a decade.
less well known is that Watts also had a curious role in the original Russiagate hoax. Christopher Steele had met Kathleen Kavalec, a senior State Department official on October 11, 2016, where he spun an even more lurid fantasy than the "dossier" itself, adding in Sussmann's false Alfa Bank hoax and naming Millian as a supposed source (notwithstanding his supposed reluctance to identify sources because of "danger".) Kavalec later met with Bruce Ohr, who became Steele's conduit to FBI after November 1, 2016.
Kavalec read Watts' lurid November 6, 2016 article entitled "Trolling for Trump" and, after meeting with Ohr et al on Nov 21, 2016, called Watts in for a meeting on December 7, 2016. warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolli…
Kavalec was so impressed with Watts that she sent a copy of "Trolling for Trump" to Victoria Nuland and other high-level State Department officials including Daniel Fried, John Heffern, Athena Katsoulos, Naz Durakoglu, Jonathan Cohen, Bridget Brink, Eric Green, Christopher Robinson, Conrad Tribble. Earlier in 2016, Brink and Nuland had been involved in the Biden/State Department putsch to remove Shokin as Ukrainian Prosecutor General.
Clint Watts' "Trolling for Trump" article warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolli…, which had so enthralled senior State Department official Kavalec and her associates, said that their interest in "trolls" had arisen as follows: "When experts published content criticizing the Russian-supported Bashar al Assad regime, organized hordes of trolls would appear to attack the authors on Twitter and Facebook."
So who were the "experts" whose feelings had been hurt by online criticism? It turned out to be January 2014 article foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria… co-authored by Watts himself entitled "The Good and Bad of Ahrar al-Sham: An al Qaeda–Linked Group Worth Befriending."
At the time of Watts' article, ISIS was still very new. It was written in the same month as Obama had called ISIS the "jayvee". At the time, U.S. (through separate CIA and DoD operations) and Gulf States allies were funneling cash and weapons to jihadis of every persuasion as the Obama administration attempted to implement its regime change coup in Syria.
But despite Beltway support for arming Al Qaeda and its allies (including Ahrar al-Sham as advocated by Clint Watts), the larger public has never entirely understood the higher purpose supposedly served by arming Al Qaeda and its allies to carry out regime change in Syria. Mostly, they find it hard to believe that U.S. would carry out such an iniquitous policy. So Watts ought to have expected some blowback to his advocacy of arming AlQaeda allies, but instead, Watts blamed "Russia" for online criticism, ultimately falsely accusing simple opponents of US allying with AlQaeda allies as Russian agents or dupes.
actually, the lesson from Helene is the opposite from that being promoted.
In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Over the next 40 years, they built 49 dams, which, for the most part, accomplished their goal. Whereas floods in the Tennessee were once catastrophic, younger people are mostly unaware of them.
The French Broad River (Asheville) is an upstream tributary where flood control dams weren't constructed due to local opposition.
Rather than the devastation of Hurricane Helene on Asheville illustrating the effect of climate change, the success of the flood control dams in other sectors of the Tennessee Valley illustrates the success of the TVA flood control program where it is implemented.
Hurricane Helene did not show the effect of climate change, but what happens to settlements in Tennessee Valley tributaries under "natural" flooding (i.e. where flood control dams have been rejected.)
I should add that, in its first 40 years, the TVA built 49 flood control dams, of which 29 were power-generating. In the subsequent 50 years, TVA built 0 flood control dams,
However, in the 1980s, they established the Carbon Dioxide Information Centre (CDIAC) under their nuclear division, which sponsored much influential climate research, including the CRU temperature data (Phil Jones) and Michael Mann's fellowship from which Mann et al 1998 derived.
In 1990, the parents of Crowdstrike's Dmitri Alperovich moved from Russia to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where his father was a TVA nuclear engineer. Dmitri moved to Tennessee a few years later.
One can't help but wonder whether TVA's original mandate for flood control got lost in the executive offices, attracted by more glamorous issues, such as climate change research.
If so, one could reasonably say that a factor in the seeming abandonment of TVA efforts to complete its original flood control mandate (e.g. to French Broad River which inundated Asheville) was partly attributable to diversion of TVA interest to climate change research, as opposed to its mandate of flood control.
another thought. As soon as the point is made, it is obvious that flood control dams have reduced flooding. Not just in Appalachia. I've looked at long data for water levels in Great Lakes and the amount of fluctuation (flooding) after dams installed is much reduced.
And yet my recollection of public reporting of climate is that weather extremes, including flooding, is getting worse. But in areas with flood control dams, it obviously //isn't// getting worse than before. It's better. Note to self: check IPCC reports for their specific findings on flooding.
as readers are aware, @walkafyre has a long-term project of decoding the Mueller investigation through the laborious project of identifying the interviewees underneath the redactions. Some of the identifications are so ingenious that it's fun. Yesterday was an interesting example, which I'll narrate since it's interesting. (There are many other equally interesting examples.) It is the identification of the interviewee of Bates number B2997, interviewed on Aug 15, 2018 (302 filed on Dec 17, 2018). The 302 was published in volume 11 (page 92) - online at walkafyre's website here:
The 302 has 6 pages. The last 4 pages are totally redacted of information. All identifying information has been redacted from the first two pages except for the presence of Mueller attorney Aaron Zelinsky. Take a look.
And yet from this meagre information, walkafyre has made a firm identification of the interviewee.
first step. The 302s are in non-proportional font (Courier) and characters can be counted. Last name has 8 characters and praenomen has 9-10 characters.
second step. B2995 previously identified as Ali, Hesham and B3005 previously identified as Bartholomew, Vanessa. 302s are //locally// in alpha order, thus pinning surname to alpha range Ali to Bar.
third step. the interviewee (LN8) interacts with a LN9 frequently.
fourth. the interview was in summer 2018 with Zelinsky in attendance. This indicates that interview was connected to Roger Stone.
fifth, LN9 has given money to "the ___". Probably "the PAC". Public data on Roger Stone's PAC shows that the largest contributor (by far) was John Powers Middleton (9-character last name.)
So the interviewee is a LN8 in alpha range Ali-Bar with some sort of regular connection to Middleton. Walkafyre had this figured out a long time ago, but was stuck.fec.gov/data/receipts/…
a few days ago, @walkafyre took a look at documents related to a sordid lawsuit between Middleton and Roy Lee, an estranged associate. Case number shown below. One of the motions demanded deposition of "Alex Anderson", a Middleton employee. Alexander Anderson had previously made a deposition in support of Middleton.
As a coup de grace, one of the production requests in the pleadings was for "all communications related to Middleton's relationship with Roger Stone".
The redacted interviewee the August 15, 2018 grand jury notice was convincingly Middleton's employee Alexander Anderson.
@WashAuthor
in your interesting March 2023 article entitled "The Trump Campaign's Collusion with Israel", you observed that the profile of the Israeli agent whose emails were the subject of a May 5, 2018 warrant in the Roger Stone investigation (courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…) was "strikingly similar to that of Isaac Molho".
However, the specific identification to Molho is precluded by several details in the supporting affidavit.
First, on multiple occasions, slightly incomplete redaction revealed that the first letter of the agent's surname was A, as shown in paragraph 43 below (there are several other examples).
Second, the length of the surname is approximately 9 letters. The affidavit is in Times New Roman 11.5 with either default or close to default margins and tabs. While a precise character count is not possible, it is possible to say that the length is approximately 9 letters - much too long for "MOLHO".
Third, from paragraph 63, it appears that the first letter of the first name is also A. The redaction in paragraph 63 is a quote from a text from the Israeli agent to Roger Stone and is too long for the standalone surname, but is consistent with a first name-surname combination.
At first glance, these details seem insufficient to permit a positive attribution, but, remarkably, an Israeli agent with first name beginning with A and a nine-letter surname beginning with A was exposed in January 2019 by @jsrailton and @razhael: Aharon Almog Assouline. See apnews.com/article/9f31fa… and nytimes.com/2019/01/28/wor….
@RonanFarrow subsequently wrote about Assouline's connection to Black Cube, the Israeli private intelligence firm that had worked on behalf of Harvey Weinstein: newyorker.com/news/annals-of…
Below shows an attempted replication of paragraphs 42 and 43 of the May 5, 2018 Stone Warrant in Times New Roman 11.5 with "ASSOULINE" (showing the slightly unredacted A in yellow). If the surname isn't "ASSOULINE", it's a surname of almost identical length in Times New Roman 11.5 that begins with A.
Also shown is an attempted replication of paragraph 63 showing a full name (with AARON rather than AHARON).
While these details (length of surname, A as first letter of surname) do not //prove// that Assouline was the Israeli agent, they severely limit the field of potential candidates and eliminate Molho.
Meier's book ial connection of Assoulin to the Stone warrant was first thought of (needless to say) by @walkafyre.
The January 2019 incident in which Railton and Satter exposed Assoulin was discussed in @BarryMeier's book Spooked (amazon.ca/Spooked-Trump-…) which discussed Black Cube but did not consider its possible connection to the Mueller warrant for emails of the Israeli agent.
Meier's book did point out an interesting attribute of a Black Cube operation identified by Citizen Lab: it sent out fake security alerts (ostensibly from Google) in which a public hyperlink-shortening service shortened and encoded a hyperlink containing the target email address of the phishing target. Citizen Lab figured out the sequencing of the shortened hyperlinks and identified thousands of targets of the phishing campaign carried out by Black Cube.
By coincidence (or not), the Podesta hack is also attributed to a fake security alert (ostensibly from Google) that used a public hyperlink-shortening service (bitly) that encoded Podesta's email address (in base64) in the hyperlink as part of a phishing campaign in which thousands of shortened addresses were generated.