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May 9 • 436 tweets • 106 min read
1) GOP Political Strategist Steve Schmidt is firing off against Meghan McCain, dropping secrets from past GOP campaigns in a bitter feud full of drama.

Let's dig into some revelations.

Dole Campaign leftovers recycled for Trump Campaign:

kansascity.com/.../polit.../a…
2) Steve highlights how one firm ran the 96 Dole Campaign, where legendary theft was reported, the 2008 McCain Campaign, and the 2016 Trump Campaign.

The DC firm is two guys and is connected to the corrupt WinRed and Paul Manafort.
3) I cover how WinRed is likely used with a <$200 gift card scheme to finance House campaigns of people like M.T. Greene or Lauren Boebert on Twitter in 2020. Evidence exists. This thread also covers it.

4) John Weaver had to register as foreign agent of Putin’s Russia after agreeing to lobby for a Russian nuclear company against U.S. sanctions for $350,000+ & only backed out after being shamed online.

Think about what agency has the clout to online shame and effect that kind
5) of change for perception. Steve Schmidt then co-founded Project Lincoln with Weaver. Was there an attempt by Russia’s Intel Services to intimidate Steve Schmidt?

In 2015, Weaver worked for John Kasich of Ohio, a saner GOP candidate that perhaps Moscow worried about
6) over-shadowing Donald Trump in the primaries leading into 2016, and hence maybe planted weaver as a land mine in the Kasich orbit?

Link: politico.com/story/2019/05/…

Nicolle Wallace was a senior advisor for McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
7) She likely knew at the time much of what Steve Schmidt is disclosing now. Maybe she should disclose everything she knows as well.

The 2008 John McCain presidential campaign was another national Republican presidential campaign Putin attempted to infiltrate, not through the
8) famously anti-Russia McCain (who at the time he ran was widely thought to be a reasonable candidate to die of old age in office) but through the young, largely unknown running mate who’d be president of the United States if something happened to McCain, then-Alaska Governor
9) Sarah Palin.

From Seth Abramson: Of course, if a third of Americans susceptible to Donald Trump’s idiosyncratic con are unable to conceive of Trump as someone willing to throw America under the bus for the most lucrative business deal of his professional life in Russia—Trump
10) Tower Moscow being an ambition he admits to having harbored for many decades, even as he admits he’s been broadly motivated by greed his entire adult life—they are even less likely to see a potential Kremlin stooge in the almost gratuitously vapid Palin, whose selection by
11) the war hero McCain was not just an unexpected turn of events but in short order sank his entire presidential bid.

Hardly any American, it seemed, wanted Sarah Palin just a heartbeat away from the American presidency.

But there’s increasing evidence to suggest that
12) this is exactly what the Kremlin wanted.

As reported by the Times in September 2008 (in an article entitled, “Are Russian Ties a Palin Priority?”), in May 2007 a Russian politician by the name of Vladimir Yetylin came to the United States on a diplomatic mission.
13) But he didn’t go to Washington; indeed, he didn’t go to the “Lower 48” at all. Instead, he travelled to the largest city in Alaska—Anchorage—to see Alaska’s then-Governor.

A May 2009 Atlantic article revealed that Yetylin’s invitation to have Palin come to Russia wasn’t the
14) first such invitation Palin had received. The magazine reported that soon after as she was elected to office in December 2006, Palin had a communication from Russian Federation Honorary Consul Steve Smirnoff, who not only asked her to “open a dialogue [with Russia]” but
15) do something more audacious: “be instrumental in reviving relationships between Alaska and Russia, and the rest of the world.”

Smirnoff’s oddly punctuated entreaty appeared to position Sarah Palin as the linchpin to Russia “reviving [its] relationships” with
16) “the rest of the world,” particularly the U.S., at a time when Putin was facing international scrutiny over Russian war crimes originating from Kremlin aggression in Europe, specifically in Chechnya, a breakaway Russian republic that was hoping to remain independent from the
17) Kremlin but which Russia’s autocratic leader was determined to bring to heel at the barrel of a gun.

The horribly bloody Second Chechen War would last until 2009, but in August 2008 Putin would nevertheless ramp up his feverish imperialist ambitions by invading the former
18) Soviet republic of Georgia as well.

Side-note: in 2004 Deripaska partner Nat Rothschild invited Paul Manafort & Rick Davis to help return Igor Giorgadze to a position of influence in Georgia.

In 2004, Manafort helped Deripaska w/what consultant Philip Griffin called
19) intelligence gathering on the US view of Ukraine & met Rinat Akhmetov.

In 2009, CIA AGENT Steven Stigall told the EAC that Yanukovich's Ukraine campaign rigged the vote tallies in 2004 by "intersecting the votes before it goes to the official computer for tabulation" so
20) that they could make "subtle adjustments to the vote."

prnewswire.com/news-releases/…
21) Yanukovych initially was declared the winner of the 2004 Ukraine election, but there was a massive protest called the Orange Revolution due in part to alleged rigging & the result was annulled. In the re-do, Yanukovych lost.

What needs further investigated is that it seems
22) Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, Rick Davis, Paul Manafort, & Oleg Deripaska converged on Alabama during this same time frame. Don Siegelman, the D Governor of Alabama, was prosecuted & convicted in what may have been a setup influenced by foreign operations.

Russian politicians
23) call Americans some version of “forward-thinking” when they mean to say the person in question is uniquely open to a historic detente between the two longtime Cold War superpowers.

Smirnoff referred to Sarah Palin in 2006 and 2008 as “forward-thinking.”
24) If that seems far-fetched to you, consider that while the Russian-born Smirnoff was a naturalized American, he had been (as his 2016 obituary explains) “[wearing] out his passport over and over again” via trips between the United States and Russia from 1977—the year he was
25) named an emissary to the Soviet Union—to the time of his letter to Palin in 2006.

Smirnoff Obituary: legacy.com/.../name/steve…...

Check out the Series on Fx called The Americans:

fxnetworks.com/shows/the-amer…

Not only did Smirnoff have “a passion of all things Russian”, but
26) his work as a transpacific emissary was sufficiently high level that he had met Russians at all levels of government—including Kremlin executives such as President Boris Yeltsin himself.

Smirnoff was well-connected in Russia, wanted better relations between the United States
27) and the Kremlin, and appeared to earnestly believe Palin could fill that role even before there had been any significant speculation about her seeking higher office in D.C. Yet Palin did not meet with Smirnoff—so while the well-connected, Russian-born U.S. citizen may well
28) have had high hopes for Palin in 2006, we have to look to 2007 (i.e., the Vladimir Yetylin meeting with Palin) to get a better sense of how Palin was being sized up by the Kremlin.

Indeed, the Yetylin-Palin meeting may help explain one of the strangest (and arguably most
29) deceitful) things Palin ever said to American media.

So, what, precisely, was Palin referring to when she told CBS News that she personally had foreign policy experience because of “trade missions back and forth” with Russia?

The simple answer is, we don’t know.
30) But perhaps it’s time for someone to find out. The Daily News opined that Palin’s statement on “trade missions” was an “odd lie.” Yet it wasn’t entirely a lie, as it turns out. As we now know, Palin did meet with at least one “Russian leader”: Vladimir Yetylin.
31) Mr. Yetylin worked in Moscow as a member of the Russian government’s lower house (the equivalent of America’s House of Representatives).

The Soviet-born Yetylin was a member of the Supreme Soviet Committee on Foreign Affairs until the Soviet Union’s demise.

That’s right:
32) Yetylin was for several years a top Soviet expert on foreign relations.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Yetylin undertook a series of unsuccessful runs for the Russia Duma throughout the 1990s. His best placement on the lists was second, an election he lost to Trump
33) family friend Roman Abramovich, which at a minimum means a Russian oligarch close to Trump, who would become Putin’s greatest fan and ally, knew who Vladimir Yetylin was (indeed had been solely focused on him for months, in the midst of a political campaign) at the time
34) Yetylin flew to Anchorage to invite Palin to Russia so she could be the bridge between Russia and America that Roman’s friend Donald Trump would subsequently become instead. Vladimir Yetylin was for years a political adviser to Trump family friend Roman Abramovich, and
35) indeed was finally elected to the Duma, Russia’s version of our American House of Representatives, exclusively due to Abramovich’s largesse; indeed, Yetylin actually took Abramovich’s seat in the Duma when Abramovich was elected to an even higher office within Putin’s orbit.
36) Yetylin’s party at the time? The pro-Putin People’s Party of the Russian Federation.

Let’s summarize this: a top political adviser for a Russian oligarch who is a widely recognized member of “Team Putin” meets with Palin at a time when she is seen as a candidate for federal
37) office; this adviser is a Russia Duma member who, like Putin, previously worked for the Soviet Union’s Communist Party (in this case, in the Supreme Soviet Committee on Foreign Affairs); this Kremlin agent’s meeting with Palin results in him assessing her to be
38) “forward-thinking” in her approach to American relations with the Kremlin; Palin appears to reference this meeting with a Kremlin agent in a nationally televised CBS News interview, calling it a “trade mission” that was part of a “back and forth” between her administration
39) and the Russian government; and the AP responds to all these facts by falsely declaring “Palin has not met with Russian leaders or delegations.” Palin, like Trump, is seen by those in control of the Russian Federation as a useful idiot.

Gov. Sarah Palin meet with a Kremlin
40) agent under the circumstances described above, but she did so in a way that her official records either hid or elided altogether—and did so just a matter of months before becoming the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party.
41) Steve Schmidt now says the following about the 2008 John McCain campaign (emphasis in original):

There was a pro-democracy faction [inside the 2008 GOP presidential campaign] and there was a pro-Russia faction….the pro-Russia faction was led by a Washington lobbyist
42) [Rick Davis] who was in business with [future Trump campaign manager] Paul Manafort.

Like Manafort, [Davis] had a Trump Tower residence. He was in charge of the [2008 McCain] campaign’s finances and bankrupted the campaign through a series of unethical transactions and
43) markups with Manafort and a company [allegedly funded in part by Putin agent and Manafort co-boss Oleg Deripaska] called 3eDC.

….
[Senator McCain] tolerated his campaign chairman [Davis] being in business [with] and working for [Vladimir] Putin through his association with
44) [Manafort co-boss and Kremlin puppet Viktor] Yanukovych, [the Kremlin-backed Ukrainian president].

[McCain was] the same as Trump [in this regard].

Yanukovych was Putin’s puppet in Ukraine.

The story of American corruption in Ukraine perhaps starts here.

It starts in
45) John McCain’s [2008 campaign] operation, not Trump’s.

Did you know that [McCain] was taken on Oleg Deripaska’s yacht in Montenegro for his seventieth birthday by his top aide [Davis]? It was a McCain guy [Davis] who represented the interests of the [Kremlin] in the
46) Montenegro independence referendum….[and] this is why the [McCain] campaign went kaboom in July of 2008 and [McCain] went from front-runner to middle seat on a Southwest flight with the national press corps gathered in New Hampshire waiting for him to drop out.
47) That is when John McCain called me and asked me for help. It is the opening scene of [the nonfiction political-thriller film] Game Change. I helped [McCain], and his corresponding comeback made him the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

….
Here is the
48) important part.

The person I’m talking about, [Rick Davis], is the one who was in charge of vetting the [2008 GOP] vice presidential candidate, [Sarah Palin]. True. Putin’s guy, [Rick Davis], the one who was Viktor Yanukovych’s henchman, was in charge of all of the
49) due diligence around [McCain’s selection of] Palin.

Manafort wanted to use 3EDC software in McCains campaign. It is what he used in Ukraine.

You know where Trump may have gotten that line about John McCain, namely, how he doesn’t like captured soldiers?
50) Putin hated McCain because Deripaska couldn’t ‘buy’ him.

kyivpost.com/article/opinio…

Plenty to unpack from Steve Schmidt's truth-bombing Meghan McCain.

At the time Rick Davis was running the McCain campaign in 2008, Davis’s business partner, Manafort, was under contract
51) with self-admitted Kremlin agent Oleg Deripaska to advance Vladimir Putin’s interests not just inside Russia and Ukraine but the United States as well. Indeed, McCain campaign manager Davis’s business partner Manafort was getting $10 million annually to advance Putin’s
52) interests in America—a course of foreign lobbying that began with Manafort moving into Trump Tower and rekindling a friendship with Donald Trump that he had had since the 1980s, when Manafort took on Trump as the first client in his newly minted consulting business.
53) As Schmidt indicates above, Manafort was a top political adviser to the very President of Ukraine whose betrayal of that country in 2013 led to the Euromaidan Revolution and Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. Schmidt alleges that Davis was also an adviser to Kremlin puppet
54) Yanukovych.

What Schmidt does not say is that Kremlin agent Manafort expected Davis’s closeness to the 2008 Republican presidential candidate to allow him (Manafort) to get close to McCain as well, indeed, to be McCain’s convention manager for the 2008 Republican National
55) Convention. As the Times reports, McCain rejected Manafort for a campaign role Manafort felt was his “birthright” precisely because McCain believed—correctly—that Manafort (who we now know was under contract with the Kremlin at the time) was too close to Putin.

In view of
56) all the foregoing, why John McCain allowed Manafort’s business partner Rick Davis to pick his vice-presidential running mate is a mystery that we may never unravel.

Any political journalist alive during the 2008 election would know that Palin’s foreign policy knowledge that
57) year was entirely the product of outside coaching.

Indeed, the McCain campaign even admitted as much, noting several times, as delicately as it could, that Palin was getting a crash course in international politics through her surprise appearance on the GOP presidential
58) ticket.

Sarah Palin was coached for the McCain Campaign on foreign policy, which, considering the above, may be a polite way of saying, Palin was being wired up with her puppet strings.

We don’t know for certain, but Schmidt certainly implies, in his Saturday statement,
59) that the same man who was solely responsible for determining whether Palin was ready to be a vice presidential nominee, Rick Davis, might have had a major role in ensuring, once Palin had been picked at his suggestion, that Palin indeed had the political chops Davis had
60) sought to convince a dubious John McCain the 44 year-old new Alaskan governor possessed.

Here’s what Palin said in October 2008, speaking of 2008 Democratic presidential candidate (and future President of the United States) Barack Obama:

"After the Russian army invaded
61) the nation of Georgia [earlier in 2008], Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next."
62) Palin’s statement, especially coming from one of the four people in the United States who was, depending on how things played out, just 90 days away from moving into the White House, was startling not only because it appeared to speculate about a Russian invasion of Europe,
63) but because Ukraine had not been a topic of discussion in the 2008 presidential campaign. There was no shortage of hot spots around the world for Palin to talk about in Reno in October 2008, and to her credit she did mention some of them, such as Iran and Iraq.
64) Her referencing Ukraine in the context of ongoing Russian aggression in two different places (Chechnya and Georgia) came out of left field, as Blake Hounshell and undoubtedly other journalists quickly registered at the time.

Notably, just days after Putin invaded Ukraine in
65) February 2014, Palin was on future Trump domestic policy adviser Sean Hannity’s Fox News television program claiming that she, the same person who’d said many dim-witted things in the public arena, there are now Ranker articles cataloging them, uniquely foresaw Russia’s
66) invasion of Ukraine six years in advance using nothing but her own down-home common sense.

LOL - did people really believe this?

As she told Hannity at the time, “Anyone who carries the commonsense gene would know that Putin doesn’t change his stripes.
67) He hearkens back to the era of the czars, and he wants that Russian empire to grow again. He wants to exert huge power and dominance. So he has to get to those border areas and he has to capture them.”

Palin seemed very keen to eliminate even the possibility that her
68) “foreknowledge” of Russia’s designs on Ukraine had come from anyone else.

In the same March interview, reports MSNBC, and as Putin was committing war crimes in Ukraine, Palin had even more to say about Putin.
Specifically, she chose to sing his praises.
69) “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president [Obama] as one who wears mom jeans.”

Golly, gee, Palin sounded much like Trump.

Recall more recently that Paul Manafort begged Trump friend Thomas Barrack to help him
70) “get to” the 2016 Republican presidential candidate in order to “get whole” with Russian oligarch and self-admitted Kremlin agent Oleg Deripaska?

Deripaska is who Manafort and Davis were working for so diligently in 2008.

When Davis allegedly helped rig a Russian
71) referendum in Montenegro for Putin in the 2000s, it was to help the Kremlin, per the Nation, “establish a Russian outpost in the Mediterranean”; by raising the seemingly distant prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and then preemptively blaming it on Americans
72) (Obama and Biden), Palin was helping Putin to establish a “Russian outpost” on the Black Sea.

Oh, how that might be relevant in 2022. Keep in mind that Sarah Palin is about to make her way back to D.C. as a powerful federal official.

On Barrack: cnbc.com/2022/01/05/tru…
73) Let's review a description The Nation gave of Montenegro in 2008:

Montenegro is [now] nicknamed “Moscow by the Mediterranean.” Russian oligarchs control huge chunks of the country’s industry and prized coastline—and Russians exert a powerful influence over the country’s
74) political culture. “Montenegro is almost a new Russian colony, as rubles flow in to buy property and business in the tiny state,” Denis MacShane, [former UK Prime Minister] Tony Blair’s former Europe minister, wrote in Newsweek in June.

The takeover of Montenegro has been
75) a Russian geostrategic victory—quietly accomplished, paradoxically enough, with the help of McCain and his top aides.

In mid-September [2008] The Nation published a photo of McCain celebrating his seventieth birthday in Montenegro in August 2006 at a yacht party.
76) On the same day one of the largest mega-yachts in the world, the Queen K, was moored in the same bay of Kotor. This was where the real party was. The owner of the Queen K was known as “Putin’s oligarch”: Oleg Deripaska, controlling shareholder of the Russian aluminum
77) giant RusAl, currently listed as the ninth-richest man in the world, with a rap sheet as abundant as his wealth.

By mid-2005 [the year that Manafort signed his contract with Deripaska and the Kremlin, and a year before he moved into Trump Tower] Deripaska had already
78) virtually taken control of Montenegro’s economy by snapping up its aluminum plant, KAP, which accounts for up to 40% of the country’s GDP and some 80% of its export earnings, in a non-transparent privatization tender strongly criticized by NGO watchdogs, Montenegrin
79) politicians and journalists.
The Nation has learned that Deripaska told one of his closest associates that he bought the plant “because Putin encouraged him to do it.” The reason: “the Kremlin wanted an area of influence in the Mediterranean.”
….
Russia’s virtual takeover
80) of Montenegro was well under way by January 2006, when Rick Davis introduced Deripaska to McCain at a villa in Davos, Switzerland.

They met again seven months later, at a reception in Montenegro celebrating McCain’s birthday, as reported in The Washington Post.
81) The story of how Deripaska, 40, rose from a Cossack village to become a Putin-blessed aluminum tycoon with an estimated $40 billion fortune does not begin with a lemonade stand and old-fashioned elbow grease.

Like most post-Soviet success stories, Deripaska’s rise began
82) abruptly and violently, during the chaotic reign of Boris Yeltsin.
…
Deripaska understands that success in Russia today comes from a mixture of brute force, political influence and personal connections.

In 2001, about a year after Putin signed a decree granting
83) legal immunity to Boris Yeltsin’s family, Deripaska married Yeltsin’s granddaughter, thereby cementing his own immunity and power.

pbs.org/frontlineworld…
84) Recall in the mid-to-late 2000's, Putin lobbied for Deripaska’s U.S. visa. In an interview with [French media outlet] Le Monde in 2008, Putin complained, “I have asked my American colleagues why [Deripaska cannot get a U.S. visa]. If you have reasons for not delivering him a
85) visa, if you have documents on illegal activities, give us them…. They give us nothing, explain to us nothing, and forbid him from entry.”

If Putin couldn’t have Deripaska in the U.S. during the 2008 presidential election, he at least had the next best thing:
86) two of Deripaska’s top agents, Davis and Manafort.

Deripaska did not sit idle as Putin, one of the most powerful men in the world, worked as his personal advocate. Per the Nation, to try to expand his influence inside America, “Deripaska turned to powerful GOP figures to
87) solve his [visa] problem.”

One of those men was 2008 McCain campaign adviser Richard Burt, who would next be seen in U.S. politics co-writing Donald Trump’s historically pro-Russia policy in March of 2016.

In 2007, Richard Burt was working for Henry Kissinger, the man who
88) introduced Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to Putin’s self-described “friend” Dimitri Simes, who co-wrote Trump’s Russia policy with Burt, became the Trump campaign’s top Russia adviser thereafter, and fled to Russia the moment Kremlin spy Maria Butina was arrested by the
89) FBI in July 2018, as she had named him as one of her handlers in the United States.

No shit. Butina named one of her handlers as Dimitri Simes, who was literally co-writing Donald Trump's foreign policy that took over one of two major U.S. political parties' platform.
90) Simes now works for the Kremlin as a highly paid on-air propagandist.

Like it is fair to position Donald Trump not as a scheming Kremlin agent, but a voluntarily useful idiot for Kremlin schemes, a position Trump allowed himself to be in because he thought it would profit
91) him financially and perhaps hide some secrets, it is fair to position Sarah Palin as such. Sarah lacked the intelligence, wherewithal, & gumption to hatch a complex 2008 collusion plot with the Kremlin. She was simply another useful idiot.

(1) neither Trump nor Palin have
92) any earnest core beliefs; (2) both Trump and Palin are amenable to participating in acts of government corruption; (3) both Trump and Palin are venal; (4) both Trump and Palin are dull-witted and incurious, charismatic without being leaders or visionaries, and interested in
93) bucking conventional wisdom merely as a matter of branding rather than a matter of principle; (5) both Trump and Palin were political outsiders with so little natural cachet within the GOP that they would be inclined to feel enormous gratitude to anyone, whether U.S. native
94) or a foreign national, willing to work to put them on the national political map.

Palin may well have presented to the Kremlin as a “[2008] Plan A” to Trump’s “[2016] Plan B," and we're not talking about the morning after pill. Unlike Trump, Palin was only on the Republican
95) ticket as a vice presidential candidate, meaning that she would receive less scrutiny than her running mate, even as she would (due to John McCain’s age and health) be in a prime position to eventually occupy a role no one really anticipated for her when they entered the
96) voting booth. Palin didn’t have a decades-long history of cozying up to the Kremlin like Trump did, making her a far less risky associate for a Kremlin that certainly wouldn’t want its influence operations to be detected by U.S. intelligence, like happened in 2016 and led to
97) The Mueller Probe, which Trump and Barr obfuscated. Palin’s candidacy would have the benefit of being historic, if elected she would be America’s first woman vice president.

Trump floated (through his attorney Michael Cohen) presidential runs in both 2008 and 2012,
98) after spending the twenty years before that telling anyone who would listen that he intended to be President of the United States one day, all of which may have made the Kremlin feel, even if Trump were their top pick to be a useful idiot for the Kremlin, that Donald was too
99) risky. Putin and his advisers would have had good reason to believe, as the November 2008 election in the United States approached, that Palin was the best option they were likely to get in the near term.

Palin presented to the Kremlin, which was then in the midst of two
100) wars and contemplating a third, all of which the United States could interfere with in gutting ways either unilaterally or through its influence upon NATO, as an opportunity it simply couldn’t pass up.
101)

Let's take a detour and go back years further to 2000. I still need to edit this and better form the connections. Nonetheless, recall, America had just gone through Bush v Gore in 2000 and Bush was perhaps the first modern useful idiot for foreign
102) intel services.

Bush ran again in 2004 which meant that Rudy Giuliani’s first opportunity to cash in on the image created from 9/11 was the 2008 election.

A Draft Giuliani movement began in October 2005, following Bush’s win in 2004. Rudy had a Presidential Campaign for
103) 2008 and at the onset, he held a significant lead in nationwide polls. A problem for foreign (or domestic) actors who may have desired a Giuliani Presidency was John McCain primaried him.

Now you understand why the Kremlin had to find a V.P. pick for John McCain.
104) Maybe McCain thwarted a plan to push useful idiot, Rudy G?

Recall that Donald Trump announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee on the October 7, 1999 edition of Larry King Live on CNN.

Trump had previously considered a presidential run in 1988 as a
105) Republican but chose not to run.

For 2000, Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, @GovJVentura, persuaded Trump to seek the presidential nomination of the Reform Party.

Ventura later worked for RT, meaning Russia finds him useful, but I don't think Ventura is a useful idiot,
106) like Trump, Palin, and Rudy G.

Internal conflict caused Ventura to exit the Reform Party in February 2000, removing Trump's most vocal proponent. Trump officially ended his campaign on the February 14, 2000 airing of The Today Show on NBC.

The 2000 Florida recount was
107) a capstone of Roger Stone’s career up to that time.

Stone was not a supporter of candidate George Bush — at the time he was helping Donald Trump’s campaign for the New York Reform Party nomination for president — and became involved only when contacted by Margaret
108) Tutwiler, at the request of recount head James Baker III, giving rise to one Stone's proudest moments, and the title of a Netflix biography, “Get Me Roger Stone.”



The context for 2000 is that Stone (and Russia) preferred Trump or Rudy G, but had to
109) pivot to a next best useful idiot, George W. Bush, to influence his foreign policy.

In the words of Roger Stone, “The idea we were putting out there was that this was a left-wing power grab by Gore, the same way Fidel Castro did it in Cuba.”
110) Sound like Russian talking points? They tried to push Trump through in 2000 for President but failed. So, they made Trump a star with the Apprentice after pivoting to prevent Gore and favor Bush. Trump did not run in 2012, although consideration was given for a run.
111) Mark Burnett later helped connect UBS Deputy Chair Robert Foresman to Thomas Barrack. Foresman had lived for years in Moscow, where he led a $3 billion Russian investment fund.

More context: In September 1998, as part of New York City’s Fashion Week festivities,
112) 28-year-old Slovenian model Melania Knauss attended a party at the Kit Kat Club in Times Square. There she caught the eye of 52-year-old Donald Trump. Recall Trump later ended his relationship with Melania Knauss in January 2000, removing a key figure of the campaign
113) entourage for the 2000 Reform Party. According to the New York Daily News, an associate of Trump said the move was meant to appease Reform Party leaders. Roger Stone denied the suggestion.

nydailynews.com/.../pageant-be…...

Context: Trump nixed the Slovenian in Jan 2000 for
114) optics in a Presidential run.

Melania obtained her Green Card in 2001 and moved into Trump Tower, a building with units owned by Russians. But Melania began petitioning the government for the right to live permanently in the United States in 2000, although Donald
115) nixed her in Jan 2000.

In March 2001, she was granted a green card in the EB-1 program, only 1 of 5 from Slovenia to get one in 2001.

Trump was critical of the George W. Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War and publicly endorsed Bush's impeachment.
116) What opportunity might that later provide Trump to challenge Cheney? Trump considered challenging Bush in the 2004 Republican presidential primaries, but ultimately decided against it.

Jesse Ventura, who chose not to run for re-election as Governor of Minnesota in 2002,
117) also considered a 2004 presidential run and publicly asked for and received Trump's support at WrestleMania.

However, Ventura did not run.

Someone in about Jan 2012 filed paperwork in Texas Secretary of State's office to create
118) a “Make America Great Again Party," with the intention of allowing Trump to be the party's presidential nominee if he decided to run.

Journalists: find out who filed the paperwork in Tx.

Trump did not run in 2012 with Romney in the race. The implication is that both
119) Donald Trump and Rudy G were Russia’s preferred candidates / assets, presumably, to build up intelligence assets in the U.S. and tear down the U.S. government from within.

Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife,
120) Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model.

See any similarity with Melania, a Slovenian model? Is this cultivating an asset? Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.

The former Soviet Union had
121) post-cold war spies at the UN in NYC. What info did WTC Building 7 have on spies?

Most Russian spies were expelled by 1986 and KGB would be looking for ways to rebuild its operations in the U.S. Recall 9/11 switched U.S. Intelligence focus and FBI from Russian mafia to
122) other areas. Would that not be nice for Russia or Saudi Arabia or the UAE?

AG Bill Barr took ~300 FBI agents off Russian mafia work towards crack / cocaine.

George Bush as the Russia back-up delivered. He was a dummy without qualifications for the job.
123) Just before Bill Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States on January 20, 1993, allegations of ethical improprieties were made against FBI Director William Sessions.

A report by outgoing Attorney General William P. Barr presented to the
124) Justice Department by the Office of Professional Responsibility included criticisms that Sessions had used an FBI plane to travel to visit his daughter on several occasions and had a security system installed in his home at government expense.
125) William Sessions (1987 to 1993 FBI Director) was dismissed by Bill Clinton but then went onto represent Semion Mogilevich as his lawyer. Rudy G prosecuted Italian mafia bosses to weaken the Cosa Nostra so Russian mobsters could take over.
126) Rudy was at the time a useful idiot. Need to know more about how and why Bill Barr presented the report to oust William Sessions before Sessions went on to represent Mogilevich?

Imagine the message that sent to FBI rank and file.

On the 9/11 time-line and how it moved
127) intel and FBI assets away from Russia, keep in mind that on February 18, 2001, Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested and charged with committing espionage on behalf of the intelligence services of the former Soviet Union and its successors.

Hanssen pled guilty to 15 counts
128) of espionage on July 6, 2001, two months prior to 9/11, and was sentenced to prison without the possibility of parole. Hanssen is considered the most damaging spy in FBI history.

Trump sealed FBI documents for another 25 years. Why?

Also, what does Russia know about
129) what DOJ and FBI knows and does not know? Re: Solar Winds Hacks of DOJ, Treasury, Commerce, etc.

These themes of election interference bring to mind the October Surprise Scandal, Iran-Contra, and the collapse of Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
130) Also reminds one of Inslaw. The theft of Inslaw PROMIS may have been related to the October Surprise. PROMIS may have been too powerful for its time with respect to finding money laundering.

Get this, it was Ghisaline Maxell’s father, Robert Maxwell, who stole PROMIS!
131) Yes, GMax from Jeff Epstein’s operation.

For journalists, check out Christine Maxwell, sister of GMax, and Magellan search engine.

Thenk look up Isabel Maxwell and Chiliad, an early data mining company.

businesswire.com/news/home/2013…

132) You think PROMIS is not relevant in 2022? Think again. DOJ just charged a Virginia resident for theft of similar software in April 2022.

justice.gov/opa/pr/former-…
133) John Cohen, a House Judiciary Committee investigator on Inslaw had a theory about why PROMIS was taken.

PROMIS, Cohen asserted, could be modified to track money laundering. Importantly, one could modify the software to control hundreds of accounts and move money through
134) the international banking system. Maybe some folks wanted to use PROMIS to get around CHIPS and SWIFT to move money invisibly? All this is prior to the time frame for the request of documents related to Rudy G.
135) Were Baker & Mosbacher laundering Russian drug money through Enron? What fueled the tech bubble from 1995 to 2000?

Did Islamic militants interrupt a flow of cash when they took over the narcotics trade in Central Asia in the late 1990s?

Was the dot-com crash of
136) March 2000 due to the interruption of drug cash flowing through wall street?

@StringwallApp has done some heavy lifting to connect some dots.

Donald Trump laundered drug and escort money through his real estate and casinos.

globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/c…
137)
fincen.gov/news/news-rele…

Mark Esper mentions Trump asked Esper to shoot missiles into Mexico “to go after the cartels.” Esper is such a moron. He thinks Trump was serious about drugs in America.

What Trump was serious about was eliminating competition among
138) drug suppliers. Does Esper not realize what Afghanistan was all about?



Is Esper familiar with Turkey being a crossroads for the drug Trade in Europe? In 1974, with the occupation of Cyprus by the Turkish army, newspapers in Turkey wrote:
139) New land for poppies.

news.sol.org.tr/european-drug-…

independent.co.uk/news/world/eur…

aa.com.tr/en/turkey/turk…

aa.com.tr/en/europe/germ…
140) Turkey is a transit route for opium smuggled overland from Afghanistan via Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia en route to Western Europe. Evidence suggests traffickers also use a more northerly route through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
141) 2017-2021.state.gov/wp-content/upl…

Do you recall that after senior Turkish government officials lobbied Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Donald Trump, Mr. Mnuchin pressed the Justice Department not to impose too large a fine on Halkbank because Turkey could not afford it?
142) Ballard Partners, the firm dubbed “the Most Powerful Lobbyist in Trump’s Washington,” ended its years-long contract with Turkey’s state-run Halkbank the day after that bank’s indictment in a record-breaking money-laundering scheme.
143) Records disclosed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act show that Turkey’s payments to Ballard came with high-ranking access to Trump’s State Department, Treasury Department and White House, at critical moments for the U.S.-Turkish relationship.
144) courthousenews.com/turkeys-lobbyi…

Again, Trump’s “concern” for drugs coming from Mexico was simply concern for pleasing his handlers who wanted to eliminate competition.

justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/t…
145) Heck, one can draw a line from the Turkey cash-for-gold Iranian sanctions evasion & Central Asian smuggling operation to Qanon through Alptekin, Kian, Kazeminy, Nowruz Commission, Flynn, and Schoenberger!

146) The timing of the Inslaw / PROMIS stuff lines up with the time frame for how Bill Barr came to be A.G in 1991.

Assistant Attorney General William P. Barr, chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, was nominated to replace Deputy A.G. Donald B. Ayer in May 1990 after Ayer
147) and his top aide abruptly resigned on May 11, 1990.

washingtonpost.com/.../2efb2677-6…

William Barr moved from OLC to Deputy A.G. due to a resignation, where Barr served under Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.

But Thornburgh resigned Aug 15, 1991 to seek the Republican nomination
148) for the United States Senate seat from Pennsylvania left vacant by the death of PA Senator John Heinz. Thornburgh's resignation paved the way for William P Barr’s promotion to A.G.

Given Heinz death paved the way for Bill Barr to become A.G., only after a resignation
149) paved Barr’s way to Deputy A.G., let’s look at the death on John Heinz.

Senator John Heinz chartered plane had collided in air with a helicopter inspecting the planes landing gear on April 4, 1991.

Was that a first? The weather was good, and the helicopter was flying
150) under visual flight rules, which did not require an approved flight plan. Pilot judgment being poor was reason cited for why the plane crashed. Why did such a pilot not properly trained get the opportunity to be around such a wealthy Heinz Senator?

151) Suspicious? What if I told you that former U.S. Senator John Tower of Tx also died in a commuter plane crash on April 5, 1991, one day after Senator John Heinz died in a plane crash?

apnews.com/article/f9552f…

NTSB had said that the failure of a severely worn part in the
152) commuter plane’s propeller unit caused the crash.

washingtonpost.com/.../e67533b1-b…

John Tower was among those responsible for the Tower Commission that was established in December 1986 and published a report on Feb 27, 1987.

The Tower report was critical of Iran-Contra.
153) William P Barr subsequently pardoned those involved with Iran-Contra and the intelligence shenanigans surrounding the theft of Prosecutors Management Information Systems (PROMIS).

As he did with the burgeoning Iraqgate scandal and as his predecessor did before him,
154) William Barr, not long in his new A.G. role, refused to appoint an independent counsel to the Inslaw case involving PROMIS, relying instead on a retired federal judge, Nicholas Bua, who reported to Barr alone.

In other words, the DOJ was responsible for investigating
155) itself. Does Barr's handling of this have similarities to how Barr handled Mueller report?

Israeli Intelligence was interested in PROMIS.
"PROMIS was a very big thing for us guys, a very, very big thing ... it was probably the most important issue of the '80s because
156) it just changed the whole intelligence outlook. The whole form of intelligence collection changed. This whole thing changed it."

PROMIS, Ben Menashe said, was perfect for tracking the Palestinian population and other political dissidents.
157) If this tickles your fancy and you are from Martinsburg, WV, check out this episode of Unsolved Mysteries:

unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Danny_Cas…

At 12:30pm on August 10, 1991, forty-four-year-old investigative reporter Danny Casolaro was found dead in his hotel room
158) near Martinsburg, West Virginia.

And this 1993 Wired Article: wired.com/1993/01/inslaw/

Does this 1991 mystery remind you of the July 2016 DNC Staffer Seth Rich?

On the October Surprise Conspiracy, in November 1979, a number of U.S. hostages were captured in Iran
159) during the Iranian Revolution. The Iran hostage crisis continued into 1980; as the November 1980 presidential election approached, there were concerns in the Republican Party that a resolution of the crisis could constitute an "October surprise" which might give incumbent
160) Jimmy Carter enough of an electoral boost to be re-elected.

Side Note: npr.org/2019/06/28/737…

After the release of the hostages on 20 January 1981, mere minutes after Republican challenger Ronald Reagan's inauguration, some charged that the Reagan campaign had made a
161) secret deal with the Iranian government whereby the Iranians would hold the hostages until after Reagan was elected and inaugurated.
What if Reagan was another useful idiot to be the favored candidate by middle eastern or Russian intelligence services?
162) I am not sure about George H.W. Bush, but the next useful idiot would be George W. Bush followed by Sarah Palin then by Donald Trump as the preferred candidates to foreign adversaries.

Brett Kavanaugh was part of Ken Starr's team, although Rod Rosenstein and Alex Azar
163) left or kept distance once the Lewinsky scandal emerged.

George W. Bush appointed Kavanaugh to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit following his work w/ Ken Starr. Were these figures of the GOP all assets of sorts for foreign adversaries
164) for decades?

Justice Kennedy retired abruptly to make way for Brett Kavanaugh. Kennedy’s son Justin and Deutsche Bank executive Tom Bowers signed off on Trump’s loans. Justin’s boss Tom Bowers “killed himself.” Deutsche Bank destroyed copies of Trump’s tax returns.
165) Notice Trump did not attempt a run in 2008, the cycle Rudy G had his first opportunity to cash in on the image created of him by 9/11.

Apparently, Trump had signed a book for Rudy promising "never to run" against him in 2000.
While the Kremlin failed to get its agent
166) Manafort into the “convention manager” role for the McCain Campaign, Manafort would successfully secure this with Trump eight years later. The Kremlin got Davis atop the McCain campaign. And it had a McCain running mate who well knew she owed her national political career
167) to Davis. All Palin needed to do, really, was be herself—with perhaps some light guidance from the outside—in order to destabilize America.

Side-Note: Like the two plane crashes mentioned above, Mike Connell, who designed websites in Slovenia for the 2000 elections
168) (reminder, Melania Knauss is from Slovenia), and GovTech, one of Mike Connell’s companies “designed websites” for the 2004 meeting of the G8 in the Former Soviet Republic of Georgia, among others, died in a private plane crash.
169) It was later learned that Ohio’s Sec of State Kenneth Blackwell’s office had routed internet traffic from county election offices through out-of-state servers in Chattanooga, TN, based at SMARTech.

Before his plane crash and death, Connell denied any knowledge of vote
170) rigging in a deposition but had been subpoenaed for trial. Who may have killed him before trial, if it was not an accident? Davis and Manafort were working in the Republic of Georgia in 2003, at the same time as Mike Connell.
171) In considering some of the evidence that Sarah Palin was the Kremlin’s “Plan A” and Trump its “Plan B,” it’s worth considering, too, the other bombshell revelation Steve Schmidt dropped Saturday night. It relates to the peaceful transfer of power from a GOP
172) president (George W. Bush) to the nation’s first-ever Black president (Barack Obama, a Democrat) in 2008.

According to Schmidt, on the night in November 2008 that John McCain ended his campaign for president and acknowledged the peaceful transfer of power from GOP rule of
173) the executive branch to a Democratic administration, Sarah Palin wanted to break with centuries of American tradition and address the nation.

Moreover, it is clear from Schmidt’s comments on Saturday that, unlike the gracious speech McCain actually did deliver on the
174) night of November 4, 2008, the speech Palin wanted to give would’ve looked backward rather than forward—and been highly partisan in nature.

Again, it’s worth noting that such a speech would have been historically disruptive to the natural order of U.S. politics
175) with respect to the acceptance of election results—an issue all America is now singularly focused upon in 2022.

As Steve Schmidt puts it on Twitter, the scene above (from the 2012 movie Game Change) is “almost precisely what happened” during his
176) “last interaction with the profoundly unfit [to serve] loon Sarah Palin”. Woody Harrelson nails it.

Donald Trump leapt to endorse Sarah Palin in a congressional race that, if she wins it, would bring her back to D.C. and legitimize her as a national political candidate in
177) a way her Alaska governorship did not.

Why?

Is that a preview of Trump / Palin 2024 - MAGA 3.0 Kremlin Reboot?

Palin could outshine other GOP politicians in her demographic like Nikki Haley, Elise Stafanik, or Kristi Noem, all useful idiots.

Has any Republican
178) presidential candidate of the last eighteen years, perhaps with the exception of Mitt Romney, although not sure, been untainted by the spectre of Kremlin aid and encouragement?

For that matter, has the United States been in a proxy war with Russia—waged not just through
179) cyberterrorism and propaganda but dangerous influence operations—for the entirety of this century?

And if this proxy war becomes a “hot” war this year or next, what do we do if Sarah Palin enters Congress and Trump declares a presidential run, or, worse still, if Trump
180) and Palin decide to make a run for the White House together?

Anyone care to revisit what Andy Khawaja said about Trump’s $100 million in anonymous small donations between June-Sept 2016 and how that might relate to the mysterious data transfers between Trump Org,
181) Alfa Bank, Spectrum Health, & Heartland Payment Systems between May-Sept 2016?



George Nader is who Andy Khawaja allegedly showed how to disguise large cash infusions as multiple small prepaid gift card transactions. “The money would come from
182) the Saudis.

The Emiratis would run the operation, using data bought from the Chinese. Khawaja says that Nader told him: ‘We have all the data already, we have 10 million US consumers’ data. And we have endless money.’ The Russians were ‘on board’ too:
183) “‘He said, “Yes, I have met with Putin already and we have a green light from him. Because Putin is on the same page with us. He wants Hillary to lose.”’”
184) Some screenshots I neglected to add earlier.
185) Adding a screenshot I neglected to attach earlier.

186) Let's link this thread with Tweet 151 above.



187) John Tower notes:



news.google.com/newspapers?nid…
188) Frank Church (below next to John Tower), Gaylord Nelson, Birch Bayh, George McGovern, Warren Magnussen.

189) thedailybeast.com/did-a-cia-agen…

In 2008, Jon Roberts, a convicted cocaine trafficker, made a startling claim to Journalist Evan Wright: that more than three decades earlier he had participated in a murder with a man named Ricky Prado, who later entered the
190) Central Intelligence Agency and became a top American spy.

The murder to which Roberts referred was one of Miami’s most infamous, that of Richard Schwartz, stepson of the legendary mobster Meyer Lansky.



SideNote: Nixon, Rebozo, and Kissinger
191) spent lots of time hanging out in the Resorts International casinos in the Bahamas, which were part of Meyer Lansky’s criminal money laundering enterprise.

In its 115-page report, the NJ attorney general's office charged that Resorts, in the Bahamas, did business with a
192) convict, Wallace Groves, and with Louis Chesler, once tied to reputed Mafia kingpin Meyer Lansky.

After a seven-week hearing, however, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1979 found ''no evidence of organized crime involvement'' and granted the license.
193) See: nytimes.com/.../resorts-in…...

End SideNote.

Jon Roberts claimed to Evan Wrigth that Prado was the shooter, provided by a local Cuban drug kingpin named Alberto “Albert” San Pedro, for whom Prado worked as an enforcer and occasional hit man.
194) What made Roberts’s story unbelievable was his claim that shortly after the shooting, Prado joined the CIA.

Not long after Roberts told his tale, Evan Wright found there was a CIA officer named Enrique "Ricky" Prado, who joined the agency in 1982 and eventually attained
195) the rank of SIS-2, the equivalent of a two-star general. He served as a supervisor in the bin Laden unit, and by the time of the 9/11 attacks, he was a top official in the CIA's counterterrorist center.

196) He later ran the "targeted assassination unit"—first at the agency and then at Blackwater, where he served as vice-president from 2004 to 2008.

Recap: Prado was a hit man for a Cuban drug lord. In 1977, he murdered Meyer Lansky’s stepson. In 1982, he joined the CIA,
197) where he served as a supervisor in the bin Laden unit & was a top official in the CIA's counterterrorist center on 9/11.

Prado was vice-president of Erik Prince’s Blackwater from 2004 to 2008. This same Blackwater:



And during much of his career
198) (both in and out of the CIA), Prado worked closely with J. Cofer Black, who became a top adviser to Mitt Romney.

Wait. Mitt Romney? Were forces attempting to infiltrate the Romney Campaign too, another GOP candidate?



It was impossible to believe
199) that Roberts's allegations about Prado had merit until Evans found long- suppressed files from a 1991 federal RICO and murder investigation that targeted Prado for his alleged role as a criminal enforcer for San Pedro prior to joining the CIA.

No charges were filed
200) against Prado.

A subpoena compelling him to testify before a federal grand jury was quashed.

His rise in the CIA continued after the case disappeared. But law enforcement officials from the 1991 investigation tell a different story.

201) Joseph Cofer Black founded Backwater with Erik Prince.

J. Cofer Black has been a director at Burisma since 2017.

Now you see why the Biden / Burisma story circulated?

202)
203)
204. Let's add to Tweet 123 above.



This is a potential reason why 20 years after 9/11, the men charged with responsibility are still waiting for trial.

news.yahoo.com/20-years-9-11-…
205) The CIA’s secrets, as one prosecutor explained, are “the most highly classified information that the government has … It’s extremely important that we protect that information.”

thenation.com/article/archiv…
206) NATO Article 5 has only been invoked once, after the September 11 attacks, which led the alliance into Afghanistan.

It took until October 2, 2001 — when then-NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson announced that the attacks had indeed been directed from abroad — for
207) Article 5 to be invoked.

Failure to invoke Article 5 would have rendered NATO obsolete. Instead, the alliance, which had struggled to find its raison d'être following the collapse of the Soviet Union, was propelled into Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism.
208) But you know what else is in Afghanistan?

Poppy for drugs.

As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrote on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, "Afghanistan will not be the last crisis for which North America and Europe need to act together through NATO."
209) The Taliban banned opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in April 2022.

Afghanistan produces almost 85% of global opium production.

In 2000, Afghanistan's poppy cultivation was 82,000 hectares, and in 2020, it had reached 224,000 hectares.

nytimes.com/2022/04/03/wor…
210) In January 2011 Vice Admiral William McRaven, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), selected a team to start planning a raid on a compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.

npr.org/2011/05/31/136…
211) On January 27, 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller delivered his "Iron Triangles" speech to the Citizens Crime Commission of New York.

It focused on the growing threat of global organized crime, political corruption, and how they link to terrorism.
212) By May 1, 2011, Osama Bin Laden was killed.

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/05/0…
213) May 12, 2011 is when Obama requested two more years for Robert Mueller.

Mueller was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and began just a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of 2001.
214) By June 1, 2011 Gawker ran a story profiling Silk Road, an online drug market on the dark web where drugs could be purchased 'anonymously' with cryptocurrency and shipped to buyer.

"It's Amazon - if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals."

gawker.com/the-undergroun…
215) By July 15, 2011 Rand Paul held up the Senate vote to extend FBI Director Mueller's term.

nytimes.com/2011/07/16/us/…
216) By July 19, 2011 President Obama signed the introduction letter for the National Security Council's Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime.

On July 20, 2011, Paul Manafort approved a clandestine media strategy to smear an opponent of his client in Ukraine.
217) On July 25, 2011 John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, announced the Obama administration's new Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime.

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/realitycheck/t…
218) Notice drug trafficking and human trafficking?

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration…
219) An Executive Order

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-offi…

July 25, 2011 - House voted to extend Mueller two years and Obama signed-off on July 26, 2011. On July 27, 2011 the Senate approved in a 100-0 vote. Rand Paul could not draw attention.
220) Bill McRaven understood what Trump was doing.

businessinsider.com/william-mcrave…
221) When you read about the videos that dropped this week regarding Madison Cawthorn of NC, recall he claimed Republican House Members offered him cocaine and invited him to an orgy. Then read this screenshot. History repeats.

Should revisit Cawthorn story of meeting some
222) random “Todd the Army Captain” one night in a St Petersburg casino, who later invited him to a fake CrossFit event in Florida where he met his (now-ex) wife.

This smells like some intel operation.
223) This thread started due to information Steve Schmidt dropped Saturday night regarding who selected Sarah Palin as McCain's VP.

Steve has posted a note.

224) "By early July 2008, the campaign was in deep trouble. At that time, I was put in charge of everything except the VP search and vetting process, as well as the looming convention. Rick Davis retained authority of those areas."
225) "After Senator McCain was unable to choose Joe Lieberman under a one-term pledge that I had proposed – due to Lindsey Graham’s lack of restraint and discipline to maintain confidentiality – the campaign was left with two choices: Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty."
226) "Unfortunately, neither would change the fundamental dynamics of an election that we were losing. That was the context under which I made the call to Rick Davis, suggesting that we consider Sarah Palin. I said that I didn’t know much about her, except that she was the most
227) popular Governor in America – but that we must fully and completely vet her."

"As has been previously reported, John McCain met with Sarah Palin alone for two hours before Cindy, Mark Salter and I joined him by a stream on their Sedona, AZ, property. Cindy pointed out that
228) picking Sarah Palin would be a big gamble.

Mark Salter told Senator McCain that there were “worse things than losing an election; you could lose your reputation.”

I told him that it was a big risk, but that in my view, unless we took a risk with her, we would certainly
229) lose the election. John McCain looked at Cindy, said that he wished she hadn’t described it that way, closed his fist and pretended to shake imaginary dice, before saying, “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”"

Imagine if Russian operatives were cultivating Palin and McCain took
230) the "fuck it, let's do it" approach.

"The bravest man that I had ever met turned out to be terrified of the creature that he had created [Sarah Palin].

His refusal to be honest about his mistake of picking her – and his unwillingness to confront the furies she unleashed
231) – allowed an ember to grow into a conflagration that is foundational to our current catastrophic denial of reality and profound dishonesty of the far right."

Senator McCain tried to ride the Tea Party tiger in the 2010 election. He promised to build the wall. He said so
232) many other things that he didn’t truly believe because they were politically expedient.

Schmidt: "In the end, John McCain’s top political aide made a choice. He made the same choice as Paul Manafort.

He wanted to make millions of dollars advancing the strategic
233) interests of Vladimir Putin, Oleg Deripaska and their puppet Victor Yanukovych, while at the same time acting as the top advisor to a US major party nominee, and ultimately a President of the United States."
234) On February 21, 2008, in the midst of John McCain's campaign in the 2008 Republican Party presidential primaries, both The New York Times and the Washington Post published articles detailing rumors of an improper relationship between John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman.
235) Vicki L. Iseman (born 1967) was a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist working for the firm Iseman & Szelinga and then Alcalde & Fay.

Steve Schmidt confirms the Times article that McCain, who was a member of the Senate Commerce Committee during the period when Iseman was
236) lobbying the committee, developed a close personal relationship with Iseman.

In December 2008, Iseman filed a US$27 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, alleging that the paper falsely communicated an illicit romantic relationship between her and
237) McCain. The Times said they "fully stood behind the article" and the story was "true and accurate".

The lawsuit was settled in February 2009 with no money changing hands between the parties.

However, as a condition of the settlement The New York Times printed an unusual
238) "Note to Readers" stating that The Times had not intended to allege any affair.

Former staffer to President Bill Clinton and 2016 Hillary Clinton supporter Lanny Davis said the article "had no merit".

The same Lanny Davis who represented Michael Cohen before Congress.
239) Seems maybe Reagan and Bush people partnered with Russian organized crime to dismantle the Soviet state, but then when the Russian mob rose to power, the GOP helped them launder their stolen loot & drug money into the US economy?

The Strength of the Wolf is the first
240) complete history of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1930–1968), covering a period before Reagan and Bush.

Working undercover around the globe, the FBN's charismatic “case-making” agents penetrated the Mafia and its French connection.

In the process, however, they
241) uncovered the national security establishment’s ties to organized crime.

Victims of their freewheeling methods and unparalleled success in hunting down society’s predators, the agents were ultimately targeted for destruction by the FBI and CIA.

U.S. involvement in the
242) narcotics trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan before and after the fall of the Taliban, and how U.S. drug policy in Central America and Colombia has increased the global supply of illicit drugs is covered in the book: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug
243) Trade.

While researching Phoenix, Douglas Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos, to generals and politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam.

His investigations into this illegal activity focused on the CIA’s
244) relationship with the federal drugs agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States.

Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack, showing how the
245) CIA infiltrated federal drug law enforcement agencies and commandeered their executive management, intelligence and foreign operations staffs in order to ensure that the flow of drugs continues unimpeded to traffickers and foreign officials in its employ.
246) Ultimately, portions of his research materials would be archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center, and John Jay College.

A common theme of Valentines' is the CIA’s ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its
247) impenetrable government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability.

Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then continues to inform CIA praxis now.

248) senate.gov/about/powers-p…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Co…

On May 9, 1975, the Church Committee decided to call acting CIA director William Colby. That same day Ford's top advisers (Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Philip W. Buchen, and John Marsh) drafted a recommendation that
249) Colby be authorized to brief only rather than testify, and that he would be told to discuss only the general subject, with details of specific covert actions to be avoided except for realistic hypotheticals. But the Church Committee had full authority to call a hearing and
250) require Colby's testimony.

web.archive.org/web/2008032002…
251) Douglas Valentine covers the opium-infused Vietnam War and a dehumanized bureaucratic system more suitable to empire: the wolf pack, secretly led by the CIA and designed specifically for using the war on drugs as a covert means of advancing the interests of the U.S.
252) ruling class at home and abroad.

Author Valentine focuses on the CIA's steady infiltration and corruption of federal drug law enforcement for the purpose of waging political and psychological warfare against the American public.

Trump's pledge to
253) "stop the drugs pouring into our country [from Mexico]" is too similar to Nixon's operations, both infiltrated by Roger Stone.
254) The Greg Abbot Texas debacle had a similar past precedent.

al.com/news/2022/04/t….
255) Henry Kissinger

256)
257)
258)
259) The October Surprise in more context.

260)
261)
262)
263)
264) vice.com/en/article/jg8…

265) Jan 2008: Is this the moment in which Putin made a power play to take charge of the criminal enterprise?

theguardian.com/world/2008/jan…
266) FBI officials claimed the 61-year-old Ukrainian-born Russian citizen, Semyon Mogilevich, was a major figure in the international mafia world.

267)

thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5861410/w…
268) "Mogilevich Is Living Openly in Moscow & Was Removed From the FBI’s Most Wanted List Because He Lives in a Country That Does Not Have an Extradition Treaty With the U.S."

heavy.com/entertainment/…

Older 2009:
jamestown.org/russia-release…
269) April 6, 2022: the #FBI and @StateDept announced a $5 million reward for tips that lead to Semion Mogilevich's arrest and/or conviction.

270) fbi.gov/news/press-rel…
271) Greg Olear: “Meyer Lansky may have written the book on money laundering, but it was Semion Mogilevich who turned it into a blockbuster motion picture.”

Semion Mogilevich and his Hungarian wife, Katalin Papp in this photo?
272) "Look at the Astor's and the Vanderbilt's, all those big society people. They were the worst thieves - and now look at them. It's just a matter of time.” – Meyer Lansky

273) Per David Kay Johnson, David Bogatin arranged for shell companies to purchase those five deluxe Trump Tower apartments, and Trump personally attended the closing. “Thus,” Craig Unger explained, “according to the New York state attorney general’s office, when Trump closed
274) the deal with Bogatin, whether he knew it or not, he had just helped launder money for the Russian Mafia.”

If he didn’t know at the 1984 closing, Trump certainly figured it out soon after. Ivankov made Trump Tower one of his bases of operation; plenty of Russian mob
275) activity went down there. Monya Elson was headquartered in Brighton Beach, where most of the residential housing units were owned by Fred Trump, longtime front man for the Genovese crime family. The Former Guy is second-generation mobbed up, born into it. He knew exactly
276) what he was doing.

We can’t say for sure if Trump has ever spoken to “Seva” Mogilevich directly, much less been in the same room with him.

But one of Unger’s sources for House of Trump, House of Putin, whom the author describes as having “direct contact with the Russian
277) underworld over many years,” puts the chances that the Brainy Don and the Not-So-Brainy Don had met at “one hundred percent.” Unger writes:

The source. . . claimed Mogilevich had a relationship with Trump that dated back many years as well.
278) “It didn’t sound to me that [2016] was the first business they did,” he told me. “I know that Seva met Trump when he was in America.”

He added that the U.S. meeting took place during the days of YBM Magnex [the scam that Felix Sater1 helped the FBI bust in 1998].
279) The relationship between the two men, the source said, had nothing to do with politics. “I don’t think that anybody really believed that an idiot like Trump could become mayor of a Texan village. A big businessman, let’s get something on him.”
280) trumpfile.org/donald-trump-v…
281) trumpfile.org/epstein/

We do know that in the late 1940s, Robert Maxwell was likely a Russian asset while working for Soviet allies in Israel.

We know that he most likely joined Mossad after the Israeli intelligence agency was formed in 1949 — and that Ari Ben-Menashe
282) later takes credit for being Maxwell’s and Epstein’s handler.



We know that Maxwell has the power to authorize Israeli passports, which he does for transnational crime boss and sex trafficker Semion Mogilevich in the late ’80s.
283) That’s around the same time that (1) Maxwell invites Donald Trump to his Khashoggi yacht, (2) Trump helps a Mogilevich associate with money laundering, and (3) Epstein meets Trump for the first time.
284) In the 1980s, Robert Maxwell was laundering money for the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

His operation became the model for Russia and transnational organized crime groups.

Mogilevich entered the 1980s already entrenched in organized crime, but not leading it.
285) He began building his fortune in the mid-80s by fleecing Jewish refugees emigrating to Israel and the US from the Soviet Union. He offered to purchase their assets, sell them for market value, and send them the proceeds after they settled. Instead, he kept the money for
286) himself.

Robert Maxwell was introduced to Mogilevich by KGB boss Vladimir Kryuchkov as part of a plan to turn KGB agents and organized crime leaders into the ruling class in a post-Soviet Russia.
287) According to the book Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy, Maxwell was in deep financial troubles when Mossad officials told him to “try to do what his fellow tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, had done”: confess to the banks and renegotiate.

Maxwell refused and threatened to expose
288) Mossad secrets in his newspapers if the organization didn’t pay him. It’s with that level of power over Israel that Maxwell is able to obtain Israeli passports for Mogilevich and his associates.

According to the authors of Superspy, Maxwell’s Mossad handler was Rafi Eitan,
289) the same Mossad official who recruited Jonathan Pollard to spy on the USA for Israel.

Ari Ben-Menashe also claims to have handled Maxwell.
290) Why did Jim Comey drop Semion Mogilevich from the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list?

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller promised in a 2011 speech that Mogilevich would never be removed from the list unless he was captured.

independent.co.uk/news/world/rus…
291) Robert Mueller, Jan 27, 2011: As you know, just last week we arrested nearly 130 members of La Cosa Nostra in New York, New Jersey, and New England.

archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/…
292) We will continue to work with our state and local partners to end La Cosa Nostra’s lifelong practice of crime and undue influence.

293) President Clinton fired William Sessions in 1993, after the Washington Post published an expose on his alleged ethical improprieties.

294) In 1997, as Craig Unger reports in House of Trump, House of Putin, Sessions traveled to Moscow, where he railed against the scourge of Russian organized crime.

Ten years later, Sessions was Semion Mogilevich’s attorney.

That means that when Mogilevich was included on
295) the FBI Ten Most Wanted list in 2009, his attorney was a former director of the FBI.

Have not figured out what William Sessions was doing, representing Mogilevich.

During Donald Trump’s early November 1996 trip to Moscow, he attended a party thrown in his honor at
296) “The Library,” a room in the Baltschug / Balchug-Kempinski Hotel.

The hotel was owned by Semion Mogilevich.

At the party, Trump began a relationship with a Russian woman who may have been an associate of Mogilevich.

Her name is redacted from the 2020
297) Senate Intelligence report.

intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/…

On June 13, 1991, Leonard “Leib” Yermolkin / Yarmolkin registered FNJ Trade Management Corporation on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.

FNJ was a shell company for laundering money between Semion Mogilevich’s U.S.
298) associates, like Yermolkin, and his criminal operation overseas.

Three years later, the California Secretary of State’s office shut it down.

Mogilevich associate opened a second business, K & O Trade Management. The registration for K & O lists Yermolkin and another
299) individual, Sergei Kriveutchev. This could be a pseudonym for Sergei Krushchev, the son of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The younger Krushchev moved to the United States in 1991.

In March 1994, top Mogilevich associate and high-ranking Ukrainian railway official
300) Vahtang Ubiriya was photographed by the FBI at a Republican Party fundraiser in Dallas, Texas.

This is the first known record of a Mogilevich crime ring member mingling with U.S. politicians.

villagevoice.com/1998/05/26/the…
301) Mogilevich’s drug trafficking operation by 1994 was only exporting, not importing, cocaine and heroine to Russia from the U.S. and Canada.

Helping his operation were Monya Elson and Vyacheslav Ivankov, two Russian mafia leaders who also operated their own crime syndicates.
302) Both men had moved to the USA, and Ivankov lived in Trump Tower.

Mogilevich paid off a judge to release Ivankov from a forced labor camp in Russia and sent him to New York in 1992.

Ivankov was given a mission: strengthen the Russian mafia in the United States and form
303) alliances with mafia organizations that already infiltrated the country.

Once he settled in to his new country, Ivankov became a regular at Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and communicated frequently with an associate at Trump Plaza.

Authorities believed his operation
304) was based in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, ground zero for Russian mafia in the United States.

At one point during their search, the New York State Organized Crime Task Force found Ivankov at Trump Taj Mahal but lost track of him. That discovery eventually led
305) them to Trump Tower.

web.archive.org/web/2020020320…

nypost.com/1999/12/22/rud…
306) nytimes.com/1997/01/30/nyr…

web.archive.org/web/2020061004…
307) One of Ivankov’s associates was Semyon Kislin, a Rudy Giuliani donor and electronics store owner who alerted the KGB about Donald Trump in the late 1970s.

Beginning in 1993, Kislin and his family donated $64,950 to Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral campaigns over the course of
308) four years.

In 1995, the FBI finds Kislin’s boss Vyacheslav Ivankov living in Trump Tower.

In ’96, Giuliani appoints him to the board of New York City’s Economic Development Corporation.

He reappoints him to the board in ’99.

This adds context:
309) Tamir Sapir goes on to launch the Sapir Organization, a partner in Trump’s 2006 Trump SoHo project and the planned Trump Tower Moscow.

His son, Alex Sapir, promotes the project in an interview in 2013.
310) In 1996, the FBI identified over two dozen U.S. businesses with connections to Mogilevich’s transnational crime syndicate.

One of those businesses was led by Jacob Bogatin, the brother of David Bogatin, whose money laundering scheme was aided by Donald Trump in 1984.
311) Sometime in 1984, the Russian mafia figure David Bogatin purchased five luxury condos in Trump Tower for $6 million.

Donald Trump was in the room with Bogatin when the paperwork was signed.

State prosecutors concluded that Bogatin purchased them “to launder money,
312) to shelter and hide assets: and used them on weekends ‘for parties.

In 1987, New York found that the condos were used for money laundering, to hide profits from and evade taxes on 15 million gallons of gasoline he and his associates purchased and distributed in the
313) New York City area.

“During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the
314) Clinton administration.

“It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were
315) sold but no one is living in them.”

When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reported in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.

Almost a decade later, a Senate Intelligence report confirms
316) that transnational organized crime boss Semion Mogilevich operated in the US.

A joint FBI / DOJ report released the same year confirmed David and his brother Jacob worked for Mogilevich and his associates.

independent.co.uk/news/world/rus…
317) As a pilot in the Soviet army, David Bogatin was best known for shooting down American troops over North Vietnam.

@sarahkendzior notes in her book that the Russian mafia had been growing in New York City due to a wave of Soviet émigrés and a crackdown on the Italian mob by
318) then prosecutor and Trump friend Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani, who became the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York in 1983, waged a tactical war against New York’s five organized crime families so successful that even the Italian government gave him a medal.
319) But the near elimination of the Italian mafia only cleared the way for Russian criminal domination.

320) A point to this last block of tens of Tweets is to provide supporting evidence for the main thesis in the first 180 Tweets in the thread.
321) The thread started by adding new information from Steve Schmidt that allowed a connection to be made that the Kremlin cultivated Sarah Palin.



But the pro-Russia faction probably started earlier than Steve Schmidt realizes.
322) Enron hired James Baker and Robert Mosbacher in 1993 to help develop overseas projects. Enron was negotiating to build plants in Kuwait, Turkey, India and Germany. Enron hoped to build pipelines in Russia.

nytimes.com/1993/02/23/bus…
323) "We are delighted to have these two individuals, who have such a wealth of international experience, join us in the development of natural gas projects around the world," Kenneth L. Lay, Enron chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.
324) Mr. Baker was Treasury Secretary and White House chief of staff under former President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State and chief of staff under President George Bush.

Mr. Mosbacher, a former member of Enron's board of directors, was Secretary of Commerce from 1989 to
325) early 1992, and then headed the Bush re-election campaign before becoming chairman of finance for the Republican National Committee.

Recall, Kenneth Lay was active in George W. Bush campaign.

326)
327) Enron and Russia's natural-gas monopoly [Gazprom] signed an agreement for European markets in August 1993.

upi.com/amp/Archives/1…

James Baker was hired to develop overseas projects in February 1993. By August, he had delivered.
328) The Russian PM was co-chair with Al Gore for a commission on energy and space.

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

Russia and US interests were eye-balling a nat gas field off Sakhalin Island near Japan.
329) With this context:

330) Was Viktor Chernomyrdin attempting to use Gazprom to launder Solntsevskaya’s drug money into the US economy through Enron, and working with Reagan and W Bush associates?

331) From 1984 to the present, a total of 13 criminal authorities associated with Solntsevskaya OPG & its partner criminal organizations had real estate in the Trump Tower in New York or other Trump buildings.

The main buyers were clients from Azerbaijan, Russia and Kazakhstan.
332) In a charge brought by Mueller, Manafort was named the beneficiary of Cyprus company Lucicle Consultants Ltd, which received millions of dollars from Ivan Fursin, who, according Austrian police, works for Dmitry Firtash and is part of the organization of Semyon Mogilevich.
333) In 2006, the Azerbaijani criminal Hikmet Mukhtarov was shot in a car registered with the co-founder of Crocus, Rail Zeynalov. According to some, Vyacheslav Ivankov-Yaponchik (who was detained in the Trump Tower) was present at the funeral of Hikmet's authority in Azerbaijan.
334)

These connections come together via Trump Escorts and Mystique Companions, linked to MultiGroup, linked to Robert Maxwell, Mogilevich, Solntsevskaya.

Escorts + Drugs = Real Estate to launder
335) ft.com/content/728090…

336) Report on the Solntsevskaya criminal organization

tbcarchives.org/informe-oc-sol…

Putin was Alfa Group’s/Solntsevskaya’s political front man in the early 1990s.

The dossier that Steele assembled claimed that Aven and Fridman had been close confidants of Vladimir Putin since he
337) was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, in the nineteen-nineties, when they sent him “large amounts of illicit cash.”

Alfa Group & Solntsevskaya were possibly among the “freedom fighters” with whom the Reagan administration partnered in the 1980s/early 90s to dismantle the
338) Soviet state.

SideNote: Kirkland and Ellis followed Andrew Fastow to Enron from his previous gig at Continental Illinois Bank.

Continental Illinois Bank was also part of the laundering operation out of Italy involving Michele Sindona, Roberto Calvi, Banco Ambrosiano,
339) the Vatican, and Propaganda Due.

340) Steve Pieczenik went on InfoWars and told Alex Jones that he and his pals from the HW Bush administration (James Baker) had personally picked Putin to be their guy.



Pieczenik/Behrends/Baker/Casey “picked” Putin to lead the way in post-Soviet Russia?
341) Mitt Romney article:

huffpost.com/entry/mitt-rom…

342) Getting back to organized crime, the CIA, and drug trade, most people assume that America's support for the Shah of Iran was due to oil policy.

But was American support because of heroin policy? In 1969, the Shah of Iran lifted the 1955 ban on the cultivation, sale, &
343) possession of opium.

Fast forward to the late 1970s and Southern Air to Nicaragua.

Then recognize different but similar operations eventually required laundering in Panama.

344) Every so many Tweets in the thread, I should throw in a reminder of a main thesis.
345) Repeating Mark Esper from earlier in the thread where I dropped his clip from 60 minutes talking about missiles targeted at the cartels in Mexico, in context of the drug trade discussion. You can find the video in the thread.

msn.com/en-us/news/pol…

axios.com/2022/05/09/mar…
346) Schmidt's airing of dirty laundry keeps getting better.

Mitt has skeletons in his closet?

Was the National Chair for Romney for President, the COO of the Office of the Governor of MA, and the Office of the CEO for the

347) Salt Lake Organizing Committee from 2000 to 2002 Mitt's son?
348) Hmm ....

Paul Ryan was named partner at Solamere Capital in Feb 2021. That is the private equity investment firm founded in 2008 by Eric Scheuermann, Spencer Zwick and Tagg Romney.

Keeping it 'the family.'

Bobby Jindal must feel left out.
349) Re-summarize key point from above thread: Paul Manafort, Trump Tower resident & key architect of the corruption that plagued Ukraine, not only injected Russian oligarchs into American elections back in ‘08, Manafort was pardoned by the successful Russian candidate from ‘16.
350) “In Nov 2015, a Russian-born developer named Felix Sater sent an email to Cohen stating, ‘Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this. I will manage the process.”  @jennycohn1

320) Footnote from Yale’s 2017 report: “Yale’s 106.3% venture capital return over the past twenty years is heavily influenced
by large distributions during the Internet boom.

321) Since such a calculation assumes reinvestment of proceeds from the portfolio during the period at the same rate of return for the rest of the period, it is inappropriate to compound the 106.3% return over the twenty-year time horizon.

For reference, the twenty-year
322) time-weighted return of Yale’s venture capital portfolio is 25.5%.

Returns for other illiquid asset classes are not subject to large distortions.”

The time-weighted return is not a useful measure, despite Yale referring to it, because the returns are very skewed:
323) the period probably includes one or two years with a return of 100% or more.

The most informative measure of performance would be the MoM or TVPI, but despite being repeatedly asked, Yale has yet to communicate this common measure.

If Yale opts to report their
324) past twenty-year return in VC again next year, the mathematics of IRR is such that their return will probably drop from a 256% p.a. average to about 15% p.a. average.

It will be interesting to see whether they then
revert to reporting a since inception IRR, in which case
325) the reported figure will be over 30%, or
show the past twenty years average, in which case the explanation should be an interesting read.

I got side-tracked here, but a point is, we asked, what fueled the tech bubble from 1995 to 2000 that institutions like Yale point out
326) in their reports as providing rocket boosters to their IRRs?

Might it be illicit funds being laundered through Real Estate, and Hedge Funds?

Maybe I'll write about that some day.



Private equity funds invest long-term in illiquid assets over a
327) 10-year fund lifespan, and investors do not have general rights of redemption in these funds, and that is a repellant to using a PE fund to launder. But, you could scheme up multiple scenarios.

reuters.com/article/bc-fin…
328) Imagine how one could run cash flows from a drug trade (or arms deals) through either real estate or hedge funds.

Private investment funds, including private equity, have no anti money laundering requirements.
329) How might one use private placement funds and a series of shell corporations to purchase and sell prohibited items from sanctioned countries to the United States?

What schemes might one use to avoid sanctions?

What premium could a fund manager willing to take legal risk
330) charge?

But is there any legal risk depending on the jurisdictions and legal and trading structures used?

When did the Soviet Union fall and Russia become a mafia state?

Where might money get laundered?

Case Study: ByteGrid was financed by a private equity firm,
331) AltPoint Capital Partners, whose fund
manager and largest investor was a Russian oligarch named Vladimir Potanin.

businessinsider.com/vladimir-potan…

Potanin, one of Russia’s wealthiest individuals, reportedly made his money after the fall
of the Soviet Union through a series of
332) privatization deals in the commodities markets.

A lack of disclosure of the Russian oligarch behind ByteGrid and AltPoint Capital raises
national security concerns, highlighting how a hostile foreign interest could use private equity
to potentially gain a measure of
333) secret control over a firm administering important aspects of U.S. election infrastructure.

This firm had a contract to manage election infrastructure in Maryland.
334) Donald Trump seems to want to eliminate competition among suppliers of drugs by taking out some Mexican suppliers.



Primer on the mechanics of currency exchange.
335) At an April 01, 2020 Presser, President Trump brings out A.G. Barr to talk about costs of battling cartels from S. America and narcotic trafficking.

He has Sec. of Defense Esper talk about deaths from drug overdoses and addiction in America, attempting to connect the
336) Maduro regime from Venezuela to American deaths from drug overdoses.

Trump has Sec. of Defense Esper discuss deployment of naval, marine, and coast guard assets to the Caribbean to fight drug trafficking by Maduro.

He has General Milley mention the war with drug
337) cartels. He has Acting DHS Sec. Chad Wolf speak about the wall after Wolf attempts to leave the podium.

He has an Admiral on stage. He even plants an OANN reporter to ask about the caravans.

Were you paying attention to reason / incentives why Trump was targeting certain
338) drug suppliers?

Donald favored Bolsonaro over Maduro, perhaps at the request of Steve Bannon or some intermediary through another intermediary tied to a Russian oligarch?

nytimes.com/2019/01/08/opi…

washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/…
339) In a livestreamed video posted at 7:22 a.m. EST, Lindell claimed to have met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s son the night before the insurrection.

Implication is Lindell may have met with a son of Jair Bolsonaro during

mediamatters.org/january-6-insu…
340) a meeting at Trump’s “private residence” described by Charles W. Herbster, Republican gubernatorial candidate from Nebraska.

A photo from Eduardo Bolsonaro shows which son met with Mike Lindell.

charleswherbster.com
341) On January 4, 2021, Eduardo Bolsonaro entered the United States as part of a “surprise visit to the White House at the invitation of Ivanka Trump.”

wsws.org/en/articles/20…
342) If Donald favored Brazil as a supplier, why was Rudy G repping someone from Venezuela?

reuters.com/article/us-ven…
343) Wait.

Were these fools, including Fraud Guarantee, trying to overthrow the government of Venezuela, perhaps to control a drug trade, with Donald Trump making Mark Esper, Mike Pompeo, and other's think he was trying to

theintercept.com/2019/01/30/don…
344) protect Americans from drugs, or to take Venezuelan oil?

Maybe Donald did think that and was just someone else's useful idiot?

nytimes.com/2018/09/08/wor…

independent.co.uk/news/world/ame…

thedailybeast.com/in-venezuela-t…
345) Or was the CIA getting involved in another narcotics trade?

vox.com/2020/5/11/2124…
346) progressive.org/latest/trump-s…

Screenshot from Vox article with link from last tweet.
347) I thought Trump brought on John Bolton in April 2018, a guy he detested, and whose views on Iraq he disagreed, for cover for an INF exit.

348) But perhaps Bolton was a useful idiot for a Trump / Putin alliance in another way, regarding plans in Venezuela?

money.yahoo.com/john-bolton-sa…
349) Thesis is, looking for a connection and incentives for the Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Brazil posture of the Trump Admin.

Was is about, among other things, a drug trade and how to launder drug money?
350) The reduced U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan — down to 2,500 troops at the end of Trump's term — may have hindered intelligence efforts in Afghanistan. Retired Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, who led the Defense Intelligence Agency until October, said having fewer Americans
351) embedded with Afghan forces meant there was less insight into how those forces would perform.

A subset of Republicans in the House or Senate blasting Biden for the Afghan exit didn’t say much when Trump actually said he trusted the Taliban, invited them to
352) Camp David on 9/11, and then set in motion an even earlier exit, plus a visit of the Taliban to Moscow.

One R, John Bolton said that Trump's plan was the stupidest fucking bullshit he'd ever heard in his life, but Trump fired Bolton right after.
353) Bolton was maybe not the useful idiot Trump needed him to be?

Wondered why Bolton referred to the Ukraine extortion as a drug deal. Perhaps Bolton was foretelling something else?

justsecurity.org/68311/the-ukra…
354) Former ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker: “By cutting the Afghan government out of the peace talks, while agreeing to terms that included the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners, Crocker said the U.S. government [Trump Admin] “effectively sided with the
355) Taliban” in the eyes of Afghan forces.

Trump & Pompeo set in motion a quagmire for the benefit of ??

Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar (head of Taliban Political Office) was released from a Pakastani prison in 2018 after President Trump made the request as a part of
356) "peace talks." He was also a GITMO detainee.

Odd that Trump released him after 8 years in GITMO for nothing in return, and Baradar was set to become the President of Afghanistan following the collapse of the Afghan government.

It was Obama in 2010 who persuaded ISI to
357) arrest the Taliban political chief, Abdul Ghani Baradar.

The Trump administration recognized the Taliban was the real power in Afghanistan and effectively capitulated to them.

A problem with the Trump / Pompeo Feb 2020 deal with the Taliban is not that the Taliban
358) violated it but that it was done w/o Afghan government participation & asked so little of the Taliban in return for US military withdrawal.

How does this comport with the Taliban outlawing the cultivation of drugs, including opium poppy,

voanews.com/a/taliban-ban-…
359) across Afghanistan, the world’s biggest opium producer, which accounts for 85 percent of global production?
360) This thread is weaving more than a granny with her yarn on a sunny sunday.

I may need to rewrite it.

Anyhow, it would be rational to say that Mitt Romney selected Paul Ryan for the same reason McCain selected Sarah Palin: To woo the crazies.

But this thread illuminates
361) evidence that Palin was selected by a Russian operative + McCains' approval, which was a "fuck it" attitude of let's roll the dice, per Steve Schmidt.

Now one wonders, how was Paul Ryan introduced to Romney in 2012?
362) If we think Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Brazil links are crazy, consider this.



In the mid-'80s, the Republican Reagan administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress differed on how to deal with the menace of the leftist government in
363) Nicaragua.

Anticommunist Reaganites favored the classic communist tactic of secretly arming opposition movements ("contra-revolutionaries"), while Congress considered this strategy sneaky, illegal, and destabilizing to the international order.

Congress prevailed,
364) cutting off the CIA's funding for a proxy war in Central America.

But Congress was merely a local outfit. The anticommunist faction both privatized and globalized, replacing vanished public subsidies with private funds from right-wing charities like the
365) National Defense Council, the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, and the Western Goals Foundation, as well as from supportive Muslims with oil money to burn.

The conspirators secretly acquired weapons from Israel and sold them to Iran at a hefty profit, which they turned over
366) to guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan regime.

Admiral Poindexter's PROF interoffice email system (powered by an IBM mainframe) seems pretty backward nowadays, but there was an unmistakable Enron-style genius in routing charity money and Saudi profits through Israeli
367) arms contractors to buy munitions for Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries.

John Poindexter, Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, Richard Secord, John Singlaub, Robert MacFarlane, Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar: These legendary innovators created something truly new and
368) brilliant - an offshore, autonomous, self-financing, global, anticommunist venture-capital outfit big enough to fight a private war against a sovereign nation.

Lieutenant Colonel North liked to call it Project Democracy. It ran loops around Congress the way offshore
369) Internet porn rings dodge the US Customs Service.

Catch that? We covered an anticommunist venture-capital outfit big enough to fight a private war against a sovereign nation.

370) More: wired.com/2003/04/the-se…

The real success story was the Contras, or rather their modern successor: al Qaeda.

Those new-model Contras did not need state support from Washington, Moscow, or any Accessory of Evil.

Like Project Democracy, they got
371) independent financing: oil money, charity money, arms money, and a collection plate wherever a junkie shoots up in an alley.

372) Instead of merely ignoring and subverting governments for a higher cause, as Poindexter did, al Qaeda tried to destroy them outright.

The next scandal was predicted to erupt when someone as molten, self-righteous, and frustrated as John Poindexter uses stateless power
373) for domestic advantage.

Is this sounding like an opening for a Russian Federation Intel and Military Op to infiltrate Mike Flynn and his associates?

That's the breaking point in American politics: not when you call in the plumbers, but when you turn them loose on the
374) opposition party.

Then the Empire roils in a lather of sudden, indignant fury and strikes back against its own.

Sure sounds like what other nations hostile to the U.S. may be instigating or amplifying.
375) History repeating itself?

Mr. Putin studied this stuff and learned from it, right?
376)
377)
378)
379) It is perhaps a good time to remember that Kirkland and Ellis grew to prominence thanks to the growth of Private Equity.

Where to go to launder when Deutsche Bank has to temporarily slow down its operations?

theguardian.com/business/2019/…
380) Formed in the midst of the Second World War, the Vatican Bank is the privately-run custodian of the Church’s assets, which are “designated for religious works or charity.” It is run by an advisory board that reports to a committee of cardinals and the pope himself.
381) Hmm ...

What if the Mormon church can similarly be corrupted, when Pope Francis tries to clean up the Vatican and Catholic Church?

Imagine someone somewhere has tried.

occrp.org/en/daily/10465…

foreignpolicy.com/2010/09/21/vat…
382) Where else to go to launder money? Epstein? Trump?

nytimes.com/2020/07/07/bus…

mensjournal.com/entertainment/…
383) There is even one theory that Epstein belong to Intelligence. But perhaps Acosta was fed that to lead sniffing hounds elsewhere?

nymag.com/intelligencer/…
384) vox.com/policy-and-pol…

vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/j…

What about Jared Kushner? Why would the Saudis give him $2B? Theories are he could have shared secretes or covered up Kashoggi's murder.

But what if it's petty cash seed money to set up an operation to launder in the future?
385) How much of a hit was the Deutsche Bank fine and possible short term scrutiny?

theguardian.com/business/2019/…
386) Or more of history repeating itself?
387) Paul Behrends arranged for Erik Prince to work as an intern in the congressional office of Dana Rohrabacher, who Kevin McCarthy famously said is Putin's favorite congressman.

wsj.com/articles/house…
388) Paul Behrends converted Erik Prince to Catholicism. Remember how we said the Catholic church laundered?

Paul Behrends was a Catholic, a knight in the Sovereign Order of Malta, and an anti-communist crusader who partnered with organized crime and Russian oligarchs in an
389) effort to bring down the Soviet state.

Now might be a good time to read the history of Blackwater and make some connections.

Nice time to remind of Catholic Church opposition to Sandinista Gov.
390) Alexandre de Marenches co-found the Saudi-funded private intelligence group the Safari Club, one of George H. W. Bush’s many end-runs around congressional oversight of the American intelligence establishment.

Perhaps the Saudi's learned a few things and passed on that
391) knowledge to the folks now running the show in Saudi Arabia and UAE?

William P Barr enters the story again in a connection to BCCI, again, covering up shit.

apnews.com/article/d0bc48…

392) Another example involving Bill Barr.

393) Another Bill Barr example, related to the Durham probe of 2022 I'd ponder.

394) A favorite Bill Barr connection to a cover up.

395) What's part of the point?

Ever since the end of WWII, staunch anti-communist elements within our govt were partnering with organized crime (and its affiliates within the Catholic Church) to battle communism throughout the world.

But after the

396) communist states failed, criminal syndicates and drug cartels moved in to fill the void.

Intermission for some Lady Gaga Lyrics:

Tell me something, boy
Aren't you tired tryna fill that void?
Or do you need more?
Ain't it hard keepin' it so hardcore?
397) Coolio: Living in Gangsta's Paradise

theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/…
398) We'll come back to this story of laundering, cartels, former Intel officers, private equity, hedge funds, Kirkland and Ellis later.

Now back to the story of Palin being John McCain's VP pick. I had asked, what about Paul Ryan being Mitt Romneys.

399)
400) Let's not lose track of this important point.

401) Review over. Let's pivot to another VP selection: Mike Pence.

SideNote: Was Russia hot for Ted Cruz too? Another story for another day.

How does Kellyane Conway fit into the story of Mike Pence's selection?

vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/t…
402) This is Conway sounding like a useful idiot:

“The Republican Party was always looking for the next Ronald Reagan, but it kept picking Bushes,” Conway says.

Pence in 2015: “You don’t think it’ll be damaging to my career to be associated with Trump?”
403) All the concerns Pence had about Trump were flooding over him.

Conway wouldn’t hear it. “You crossed the Rubicon. Now that you’ve gone this far, there’s no going back,” Conway told Pence. “I’m going to make sure you get it.”

Does this sound anything like how Sarah Palin
404) was selected?

Not exactly, but exploring this a little.

With Manafort and Kushner egging them on, they made the hard sell. Pence was deferential. He would attract evangelicals. He was polished. And he looked the part—an invaluable asset in the eyes of their father.
405) Hook, Line, and Sinker

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More from @JWalters314

Jamie Walters, CAIA Profile picture
Apr 14
Coincidence that Elon Musk offers to take-over Twitter at the low price of $54.20 per share, all-cash, during a period when Donald's Truth Social cannot get off the ground?

Elon would reinstate Donald’s Twitter and Donald would drop Devin Nunes so fast, his head would spin.
Unless Donald would keep Devin to lobby in Congress (obstruct) to kill Twitter so that Truth Social could eat market share?

Would the Saudi's back Donald's platform if their Twitter investment is taken over by Elon?
The useful idiots in Congress will be turning the Musk Twitter Board rejection into a fake war on "free speech," but how will that bunch react to the Twitter take-over offer by Musk?



Twitter will reject at the offer price so expect Greene & Boebert
Read 20 tweets
Jamie Walters, CAIA Profile picture
Feb 21
1. Withholding security assistance to Ukraine “for no good reason, other than help with a political campaign, made no sense,” Ambassador Bill Taylor said during the 1st House impeachment hearing on Nov 13, 2019, of the Manchurian Candidate.

2. “It was illogical, it could not be explained, it was crazy.”

Four years of Manchurian Candidate Donald Trump in the United States provided Putin with confidence by dividing the U.S. inside the legislative branch, planting idiots and possibly a mole or two inside U.S.
3. agencies, and leverage by obtaining classified information by getting inside U.S. agencies.

Recall all those hacking stories during that time when Donald has so many useful idiots running things?

Putin observed the situation in Israel: sending citizens to settle in a
Read 198 tweets
Jamie Walters, CAIA Profile picture
Dec 4, 2021
1. Four years of Pavlovian Conditioning by TFG reinforced the MAGA view of government’s purpose to maintain hierarchy.

When TFG would listen to a build the wall chant and eventually follow up later in the rant with “law & order”, MAGA would fawn.

No surprise the parents
2. publicly oozed for “2nd A” MAGA political types that appeal to single-issue voter’s hell-bent on the past and a law & order hierarchy candidate.

I wonder, however, whether the mother finds @laurenboebert appealing or does being "female" peel away any appeal a female
3. politician may have for Mrs. Crumbley?

Four days before the shooting, Ethan Crumbley accompanied his father to a gun shop, where James Crumbley bought a semi-automatic handgun, prosecutors said.

Later that day, Ethan posted photos of the gun on social media, writing,
Read 15 tweets
Jamie Walters, CAIA Profile picture
Oct 8, 2021
President Trump provided misleading information about the financial situation of the Trump Hotel in his annual financial disclosures; received undisclosed preferential treatment from a foreign bank [Deutsche Bank?] on a $170 million loan to the hotel that the President personally
guaranteed; accepted millions of dollars in emoluments from foreign governments without providing an accounting of the money’s source or purpose; concealed hundreds of millions of dollars in debts from GSA when bidding on the Old Post Office Building lease; and made it
impossible for GSA to properly enforce the lease’s conflict-of-interest restrictions by engaging in opaque transactions with other affiliated entities.

Pretty much all know but evidence trickles in later.

With the Senate Trump had, none of it mattered.
Read 8 tweets
Jamie Walters, CAIA Profile picture
Aug 27, 2021
1. Kevin looks in control here but don’t forget, Kevin was the Chief of Staff to the last President, and they had their opportunities to perform on Afghanistan, but failed.

With these new MAGA talking points on Bagram, let’s not forget that in 2019 during Kevin’s tenure in the
2. W.H. and while Trump had his people negotiating with the Taliban, Taliban militants attacked Bagram with two car bombs, killing 2 civilians and injuring 80, followed by an attempt by militants to storm the base which was repulsed by US-led NATO forces.

The attack did not
3. make the front page of the NYT.

Let’s not forget that Trump divulged by Tweet on a Saturday in late Sept 2019 that “unbeknownst to almost everyone,” Trump had invited Taliban leaders to Camp David in Maryland.

Mr. Trump said that “in order to build false leverage,”
Read 9 tweets
Jamie Walters, CAIA Profile picture
Jul 2, 2021
1) If you like Ozark on @netflix, try this mostly money-laundering thread.

To modify what @mmckinnon said, Trump calls the indictments a fishing expedition.

Well, when you refuse to disclose your taxes when you run for president, and when you are president, and claim they're
2) being audited indefinitely for decades, then, yeah, prosecutors should go fishing. Cause something's fishy.

Problem is, few are fishing and the regulators are out of good fishing nets and fishing tools (laws).

They missed almost everything or have intentionally only
3) indicted on 15 counts not touching money laundering schemes, to pass that onto a U.S. Attorney, if any take up the case.

Biden’s A.G. (and of course none of Trumps) have signaled any interest in pursuing money-laundering cases with wide nets.
Read 57 tweets

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