Anthony Pratt, the Australian billionaire who says Trump revealed to him sensitive information about submarines, reportedly paid Rudy Giuliani "about a million bucks" to attend Pratt’s birthday party. smh.com.au/world/north-am… “All these guys are like the mafia. Trump, Rupert, Rudy. You want to be a customer, not a competitor. And I am very aware of that," Pratt says in a recorded conversation obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald.

It looks like the unnamed former high-ranking government official and Trump advisor mentioned in Gal Luft's indictment was R. James Woolsey Jr., former director the CIA from 1993-1995.

https://twitter.com/Folly_and_Glory/status/1678540069211086849

Woolsey's op-ed in the @SCMPNews in the fall of 2016 includes word-for-word a line that the indictment claims Gal Luft, the Israeli head of a US think tank, had written for "Individual-1," the former gov't official and Trump advisor. scmp.com/comment/insigh…

"While working with Ms. Dunphy, Giuliani would look to Ms. Dunphy, point to his erect penis, and tell her that he could not do any work until 'you take care of this.'"

More stunning allegations against "America's Mayor" were filed today by a former assistant. Lordy, there are tapes.

"In addition to his sexual demands, Giuliani went on alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist, and antisemitic remarks, which made the work environment unbearable. Many of these comments were recorded."

Bombshell report from @WSJ: Circle of people around Jeffrey Epstein is larger than previously known.

Biden's CIA Director Bill Burns met Epstein in 2014 when Burns was deputy secretary of state. wsj.com/articles/jeffr… "Kathryn Ruemmler, a White House counsel under President Barack Obama, had dozens of meetings with Epstein in the years after her White House service and before she became a top lawyer at Goldman Sachs in 2020."

“I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ruemmler said.

Tim Golden at ProPublica writes about year-old declassified docs revealing that the Saudi who helped two 9/11 hijackers was a spy without mentioning the new, more troubling info we uncovered in @talk_spy.

https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1652154831425925120

@SpyTalker and I wrote last month about a previously-unreported military court filing that revealed several former FBI agents believed the Saudi spy was part of a failed and possibly off-the-books CIA effort to recruit the hijackers. spytalk.co/p/exclusive-fb…

The @nytimes has a big story up about how the Israeli spyware Pegasus got into Mexico, but the article avoids my 2021 report in @thedailybeast showing the key role played by GOP fundraiser Elliot Broidy and a Mexican businessman later jailed in the US. thedailybeast.com/scandal-spywar… The Times' story shows that reporters @ronenbergman and @Nataliekitro had access to the same Israeli court documents I based my story on.

So why did the Times omit this critical piece of the puzzle involving Broidy and Jose Azano aka "Mr Lambo?" nytimes.com/2023/04/18/wor…

This is wild.

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1647200004598013952

Pretending to be Russian and using a fake Russian accent is OK because she never pretended to *live* in Russia. Got it.

Ever heard of Robert Smalls? Me neither, until this week. 🧵 Born a slave in South Carolina, Smalls commandeered a Confederate warship in 1862 and turned it over to Union troops.

He may be bankrupt but that didn't stop exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui and his "New Federal State of China" from sponsoring @CPAC's convention taking place this week in DC. Guo is Steve Bannon's friend and patron. Bannon and Guo announced the formation of the New Federal State of China in 2020.

It’s taken me far too long to understand what’s driving a lot of the political conversation on Twitter.

Hint: It's not bots. There are private, invite-only factories for making viral tweets. They're called retweet rooms.

Members of a retweet room agree to share each others tweets.

The FBI has released a file I requested years ago on Tamir Sapir, (center), a Georgian developer who financed the construction of Trump Soho in 2008.

The file shows Sapir was under FBI investigation for links to organized crime . #FOIA vault.fbi.gov/tamir-sapir/ta… A memo in the file from 1998 states that the FBI's Russian Organized Crime squad in New York was investigating Sapir for money laundering and extortion.

This is big news. Charles McGonigal, former FBI agent in charge of the NY FBI's counterintelligence division, was indicted for working for the sanctioned Kremlin-connected oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/f… Also indicted was Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet and Russian diplomat, who worked as an interpreter for the federal courts and US attorney's offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Those two offices have handled cases involving Russian spies and organized crime figures.

The US follows the UK and Canada in sanctioning Vladimir Potanin, Russia’s richest man. Vladimir Potanin has invested heavily in US companies through Altpoint Capital Partners LLC, a venture capital fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut.

US investments included ByteGrid, which hosted the computer servers used to register Maryland voters. sethhettena.com/2019/06/05/a-r…

Donald Trump controls a mob of thugs and trolls who attack his enemy of the moment. The FBI, Liz Cheney, Fauci, Adam Schiff, Pence, election officials, on and on, now the archivists at NARA. Truth Social is the bat signal. He's a sick, dangerous man.
washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/… I mean...

This is big: A derivatives panel has formally ruled that Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt.

https://twitter.com/bondhack/status/1532017451621404674

The ruling means holders of debt insurance (credit default swaps) on two sovereign Russian bonds are now entitled to billions of dollars in payments.

The United Arab Emirates remains a safe harbor for sanctioned Russian wealth.

Exhibit A: Andrey Melnichenko’s Motor Yacht A.

(Photo: Christoffer Rudquist) The @FT reports the futuristic $300 million yacht has been anchored for weeks in Ras al Khaimah in the UAE. ft.com/content/0b4d71…

On this #MemorialDay, please join me in remembering my uncle, Seymour Levine, who was killed in action during #WorldWarII. 2nd Lt. Levine was a platoon commander in Company F of the 182nd Regiment of the Americal Division. In March 1945, the division was assigned to take Cebu, an island in the Philippines held by the Japanese. #MemorialDay

Alina Kabaeva, the rhythmic gymnast who is believed to be Vladimir Putin’s longtime mistress, has been sanctioned by the United Kingdom. Also placed under UK sanctions today were Putin’s ex-wife, Lyudmilla, and three members of the Putin family: Igor, Mikhaïl, and Roman.

Another Russian-owned castle has been seized by authorities in France. "Le Château du Clos-Renard," a 27-acre property with its own hunting forest, is worth an estimated €22 million. leparisien.fr/immobilier/gue… The chateau's owner was listed as the 28-year-old son of Aleksandr Babakov, a deputy chairman in Russia's parliament.

What foreign bank has the greatest exposure to Russia?

Readers of my book won't be surprised to learn that it's Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank with 4.2 million customers and 9,400 staff in Russia, and €22.9bn of assets at risk.
ft.com/content/0b5006… There's a long history of dirty Russian money flowing through Raiffeisen.

Let's start in 2006 when a State Department cable released by Wikileaks stated that that Raiffeisen served as a front for the Russian gangster Semion Mogilevich.

A judge in Manhattan has refused to strike allegations that billionaire Leon Black flew an ex-model to Palm Beach to "satisfy the sex needs" of Jeffrey Epstein.

"The facts show that Epstein was significant to plaintiff’s claims in this case," the judge ruled. Supreme Court Judge David Cohen found that Epstein was no mere "associate" of Black's. Black admitted that Epstein was one of the only people with whom he discussed intimate details of his relationship with the former Russian model, Guzel Ganieva.