Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose
WASHINGTON POST
Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice last year while he was still a senator and a prominent surrogate of the Trump campaign, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. During his confirmation hearing for attorney general, Sessions did not disclose these conversations. “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Sessions said in response to a question about communications between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.” In a written questionaire, Sessions said "no" to the question of whether he had been in contact with the Russian government regarding the 2016 campaign. (A spokesperson for Sessions said he met with Kislyak in his capaicty as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and that he couldn't remember what exactly they discussed). Sessions now oversees the Justice Department and the FBI that are investigating alleged Russian meddling and potential ties to the Trump camp. Sessions has resisted calls for him to recuse himself from the ongoing investigations.
Obama Aides Left a Trail of Intelligence on Russian Efforts
In a new report by The New York Times, three former U.S. officials say that American allies, specifically the British and the Dutch, provided information that described meetings between Russian officials and associates of President Trump during the campaign in European cities. Additionally, the report contends that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications of Russian officials discussing contacts with Trump associates. The report also says that the Obama administration scrambled to spread information about Russian contacts with Trump associates prior to Trump's inauguration in order to prevent the president from destroying intelligene or obstructing inestigations. Additionally, over a half-dozen current and former officials said there were efforts to keep and distribute information in an attempt to ensure that there was a proper Congressional investigation.
Wilbur Ross Is Another Trump Cabinet Pick With Underexamined Russian Ties
After Ross and his team invested more than $1 billion in the troubled Bank of Cyprus, he became one of its two vice chairmen. Putin appointed the other.
A study prepared exclusively for DCReport.org by James S. Henry reveals deep financial ties between Donald Trump’s nominee for Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, and three Russian oligarchs, whose lives and fortunes depend on staying in the good graces of Vladimir Putin.
These connections raise many new questions about Trump’s reliance on the Putin regime, which all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies say interfered in the presidential election on Trump’s behalf, but which Trump disputes.
These relationships between nominee Ross and the oligarchs involve ownership and management of a European bank with a reputation for laundering Russian money and making bad loans.
The study also compared flight records of Trump’s campaign plane and a plane used by one of the oligarchs. During the campaign, the two planes often were at the same airports at the same time.
Henry, DCReport.org’s senior editor for economics investigations, gathered the information and connected the dots.
Henry is a lawyer and former chief economist for the McKinsey & Co. business consulting firm. He abandoned his executive career to spend more than four decades exposing corrupt international banking. In 1976 Henry became the first person to urge eliminating large denomination bills to thwart drug trafficking and tax evasion. Henry served as a consultant on the massive Panama Papers that revealed a global network of tax evasion and other dubious financial practices of the international elite.
The records Henry combed through shows that Ross and his team invested more than $1 billion in the troubled Bank of Cyprus. Ross became one of two vice chairman of the bank. Putin appointed the other.
Soon Ross named a new chairman, who earlier left under a cloud as chairman of Deutsche Bank. On that chairman’s watch, Deutsche Bank paid $20 billion in fines. Among these was a $650 million fine for helping launder Russian money through Deutsche Bank offices in Moscow, New York City and Cyprus.
Deutsche Bank is Trump’s largest known lender, having extended him more than $300 million of loans that remain outstanding.
Why Ross would appoint anyone with such a poor record of banking conduct, and why he worked with the Russian oligarchs, remains a mystery.
This report first appeared at DCReport.org
| The agreement to pay Christopher Steele, who compiled a controversial dossier on behalf of Trump’s political opponents, ultimately fell apart but shows that U.S. investigators considered him to be credible on the president’s alleged Russia ties. Trump has derided the dossier as “fake news.” . Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman scoop: “The agreement to compensate former MI6 agent Christopher Steele came as U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that the Russians had interfered in the presidential election by orchestrating hacks of Democratic Party email accounts.” While Trump derided the dossier as "fake news" – and the agreement eventually fell apart -- the FBI’s arrangement with Steele shows that bureau investigators considered him credible on Trump’s alleged Russia ties. How it happened: At the time of the October agreement, FBI officials were probing Moscow's activities -- including possible communications with Trump's team -- and were "aware of the information" Steele had been gathering for the Democratic research firm. The firm was due to stop paying Steele in the final weeks before Election Day, but Steele said he felt like his work "was not done." Steele had previously been hired by the FBI and was known for both high work quality and the breadth of knowledge developed over nearly two decades working on Russian-related issues. Ultimately the FBI never paid Steele – and communications between the agency and the former spy were interrupted as the now-famous dossier became the subject of international headlines. Still, the revelations are likely to strain an already-tense relationship between the intelligence community and the White House. Steele is now in hiding. Key quote: Steele at one point last year suggested that a Putin-orchestrated plan to help Trump may have been in the works for years. “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years,” he wrote last June. |
| By Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman • Read more » |