Kellyanne Conway Moves Trump-Russia Goalpost To Over There, Where Ivanka Isn't!
Two tiny little scooplets today, nothing to see here really: A Cambridge Analytica director told friends she sent "third party" funds to Wikileaks via Dogecoin (probably not Dogecoin). Is that a big deal? And Ivanka Trump yelled at Michael Cohen for turning down a Russian Olympic weightlifter's offer -- fow which she'd done the intro -- to set up a Trump-Putin meeting to grease Trump Tower Moscow. Is that bad, do you think?
NO DUMMY, THOSE ARE NOT BAD, OR A BIG DEAL, because Kellyanne Conway went on the Weak Loser Fake News CNN this morning to point out that it is NO COLLUSION unless Russia actually changed the vote tabulations, in the computers! (We will look forward to how that hypothetical is also NO COLLUSION once Mueller lays down some tiny news about Russia monkeyin' around in the voter rolls.)
Kellyanne Conway closes CNN interview by making clear that Trump administration is trying to define "collusion" as "Russians literally got help from Trump to hack voting machines & change votes."
Suggests any cooperation short of that isn't a big deal b/c votes weren't changed. pic.twitter.com/21wDwfKy6T— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 6, 2018
Ivanka Trump shimmies her way into Trump-Russia
Let's start with Vanky, because she is le sexxx (according to her father, the president of America). Buzzfeed spoke with four sources and also was permitted to view emails, as long as it did not quote from them, between Ivanka Trump and Michael Cohen, who is as bad at business as he is at law, and between Michael Cohen and Dmitry Klokov, a YUUUGE Olympic man whose sport is "picking up heavy objects."
You will remember that in 2015, while Donald Trump was stating unequivocally that he had no business, no ties, no deals with Russia, he had actually signed a letter of intent to develop a Trump hotel in Moscow.
In November 2015, Ivanka Trump told Cohen to speak with Klokov, according to the four sources. Cohen had at least one phone conversation with the weightlifter, they said. It is not known what the men discussed over the phone, but they exchanged a string of emails that are now being examined by congressional investigators and federal agents probing Russia’s election meddling.
In one of those emails, Klokov told Cohen that he could arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and Putin to help pave the way for the tower. Later, Cohen sent an email refusing that offer and saying that the Trump Organization already had an agreement in place. He said he was cutting off future communication with Klokov. Copying Ivanka Trump, the Russian responded in a final brusque message, in which he questioned Cohen’s authority to make decisions for the Trump Organization. Frustrated by the exchange, Ivanka Trump questioned Cohen’s refusal to continue communicating with Klokov, according to one of the sources.
Well, is the weightlifter changing the vote tabulations? No? THEN SHUT UP!
Klokov initially told BuzzFeed News that he did not “send any emails” to Cohen. “I don’t understand why you ask me about this,” Klokov said in text messages. “I’m weightlifter, not a political.” When told that he had sent at least two emails to Cohen and had had a phone conversation with him at Ivanka Trump’s request, Klokov stopped responding.
He probably only lobbied in Europe too, DEFINITELY NOT IN AMERICA US.
Cohen referred BuzzFeed News to his attorney, Stephen Ryan, who declined to comment.
What about Ivanka? Does she have a super good excuse? YES. She only wanted to make sure that the spa that bore her name had the best Italian marble, and that's IT.
A spokesperson for her attorney wrote that Ivanka Trump did not know about the Trump Moscow project “until after a nonbinding letter of intent had been signed, never talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal, and, even internally, was only minimally involved. Her only role was limited to reminding Mr. Cohen that, should an actual deal come to fruition (which it did not) the project, like any other with the Trump name, conform with the highest design and architectural standards.”
Careful, Ivanka's lawyer's spokesperson! The Trump family's statements have a way of becoming no longer operative! What do you think, Kellyanne Conway?
Kellyanne Conway closes CNN interview by making clear that Trump administration is trying to define "collusion" as "Russians literally got help from Trump to hack voting machines & change votes."
Suggests any cooperation short of that isn't a big deal b/c votes weren't changed. pic.twitter.com/21wDwfKy6T— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 6, 2018
Russia if you're listening
Now here's another fun story! Remember when the Access Hollywood pussburglar tapes came out, and within twenty-nine minutes, Julian Assange of Wikileaks began publishing emails that had been hacked by Russia (according to every American intelligence service) or a 400 pound guy sitting on his bed (according to the now-president) from the accounts of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta? And remember Cambridge Analytica, the shaaaady and now "defunct" Facebook-data-stealin' company owned by the creepy rightwing billionaire Mercer family and on whose board Steve Bannon sat? (And who we suspect might have been laundering Facebook data and voter rolls between Moscow and the Trump Org, but that is just us speculating, as is only proper?) Wellll, they claimed they had nothing to do with Julian Assange or Wikileaks, but it seems they might have been fibbing a tiny!
There was no known connection until October last year, when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had “reached out” to Assange in July 2016 and offered to help him index and distribute the 33,000 emails that had been stolen from Hillary Clinton.
Oh, but CA and Assange both denied it? GOOD ENOUGH FOR US! Wait, there's more?
But visitor logs from the Ecuador embassy obtained by the Guardian and Focus Ecuador appear to show that Brittany Kaiser, a senior executive at Cambridge Analytica until earlier this year, visited Assange on 17 February 2017. Information passed to the DCMS committee in the UK and the Senate judiciary committee in the US states that the meeting was “a retrospective to discuss the US election”.
Kaiser is also alleged to have said that she had funnelled money to WikiLeaks in the form of cryptocurrency. She called the organisation her “favourite charity”. The reports passed to investigators say that money was given to her by third parties in the form of “gifts and payments”.
What do you think, Kellyanne Conway?
Kellyanne Conway closes CNN interview by making clear that Trump administration is trying to define "collusion" as "Russians literally got help from Trump to hack voting machines & change votes."
Suggests any cooperation short of that isn't a big deal b/c votes weren't changed. pic.twitter.com/21wDwfKy6T— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 6, 2018
See you back here when the Mueller investigation starts looking into the voter rolls penetrated by Russian hackers, as exposed by patriot NSA contractor Reality Winner, whom The Intercept accidentally put in jail.