Thread: Mueller's Russian Interference investigation

And McConnell is still refusing to do anything about election meddling.

Of course.

December 11, 2017 Post #3625

Originally Posted by SKkin

^I'm not arguing that at all. The Trump prick is a lying crook. Who knew?

But if you're counting on Mueller to do anything of substance you might as well piss into the wind.

Fast forward to the present. Explain how I was wrong.

Originally Posted by SKkin

December 11, 2017 Post #3625




Fast forward to the present. Explain how I was wrong.

It's not about Mueller, it's about Barr.

Trump is protected by Barr while he's in office.

Once he's out, he's fair game for indictment.

Originally Posted by SKkin

December 11, 2017 Post #3625

Originally Posted by SKkin
^I'm not arguing that at all. The Trump prick is a lying crook. Who knew?

But if you're counting on Mueller to do anything of substance you might as well piss into the wind.

Fast forward to the present. Explain how I was wrong.

It has completely fulfilled its task: Keeping the WH (and the population - incl. TD) in the thrill. And so distract them all, however nothing proved.

Moreover, a daily injection (not erasable) into the minds of the population: Russiangate...

Hadn't it worked similarly with Iraqgate?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

It's not about Mueller, it's about Barr.

I suggest you take a trip back in time through this thread and see how Mueller was being referred to by some of the members here.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

You don't think I'm actually reading your whackjob horseshit do you?

Willfully blind you remain...and it's no worse than the whackjob horseshit you shovel at us from the establishment POV. Good luck with that.

Originally Posted by SKkin

it's no worse than the whackjob horseshit you shovel at us from the establishment POV. Good luck with that.

Of course it is, it's written by fucking whackjobs.

That's why you swallow it.

Originally Posted by CSFFan

What I got from Mueller's testimony is this...

The president was not truthful in his written answers to the special counsel.
The president welcomed Russian help getting elected.
The president met the three criteria required to be charged for obstruction of justice in multiple instances.
The president wasn't charged because the president is immune from being charged with a crime.
The president has lied about Russian interference in the election.
The Russians are actively (today) working to interfere in the next election.

This.
Not to mention in the last couple of days the republicans killed a number of bills designed to strengthen voting security.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Of course it is, it's written by fucking whackjobs.

That's why you swallow it.

I do believe your’s is written by a whack job.

Originally Posted by RPETER65

I do believe your’s is written by a whack job.

It doesn't really matter what you think, you don't even know what we're talking about you demented old fool.

Despite the Republicans pushing Mueller's alleged feebleness, Congressman Adam Schiff's questions elicited testimony which in a normal universe would have damaged Trump and his campaign. Unfortunately there is this fat problem called Bill Barr in the Department of Justice.

Judge dismisses DNC hacking lawsuit against Trump team, says claims 'entirely divorced from the facts'

A federal judge in frank terms Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) against key members of the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over hacked DNC documents, saying they "did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place" and therefore bore no legal liability for disseminating the information.


The ruling came as Democrats increasingly have sought to tie the Trump team to illegal activity in Russia, in spite of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's findings that the campaign in fact refused multiple offers by Russians to involve them in hacking and disinformation efforts.


President Trump, in a tweet late Tuesday, noted that the judge in the case, John Koeltl, was appointed by Bill Clinton. The president called Koeltl's decision "really big 'stuff'" and "yet another total & complete vindication and exoneration."


The DNC had asserted in court filings that the Trump team's meetings "with persons connected to the Russian government during the time that the Russian GRU agents were stealing the DNC's information" were "circumstantial evidence" that they were conspiring with the Russians to "steal and disseminate the DNC's materials."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dnc...king-dismissed

It's a pity the judge couldn't fire the lot of them. Gnome Nadler is a complete idiot if he thinks this will help Dem get Trump out,

People are absolutely sick of their antics and every time they talk collusion or obstruction there go another 1000 votes

Mueller as we now know never ran the investigation a bunch of Dems clutching at every straw possible did..

This obstruction nonsense is a joke,

Trump takes a temper tantrum and who wouldn't? Spout venom saying he should get rid of Mueller and they cakll that Obstruction

If it is and it's an office to lose you temper we should all be locked up

There is absolutely no evidence of Trump sitting down with eg Rudg G and JayS and hatching a plan to obstruct
only defend.

Plenty evidence of Trump losing it but can you blame him?

If you were trying to run the country and a bunch of clowns were hell bent in causing problems and not helping... you'd lose it now and then.


There is more chance of me becoming PM than any Dem beating Trump. &/1 you can have about his nearest rival he'll bi 1/6 on the day

But instead of accepting there fate and working with the man on thing like the border they blame him and make that their excuse for being political morons.

The only thing dems might have in their favour this time is none of them we know of own hammers to smash up Blackberry s or know how to use bleach bit

We live in a world where the days of bipartisan outrage at a corrupt President are long gone.

As long as baldy orange cunto is winning votes, the immoral GOP scum will keep protecting him.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

bipartisan outrage

Originally Posted by Tanlic

Mueller as we now know never ran the investigation a bunch of Dems clutching at every straw possible did..

Fake News.

Originally Posted by bowie

You laugh but maybe you're too young to remember.

The obstruction of justice article approved last night accuses Mr. Nixon of making false statements to investigators (check), withholding relevant evidence (check), approving or counseling perjury (check), interfering with the Justice Department's investigation (check), approving payment of hush money to Watergate defendants (well porn stars), passing on information about the investigation to his aides who were suspects (almost certainly check), making false statements to the American people about White House involvement (check) in Watergate and causing defendants to believe they might receive clemency for the silence.(check)

Uncanny innit.

WaPo: Even one of Trump’s favorite foods has a hidden Russia connection

Read more
https://t.co/cDHpenCxvn

Originally Posted by bowie

I remember well. That was then - this is now.

Yes, now the GOP have the moral standards of sewer rats.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Yes, now the GOP have the moral standards of sewer rats.

always had them, you just didn't know and were too ignorant, now Trump has enlightened you

told you so, Trump is a disruptive force of Washington Jedi Temple !!!

remember, it was the the Jedi that started the Clone wars

Zelensky Ermak's assistant confirmed the meeting with his lawyer, Giuliani. They talked about Ukraine's influence on the Trump campaign


Lawyer and film producer Andrew Ermak, whom President Vladimir Zelensky appointed as his assistant immediately after the inauguration, met with Donald Trump's lawyer, Rudolf Giuliani, during a trip to Madrid in July. About this Babel told a source surrounded by Ermak.

"Andriy Yermak is now meeting with representatives of different parties, including a meeting with Giuliani. The main goal is to communicate the position of the president as clearly and without distortions as possible, ”the Babel's interlocutor said.

According to him, in the Ukrainian-American relations there are "a number of unscrupulous mediators who strongly distort information".

"It would be desirable to avoid such distortion and to communicate directly", - the interlocutor added.


What happened?

The August 21 issue of The New York Times published material about a meeting of a US president's lawyer with Zelensky's aide.

"Giuliani spoke on the phone and had a personal meeting in Madrid with the Ukrainian President's High Representative," the newspaper wrote.

Trump's lawyer urged Ermak to step up investigations into two issues of interest to the US president. The first is the possible influence of Ukrainian officials in the 2016 US election to undermine Trump's campaign. The second is to investigate a conflict of interest related to former US Vice President and Trump's main rival in the 2020 election, Joseph Biden.


What is Biden here for?

In 2014-2019, Biden Hunter's son served on the board of directors of Burisma's Ukrainian company, Yanukovych's administrator Mykola Zlochevsky. The main thesis put forward by Joe Biden's political opponents, including US President Donald Trump, is that Biden used the position of Vice President to promote and protect his son's business interests.

In March 2016, during his visit to Ukraine, Joe Biden demanded the release of then-Attorney General Viktor Shokin. Shokin was then resigned. According to one version promoted by Biden's opponents , Shokin was fired because he was investigating a corruption case in Burisma and making illegal payments to Hunter Biden and Burisma Board Director Devon Archer. It is reported that Burisma's board members received $ 17 million, whose origin has not been proven.

https://thebabel.com.ua/news/34626-u...pa-v-2016-roci

Justice Department Dropping Case Against 2 Russian Companies Charged in Mueller Probe

(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department is moving to drop charges against two Russian companies that were accused of funding a social media campaign to sway American public opinion during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Prosecutors said they concluded that a trial, against a corporate defendant with no presence in the United States and no prospect of meaningful punishment even if convicted, would likely expose sensitive law enforcement tools and techniques, “potentially undermining their effectiveness.”

Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering were among three companies and 13 individuals charged in 2018 by special counsel Robert Mueller in a conspiracy to spread disinformation on social media during the 2016 presidential race. The effort was aimed at dividing American public opinion and sowing discord in the electorate, officials said.

The case was one of the signature indictments from Mueller’s two-year Russia investigation. Together with a separate case against Russian government hackers accused of breaking into Democratic email accounts, it revealed a sweeping Russian effort to influence, or interfere in, the race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

DOJ Drops Case Against 2 Russian Companies Charged by Mueller | Time

Mr. Mueller, please come back, the job is going on...

Russian election meddling is back -- via Ghana and Nigeria -- and in your feeds

Updated 1002 GMT (1802 HKT) March 13, 2020

Accra, Ghana (CNN)The Russian trolls are back -- and once again trying to poison the political atmosphere in the United States ahead of this year's elections. But this time they are better disguised and more targeted, harder to identify and track. And they have found an unlikely home, far from Russia itself.

In 2016, much of the trolling aimed at the US election operated from an office block in St. Petersburg, Russia. A months-long CNN investigation has discovered that, in this election cycle, at least part of the campaign has been outsourced -- to trolls in the west African nations of Ghana and Nigeria.
They have focused almost exclusively on racial issues in the US, promoting black empowerment and often displaying anger towards white Americans.

The goal, according to experts who follow Russian disinformation campaigns, is to inflame divisions among Americans and provoke social unrest.

The language and images used in the posts -- on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram -- are sometimes graphic.

One of the Ghanaian trolls -- @africamustwake -- linked to a story from a left-wing conspiracy website and commented on Facebook: "America's descent into a fascist police state continues."

More than 200 accounts were created by the Ghanaian trolls -- the vast majority in the second half of 2019 -- and they reached hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people worldwide.

Facebook and Twitter had already been looking into some of the troll accounts when CNN notified the two companies of our investigation. In a statement Thursday, Facebook said that its "subsequent assessment benefited from our collaboration with a team of journalists at CNN" and it had "removed 49 Facebook accounts, 69 Pages and 85 Instagram accounts for engaging in foreign interference."

Facebook said: "This network was in early stages of audience building and was operated by local nationals -- witting and unwitting -- in Ghana and Nigeria on behalf of individuals in Russia. It targeted primarily the United States."

Facebook says that about 13,200 Facebook accounts followed one or more of the Ghana accounts and around 263,200 people followed one or more of Instagram accounts, about 65% of whom were in the US.

Twitter told CNN that it had removed 71 accounts that had 68,000 followers. "Most were tweeting in English and presented themselves as based in the United States," it said in a statement. "The accounts -- operating out of Ghana and Nigeria and which we can reliably associate with Russia -- attempted to sow discord by engaging in conversations about social issues, like race and civil rights."

The activity uncovered by CNN had striking similarities to the Russian troll campaign of 2016, which created hundreds of accounts designed to pass as American. @africamustwake, for example, which described itself as a "Platform For #BLM #Racism #PoliceBrutality," claimed to be in Florida.
Other accounts, for example, claimed to be in Brooklyn or New Orleans.

One of the accounts even pretended to be the cousin of an African American who died in police custody. The post was then shared to a Facebook group called Africans in the United States. The group told CNN it had no idea that trolls were trying to engage it.

Another also implied they were in the US, tweeting in February: "Just experienced blatant #racism in Downton (sic) Huntsville, Alabama ... Three of my black male friends were turned away because they were 'out of dress code.'"

There was a concerted effort to agitate in the US. One of the trolls -- Black People Trendz -- posted to the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter in Cincinnati. Another -- @The_black_secret -- was devoted to police shootings of African Americans. It also posted a video of a racial incident with the comment "Blacks have a right to defend themselves against Racism" that drew more than 5,000 reactions and more than 2,000 shares.

CNN worked with two Clemson University professors -- Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren -- in tracking the Ghanaian operation. Linvill said the campaign was straight out of the Russian playbook, trying to mask its efforts among groups in the US.

"They were very closely engaged in the Black Lives Matter community," he said. "They talked almost exclusively about what was happening on the streets of the United States and not on the streets of Africa."

Kailee Scales, managing director of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, said her organization was proactive when it came to protecting its voice online. "We are walking into the 2020 election cycle with eyes wide open to the fact that international and domestic actors are striving to undermine our organizing, and we are not going to let that happen," she told CNN.

Inside the troll farm
The operation's headquarters were in a walled compound in a quiet residential district near the Ghanaian capital, Accra. It had been rented by a small nonprofit group that called itself Eliminating Barriers for the Liberation of Africa (EBLA).

Sixteen Ghanaians, mostly in their 20s, worked at the compound; some lived rent-free in a nearby apartment. They were issued mobile phones, not laptops, and worked around a table. The EBLA trolls communicated as a group through the encrypted Telegram app, which is rarely used in Ghana.

One of the trolls agreed to talk to CNN, so long as her identity was disguised. She said she had no idea she would be working as a Russian troll. She said that employees were given topics to post about. "So you get stories about LGBT, you get stories about police brutality, depends on what you are working," she said.

The employee said they were told that the best time to tweet and post was late afternoon and at night in Ghana, times when a US audience would have been active. They were given US articles to read.

Facebook said that although the people behind the campaign had attempted to conceal their purpose and coordination, its investigation had found links to both EBLA and "individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency."

The Internet Research Agency (IRA) was responsible for much of the foreign trolling activity aimed at the 2016 and 2018 US election campaigns, according to the US government. The IRA was funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is so close to the Kremlin that he is nicknamed "Putin's chef."

A CNN request for comment from Prigozhin's holding company, Concord Management, on the Ghana trolling operation went unanswered.
The man running EBLA calls himself Mr. Amara and claims to be South African. In reality he is a Ghanaian who lives in Russia and his name is Seth Wiredu. Several of EBLA's workers said they had heard Wiredu speak Russian.

Late last year, Wiredu extended EBLA's activities to Nigeria, filling at least eight positions, including a project manager to help with "social media management." CNN uncovered the postings for two of the jobs, and a source in Nigeria confirmed that the employees shared office space in Lagos. The Nigerian accounts posted predominantly on US issues too.

And at the end of January this year, EBLA ventured even further afield. It advertised a position in Charleston, South Carolina, just as the IRA had done in 2016. The LinkedIn posting invited applicants to "join hands with our brothers and sisters world-wide, especially in the United States where POC are mostly subjected to all forms of Brutality."

The posting on LinkedIn stopped accepting applications days later.

EBLA had a website touting its advocacy work, but CNN found the photos had likely been uploaded by someone using a Cyrillic keyboard, unusual outside of Russia.

EBLA had a website touting its advocacy work, but CNN found the photos had likely been uploaded by someone using a Cyrillic keyboard, unusual outside of Russia.

On February 6, Ghanaian security services raided the EBLA compound. On that same day the group stopped posting on the social media accounts it had created. One of the workers told CNN they were told to lie on the ground and had guns pointed at them. They were interrogated by police and the phones used to post on the fake accounts were confiscated.

When CNN visited the compound two weeks later, it appeared to have been abandoned.

In a statement to CNN, the Ghanaian security services said their Cyber Security Unit had become suspicious of EBLA's activities and believed it was engaged in "organized radicalism with links to a foreign body." They added that they had determined that "EBLA receives its funding from an anonymous source in a European country."

Ghanaian security sources subsequently told CNN that all of EBLA's funding had come from Russia.

Wiredu does not seem to have been deterred by the raid. Early in March, he called a meeting of EBLA workers. CNN observed the meeting from close by.

Wiredu told the workers, whom he met in several groups, that the trouble with the security services would soon pass, according to someone at the meeting. He told them they would be returning to work and should create new accounts, providing him with the password.

Approached by CNN after the meeting, Wiredu denied he had ever worked for the Internet Research Agency or knew Prigozhin.

"I wouldn't say I have Russian partners. I have friends ... but to call them partners wouldn't be right because I don't ask someone to come and support me," he said. He said he did translation work for many entities in Russia.

Wiredu insisted he funded EBLA from his own income and did not understand why the Ghanaian security forces had raided the compound. He said the accounts had been "talking about what is important to black people, talking about racism, talking about police brutality."
"I actually, I perceive myself as a blacksfighter. I fight for black people," Wiredu added.

Wiredu acknowledged that he had called himself Amara and pretended to be South African.

EBLA's targets in the US followed a long-established pattern, according to Linvill and Warren at Clemson, who work with US law enforcement in tracking trolling activities.

"There's a long history, actually dating back to the Soviet Union, of Russia emphasizing the real and serious racial divisions that exist in the United States. But also trying to inflame those divisions," Warren said.

According to an indictment released in February 2018 by special counsel Robert Mueller, Russian operatives working for the Internet Research Agency used social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram -- including ones called "Woke Blacks" and "Blacktivists" -- to urge Americans to vote for third-party candidates or sit out the election entirely.

Three months later, Facebook removed 70 Facebook and 65 Instagram accounts -- as well as 138 Facebook Pages -- that were controlled by the IRA. Facebook also took down other Russian operations not linked to IRA in 2018.

CNN's investigation found the accounts created in Ghana were consistently coordinated, posting on the same topic within hours of each other. Instagram accounts appear to have done especially well: the most popular Instagram account built a following of more than 25,000, three times its Twitter audience.

One EBLA-branded image was retweeted by a Twitter account with 126,000 followers, greatly amplifying the group's message.

Wiredu closely monitored the impact of the expanding operation, according to several EBLA employees who spoke to CNN. One of them said they provided their passwords to him and every week had to report details of the reach of their accounts. They used Twitter analytics to examine their growth and were told they would get bonuses and higher pay if their accounts grew significantly.

Some of the trolls' posts incorporated video with the EBLA logo burned in. The @AfricaMustWake Twitter account posted a video in December carrying the EBLA logo, showing alleged police brutality in Chicago.

In November, another account -- @AfricaThen -- posted an EBLA-labeled video with the caption: "A female white supremacist went into a Popeyes using the N-word at the employees.. and she ended up getting a Grand Slam breakfast #Racism #kickitout #CHANGE."

Read more
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/12/world/russia-ghana-troll-farms-2020-ward/index.html