Liberal Forum

GOP Lawmaker Got Direction From Moscow, Took It Back to D.C.

After being given a secret document by officials in Moscow, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher sought to alter sanctions legislation and tried to set up a virtual show trial on Capitol Hill.

Members of the team of Russians who secured a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner also attempted to stage a show trial of anti-Putin campaigner Bill Browder on Capitol Hill.

The trial, which would have come in the form of a congressional hearing, was scheduled for mid-June 2016 by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a long-standing Russia ally who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe.

During the hearing, Rohrabacher had planned to confront Browder with a feature-length pro-Kremlin propaganda movie that viciously attacks him—as well as at least two witnesses linked to the Russian authorities, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Ultimately, the hearing was canceled when senior Republicans intervened and agreed to allow a hearing on Russia at the full committee level with a Moscow-sympathetic witness, according to multiple congressional aides.

An email reviewed by The Daily Beast shows that before that June 14 hearing, Rohrabacher’s staff received pro-Kremlin briefings against Browder, once Russia’s biggest foreign investor, and his tax attorney Sergei Magnitsky from a lawyer who was working with Veselnitskaya.

Although House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) had prohibited Rohrabacher from showing the Russian propaganda film in Congress, Rohrabacher’s Capitol Hill office still actively promoted a screening of the movie that was held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on June 13, 2016. Veselnitskaya was one of those handling the movie’s worldwide promotion.

Invitations to attend the movie screening were sent from the subcommittee office by Catharine O’Neill, a Republican intern on Rohrabacher’s committee.

Her email promised that the movie would convince viewers that Magnitsky, who was murdered in a Russian prison cell, was no hero.

The invite, reviewed by The Daily Beast, claimed that the film “explodes the common view that Mr. Magnitsky was a whistleblower” and lavishes praise on the “rebel director” Andrei Nekrasov.

“That invitation was not from our office.

O’Neill was an unpaid intern on the committee staff.

Paul denies asking her to send the invitations,” said Ken Grubbs, Rohrabacher’s press secretary, referring to the congressman’s staff director, Paul Behrends.

O’Neill went on to secure a job on the Trump transition team and then in the State Department’s Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.

She did not return a call for comment.

Rohrabacher’s office was given the film by the Prosecutor General’s office in Moscow, which is run by Yuri Chaika, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin who is accused of widespread corruption, and Viktor Grin, the deputy general prosecutor who has been sanctioned by the United States as part of the Magnitsky Act.

That same Prosecutor General’s office also was listed as being behind the “very high level and sensitive information” that was offered to Donald Trump Jr. in an email prior to his now infamous meeting with Russian officials at Trump Tower on June 9—just days before the congressional hearing.

Veselnitskaya attended that meeting with Trump Jr. She also happens to have worked as a prosecutor in the Moscow region and is a close personal friend of Chaika.

The Daily Beast reviewed a copy of a document that was passed to Rohrabacher in Moscow in April 2016.

The document, marked “confidential,” was given to Rohrabacher and Behrends.

It lays out an alternate reality in which the U.S.—and the rest of the world—has been duped by a fake $230 million scandal that resulted in sanctions being imposed on 44 Russians linked to murder, corruption, or cover-ups.

The document, which was handed over by an official from the Prosecutor General’s office to Rohrabacher along with means of viewing the Russian propaganda movie, suggested that U.S. “political situation may change the current climate” and claimed that it was the ideal moment to foment a challenge to the Western narrative on Putin’s kleptocracy.

A subcommittee hearing that would re-examine the sanctions placed on Russia, the paper claimed, would be appreciated in Moscow.

“Changing attitudes to the Magnitsky story in the Congress… could have a very favorable response from the Russian side,” the document said.

What the U.S. would get in exchange for holding a subcommittee hearing was not laid out in detail.

But the document promised to help iron out “key controversial issues and disagreements with the United States.”

Grubbs said Rohrabacher had accepted the document but said the conversation with officials from the Prosecutor General’s office during the congressman’s April 2016 Moscow visit was “brief and formal.”

When Rohrabacher returned to the United States, he delayed the passage of the Global Magnitsky Act by holding it up in committee and tabled an amendment to remove Magnitsky’s name from its title, citing several of the claims found in the Russian document.

Next, Rohrabacher and Behrends, with the help of Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet army veteran and lobbyist who was also present at the June 9 Trump Tower meeting, put together a subcommittee event with witnesses including Veselnitskaya and Nekrasov, the director of the movie.

When Royce, the chair of the foreign relations committee, got wind of the hearing, he nixed Rohrabacher’s plan and offered instead to hold a full committee hearing on Russia relations.

House aides conceded that he did so, in part, to avoid Rohrabacher staging an event that could have embarrassed the Republican Party—and Congress.

Read more at link in title.

Huey » 19 Jul 2017 7:09 pm » wrote: Oh ****. You worked overnight and weekends because you were a government employee getting shift differential pay as well as overtime with union benefits.

So please, spare the god and country ****.

Misty » 19 Jul 2017 5:49 pm » wrote: Yes, I agree.
How original of the NRA to play the race card by telling people that white families are going to be slaughtered by Black Lives Matter members.

Misty » 19 Jul 2017 8:08 pm » wrote:Hey Trump, here's a shovel.

Keep digging.

Citing Recusal, Trump Says He Wouldn't Have Hired Sessions

Misty » 19 Jul 2017 6:13 pm » wrote:You love to put me down for what I did, and you even said that my husband and I should lose the pensions that we worked for decades to earn.

But you don't have the balls to tell me what you do for a living do you, you sniveling little slug?
You've probably never done a hard days work in your whole pathetic life.

Misty » 19 Jul 2017 5:07 pm » wrote: A big wet kiss to Putin.

Misty » 19 Jul 2017 2:33 pm » wrote: Then why is he wasting time and taxpayer money?
I thought the whole purpose of this commission was to prove that there is massive voter fraud?

Right.

Misty » 18 Jul 2017 6:42 pm » wrote:The Russians are threatening us now.

Uh Oh! Former UN Amb Samantha Power Emerges as Key Figure in Obama Unmasking Scandal...

Washington Free Beacon reported:

Power appears to be central to efforts by top Obama administration officials to identify individuals named in classified intelligence community reports related to Trump and his presidential transition team, according to multiple sources.

The names of Trump allies in the raw intelligence reports were leaked to the press in what many in Congress and the current administration claim is an attempt by Obama allies and former officials to damage the White House.

The House Intelligence Committee, which is spearheading the investigation into these efforts, has issued subpoenas for Power and other top Obama administration figures, including former national security adviser Susan Rice, as part of congressional efforts to determine the source of these leaks.

Power’s role in this unmasking effort is believed to be particularly questionable given her position as a the U.N. ambassador, a post that does not typically require such sensitive unmasking activities, according to former U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter.

“Unmasking is not a regular occurrence—absolutely not a weekly habit. It is rare, even at the National Security Council, and ought to be rarer still for a U.N. ambassador,” according to one former senior U.S. official who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

“The subpoena for Power suggests just how pervasive the Obama administration’s spying on Americans actually was,” said one veteran GOP political operative who has been briefed on the matter by senior Congressional intelligence officials. “The U.N. ambassador has absolutely no business calling for the quantity and quality of the intelligence that Power seems to have been asking for.”

When asked why Power would need to be involved in such gathering of classified intelligence, the source said, “That’s just not the sort of thing that she should have been concerned about, unless she was playing the role of political operative with the help of the intelligence community.”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07 ... g-scandal/

Misty » 20 Jul 2017 3:38 pm » wrote:I have decided that Termin8tor and Sgt Bilko will be joining Huey on my ignore list for a while.
I need a break from the constant ****.

Later fellas.

Misty » 20 Jul 2017 4:18 pm » wrote:Can't even escape this Trumpanzee's **** on Twitter.

Shaquita Lashay » 11 Mar 2011 3:05 pm » wrote:Meanwhile The Chosen One and Democrats are running a $1.6 trillion deficit and refusing to cut spending.Another lie, the president has put forth proposals for major cuts.Everytime a republican mentions the word "deficit" they look like such a fool b/c every single one of their heroes were for EXPLODING the deficitby pushing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to the tune of $3.9 trillion.$3.9 TRILLION.That's the name of that tune.

Misty » 20 Jul 2017 4:25 pm » wrote:Audio: Donald Trump throws Jeff Session under the bus in new New York Times interview.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDP-bUiecmo

Not only did he throw him under the bus, he backed the bus up and drove over him again.
But Jeff Sessions who obviously hasn't a shred of self respect says he's not going to resign.

Misty » 20 Jul 2017 3:38 pm » wrote:I have decided that Termin8tor and Sgt Bilko will be joining Huey on my ignore list for a while.
I need a break from the constant ****.

Later fellas.

ExxonMobil has been fined for an 'egregious' violation of Russia sanctions while Tillerson was CEO

The Treasury Department has fined the oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil $2 million for violating US sanctions on Russia — and the violations occurred while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was CEO of the company.

The Treasury said that Exxon violated the sanctions between May 14 and May 23, 2014 "by signing eight legal documents related to oil and gas projects in Russia with Igor Sechin, the President of Rosneft OAO, and an individual identified on OFAC's [Office of Foreign Asset Control] List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons."

The Obama administration previously issued an executive order that imposed sanctions on Russia in response to the country's invasion of eastern Ukraine and seizure of the Crimean peninsula.

Some of the sanctions leveled on Russia include the prohibition of technology transfers in Russian energy projects in the Arctic, Siberia, and the Black Sea. Sanctions also prohibit dealings with Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin.

"OFAC determined that ExxonMobil did not voluntarily self-disclose the violations," the Treasury said, " and that the violations constitute an egregious case."