Tag: hillary clinton

Oh No, What Is Joe Biden Doing To James Comer’s Informants Who Are Definitely Real And Not Imaginary?

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We have been having our little fun watching House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer flail around as he pretends he’s presenting hard evidence against the Bidens to the American people. He has nothing. It’s super-fuckin’ obvious. Fox News knows it. Quite frankly it kind of seems to be annoying them, because they were promised Biden investigations, and this dumb hick can’t manage to make up a damn thing. At least when they were hounding Hillary Clinton for years on end, they were able to scream “Benghazi!” and “Emails!” and they felt like they were saying something.

This is not that.

Comer went on Fox News with deflated Muppet costume Maria Bartiromo this weekend, and she wanted to ask hard journalism questions about “this coverup.” Her face was so serious, like she was a real reporter. But she accidentally got something hilarious out of Comer:

www.youtube.com

BARTIROMO: You have spoken with whistleblowers. You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information. Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?

COMER: Well, unfortunately we can’t track down the informant. We are hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant, the whistleblower is very credible.

Unfortunately, the informant has runnt away and Jamie Comer dunnot know whar he is. Heh heh heh. But don’t worry, Jamie Comer will find him wharever he’s hidin’. Maybe he is in the garage. Maybe he’s over yonder in the chicken coop.

Dangit, informant, whar yew at?

The informant is real, though. Jamie Comer seen him. Jamie Comer done come outside and the informant said, “Sir, I have a secret about Hunter Biden’s devil penis,” and Jamie Comer could tell they was real.

So, the very real informant and the very real whistleblower, these are two very real and separate people and not imaginary friends or Russian spies or imaginary Russian spies.

Except wait hold on a second:

BARTIROMO: Hold on a second, Congressman. Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?

COMER: Well, we’re hopeful that we can find the informant. Now remember, these informants are kind of in the spy business, so they don’t make a habit of being seen a lot or being high profile or anything like that.

“The spy business.”

Y’all, even Maria Bartiromo’s face was:

COMER: We have basic information with respect to what the informant has alleged, and it’s very serious! It alleges that Joe Biden when he was vice president was involved in a quid pro quo with a foreign country in exchange for foreign aid.

He pronounced it “quid pro crow.” Latin’s tough for guys like Jamie Comer.

Anyway, we hate it when the vice president of the United States withholds foreign aid. Definitely something the vice president does all the time. You know how they’re the ones who set policy and the foreign aid budget.

Also, it’s funny how those outlines are so similar to the criminal extortion Donald Trump was actually caught doing, trying to force Ukraine to help him steal the 2020 election.

It’s like Comer’s plan here is literally as half-witted as just accusing Biden of exactly what Trump did, but in the mostly brainlessly vague terms possible, and hoping the entire country is too stupid to notice that he’s trying to take all the proper nouns out of the Trump Mad Lib and replace them with Biden words.

BARTIROMO: Are there whistleblowers or informants missing right now?

COMER: [blah blah blah words that don’t mean things] Nine of the 10 people that we’ve identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens, they’re one of three things, Maria, they’re either currently in court, they’re currently in jail, or they’re currently missing.

Oh no, nine of the 10 people who know the things about the Bidens are one of three things, and one of those things is “in court.”

Okeydoke.

Comer bitched and moaned that the FBI won’t play along with his random accusations, and he babbled that “no president” has ever been accused of the things Biden has. (He hasn’t accused Biden of anything specific.)

And he baselessly said that the people who want to come forward and say things about the Bidens, “They fear for their LAAAAAAAAH-VES!” You betcha.

Bartiromo, if she was genuinely skeptical for even a moment when she was making that face above, went right back to being one of the dumbest, most gullible motherfuckers on Fox News. “This is absolutely extraordinary and it is stunning that some people are missing that you need to prove this!”

She continued:

BARTIROMO: Who in the White House is intimidating these people? Do you know?

COMER: I do know. We’re saving that for a later time.

Of course he is.

It’s funny because Trump and his administration were especially known for witness intimidation and tampering. The judge in the E. Jean Carroll case literally just advised the jurors not to make their identities known for a good long while, if ever.

Speaking to Bartiromo, Comer also accused the Democrats on his committee of acting as “defense attorneys for the Biden family.”

All of this is 100 percent the most laughable kind of projection. Jamie Comer might be stupid enough to think he’s being clever, and the 30 percent of Americans he’s playing to might be that stupid too.

That’s it, that’s the tweet.

Speaking of “that stupid,” here are two of the flying monkeys. Charlie Kirk is really leaning into the conspiracy theory and shitting his pants on command about nine whistleblowers being missing. Marjorie Taylor Greene may not have memorized her lines yet.

You’re all doing great and Jesus loves you.

The end.

UPDATE: Oh no, now she’s going to ask everybody where the informant is. Here she is this morning with GOP Rep. Tim Burchett. this is so GD sad.

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.

I would like a BlueSky invite.

I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#Joe #Biden #James #Comers #Informants #Real #Imaginary

Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

Post By World , , , , , , , , ,

The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

On Thursday, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani finally got some good news. After weeks of cratering share prices in the publicly traded firms in his Adani Group conglomerate—largely caused by the release of U.S. short-seller Hindenburg Research’s scathing report on January 24—the group announced a $1.9 billion investment in four of its public companies. The deal led to a stock rally that boosted Gautam Adani’s net worth by $3.8 billion to $42.7 billion on Friday, yet still a long way from his peak of $158 billion last September.

The man behind that deal is Rajiv Jain, the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based asset management firm GQG Partners. Like Adani, he’s also a billionaire. According to GQG’s filings on the Australian Stock Exchange, where it went public in October 2021, Jain owns 69% of the company—a stake worth roughly $2 billion. A spokesperson for GQG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jain founded GQG in 2016 and has grown it to $92 billion in assets under management, with several funds that hold large positions in oil producers ExxonMobil and Petrobras, as well as tobacco giants Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. If it weren’t for the recent market rout in Adani Group companies, his bet on a ports-to-power conglomerate wouldn’t seem out of place among the other firms that GQG typically invests in.

GQG purchased stakes in four Adani companies: Adani Ports, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises, according to a statement from Adani Group. All four stocks rallied on Friday after the deal was announced, with the flagship Adani Enterprises rising 17%, a stark contrast from weeks of stock price declines driven by the Hindenburg report. Jain’s firm invested in the Adani companies on behalf of various pension funds and institutional clients, including nearly $480 million through its Goldman Sachs GQG Partners International Opportunities Fund, a $25 billion (assets under management) fund that GQG manages on behalf of Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm

“I am excited to have initiated positions in the Adani companies. Adani companies own and operate some of the largest and most important infrastructure assets throughout India and around the world,” Jain said in a statement announcing the deal. “Gautam Adani is widely regarded as among the best entrepreneurs of his generation.”

On Wednesday, India’s supreme court asked the country’s stock market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to open an investigation into the Adani Group to look into allegations of stock manipulation and failures to disclose transactions with related parties. Forbes previously reported on several transactions involving offshore funds in Singapore and Cyprus with ties to Vinod Adani, Gautam’s elder brother, that appear designed to benefit the Adani Group and lend further credence to Hindenburg’s allegations of hidden leverage and accounting irregularities within the Adani Group.

The Adani Group has denied all wrongdoing. “The Adani Group welcomes the order of the honorable Supreme Court,” Gautam Adani said in a tweet on Thursday. “It will bring finality in a time bound manner. Truth will prevail.”

MORE FROM FORBESExclusive: New Investigation Reveals Gautam Adani’s Older Brother As Key Player In Adani Group’s Biggest DealsBy Giacomo Tognini

Born in India, Jain studied accounting at the University of Ajmer in the Indian state of Rajasthan, getting a master’s degree in the same field before leaving to pursue an M.B.A. in finance and international business at the University of Miami. He then worked as an international equity analyst at Swiss Bank Corporation before leaving to join Swiss asset manager Vontobel in November 1994, as a co-portfolio manager of emerging markets and international equities. Several promotions later, he became Vontobel’s chief investment officer in 2002 and was later tapped as co-CEO in 2014. During his time at Vontobel, he helped grow the firm’s assets under management from less than $400 million to nearly $50 billion.

Two years later, he left Vontobel to start GQG Partners in Florida. At GQG, he’s become known for focusing on companies’ earnings rather than following the hottest trends in the market—a fact borne out by his funds’ large positions in energy, mining, tobacco, consumer goods, healthcare and banking. (The only tech company Forbes identified in GQG’s fund disclosures was Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.)

“We believe earnings drive stock prices, the market offers very limited opportunities to create an information advantage, and investors are disproportionately focused on the short term,” Jain said in a July 2022 interview with Toronto-based Bridgehouse Asset Managers. “Our core valuation philosophy creates an investment style that we describe as buying high-quality, sustainable businesses at reasonable prices.”

With GQG’s $1.9 billion investment, Jain has wagered that despite Hindenburg’s allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud—which the Adani Group has denied—the Adani firms are a good bet, at a far lower price than their peak last year. “We believe that the long-term growth prospects for [the Adani] companies are substantial,” Jain added in the deal announcement.

Besides its bet on the Adani Group, GQG also invests in several other Indian companies: 22% of its $9.9 billion emerging markets equity fund is invested in Indian companies. Those include Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance conglomerate and the State Bank of India, as well as housing finance provider Housing Development Finance Corp, ICICI Bank and Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC. And at least five GQG funds hold positions in French energy major TotalEnergies, which owns a 37.4% stake in Adani Total Gas and a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy—which, as Forbes previously reported, was acquired from Mauritius-based firms controlled by Vinod Adani for $2 billion in 2021. (The price rally spurred by GQG’s investment in the Adani companies lifted Vinod’s estimated net worth by 12% to roughly $9 billion.)

Outside of his investments, Jain has also backed Democrats in the U.S. Forbes found that Jain contributed $81,600 to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates between 2012 and 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. In the 2016 primaries, Jain decided to hedge his bets: he donated $2,700 to Hillary Clinton and $1,000 to Bernie Sanders.

MORE FROM FORBESInside The Offshore Empire Helmed By Gautam Adani’s Older BrotherBy John Hyatt

Additional reporting by John Hyatt.



Source link

#Meet #Rajiv #Jain #Asset #Management #Billionaire #Backing #Embattled #Adani #Group

Meet Rajiv Jain, The Asset Management Billionaire Backing The Embattled Adani Group

Post By World , , , , , , , , ,

The founder of Fort Lauderdale-based GQG Partners is known for making large investments in old-school industries like oil and tobacco. His latest bet—on the ports-to-power conglomerate Adani Group—might be his most daring yet.

On Thursday, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani finally got some good news. After weeks of cratering share prices in the publicly traded firms in his Adani Group conglomerate—largely caused by the release of U.S. short-seller Hindenburg Research’s scathing report on January 24—the group announced a $1.9 billion investment in four of its public companies. The deal led to a stock rally that boosted Gautam Adani’s net worth by $3.8 billion to $42.7 billion on Friday, yet still a long way from his peak of $158 billion last September.

The man behind that deal is Rajiv Jain, the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based asset management firm GQG Partners. Like Adani, he’s also a billionaire. According to GQG’s filings on the Australian Stock Exchange, where it went public in October 2021, Jain owns 69% of the company—a stake worth roughly $2 billion. A spokesperson for GQG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jain founded GQG in 2016 and has grown it to $92 billion in assets under management, with several funds that hold large positions in oil producers ExxonMobil and Petrobras, as well as tobacco giants Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. If it weren’t for the recent market rout in Adani Group companies, his bet on a ports-to-power conglomerate wouldn’t seem out of place among the other firms that GQG typically invests in.

GQG purchased stakes in four Adani companies: Adani Ports, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises, according to a statement from Adani Group. All four stocks rallied on Friday after the deal was announced, with the flagship Adani Enterprises rising 17%, a stark contrast from weeks of stock price declines driven by the Hindenburg report. Jain’s firm invested in the Adani companies on behalf of various pension funds and institutional clients, including nearly $480 million through its Goldman Sachs GQG Partners International Opportunities Fund, a $25 billion (assets under management) fund that GQG manages on behalf of Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm

“I am excited to have initiated positions in the Adani companies. Adani companies own and operate some of the largest and most important infrastructure assets throughout India and around the world,” Jain said in a statement announcing the deal. “Gautam Adani is widely regarded as among the best entrepreneurs of his generation.”

On Wednesday, India’s supreme court asked the country’s stock market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to open an investigation into the Adani Group to look into allegations of stock manipulation and failures to disclose transactions with related parties. Forbes previously reported on several transactions involving offshore funds in Singapore and Cyprus with ties to Vinod Adani, Gautam’s elder brother, that appear designed to benefit the Adani Group and lend further credence to Hindenburg’s allegations of hidden leverage and accounting irregularities within the Adani Group.

The Adani Group has denied all wrongdoing. “The Adani Group welcomes the order of the honorable Supreme Court,” Gautam Adani said in a tweet on Thursday. “It will bring finality in a time bound manner. Truth will prevail.”

MORE FROM FORBESExclusive: New Investigation Reveals Gautam Adani’s Older Brother As Key Player In Adani Group’s Biggest DealsBy Giacomo Tognini

Born in India, Jain studied accounting at the University of Ajmer in the Indian state of Rajasthan, getting a master’s degree in the same field before leaving to pursue an M.B.A. in finance and international business at the University of Miami. He then worked as an international equity analyst at Swiss Bank Corporation before leaving to join Swiss asset manager Vontobel in November 1994, as a co-portfolio manager of emerging markets and international equities. Several promotions later, he became Vontobel’s chief investment officer in 2002 and was later tapped as co-CEO in 2014. During his time at Vontobel, he helped grow the firm’s assets under management from less than $400 million to nearly $50 billion.

Two years later, he left Vontobel to start GQG Partners in Florida. At GQG, he’s become known for focusing on companies’ earnings rather than following the hottest trends in the market—a fact borne out by his funds’ large positions in energy, mining, tobacco, consumer goods, healthcare and banking. (The only tech company Forbes identified in GQG’s fund disclosures was Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.)

“We believe earnings drive stock prices, the market offers very limited opportunities to create an information advantage, and investors are disproportionately focused on the short term,” Jain said in a July 2022 interview with Toronto-based Bridgehouse Asset Managers. “Our core valuation philosophy creates an investment style that we describe as buying high-quality, sustainable businesses at reasonable prices.”

With GQG’s $1.9 billion investment, Jain has wagered that despite Hindenburg’s allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud—which the Adani Group has denied—the Adani firms are a good bet, at a far lower price than their peak last year. “We believe that the long-term growth prospects for [the Adani] companies are substantial,” Jain added in the deal announcement.

Besides its bet on the Adani Group, GQG also invests in several other Indian companies: 34% of its $9.9 billion emerging markets equity fund is invested in India, more than any other country. Those include Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance conglomerate and the State Bank of India, as well as housing finance provider Housing Development Finance Corp, ICICI Bank and Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC. And at least five GQG funds hold positions in French energy major TotalEnergies, which owns a 37.4% stake in Adani Total Gas and a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy—which, as Forbes previously reported, was acquired from Mauritius-based firms controlled by Vinod Adani for $2 billion in 2021. (The price rally spurred by GQG’s investment in the Adani companies lifted Vinod’s estimated net worth by 12% to roughly $9 billion.)

Outside of his investments, Jain has also backed Democrats in the U.S. Forbes found that Jain contributed $81,600 to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates between 2012 and 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. In the 2016 primaries, Jain decided to hedge his bets: he donated $2,700 to Hillary Clinton and $1,000 to Bernie Sanders.

MORE FROM FORBESInside The Offshore Empire Helmed By Gautam Adani’s Older BrotherBy John Hyatt

Additional reporting by John Hyatt.



Source link

#Meet #Rajiv #Jain #Asset #Management #Billionaire #Backing #Embattled #Adani #Group

Hey Jim Jordan, We Got Your Weaponized FBI Right Here, His Name Is Bill Barr

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , ,

The crazy caucus squeezed Kevin McCarthy’s balls pretty hard during the hostage negotiation over the House speaker’s gavel. (Hey, man, whatever you’re into!) And one of the things that popped out during their 15 rounds of light bondage was a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

By which they do not mean the routine brutalization of Black Americans by law enforcement officers.

What they mean is every fool theory about the Deep State vomited out on Telegram and amplified by Tucker Carlson for the MAGA masses. They want to rehash the stupid shit Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss have been sock puppeting out with Elon Musk’s hands up their asses. They want to pretend it was scandalous for the Justice Department to treat threats to teachers and schools by anti-vaxx terrorists as actual terrorism. They want to lie that the Capitol Riot was instigated by FBI plants, and that the insurrectionists in jail for trying to overthrow the government are actually brave patriots, or tourists, or First Amendment political prisoners. In short, they want to pretend that white Christian conservatives are being victimized by a government which has done nothing but privilege their interests for 250 years, and they just extorted McCarthy to secure staff, funding, and subpoena power on par with the January 6 Select Committee to do it.

Which is ironic, because we just spent four years watching Trump and his cronies weaponize the FBI to target his enemies and help his friends, and the GOP doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about it.

We saw Attorney General Bill Barr sic riot police on racial justice protestors based on blatant lies about Antifa supersoldiers flying around the country in uniform to wreak havoc. We saw him break longstanding DOJ protocol and authorize investigations of non-existent election fraud before the 2020 results had been certified — after spending months pretending that mail-in ballots were rife with fraud. We saw him lie about the Mueller Report. We saw him attempt to ratfuck the Roger Stone prosecution, successfully ratfuck the Mike Flynn prosecution, and do his damnedest to blow up the Michael Cohen plea deal. We saw him go to the mat to try to prosecute former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe for the crime of being mean to Donald Trump. We saw him try to Saturday Night Massacre the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York to protect Trump and his pals. FFS, this asshole only closed the Clinton email investigation in October of 2019, more than six years after Hillary Clinton left the State Department.

And that was before last week’s New York Times story about all the ways Bill Barr and Special Counsel John Durham tried to frame the FBI, Hillary Clinton, and — when everything else failed — George Soros for the supposed crime of investigating Donald Trump’s ties to a Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Rep. Jim Jordan wants to talk about weaponization of the Justice Department? Here it is, asshole.

Barr announced publicly that there was something untoward about the origins of the Russia investigation before he even opened the Special Counsel inquiry. When the Justice Department Inspector General found the opposite, Barr and Durham leaned on him to change his conclusions, then put out statements undercutting his report.

When Barr and Durham failed to find any evidence of their public accusations, they shifted to the rightwing conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton somehow tricked the FBI into investigating Trump. This required them to pretend that the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe, which was opened in July of 2016 after coffee boy dipshit George Papadopoulos bragged to an Australian diplomat that Russian state actors were going to start releasing hacked information to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign, was actually based on DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann’s September report to the FBI about the mysterious pings between Trump Tower and a sanctioned Russian bank. But denying linear time is no problem for this dynamic duo!

Durham was able to secure a guilty plea from one low level line attorney for falsifying an email, but his vaunted prosecutions of Sussmann and Russia analyst Igor Danchenko went down in flames. But in the meantime, Durham relied on an extremely dubious Russian memo which cited supposedly hacked communications between Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and an employee at the Open Society Foundation (which is funded by Soros) regarding a supposed promise by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch promising that the investigation of Clinton’s emails wouldn’t get out of hand. When Durham couldn’t get a warrant because his evidence was so shaky, he just used a grand jury subpoena to extort the communications — which showed that he was once again going down a blind alley because none of that shit ever happened.

Let us all take a moment to appreciate the irony of Durham and Barr trying to pretend that the FBI was too nice to Clinton about her emails (or literally anything else), at a time when it was also investigating the Trump campaign and managed not to hold press conferences about it every other week. And while we’re conjuring Alanis, note that Durham and Barr accidentally kicked loose some dirt on Trump when they were traveling around England and Italy, shouting at our allies to confess to trying to screw the Trump campaign. Of course, they failed to disclose that one, too.

In short, the Justice Department has indeed been weaponized against the president’s political enemies, but we’re pretty sure that Jim Jordan won’t be looking into any of that, although, as the Post‘s Greg Sargent points out, the Senate Judiciary Committee might do it. But over in the House, Ol’ Rasslin’ Jim is going to pretend to work himself into a lather about nonsense. Of course, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries isn’t going to cede the field to Republicans, so we’ll be on the spot to factcheck in real time. Because unlike Kevin McCarthy, the Democratic leader is not a weak-kneed idiot. So, there’s that, anyway.

[WaPo / NYT]

Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty. And if you’re ordering from Amazon, use this link, because reasons.



Source link

#Hey #Jim #Jordan #Weaponized #FBI #Bill #Barr

Will THIS GUY Expose Hillary’s FBI Conspiracy To Steal Election From Herself To Frame Trump For Russia Stuff?

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s an interesting story to know about, against the backdrop of new House Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy caterwauling about how Adam Schiff LIEEEEED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE about Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia and TREEEEASON PARAPHRASED Trump’s very perfect call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, back in more innocent days when Trump was just extorting Ukraine to help him steal the 2020 election in exchange for protection from Russia.

Goddamn, that impeachment seems so much simpler to explain these days, don’t it?

The former top intelligence guy for the FBI’s New York field office, Charles McGonigal, has just been charged in federal courts in both DC and Manhattan with a number of very interesting crimes. For example, after he left the FBI, secretly working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska investigating a rival oligarch, and also working on Deripaska’s behalf to get him off the US sanctions list, itself a violation of the sanctions. Also hiding $225,000 in other bribes from a different dude while he was working at the FBI.

So that’s weird, yeah?

Charles McGonigal, 54, who retired from the FBI in September 2018, was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on charges of money laundering, violating U.S. sanctions and other counts stemming from his alleged ties to Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his role at the FBI, McGonigal had been tasked with investigating Deripaska, whose own indictment on sanctions-violation charges was unsealed in September.

A second indictment, filed in Washington, accused McGonigal of hiding payments totaling $225,000 that he allegedly received from a New Jersey man employed decades ago by an Albanian intelligence agency. The indictment also accused him of acting to advance that person’s interests.

It seems bad for one of the former top intelligence guys at the FBI to be indicted for taking secret bribes and secretly working for the interests of one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs, yeah? Especially one of the closest oligarchs to Vladimir Putin, Paul Manafort’s former boss, who was seemingly very close to the Russian operation to steal the 2016 election? Is that bad? Paul Manafort, of course, ran the Trump campaign, and pretty much every Russia report produced by the US government has concluded that he was integral to the NO COLLUSION!

Oh, and what was Manafort’s previous work for Deripaska? Propping up pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.

Trump Goon Paul Manafort Made $10 MILLION A YEAR To ‘Benefit Putin.’ Totally Normal!

It’s Manafort. It’s Always Been Manafort. And The Senate Intel Committee Seems To Agree!

NO COLLUSION! NO COLLUSION! You Know, Except For ALL THIS F*CKING COLLUSION!

Hey, Paul Manafort! Remember All That Shit You Pulled To Sell The World On The Ukrainian Dictator? Robert Mueller Remembers!

Most of the regular news reporting on this is extremely dry and weeds-y and virtually unreadable to anyone who isn’t obsessed with this stuff, but this excerpt about McGonigal, way down at the bottom of the Washington Post‘s article, is some extremely important context we will briefly explore:

McGonigal was an expert on Russian intelligence activities targeting the United States, as well as U.S. efforts to recruit Russian spies, said several former intelligence officials who worked with him and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters.

His position at the New York field office would have given him direct access to past and current recruitment efforts, work that was coordinated with the CIA, these people said. McGonigal was well-known at the CIA among officers who dealt with Russia and counterintelligence matters, and he knew the details of some intelligence operations targeting Russia, former officials said.

McGonigal has not been charged with espionage, but the former officials who worked with him said his knowledge and experience would have put him at high risk of being recruited by a foreign government.

Rightwing weirdos are already pretty sure this guy — this guy! Not the last guy or the guy before that, this guy! — will be the key to unraveling the Deep State conspiracy where Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia and the FBI in order to steal the election from herself for the sole purpose of destroying the life and presidency of God-fearing patriot and humble servant Donald Trump. They are pointing to the fact that in 2016, he was head of Cybercrimes at the home office in DC, and was one of the first people who knew about allegations from Trump campaign idiot George Papadopoulos that the Russians had big dirt on Hillary that they were going to deploy against her.

Trump himself is raaaaaaaging over McGonigal’s arrest on Truth Social:

“The FBI guy after me for the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, long before my Election as President, was just arrested for taking money from Russia, Russia, Russia,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday. “May he Rot In Hell!”

Yeah OK, buddy, mash your meds up in some ketchup and swallow them.

What’s more interesting to us is what happened later in 2016, closer to the election.

As Heather Cox Richardson explains, October of 2016 was when then-FBI Director James Comey moved McGonigal into that position as head of counterintel at the New York field office. And what was happening in October of 2016, specifically regarding the New York FBI field office? That was the one that was as intent on skullfucking the Clinton campaign as Russia was, the one that seemed to be leaking fake bullshit about Clinton to Rudy Giuliani, who was babbling on the radio that the FBI was going to “revolt” if she wasn’t indicted.

Fox News was cumming itself at the time screaming that Hillary’s indictment was coming, apparently sourced from some dumb bucktoothed idiot types at the New York office who were furious Main Justice wouldn’t sanction their investigation into the Clinton Foundation, since it was based on debunked, Breitbart-funded bullshit from that dumb Clinton Cash book.

As Cox Richardson reminds us, when James Comey went before Congress in 2018, he said he was worried that if he didn’t blabber forth 11 DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION about the “re-opening” of the Hillary emails investigation, after some “new” (not new) emails were found, that the New York office would leak it. And more:

Former acting attorney general Sally Yates was clearer. She told the inspector general that Comey and other FBI officials “felt confident that the New York Field Office would leak it and that it would come out regardless of whether he advised Congress or not.”

Yeah, so anyway!

Radicalized FBI Sleeper Cell Probably Led By Rudy Giuliani

James Comey Strikes Again (And Again And Again And Again)

Anthony Weiner’s Dick Explodes All Over Hillary Clinton’s Emails

Uh Oh, Did Adam Schiff Do TREASON COLLUSION With The Whistleblower’s Report? (No)

One more thing from Cox Richardson about what McGonigal did after his stint at the NY FBI office:

We also know that after McGonigal left the FBI, he went to work for Brookfield Properties, the multibillion-dollar real-estate company in New York that handled the bailout of Jared Kushner’s 666 Fifth Avenue by a $1.1 billion, 99-year lease—all paid up front—thanks to the Qatar Investment Authority.

And also went to work for Oleg Deripaska, which seems to tell us something about what kinda guy this dude is.

So yeah, huh! Weird stuff.

As she points out, these indictments aren’t about any of that stuff, but we kind of feel like — based on context clues — this guy might NOT end up being the guy who exposes the Deep State conspiracy where Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia and the FBI in order to steal the election from herself for the sole purpose of destroying the life and presidency of God-fearing patriot and humble servant Donald Trump.

We could be wrong.

Talking Points Memo has the indictments and much more on the charges related to the Albanian intelligence thingie, should you want to dive into the weeds.

Also here’s some MSNBC reporting on all this:

www.youtube.com

[Washington Post / Daily Beast / Heather Cox Richardson]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here!

And once that doesn’t exist, I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE! Don’t use Paypal for your new monthly donations for the moment, though, we are having some long and boring ISSUES.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#GUY #Expose #Hillarys #FBI #Conspiracy #Steal #Election #Frame #Trump #Russia #Stuff