Compromising personal and financial information about Trump
Er. This seems explosive. CNN:
Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.
The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.
Gee…so maybe it wasn’t a good idea after all to elect him even though he never released his tax returns? Maybe all that stuff we don’t know about him because he hid it from us while lying about his reason for hiding it…actually matters? Maybe the fact that he was hiding so much should have been a giant red flag? Just spitballing here.
One reason the nation’s intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.
These senior intelligence officials also included the synopsis to demonstrate that Russia had compiled information potentially harmful to both political parties, but only released information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. This synopsis was not an official part of the report from the intelligence community case about Russian hacks, but some officials said it augmented the evidence that Moscow intended to harm Clinton’s candidacy and help Trump’s, several officials with knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.
So that they could help get Trump elected and then control him because of what they know about him. What an awesome arrangement. How clever of us to let it happen.
The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.
What???????????
Sources tell CNN that these same allegations about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians, mentioned in classified briefings for congressional leaders last year, prompted then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to send a letter to FBI Director Comey in October, in which he wrote, “It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States.”
CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs.
The Trump transition team declined repeated requests for comment.
They think they don’t have to be accountable to us. They think they can just tell us to fuck off. I hope they’re wrong.
Also…I wonder if Trump will make it to January 20th.
So, if Trump gets shitcanned before he’s inaugurated, Pence becomes president? What happens to all his cabinet appointments? As evil as Pence sounds/is It must be marginally better to have someone as wildly narcissistic and bullying as the orange ignoranus (no, not a typo).
It’s probably worse, actually, ‘cuz unlike Donny from Queens, Ayatollah Pence mostly gets along with an extremely dangerous GOP…
The “who is worse, Trump or Pence?” question is a real Sophie’s Choice, isn’t it?
Which is better (or less awful): a narcissistic nitwit who’s easily manipulated by his need to bully and preen or an evil creep with ideas of his own?
One paragraph from a Guardian story ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts ) jumped out at me:
Russian intelligence allegedly gathered compromising material from his stay in Moscow in November 2013, when he was in the city to host the Miss Universe pageant.
I wonder if the “compromising material” could be a sex tape? The Russians (hell, anyone) would know about his predilection for younger women and inappropriate behaviour surrounding “his” pageants. Maybe they set him up for a “honey pot” operation.
NY Times story using the word “salacious” in connection with Trump info: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-intelligence.html
Also, talk of a sex tape (in same NYT story)
How long before we find out it involved teenagers….
I’m thinking the evil creep has sufficient influence over the narcissistic nitwit to implement his preferred domestic policy anyway, but the creep on his own is perhaps less likely to cause an international incident.
Ah the S word. The plot…yeah never mind what the plot does. It’s all salacious.
I know that salacious is the correct word so why does it seem so inadequate in Trump’s case? He’s way, way beyond the usual definition of the word.
Considering everything he’s been able to get away with so far, I quite frankly don’t see how any information at all can possibly count as “compromising” when it comes to Trump…
I’m already seeing FaceBook postings linking to ‘sources’ claiming that 4chan planted the story as a prank.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/epic-troll-4chan-users-claim-cia-media-fell-trump-golden-shower-fake-news/#lLRa8CYjhZcGvs48.99
I’m not poring over this with great care, as it presents an account that manages to avoid all of this statement’s content:
‘Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.’
To which my reaction on Gnu Atheism has been:
“One of the most interesting aspects of the attempts to debunk the documents released by Buzzfeed is that they include both the claim that 4Chan trolled the CIA and WikiLeaks’ claim that the style is inconsistent with other reports. See the problem? If either one of the claims is true, the other one no longer makes much sense. Smells a lot more like uncoordinated damage control, doesn’t it? Besides which, nobody seems to be denying that the intelligence agencies themselves made this material available to both Obama and Trump.”