The Robert Mueller Investigation

[triplehorn 2,664]

11 hours ago, Anastasis said:

ask him about the scotus sergeant at arms. 

No, ask Louise Mensch who yammered about Sarge at Arms on the tarmac, or Orrin Hatch getting briefings to take over as Senate pro tempore, or Trump avoiding setting foot in NYC in spring '17 due to warrant for his arrest.  Look, she had it first that there was a FISA warrant on Page back when ppl scoffed about anything resembling a Trump/Russia connection let alone actual ongoing investigation.  Remember that A? lollerskates. good times.  Those Mensch's craze tweets were for entertainment purposes.  They were out there.  I did follow the reporting about the server comms, and moved on after Mueller dismissed it.  How about you unstick yourself from May 2018 and join us in the present ? 

Trump was aware of Wiki coordination via Roger Stone during the campaign.  Roger is going to prison for lying about it and witness tampering.  Trump lied to Mueller about his comms with Stone.  Mueller also pre-packaged a dozen cases of Trump obstruction of justice.  

 

Why is Trump fighting tooth and nail to hide tax returns and DB financials from Congress and the public ?

because he's compromised by Putin ?  Because they literally own him and his family.

 

 

[Anastasis 23,469]

4 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

Those Mensch's craze tweets were for entertainment purposes.  They were out there. 

You insult the intelligence of the posters here who have been engaged in this thread and its predecessors for the last three years. 

5 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

Trump was aware of Wiki coordination via Roger Stone during the campaign.  Roger is going to prison for lying about it and witness tampering.  Trump lied to Mueller about his comms with Stone.  Mueller also pre-packaged a dozen cases of Trump obstruction of justice. 

Yes, we've come quite a far ways from your Mensch/Taylor fueled fevered dreams to Roger Stone doing Roger Stone things. 

[elfenix 34,238]

Quote

Long before the current Ukraine controversy, the term "quid pro quo" came up in a White House conversation between K.T. McFarland, then a deputy national security adviser, and White House lawyer John Eisenberg, according to a heavily-redacted account of her interview with FBI interviewers.

The discussion in February 2017 came after national security adviser Michael Flynn, McFarland's boss, had been ousted over his interactions with the then-Russian ambassador. McFarland, who had been privy to details of Flynn's Russia conversations, was also being forced out.

McFarland was offered an ambassadorship to ease her way out of the White House. But first, then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus had a request, McFarland told the FBI.

Priebus said words "to the effect of 'The President would like you to send me an email saying,'" the interview notes say before a redaction. The notes continue: "could she say the President never directed Flynn to call the Russians about sanctions."

McFarland told the FBI she didn't respond to Priebus's request, but called Eisenberg to recount the conversation. She told the White House lawyer that she was being fired and offered an ambassadorship, but that the letter was being requested from her.

There are additional redactions in the interview notes, but McFarland, appears to be referring to Eisenberg, saying "He offered his opinion it was a bad idea for her to write the letter because it was awkward and looked like a quid pro quo situation

https://m.cnn.com/en/article/h_0ef097f05dc151d2755103b3d737f0ab

[triplehorn 2,664]

10 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

You insult the intelligence of the posters here who have been engaged in this thread and its predecessors for the last three years. 

Yes, we've come quite a far ways from your Mensch/Taylor fueled fevered dreams to Roger Stone doing Roger Stone things. 

no, it's just you.

[Anastasis 23,469]

Eighth installment in the Wemple series on the media's treatment of the Steele Dossier.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/03/dear-cnn-what-parts-steele-dossier-were-corroborated/

 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

4 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Eighth installment in the Wemple series on the media's treatment of the Steele Dossier.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/03/dear-cnn-what-parts-steele-dossier-were-corroborated/

 

In the meantime, trump’s loans while he was bankrupt appear to have been underwritten by Moscow.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/3/1909205/-Explosive-report-indicates-that-Donald-Trump-s-loans-from-Deutsche-Bank-were-back-by-Russia

Surely someone of your intellect could help us all understand what that means. Care to comment?

[Anastasis 23,469]

16 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

In the meantime, trump’s loans while he was bankrupt appear to have been underwritten by Moscow.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/3/1909205/-Explosive-report-indicates-that-Donald-Trump-s-loans-from-Deutsche-Bank-were-back-by-Russia

Surely someone of your intellect could help us all understand what that means. Care to comment?

I tried the read the link through from Daily Kos to Forensic News and the website was dead.  Never heard of the latter before, but I am sure it is reputable. Is this a different story than the Lawrence O'Donnell one that he had to retract?

Why don't you go ahead and comment and I will share my reactions.  Bonus points if you can directly tie it in to a well coordinated conspiracy between Trump and Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. 

If you are just going to tell me that Trump has shady ties related to his financial dealing and international real estate, which may represent potential conflicts of interest, I already agree.   

Edited January 4, 2020 by Anastasis

[JimmyJames 12,271]

1 minute ago, Anastasis said:

I tried the read the link through from Daily Kos to Forensic News and the website was dead.  Never heard of the latter before, but I am sure it is reputable. Is this a different story than the Lawrence O'Donnell one that he had to retract?

Why don't you go ahead and comment and I will share my reactions.  Bonus points if you can directly tie it in to a well coordinated conspiracy between Trump and Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. 

If you are just going to tell me that Trump has shady ties related to his financial dealing and international real estate, I already agree.   

Sure. My comment is that the Russians own trump and they know it. Its beyond obvious that trump owes his current financial fortune to the Russians so will in turn do whatever they tell him to do. Unless you are here to convince us banks routinely loan money to guys who file for bankruptcy 7 times. Why did they do That? I’d ask you to comment, but you won’t. Just more deflection, questions or another gif to come.

As for the “well coordinated conspiracy” you deign to give bonus points for, we all know nothing with trump is well coordinated with trump so it’s just another deflection you do so well. The Russians coordinated and conspired with Manafort to influence the outcome of the election. Or maybe they wanted internal polling data to jerk off to. Again I’d ask you to comment but you won’t. Just more deflection, questions, or another gif to come.

You are a talented troll. I’ll give you that much. 

 

[Anastasis 23,469]

3 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Sure. My comment is that the Russians own trump and they know it. Its beyond obvious that trump owes his current financial fortune to the Russians so will in turn do whatever they tell him to do. Unless you are here to convince us banks routinely loan money to guys who file for bankruptcy 7 times. Why did they do That? I’d ask you to comment, but you won’t. Just more deflection, questions or another gif to come.

So, shady financial dealings related to international real estate, representing a potential conflict of interest? OK.

 

5 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

As for the “well coordinated conspiracy” you deign to give bonus points for, we all know nothing with trump is well coordinated with trump so it’s just another deflection you do so well. The Russians coordinated and conspired with Manafort to influence the outcome of the election. Or maybe they wanted internal polling data to jerk off to. Again I’d ask you to comment but you won’t. Just more deflection, questions, or another gif to come.

Mueller, given all the resources at his disposal, including the entire surveillance apparatus, really whiffed on this I guess. Or maybe its just that fixed delusions are really hard to shake.

The Office did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort’s sharing polling data and Russia’s interference in the election, which had already been reported by U.S. media outlets at the time of the August 2 meeting. The investigation did not establish that Manafort otherwise coordinated with the Russian government on its election-interference efforts.

Oh, and I looked up Forensic News.  That is Scott Stedman's joint.  He has clowned himself time and time again, and is a server conspiracy huffer. I won't dismiss the report out of hand, mostly because it appears that others are leading the reporting, but if I was you I would probably wait for confirmation in a reputable outlet before I went all in on the thing. This same song played already with the Lawrence O'Donnell reporting, and we don't really need another McClatchy thing. If you wait until you have a good track on confirmation for your angle of argument, you run less risk of clowning yourself like triplehorn when it blows up. 

 

 

[Anastasis 23,469]

8 hours ago, triplehorn said:

Those Mensch's craze tweets were for entertainment purposes.  They were out there.  I did follow the reporting about the server comms, and moved on after Mueller dismissed it. 

Oh, and the Stedman call back reminds me.  You are being dishonest here.  You were all aboard servergate 2.0 when Stedman stoked it up after the Mueller report had been released.  You were also all on board with servergate 3.0 when the 302s were released.

 

I think that it was better when you just took the no ragrets approach, rather than the revisionist history approach. 

 

In case you forgot:

  

  

On 8/9/2019 at 8:31 AM, triplehorn said:

bottom of page 2 talks about the Alfa server:

"Ohr met (redacted) in Washington, DC in late late September, possibly close to the time when the Yahoo news article was published on Sept. 23, 2016.  During that meeting, (redacted) advised the Alfa server in the US is a link to the Trump campaign and Sergei Millian's Russian/American organization in the US used the Alfa server 2 weeks prior."

The Russian Alfa Bank server is referenced in the context of it being "a link to the Trump campaign", not using the specific language of Trump Tower/Alfa server comms.  But unless servers have some newly acquired human functions, the Alfa server link to Trump campaign likely means server to server. 

The specifics around user identity and timing of Alfa server use re Sergei Millian's org is notable, i.e. "the call is coming from inside the house!"

 

 

On 8/9/2019 at 8:53 AM, Anastasis said:

Lol. We ARE doing the server thing again!

 

On 8/9/2019 at 9:18 AM, triplehorn said:

Yes.  Yes we are !

Good to see you picked yourself up from your Horowitz IG faceplant.

And please link to this wide server debunking you're talking about.  Unless you made your point with a .gif, I missed it.

 

On 8/9/2019 at 10:03 AM, Anastasis said:

Every sentence of this post is pure awesomeness.  A simultaneous blend of ignorance related to both past and future events. 

 

  

Edited January 4, 2020 by Anastasis

[triplehorn 2,664]

Not being dishonest there.  Those posts were Aug 9.  Mueller testimony shooting down TT/Alfa bank server comms was two weeks prior.  I didn’t read about and become aware of that facet of Mueller testimony until well after Aug 9.  Sorry I caused you confusion.
 

@Anastasis : “Bonus points if you can directly tie it in to a well coordinated conspiracy between Trump and Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.”

“ a well coordinated conspiracy” ??? Is that your sliding bar-continuum ?  You’re a real joker.

Trump was personally warned by the FBI about the threat of Russian infiltration into his campaign.  Nevertheless he persisted.  Trump knew, period.  Trump lied to Mueller about it, period.  Stone is headed to prison over lying to Mueller about his involvement with the same Russian campaign operation Trump lied to Mueller about.  Direct knowledge followed by serial obstruction to cover it up.  guilty as fuck.
 

[burntorangebongos 10,710]

17 hours ago, Anastasis said:

I tried the read the link through from Daily Kos to Forensic News and the website was dead.  Never heard of the latter before, but I am sure it is reputable. Is this a different story than the Lawrence O'Donnell one that he had to retract?

Why don't you go ahead and comment and I will share my reactions.  Bonus points if you can directly tie it in to a well coordinated conspiracy between Trump and Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. 

If you are just going to tell me that Trump has shady ties related to his financial dealing and international real estate, which may represent potential conflicts of interest, I already agree.   

The Forensic New site was DOS attacked after their report and brought down. Here is a link to their twitter account. They hit a nerve. 

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by burntorangebongos
To their CEO's account, adding more about the attack

[JimmyJames 12,271]

Russia owns trump. 

[jimmyjazz 45,920]

That guy sounds like someone who's wondering if he might have stepped a little too deep in the shit.

And yes, by that I mean I think he sounds like someone who fears for his personal safety.  

[JimmyJames 12,271]

Another suicide coming on the way? 

[triplehorn 2,664]

1 hour ago, JimmyJames said:

Russia owns trump. 

Trump is a totally owned asset of transnational organized crime.  He owes his very financial existence to Putin's mafia state.  In 2005, Trump was unable to get a $25M loan from Bank of Scotland due to being a credit risk.  With the exclusive backing of Putin's state cash, Deutsche Bank loaned Trump nearly a billion.  He has to do what he's told or else, otherwise there's no point in owning him.

No telling how many times over the ROI on Putin's billion dollar risk will have paid for itself all told:

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by triplehorn

[jimmyjazz 45,920]

I can't recall if it was Junior or Eric, but it doesn't matter -- one of them outright bragged that the Trump organization didn't need western banks, that they received all the money they needed from Russia.

It's just shocking how not only the general public but the media becomes numb to the outright crime taking place right in front of their faces.  But hey, some FBI agent added words to an email.

[triplehorn 2,664]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

I can't recall if it was Junior or Eric, but it doesn't matter -- one of them outright bragged that the Trump organization didn't need western banks, that they received all the money they needed from Russia.

It's just shocking how not only the general public but the media becomes numb to the outright crime taking place right in front of their faces.  But hey, some FBI agent added words to an email.

It was junior in 2008: "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

DeNault, an affiliate of Stedman who would have access to the same information Stedman has, breaks down the DB/VTB/Trump arrangement further:

Re the DBTCA branch on the right, note the suicide by someone with internal knowledge

 

[GW Hayduke 1,953]

If this guy has what he says he has, it would be big, but this is where journalistic integrity comes into play - important scoops like this. I don’t know this guy or forensicwhatever.  If this is true, I hope they pass it on to the Times or Post to authenticate

[Captainant 27,661]

1 hour ago, GW Hayduke said:

If this guy has what he says he has, it would be big, but this is where journalistic integrity comes into play - important scoops like this. I don’t know this guy or forensicwhatever.  If this is true, I hope they pass it on to the Times or Post to authenticate

In the linked article, he said Val passed the info along to the FBI in 2016, but it also appears that it went to the NY "trumpland" office which would explain why they took two years to get back to him, and NYT published several smear pieces on him after he went to the FBI about it

[triplehorn 2,664]

Apart from Stedman having a generally credible history, the table posted above showing DB divisional flow chart, differential origins and amounts of Trump loans, and time frames for different origins within DB suggests they received detailed documentary records (from the whistleblower as they claim).  

Stedman also states his source is different from the one for Lawrence O’Donnell from back in August when he reported on msnbc that a source close to DB claimed Trumps DB loans were co-signed by Russian oligarchs.  O’Donnell only retracted due to not adhering to msnbc’s journalistic standards for sourcing for such a report.

So this is a second source with new and different info about Trump/Russia financial compromise, though they both represent the same problem.
 

 

[washparkhorn 9,939]

On 1/3/2020 at 5:08 PM, JimmyJames said:

Sure. My comment is that the Russians own trump and they know it. Its beyond obvious that trump owes his current financial fortune to the Russians so will in turn do whatever they tell him to do.

 

Is this an accurate reflection of reality? He armed Ukraine - a very anti-Russian move. A move that the Obama Administration would not make.

He unleashed the Turks in an attempt to strengthen US-Turkey relations in order to move them from Russia (results not known).

He took out the number two guy in Iran - the person who created the Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria alliance - a major blow to Russia. 

Serious question - what else would you want Trump to do to Russia - in this new "Cold War turning hot" period? 

And does this narrative of a Russia/Trump alliance make it more difficult for the US - at this moment - to negotiate with Russia and ask them to quiet down their puppet state - Iran? 

Russia is aligned some bad actors. They are needed, if we are going start moving these conflicts away from an open US-Russia war.

Does anyone want a US-Russia war - other than those who think they can somehow profit from a war between nuclear nations? They won't survive that war, thankfully, but neither would any of us. . 

[Captainant 27,661]

7 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

Is this an accurate reflection of reality? He armed Ukraine - a very anti-Russian move. A move that the Obama Administration would not make.

First off, trump isn't arming Ukraine. Congress is through legislative action. Secondly, he illegally withheld aid that was apportioned by Congress. But points for bad faith arguments. 

7 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

He unleashed the Turks in an attempt to strengthen US-Turkey relations in order to move them from Russia (results not known).

Yes, he sold out our allies who fought Isis for us to give an unreciprocated favor to a borderline dictator who's bodyguard beat up dozens of peaceful protestors in the US two years ago.

7 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

He took out the number two guy in Iran - the person who created the Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria alliance - a major blow to Russia. 

He ordered a strike against a chief military commander of a sovereign nation at a civilian airport, an overt act of war, without congressional approval or declaration of war. The resulting spike in oil prices have been a huge boon to the Russian economy, which is primarily reliant on oil. Furthermore, Russia Iran and China were conducting joint naval exercises last week so I really doubt that killing a top man is going to endanger that alliance. 

7 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

Serious question - what else would you want Trump to do to Russia - in this new "Cold War turning hot" period? 

Nice attempt to muddy the waters by implying that Russia has absolute control over Iran. Trump attacking Iran is an attempt to change the subject from the impeachment and his administration disregard for oversight and accountability to the people. 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

11 minutes ago, Captainant said:

First off, trump isn't arming Ukraine. Congress is through legislative action. Secondly, he illegally withheld aid that was apportioned by Congress. But points for bad faith arguments. 

Yes, he sold out our allies who fought Isis for us to give an unreciprocated favor to a borderline dictator who's bodyguard beat up dozens of peaceful protestors in the US two years ago.

He ordered a strike against a chief military commander of a sovereign nation at a civilian airport, an overt act of war, without congressional approval or declaration of war. The resulting spike in oil prices have been a huge boon to the Russian economy, which is primarily reliant on oil. Furthermore, Russia Iran and China were conducting joint naval exercises last week so I really doubt that killing a top man is going to endanger that alliance. 

Nice attempt to muddy the waters by implying that Russia has absolute control over Iran. Trump attacking Iran is an attempt to change the subject from the impeachment and his administration disregard for oversight and accountability to the people. 

Said it much better than I could have.
 

Trumps recent assassination of that general not only may lead us into yet another war, but lessens our standing with every nation not named Saudi Arabia. 

[Anastasis 23,469]

11 hours ago, GW Hayduke said:

If this guy has what he says he has, it would be big, but this is where journalistic integrity comes into play - important scoops like this. I don’t know this guy or forensicwhatever.  If this is true, I hope they pass it on to the Times or Post to authenticate

NYT financial writer has already said that he has attempted to corroborate but has been unable. Enrich wrote a book with the source, source and Enrich seem to have had a falling out as result of an article enrich wrote about the source. 

[Anastasis 23,469]

Here is the NYT piece, I am referring to.

Me and My Whistle-Blower

Deutsche Bank. North Korea. The Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the president. Again and again, one man has taken his trove of secret documents — and uncanny nose for scandal — to the center of the news.

Val Broeksmit in Los Angeles.Credit...Oriana Koren for The New York Times

By David Enrich

Oct. 1, 2019

216

One sunny Wednesday in February, a gangly man in a sports jacket and a partly unbuttoned paisley shirt walked into the Los Angeles field office of the F.B.I. At the reception desk, he gave his name — Val Broeksmit — and began to pace anxiously in the lobby.

Mr. Broeksmit couldn’t believe he was voluntarily meeting with the F.B.I. An unemployed rock musician with a history of opioid abuse and credit card theft, not to mention a dalliance with North Korea-linked hackers, he was accustomed to shunning if not fearing law enforcement. But two investigators had flown from the bureau’s New York office specifically to speak with him, and Mr. Broeksmit had found their invitation too seductive to resist. Now the agents arrived in the lobby and escorted him upstairs.

They wanted to talk about Deutsche Bank — one of the world’s largest and most troubled financial institutions, and the bank of choice to the president of the United States. Mr. Broeksmit’s late father, Bill, had been a senior executive there, and his son possessed a cache of confidential bank documents that provided a tantalizing glimpse of its internal workings. Some of the documents were password-protected, and there was no telling what secrets they held or how explosive they could be.

Federal and state authorities were swarming around Deutsche Bank. Some of the scrutiny centered on the lender’s two-decade relationship with President Trump and his family. Other areas of focus grew out of Deutsche Bank’s long history of criminal misconduct: manipulating markets, evading taxes, bribing foreign officials, violating international sanctions, defrauding customers, laundering money for Russian billionaires.

In a windowless conference room, one of the agents pressed Mr. Broeksmit, 43, to hand over his files. “You’re holding documents that only people within the inner circle of Deutsche would ever see,” he said.

Image

The United States headquarters of Deutsche Bank in New York.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

“Clearly, things went on in Deutsche Bank which weren’t kosher,” added the second agent. “What we’re up against is, all those bad acts are being pushed down on the little people on the bottom.”

“The low-hanging fruit,” said the first agent.

“And the larger bank in its entirety is claiming ignorance and that it’s one bad player,” said his partner. “But we know what we’ve seen. It’s a culture of just — ”

“Fraud and dirt,” Mr. Broeksmit interjected. Already, he was warming to the idea of having a cameo in a high-stakes F.B.I. investigation. He spent the next three hours vaping, munching on raspberry-flavored fig bars and telling his story, entranced by the idea of helping the investigators go after executives high up the Deutsche Bank food chain. (Deutsche Bank has said it is cooperating with authorities in a number of investigations.)

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When he finally emerged from the Los Angeles field office, Mr. Broeksmit got into a Lyft and called me. His adrenaline, I could tell, was still pumping; he was talking so fast he had to stop to catch his breath.

“I am more emotionally invested in this than anyone in the world,” he said. “I would love to be their special informer.”

The next great American whistle-blower

Here’s the thing about whistle-blowers: They tend to be flawed messengers. Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden — each of them was dismissed as selfish, damaged, reckless and crazy. Yet all of them, regardless of motivation, used secret documents to change the course of history.

For more than five years, Val Broeksmit has been dangling his Deutsche Bank files in front of journalists and government investigators, dreaming of becoming the next great American whistle-blower. He wants to expose what he sees as corporate wrongdoing, give some meaning to his father’s death — and maybe get famous along the way. Inside newsrooms and investigative bodies around the world, Mr. Broeksmit’s documents have become something of an open secret, and so are the psychological strings that come attached. I pulled them more than anyone, as part of my reporting on Deutsche Bank for The New York Times and for a book, “Dark Towers,” to be published next year. It has been the most intense source relationship of my career.

An endless procession of bank executives and friends of the Broeksmit family have warned me that Mr. Broeksmit is not to be trusted, and, well, they might have a point. His drug use has sent him reeling between manias and stupors. He has a maddening habit of leaping to outrageous conclusions and then bending facts to fit far-fetched theories. He fantasizes about seeing his story told by Hollywood, and I sometimes wonder whether he’s manipulating me to achieve that ambition. He can be impatient, erratic and abusive. A few days ago, irate that he was not named in a blurb for my book on Amazon, among other perceived slights, he sent me a string of texts claiming that he’d taken out a brokerage account in my name and traded on secret information I’d supposedly fed him. (This is not true.) A little later, he left me a voice mail message saying it was all a joke.

Why do I put up with this? Because his trove of corporate emails, financial materials, boardroom presentations and legal reports is credible — even if he is not. (In this article, every detail not directly attributed to Mr. Broeksmit has been corroborated by documents, recordings or an independent source.) Besides, there’s something uncanny about how Mr. Broeksmit’s fearlessness and addiction to drama have led him, again and again, to the center of the news. In addition to Deutsche Bank’s troubles, he has figured into North Korea’s hack of Sony Pictures, the collapse of the world’s oldest bank and the House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing investigation into Mr. Trump.

We might wish our whistle-blowers were stoic, unimpeachable do-gooders. In reality, to let you in on a journalistic secret, they’re often more like Val Broeksmit.

Image

Val Broeksmit with his father at Wimbledon in 2013.Credit...Val Broeksmit

‘Please don’t tell anyone where you’re getting this’

On a drizzly Sunday in London in January 2014, Bill Broeksmit cinched his dog’s red leash around his neck, slung it over a door and lunged forward. He was 58.

The elder Broeksmit was widely known as the unofficial conscience of Deutsche Bank and a longtime confidant of the company’s chief executive, and his death shocked the financial world. I was a reporter in The Wall Street Journal’s London bureau, and there were rumors that Mr. Broeksmit’s suicide was connected to his work — that he regretted what he’d seen and done. My colleagues and I divvied up the unpleasant task of contacting his family, and I got Val. He was easy to track down: His band, Bikini Robot Army, had a website with his email address.

When I reached him, he was in New York for his father’s funeral, and at first he asked me to leave his family alone. “Everyone is very sad and grieving right now,” he wrote. But before long he was on the phone — angry, slurring his speech, insisting without evidence that he knew why his father had killed himself and that it had nothing to do with Deutsche Bank. Over the next several months, we kept in sporadic touch as Mr. Broeksmit bounced between rehab facilities in Florida and California, trying to beat an opioid addiction and teasing me with provocative messages. (He is open about his struggles with substance abuse.) He would say things like “I think I know what happened” and then never follow up; once, apropos of nothing, he sent a picture of a San Francisco building on fire.

Finally, on a Tuesday in July 2014, he emailed me a single line: “Are you still looking into deutsche?”

The evening after his father died, Mr. Broeksmit had found the passwords to his email accounts. Now, he told me that he had discovered hundreds of messages related to Deutsche Bank. Mr. Broeksmit asked if I could help him sift through and decipher them, and I suggested a list of search terms: things like “subpoena” and “DOJ,” for the Department of Justice.

He soon forwarded an item with a number of those keywords. “Don’t know what it means,” he said. I started skimming: It was a detailed letter to Deutsche Bank from a senior official at the New York arm of the Federal Reserve, who was furious with the bank for its slipshod accounting. Trying to contain my excitement, I asked if I could write about the document. I braced for a negotiation, but all Mr. Broeksmit said was, “That’s cool. Please don’t tell anyone where you’re getting this info.” (He has since released me from that promise.)

Four days later, I published an article describing the Fed’s concerns. The bank’s shares fell 3 percent. Mr. Broeksmit told me he felt empowered by having dented Deutsche’s market value by more than $1 billion.

Val Broeksmit vs. David Boies

What makes a person crave the attention of journalists? Consider where Val Broeksmit comes from.

He was born in Ukraine in 1976, and his parents, Alla and Alexander, emigrated to Chicago three years later. Their marriage collapsed; Val and his father landed in a homeless shelter; and in 1982, Cook County took custody of the boy, placing the frightened 6-year-old in a foster home.

Meanwhile, Alla met and married Bill Broeksmit, who was then an up-and-coming banker. They moved to New Jersey and eventually extracted Val, then 9, from the foster care system. Bill adopted him — an angry, impulsive child with a strong anti-authority streak. A caseworker who visited the family noted that he insisted on calling his parents by their first names.

Val’s friends told me that he acted out through his boarding school and college years, compensating for what he described as his parents’ icy detachment. He was the guy trying to keep the party going with a little coke at 3 a.m., cajoling girls to make out with each other, stealing expensive gear from his college’s music department. (Mr. Broeksmit acknowledges all of this.) He wanted to be the center of attention, to prove that he mattered. That’s part of the reason he became a rocker — “It’s less lonely with an audience,” he once told me — but Bikini Robot Army never hit it big. When his father died and Mr. Broeksmit came into possession of his documents, he finally had an opportunity to make the world pay attention.

After his initial leak to me in the summer of 2014, Mr. Broeksmit started seeking out other big stories. Late that year, a group of North Korea-linked hackers, calling themselves the Guardians of Peace, penetrated the computer systems of Sony Pictures. When the hack became public, Mr. Broeksmit followed a bread crumb trail of links until he eventually came across an email address for the hackers.

“I’m interesting in joining your GOP, but I’m afraid my computer skills are sophomoric at best,” Mr. Broeksmit emailed the Guardians of Peace. (Typo his.) “If I can help in any other facility please let me know.” He doubted the hackers would reply, but an email soon arrived with a primer on how to access Sony’s stolen materials. As he waited for the hundreds of gigabytes to download, he sent another email. “Hey, you guys ever thought about going after Deutsche Bank?” he wrote. “Tons of evidence on their servers of worldwide fraud.” The hackers didn’t respond.

Mr. Broeksmit, leaning into his new persona as an exposer of corporate secrets, took to Twitter to post embarrassing Sony files: deliberations over who might direct a remake of “Cleopatra”; Brad Pitt freaking out about the edit of “Fury.” He wasn’t the only one airing Sony’s laundry, but his prolific postings set him apart.

Image

David Boies in New York in July. Mr. Boies was representing Sony when it demanded that Twitter shut down Val Broeksmit’s account.Credit...Carlo Allegri/Reuters

David Boies — Sony’s attorney and arguably the most famous lawyer in America — sent Twitter a letter demanding that it shut down Mr. Broeksmit’s account. Another letter, from a Sony executive, warned Mr. Broeksmit that Sony would “hold you responsible for any damage or loss” stemming from the materials he had published. A few days before Christmas, a colleague and I published an article about the huge corporation and its powerful lawyer threatening this random musician.

For the first time, Mr. Broeksmit was in the public spotlight. Soon he was on the Fox Business channel. “It seems like somebody’s trying to make you the fall guy, doesn’t it, Mr. Broeksmit?” an anchor asked. The lesson was clear: The media had ravenous appetites for documents that exposed the guts of giant corporations. It even seemed virtuous to share juicy material. And Mr. Broeksmit had plenty of that.

‘I am eternally sorry and condemned’

Spelunking through his Deutsche files, Mr. Broeksmit encountered detailed information about what was going on deep inside the bank. There were minutes of board meetings. Financial plans. Indecipherable spreadsheets. Password-protected presentations. And evidence of his father’s misery.

Here was the elder Broeksmit scolding his colleagues for not taking the Fed’s annual “stress tests” seriously. Here he was, in the months before his suicide, pushing executives to deal with the American division’s alarming staff shortages. Here he was talking to a criminal defense lawyer.

Mr. Broeksmit concluded that all this might help explain why his father had hanged himself. He told his therapist, an addiction specialist named Larry Meltzer, that he was on a quest to understand the suicide. Mr. Meltzer told me that he encouraged the inquiry. He also persuaded Alla Broeksmit to increase her son’s monthly stipend from $300 to $2,500.

Figuring that more information about his father’s death might be lodged in Alla’s email accounts, Mr. Broeksmit consulted some online tutorials and broke into her Gmail. Inside, he found an extraordinary demonstration of corporations’ power to control what the public knows.

In his mother’s inbox was a scan of the elder Broeksmit’s suicide note to Anshu Jain, at the time the co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank. It was four sentences, handwritten in black ink on white printer paper.

Anshu,

You were so good to me and I have repaid you with carelessness. I betrayed your trust and hid my horrible nature from you. I can’t even begin to fathom the damage I have done.

I am eternally sorry and condemned.

Bill

Mr. Broeksmit could feel his father’s anguish. It left him in tears — and baffled. Why had his father been sorry? When had he ever been careless? How had he damaged the bank?

Mr. Broeksmit read on. He learned that his father had once looked into the conduct of some Deutsche Bank traders and concluded — mistakenly — that nothing was amiss. It turned out the traders were manipulating a benchmark known as Libor. The elder Broeksmit feared he could become a target of government investigators because he had failed to detect the fraud; spiraling, he consulted his physician and a psychologist.

Those doctors wrote to the coroner investigating Mr. Broeksmit’s suicide. One described the banker as having been “extremely anxious” over the Libor affair. The other added: “He was catastrophising, imagining worst case outcomes including prosecution, loss of his wealth and reputation.”

The coroner, Fiona Wilcox, scheduled a public hearing to discuss her findings. She intended to read aloud from the doctors’ letters. But on the morning of the inquest, at the courthouse, lawyers that Deutsche Bank had hired for the Broeksmit family took her aside and urged her not to do so in order to protect the family’s privacy.

Ms. Wilcox, who declined to comment, acquiesced. Nearly everything about Mr. Broeksmit’s specific anxieties was expunged. Where the psychologist had written that his patient imagined prosecution, the words were crossed out and replaced with “He imagined various issues.” The physician had originally described Mr. Broeksmit’s worry “about going to prison or going bankrupt even though he knew he was innocent. He kept on thinking back over all the thousands of emails he had sent over the years. He knew how lawyers can twist things round.” It was replaced with: “He told me he had been extremely anxious.” All of this — the originals, and the whitewashed version — had been emailed to Alla Broeksmit. Now they were in her son’s hands.

Image

Val Broeksmit in Los Angeles, where he moved to drum up Hollywood interest in his life story.Credit...Oriana Koren for The New York Times

Dinner with Moby

Mr. Broeksmit’s antics escalated. He fished his mother’s American Express details out of her email and bought laptops, a plane ticket to Paris, rooms in luxury hotels. He told friends he was investigating his father’s death, but I wondered if he just wanted to tell people (and himself) that he was on a noble mission. At one point, Mr. Broeksmit filled out a form on the Justice Department’s website: “I’m writing in hopes of speaking to someone at the DOJ in reference to the evidence I have showing major fraud at one of the world’s largest banks.” He got a note that his message had been passed to the F.B.I.’s New York field office, but no other acknowledgment.

Ms. Broeksmit eventually wised up to her son’s credit card theft, and by the end of 2016, he was running low on cash. (In a brief phone call last year, she told me that Mr. Broeksmit “is completely ostracized from the family.”) Word spread in journalism circles that the son of a dead Deutsche Bank executive had access to revelatory materials. In Rome on New Year’s Eve of 2016, Mr. Broeksmit shared the files with a reporter for the Financial Times, periodically excusing himself to snort 80-milligram hits of OxyContin, and the journalist later connected him with someone willing to pay for the documents. On the third anniversary of his father’s death — Jan. 26, 2017 — $1,000 arrived in his PayPal account.

The money was from Glenn R. Simpson, a former journalist who ran a research company called Fusion GPS. Weeks earlier, it had rocketed to notoriety as the source of the so-called Steele Dossier — a report by a former intelligence agent containing salacious allegations against Mr. Trump. Mr. Simpson was searching for more dirt and, Mr. Broeksmit told me, he agreed to pay $10,000 for the Deutsche materials. (Mr. Simpson declined to be interviewed.)

Mr. Simpson asked Mr. Broeksmit to start searching for specific topics. “Any Russia stuff at all,” he wrote on an encrypted chat program. “Let’s get you here asap.”

They met two days later in the U.S. Virgin Islands and began combing for material on Mr. Trump, Russia and Robert Mercer, a top Trump donor. They didn’t discover bombshells — more like nuggets. One spreadsheet, for example, contained a list of all of the banks that owed money to one of Deutsche Bank’s American subsidiaries on a certain date — a list that included multiple Russian banks that would soon be under United States sanctions.

Mr. Simpson asked Mr. Broeksmit to travel with him to Washington and meet some of his contacts. Mr. Broeksmit shared some of his files with a Senate investigator and — after snorting some heroin — a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The documents found their way to a team of anti-money-laundering agents at the New York Fed. Coincidence or not, a few months later, the Fed fined Deutsche Bank $41 million for violations inside the American unit that Bill Broeksmit had overseen. (A Fed spokesman declined to comment.)

Mr. Broeksmit moved to Los Angeles to drum up Hollywood interest in his life story. Early this year, a producer invited him to a dinner party. Among the guests was Moby, the electronic music legend, who told me he was impressed by Mr. Broeksmit’s exploits and existential sadness. Moby arranged an introduction to his friend Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which had recently opened an investigation into Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Schiff’s investigators badly wanted the secret Deutsche files. Mr. Broeksmit tried to extract money from them — he pushed to be hired as a consultant to the committee — but that was a nonstarter. An investigator, Daniel Goldman, appealed to his sense of patriotism and pride. “Imagine a scenario where some of the material that you have can actually provide the seed that we can then use to blow open everything that [Trump] has been hiding,” Mr. Goldman told Mr. Broeksmit in a recorded phone call. “In some respects, you — and your father vicariously through you — will go down in American history as a hero and as the person who really broke open an incredibly corrupt president and administration.” (Mr. Broeksmit wouldn’t budge; eventually, Mr. Schiff subpoenaed him.)

It was around this time that Mr. Broeksmit had his meeting at the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles field office. Someone at the bureau had finally noticed his submission to the Justice Department’s website. After the three-hour session, Mr. Broeksmit still needed some stroking, and the F.B.I. agents obliged. They told Mr. Broeksmit he could have a special advisory title. They promised to keep him in the loop as their investigation proceeded. They let him tell the world — via this article — that he was a cooperating witness in a federal criminal investigation. They even helped procure a visa for his French girlfriend.

I had to tip my hat to Mr. Broeksmit. The man whom everyone had discounted and demeaned had managed to get his information into the hands of the Federal Reserve, Congress and the F.B.I. Even if the documents ultimately prove underwhelming to these powerful investigators, Mr. Broeksmit had accomplished one of his life’s goals: He mattered.

David Enrich is the finance editor. He is the author of “Dark Towers,” about Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump. @davidenrich • Facebook

 

[Captainant 27,661]

14 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

NYT financial writer has already said that he has attempted to corroborate but has been unable. Enrich wrote a book with the source, source and Enrich seem to have had a falling out as result of an article enrich wrote about the source. 

And per the article linked, the FBI said not everything Enrich claimed in his article is true. 

[Anastasis 23,469]

28 minutes ago, Captainant said:

And per the article linked, the FBI said not everything Enrich claimed in his article is true. 

OK.  Did you read the article I linked?  What did they say was misleading in that article?

Also, per the FN article linked "Forensic News is not confirming the underlying claim that VTB underwrote Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank." Really going out on a limb here Scott, huh. 

 

I figure by now some of you guys would learn not to jump off the deep end on a hair trigger behind guys like Scott Stedman and Forensic News without some corroboration from other sources.  Maybe not.  

 

Like I said, If you want to tell me that Trump has shady financial dealings and connections that represent potential conflicts of interest, I am already in agreement. We don't have to jump down every twatter hole at first sign to get there. 

 

[wildcat09 29,354]

3 hours ago, Anastasis said:

OK.  Did you read the article I linked?  What did they say was misleading in that article?

Also, per the FN article linked "Forensic News is not confirming the underlying claim that VTB underwrote Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank." Really going out on a limb here Scott, huh. 

 

I figure by now some of you guys would learn not to jump off the deep end on a hair trigger behind guys like Scott Stedman and Forensic News without some corroboration from other sources.  Maybe not.  

 

Like I said, If you want to tell me that Trump has shady financial dealings and connections that represent potential conflicts of interest, I am already in agreement. We don't have to jump down every twatter hole at first sign to get there. 

 

Who did that?

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,585]

*eagerly awaiting a film review of Argo and breakdown of the Church Committee hearings*

[Anastasis 23,469]

Ninth in the series by Wemple.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/06/come-clean-cnn/

 

 

[triplehorn 2,664]

On 1/5/2020 at 7:21 AM, Anastasis said:

NYT financial writer has already said that he has attempted to corroborate but has been unable. Enrich wrote a book with the source, source and Enrich seem to have had a falling out as result of an article enrich wrote about the source. 

I don't recommend listening to this whole thing, but the source, son of deceased high up DB exec, Val Broeksmit, gives a clear history of why he didn't work with WSJ, Rolling Stone, or Maggie Haberman at NYT.  He also talks about Enrich.  He explains why he's giving these reporters the interview.  The guy has some personal issues but he's not dumb.  He details how he met with FBI counterintel agents, Dan Goldman (also was House impeachment counsel), Schiff at his office, and spent the night at Glen Simpson's house in DC after partying w him in el mar caribe.  Best line was that "you aren't on Twitter unless you've been called a Russian agent by Louise Mensch".  The takeaway is that this is a real person who has a load of official docs from DB via his father's emails and hardware that reveal bad stuff going on at DB directly involving Trump.  Fast forward to the last 10-15 min of the interview to hear some detail about Trump, Kushner, sanctioned Russian VTB, mirror trades for laundering sanctioned oligarch cash, and how debt got masked for Trump by KushCo using a shady maneuver through DB.

A logical observation that points to how you know Trump had to have co-signers guarantee his DB loans to get vital cash:

That someone other than Trump?  Vlad.

 

Edited January 7, 2020 by triplehorn
forgot to mention *Enrich*

[jimmyjazz 45,920]

Is there any indication Mueller had all of this alleged documentation owned by the son of the DB exec?  I can't keep up with all the various interwoven stories.

[triplehorn 2,664]

15 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Is there any indication Mueller had all of this alleged documentation owned by the son of the DB exec?  I can't keep up with all the various interwoven stories.

All we know is reporting from late 2017 that Mueller subpoenaed DB records and zeroed in on Trump.  From this most recent news from the son of deceased DB exec Broeksmit, we know that FBI counterintelligence is investigating links between DB and Russian bank VTB.  VTB is said to be Putin and oligarchs' personal piggy bank.  VTB is also sanctioned.

[FondrenRoad 4,378]

8 hours ago, triplehorn said:

I don't recommend listening to this whole thing, but the source, son of deceased high up DB exec, Val Broeksmit, gives a clear history of why he didn't work with WSJ, Rolling Stone, or Maggie Haberman at NYT.  He also talks about Enrich.  He explains why he's giving these reporters the interview.  The guy has some personal issues but he's not dumb.  He details how he met with FBI counterintel agents, Dan Goldman (also was House impeachment counsel), Schiff at his office, and spent the night at Glen Simpson's house in DC after partying w him in el mar caribe.  Best line was that "you aren't on Twitter unless you've been called a Russian agent by Louise Mensch".  The takeaway is that this is a real person who has a load of official docs from DB via his father's emails and hardware that reveal bad stuff going on at DB directly involving Trump.  Fast forward to the last 10-15 min of the interview to hear some detail about Trump, Kushner, sanctioned Russian VTB, mirror trades for laundering sanctioned oligarch cash, and how debt got masked for Trump by KushCo using a shady maneuver through DB.

A logical observation that points to how you know Trump had to have co-signers guarantee his DB loans to get vital cash:

That someone other than Trump?  Vlad.

 

It may have been Vlad. Now it's probably us. We gave this con man the power to sign contracts on behalf of the US government.  I imagine the hotel and golf club tax money funnels we see out in the open are just a drop in the bucket.  It's likely that all procurement is now going through one Trump owned shell company or another.  He could get away with skimming 5 to 10% of all bureaucratic spending.  He probably already paid Vlad back ten times over. Vlad owns him because of information not money.  

Edited January 7, 2020 by FondrenRoad

[triplehorn 2,664]

4 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

  He probably already paid Vlad back ten times over. Vlad owns him because of information not money.  

No doubt.  Once Trump was installed as POTUS, co-signing risk for Trump's DB loans nearly a decade ago became a drop in the bucket of Putin's windfall.

Recall this from Felix Sater in 2015, when Sater was serving as an intermediary between Trump and the Kremlin on negotiations for Trump Tower Moscow. :  “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it...I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

After Trump had blown through all his inheritance and went bankrupt in the early aughts, Russian mob found its mark and brought him back to life over the course of years.  Trump's Presidency is their payback time.

 

 

[David Dennison 18,856]

 

[Zavala 1,384]

 

[Anastasis 23,469]

10th.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/08/so-this-is-all-about-collusion-an-inventory-media-remarks-steele-dossier/

[Biff Tannen 45,682]

Dotard supporters sure do post a lot of opinion articles.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,585]

If Bill Barr wasn't so damn ethical, he'd be using the surveillance state to track down Ghislaine Maxwell. 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

3 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Dotard supporters sure do post a lot of opinion articles.

According to them they don’t support him, as they continue to post article after article defending him. 
 

“I don’t support trump,” but here is an article defending him that I’ve decided to post anyway. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I want all of you to read it anyway. 
 

They’re just annoying frauds. I’ve learned to accept that. 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

3 hours ago, Anastasis said:

10th.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/08/so-this-is-all-about-collusion-an-inventory-media-remarks-steele-dossier/

Paywall. 
 

Tom cruise America flag Gif. 
 

Word. 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,585]

It just...I dunno...seems pretty weird that Law Enforcement that just went goose-stomping on Carter Page's right to privacy can't track down a missing person of interest who spent years mingling in their own inner sanctum social circle of the politically connected.

[Anastasis 23,469]

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

Very interesting interview with Brittany Kaiser (The Great Hack), Cambridge Analytica whistleblower. In four parts, can either read or watch the videos. She is on a book tour (who isn't these days?), but the transcript is a quick read.

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/7/the_great_hack_cambridge_analytica

Meet Brittany Kaiser, Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Releasing Troves of New Files from Data Firm

Quote

New details are emerging about how the shadowy data firm Cambridge Analytica worked to manipulate voters across the globe, from the 2016 election in the United States to the Brexit campaign in Britain and elections in over 60 other countries, including Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. A new trove of internal Cambridge Analytica documents and emails are being posted on Twitter detailing the company’s operations, including its work with President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton. The documents come from Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, who worked at the firm for three-and-a-half years before leaving in 2018. We speak with Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, co-directors of the Oscar shortlisted documentary “The Great Hack”; Brittany Kaiser, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower featured in “The Great Hack” and author of “Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower’s Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again”; and Emma Briant, a visiting research associate in human rights at Bard College whose upcoming book is titled “Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry.”

 

[Anastasis 23,469]

Eleventh in the series: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/10/david-corn-steele-dossier-just-checking-facts/

 

[Anastasis 23,469]

Where did suddenly_silent go?

 

[LongestHorn 759]

We’re over here.

[Anastasis 23,469]

1 minute ago, LongestHorn said:

We’re over here.

You have a very confusing avatar. Be prepared for misdirected personal attacks.