Mueller indicts 12 more Russians/Indictment refers to an unnamed American co-conspirator

shakeysix said:

I have a feeling, maybe only a misguided hope, that Mueller expected this to happen. Fingers crossed. --s6

Click to expand...

ElaineA said:

...
But the world is full of examples, I suppose. ...

Click to expand...

One of the few things that Kaiser Wilhelm II, who ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918, had a talent for was causing outrage. A particular specialty was insulting other monarchs. He called the diminutive King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy “the dwarf” in front of the king’s own entourage. He called Prince (later Tsar) Ferdinand, of Bulgaria, “Fernando naso,” on account of his beaky nose, and spread rumors that he was a hermaphrodite. ...

... One of the many things that Wilhelm was convinced he was brilliant at, despite all evidence to the contrary, was “personal diplomacy,” fixing foreign policy through one-on-one meetings with other European monarchs and statesmen. In fact, Wilhelm could do neither the personal nor the diplomacy, and these meetings rarely went well. ...

... a compulsive liar, and seemed to have a limited understanding of cause and effect....

Wilhelm was a compulsive speechmaker who constantly strayed off script. Even his staff couldn’t stop him, though it tried, distributing copies of speeches to the German press before he’d actually given them. Unfortunately, the Austrian press printed the speeches as they were delivered, and the gaffes and insults soon circulated around Europe. ...

... He reads very little apart from newspaper cuttings, hardly writes anything himself apart from marginalia on reports and considers those talks best which are quickly over and done with.” The Kaiser’s entourage compiled press cuttings for him, mostly about himself, which he read as obsessively as Trump watches television. A critical story would send him into paroxysms of fury....

...During Wilhelm’s reign, the upper echelons of the German government began to unravel into a free-for-all, with officials wrangling against one another....To add to the confusion, Wilhelm changed his position every five minutes. He was deeply suggestible and would defer to the last person he’d spoken to or cutting he’d read—at least until he’d spoken to the next person....

“In order to get him to accept an idea you must act as if the idea were his,” the Kaiser’s closest friend, Philipp zu Eulenburg, advised his colleagues, adding, “Don’t forget the sugar.” (In “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff writes that to get Trump to take an action his White House staff has to persuade him that “he had thought of it himself.”)...

More sinisterly, Wilhelm’s patronage of the aggressive, nationalistic right left him surrounded by ministers who held a collective conviction that a European war was inevitable and even desirable.

Click to expand...

shakeysix said:

WOW! This is the name that a Canadian friend gave me--Maria Butina-- this winter. My friend told me to watch for news on this name under a front called Guns For Russia--which is insane. No gun possession for private citizens in Russia allowed so that name is crazy. My friend had the NRA ties down, accused this Butina of funneling money from Russia to the Trump campaign through the NRA. I've said this before but at the time I thought my friend was a little nuts but now ….? Also she said that Butina was really a change of Putin and claimed she is Putins daughter. Crazy as it sounds it might be true, too! The Indictment on Butina did mention a gun organization! --s6

Click to expand...

The Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that the Russian government apparently used the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. “The committee has obtained a number of documents that suggest the Kremlin used the National Rifle Association as a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign,” according to a report on the panel’s preliminary findings on Russia and the presidential campaign. The NRA may have been used to “secretly fund Mr. Trump’s campaign,” the report states. While the report didn’t discuss the documents, it said two Russian nationals—Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina—were “involved in this effort.” Torshin, a member of Russia’s central bank, hosted an NRA delegation in Moscow in 2013. Butina, founder of a pro-gun group in Russia, boasted at a Washington, D.C. party following the election that she was “part of the Trump campaign’s communications with Russia,” The Daily Beast reported last year....

At 23 years old in 2011, this dynamic young woman was named the founding Chairman of “The Right to Bear Arms,” a fledgling Russian version of the NRA. The organization had been created by in 2010 as one of the last wishes of Torshin’s good friend Gen. Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47. The Right To Bear Arm’s honorary members included Torshin and an impressive list of other members of the Russian Parliament including top brass from the right-wing nationalist LDPR and Rodina parties.

In 2011 Torshin also began his relationship with the NRA. Torshin had cultivated a friendship with a conservative gun loving Nashville lawyer G. Kline Preston IV. The two had met in 2009 when Preston, who specialized in Russian legal work, had briefed Russian legislators in Russia on implementation of immunity agreements, also known as ‘plea deals’. Preston then served as an international election observer in the 2011 legislative elections in Russia, “which sparked mass street protests in Moscow charging electoral irregularities, but Preston said he concluded that the elections were free and fair. By contrast, Preston brought Torshin to the US to observe the 2012 US election and said he and Torshin saw violations of U.S. law — pro-Obama signs posted too close to a polling place.” In 2011 Preston introduced Torshin to David Keen, then the NRA President.

Click to expand...