NY Magazine: "Now We Have a Road Map to the Trump Campaigns Collusion With Russia"

[emulatorloo]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/now-we-have-a-roadmap-to-trump-campaigns-russia-collusion.html

July 1, 2017 9:34 am
Now We Have a Road Map to the Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Russia

By Jonathan Chait

Most of the commentary surrounding the Russia scandal has treated the possibility that Donald Trump’s campaign deliberately colluded with Moscow as remote, unfounded speculation. The new reporting that has broken this weekend suggests instead that this collusion likely did take place. It provides a road map to the, or perhaps a, likely avenue through which this occurred.

The figure carrying out the operation in question was Peter W. Smith, who died at the age of 81 earlier this year. Smith is hardly a lone kook. He’s an established Republican donor with a demonstrated history in financing ethically murky investigations, such as paying Arkansas state troopers for stories of Bill Clinton’s sexual dalliances.

Smith surfaced earlier in the week in an explosive Wall Street Journal report by Shane Harris, which Harris followed up on Friday night. What really underscores the significance of Harris’s reporting, though, is a detailed account, also published Friday night, by Matt Tait, a British cybersecurity expert who dealt extensively with Smith. Tait’s report makes it clear that Smith had access to Michael Flynn, at the very least, and was working not only to obtain stolen Clinton emails but also to hide the Trump campaign’s involvement.

<snip>

The document (given to Tait by Smith) listed a series of high-level Trump campaign officials: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis, Lt. Gen. Flynn, and Lisa Nelson. Bannon and Conway, contacted by the Journal, deny any involvement with Smith. But Smith’s comments to Tait indicate a fairly close understanding of Trump campaign internal dynamics. It is possible he was bluffing, but Smith seemed to be displaying authentic insider credentials.

<snip>

The key to understanding the significance of this report is to put it together with a sentence from Harris’s first story on this in the Journal, which reports that U.S. investigators “have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary.”

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A short article but difficult to excerpt. Much more at link. Definitely worth reading it, and worth giving New York Magazine's website some clicks/traffic

[Cha]

1. Mahalo for this, emlatorloo!

[Cha]

2. Wow.. only one reply.. isn't that a

record with so many RECS?

[NewJeffCT]

3. I'm almost positive there was collusion

but, we need Mueller and his team to get all the background and ties sorted out. I'm sure Trump's accountants and tax lawyers have made it all intentionally very complex.

[AntiFascist]

4. K&R n/t

[drm604]

5. K&R

[bucolic_frolic]

6. Not only

the personnel to do the crime, but the personnel to plan how to hide it too

[dalton99a]

7. Kick.

[burrowowl]

8. K&R!!!!!!