February 10, 2019

CIA may have used contractor who inspired 'Mission: Impossible' to kill RFK, new book alleges

Was Robert Maheu, an aide to Howard Hughes, responsible for Bobby Kennedy’s assassination?
By Tom Jackman

February 9, 2019 at 7:00 AM

Robert A. Maheu was such a colorful character that it’s widely believed the television show “Mission: Impossible” was based on him and his private investigative agency.

As an ex-FBI agent, the CIA asked him to handle jobs it wanted to steer clear of, such as lining up prostitutes for a foreign president or hiring the mafia to kill Fidel Castro. For more than 15 years, Maheu and his Washington-based company were on monthly retainer to “The Agency,” CIA records show. And during much of that time, Maheu was the right-hand man to Howard Hughes as Hughes bought up vast swaths of Las Vegas and helped finance CIA operations.

Now, a new book alleges that Maheu may have performed another mission for the CIA: the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.).

(Snip)

Maheu would have had access to the CIA’s experiments in hypnosis and mind control, which were being conducted at the time in California and elsewhere. That would have enabled him to frame Sirhan Sirhan as a patsy for the slaying of Kennedy, while other gunmen actually fired the fatal shots, argues author Lisa Pease, who spent 25 years researching her book, “A Lie Too Big to Fail."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/history/2019/02/09/cia-may-have-used-contractor-who-inspired-mission-impossible-kill-rfk-new-book-alleges/

February 7, 2019

Sergei Millian, identified as an unwitting source for the Steele dossier, sought proximity to Trump'

Sergei Millian, identified as an unwitting source for the Steele dossier, sought proximity to Trump’s world in 2016

Around the time of President Trump’s inauguration, two of his supporters met to toast the new administration at the Russia House, a Washington restaurant known among Russian diplomats and emigres for its vodka and caviar.

The Dupont Circle spot was suggested by Sergei Millian, according to onetime Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who said he met with the Belarus-born businessman there.

The get-together followed months of outreach Millian had made to the young aide — including offering him a lucrative consulting contract to work simultaneously for Trump and an unidentified Russian, which Papadopoulos said he rebuffed. FBI agents later pressed Papadopoulos about his relationship with Millian, Papadopoulos’s lawyers have said.

The interactions between the two men — the extent of which have not been reported previously — show how Millian, a self-described real estate developer who served as an unwitting source of information for former British spy Christopher Steele, was in closer proximity to Trump’s world than previously known.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sergei-millian-identified-as-an-unwitting-source-for-the-steele-dossier-sought-proximity-to-trumps-world-in-2016/2019/02/06/c7465a52-ec19-11e8-8679-934a2b33be52_story.html?utm_term=.cbae30874923

February 6, 2019

A Lobbyist At The Trump Tower Meeting Received Half A Million Dollars In Suspicious Payments

A bank flagged transactions, including large cash deposits, made before and after Rinat Akhmetshin attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

By Emma Loop and Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold and Tanya Kozyreva and John Templon

A Russian-born lobbyist who attended the controversial Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 received a series of suspicious payments totaling half a million dollars before and after the encounter.

Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military officer turned Washington lobbyist, deposited large, round-number amounts of cash in the months preceding and following the meeting, where a Russian lawyer offered senior Trump campaign officials dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The lobbyist also received a large payment that bank investigators deemed suspicious from Denis Katsyv, whose company Prevezon Holdings was accused by the US Justice Department of laundering the proceeds of a $230 million Russian tax fraud.

The Trump Tower meeting and those who attended it have become a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. As part of that inquiry, banks were asked to pull financial information on the meeting attendees, and investigators at Wells Fargo handed over documents on Akhmetshin to the US Treasury in 2017. Those records were passed to Mueller's team, but Peter Carr, a spokesperson for the special counsel, declined to say whether the transactions are under investigation. Congressional investigators also requested the financial information from the Treasury Department.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmaloop/trump-tower-meeting-russian-lobbyist-akhmetshin-suspicious-p

The Money Trail
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/collection/themoneytrail

February 4, 2019

R-Dan Crenshaw sarcastically suggests a 70% tax rate on the Patriots for winning Super Bowls

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1092414531064786944

This topic covers politics, economics, and sports.

I think it misses the mark for several reasons. One of them as AOC points out as well as the NFL has a salary cap as well as a reverse order draft to address issues of fairness and competition. One other thing is the NFL receives a lot of government help in the form of subsidies for stadiums, antitrust protections, etc.

How the government helps the NFL maintain its power and profitability

(Snip)

Goodell, who was paid $44 million last year, has been able to ink extraordinarily lucrative broadcast and cable deals for the league’s powerful owners.

But it’s not all Goodell’s work, according to sports economists. The league also benefits from a litany of benefits from federal and state governments — many of which were conceived decades ago when the NFL was still a fledgling organization and Americans were just tuning in to watch games on television.

(Snip)

An antitrust exemption: In 1961, Congress approved legislation that allowed professional football teams to pool together when negotiating radio and television broadcasts rights. The law, signed by President John F. Kennedy, was the first action by the federal government that would spur the growth of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, academics say. CBS paid $2 million for the right to broadcast the NFL’s championship game in 1966, the year Congress approved the NFL’s merger with the AFL and expanded the combined league’s antitrust exemption. The idea was to support the fledgling sports league. Today, however, the NFL makes an estimated $7 billion in revenues just from their television deals. Hands down, NFL games are the most popular programming on television. Last fall, 34 of the 35 most-watched TV shows were NFL games.

“Apple or ExxonMobil can only dream of permission to function as a monopoly: the 1966 law was effectively a license for the NFL owners to print money,” wrote Gregg Easterbrook, author of “The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America,” in an article for The Atlantic.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2014/09/16/how-the-government-helps-the-nfl-maintain-its-power-and-profitability/?utm_term=.fc4fd9199be3

For regular updates on the topic of sports subsidies I recommend Field of Schemes.

http://www.fieldofschemes.com

January 30, 2019

2019 NFL mock draft: Full 7-round projections 1.0

1. Arizona Cardinals | Quinnen Williams | DL | Alabama
Nick Bosa is the odds-on favorite here, but the Cards already have one of the league’s best edge rushers in Chandler Jones. What they need is a dominant, disruptive force for the interior of their defensive line, and Williams is the perfect fit.

2. San Francisco 49ers | Nick Bosa | EDGE | Ohio State
This is a dream scenario for the 49ers, who get the best overall prospect in the draft, who also just happens to fill the team’s biggest need. Despite playing just a few games due to injury in 2018, Bosa is worthy of No. 1 overall consideration.

3. New York Jets | Josh Allen | EDGE | Kentucky
Similar to the 49ers, the Jets desperately need to come away from this pick with a difference-maker on the edge. Allen is a versatile weapon who was arguably the most dominant defender in all of college football last season.

4. Oakland Raiders | Devin White | LB | LSU
Some might bristle at the thought of an inside linebacker this early, but White is absolutely a top-five prospect in this class, and the Raiders have three first-round picks to play with. He’s exactly the kind of player who can transform the identity of an entire defense, and that’s what Oakland needs.

https://draftwire.usatoday.com/2019/01/29/2019-nfl-mock-draft-7-rounds-dwayne-haskins-kyler-murray-nick-bosa-quinnen-williams/

January 21, 2019

WATCH: Natalia Rybka is accosted and brutally manhandled by FSB the moment she touched down in Mosco

https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1086333157765337094

https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1086373515534700544

https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1086373879533260800

https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1086585751473741825

https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1086378500184068097