monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

If ‘dodgy dossier’ accusation true, Trump Jr. would have no reason to meet with Russian lawyer

“If the Trumps actually had a long-standing relationship with the Russian intelligence services and were regularly receiving information on Hillary Clinton — this is one of the claims in the Steele dossier — there would be no reason to accept a meeting with an unknown lawyer who claimed to have compromising information,” Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and State Department counterintelligence official, told The Washington Times.

“If I’m friends with the owners of the Washington Nationals and getting box seat tickets from them, why would I go out on the street and buy tickets from a scalper? It just does not make sense.”

I wonder why he thought Trump would "lie" about such a briefing, eh?

“I have subsequently learned that he used intermediaries,” Mr. Morell said in March at conference sponsored by Cipher Brief. “And then I asked myself, ‘Why did these guys provide this information? What was their motivation?’ And I subsequently learned that he paid them, that the intermediaries paid the sources and the intermediaries got the money from Chris.

And that kind of worries me a little bit because if you’re paying somebody, particularly former FSB officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they’re going to call you up and say, ‘Hey, let’s have another meeting. I have more information for you.’ I think you’ve got to take all that into consideration when you consider the dossier.”

I wonder why he thought Trump would "lie" about such a briefing, eh?

Eighth person in Trump Tower meeting is identified

An American-based employee of a Russian real estate company took part in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., bringing to eight the number of known participants at the session that has emerged as a key focus of the investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians.

Ike Kaveladze’s presence was confirmed by Scott Balber, an attorney for Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Balber said Kaveladze works for the Agalarovs’ company and attended as their representative.

Balber said Tuesday that he received a phone call from a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the weekend requesting the identity of the Agalarov representative, which he said he provided. The request is the first public indication that Mueller’s team is investigating the meeting.

Donald Trump Jr. agreed to take the meeting on the promise that he would be provided damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s presidential campaign, according to emails released by Trump Jr. last week.

[...]

Laundering Of Money Seen as 'Easy'

A Congressional inquiry has found that it is ''relatively easy'' for foreigners to hide their identities and form shell companies here that can launder money through American banks.

In a a nine-month inquiry that subpoenaed bank records, the investigators found that an unknown number of Russians and other East Europeans moved more than $1.4 billion through accounts at Citibank of New York and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco.

The accounts had been opened by Irakly Kaveladze, who immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991, according to Citibank and Mr. Kaveladze. He set up more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers and then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations, according to the report by the General Accounting Office, which has not been made public.

[...]

In an interview, Mr. Kaveladze said he had engaged in no wrongdoing. He described the G.A.O. investigation as a ''witch hunt.''

The G.A.O. report said nothing about the sources of the money. In view of past investigations into laundering, this wave was highly likely to have arisen from Russian executives who were seeking to avoid taxes, although some money could be from organized crime.

[...]

At current count, this brings the number of Russians participating in the Trump Tower meeting to four: Natalia Veselnitskaya, Anatoli Samochornov, Rinat Akhmetshin, and Irakly "Ike" Kaveladze.

Rinat Akhmetshin