Russia Archives - The National Memo

Russia Probe: Oligarch Boasted Of US Influence After Trump Victory

December 9, 2018 4:27 am

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

Viktor Vekselberg is among the Russian oligarchs that Michael Cohen came into contact with during his years as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. The 61-year-old Ukraine-born Vekselberg has had business and political contacts in the U.S. for decades—and after the 2016 presidential election, reportedly bragged about his ties to the Trump Organization.

“Soon,” Bloomberg News reports in a new article, “Trump would be in the White House, and Vekselberg would be privately boasting of having the pull needed to help achieve the sanctions relief the Kremlin was craving.”

But sanctions relief, according to Bloomberg, is the last thing Vekselberg experienced after Trump was sworn in as president—and his U.S.…

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House May Investigate Don Jr’s Alleged Lies To Intelligence Committee

December 8, 2018 4:05 am

Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.

A member of the House Intelligence Committee says Donald Trump Jr. lied when he testified before Congress — and that Republicans helped him to cover up.

In an interview with CNN, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) revealed that she believes there were “at least two occasions when [Trump Jr.] lied to the committee” when he offered testimony about Russian election interference.

Speier further explained that her Republican colleagues prevented the committee from subpoenaing documents that could have disproved Trump Jr.’s testimony.

She described these Republicans as “puppets of the President” who were willing to ignore their constitutional duties just to protect Trump’s son.…

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Mueller Filing Blasts False Statements To Public

December 8, 2018 4:05 am

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

On Friday, two sentencing memos were filed against President Donald Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen — one by prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, recommending a sentence of around 51 to 63 months for tax evasion, bank fraud, illegal campaign finance, and lying to Congress, and one from special counsel Robert Mueller, who discussed his assistance in the Russia investigation.

Both of these documents are incredibly damning for Trump, with SDNY prosecutors strongly implicating Trump’s knowledge and consent to Cohen’s crimes. But perhaps one of the sections that should unnerve Trump most came from Mueller’s filing:

“By publicly presenting this false narrative, the defendant deliberately shifted the timeline of what had occurred in hopes of limiting the investigations into possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S.