I believe this is where I needed to begin about a month ago. The pneumonia is finally over. That was rough. Wow. But, 10 days of antibiotics and yogurt seemed to have straightened it out for now.
So, it is time to finish the counterintelligence section of the Special Council Report beginning Friday. That is the plan. I am just busy at the moment. So, Friday I will seek to finish reading this document over time.
d. Jared Kushner’s Continuing Contacts with Simes
Between the April 2016 speech at the Mayflower Hotel and the presidential election, Jared
Kushner had periodic contacts with Simes.648 Those contacts consisted of both in-person meetings
and phone conversations, which concerned how to address issues relating to Russia in the
Campaign and how to move forward with the advisory group of foreign policy experts that Simes
had proposed.649 Simes recalled that he, not Kushner, initiated all conversations about Russia, and
that Kushner never asked him to set up back-channel conversations with Russians.650 According
to Simes, after the Mayflower speech in late April, Simes raised the issue of Russian contacts with
Kushner, advised that it was bad optics for the Campaign to develop hidden Russian contacts, and
told Kushner both that the Campaign should not highlight Russia as an issue and should handle
any contacts with Russians with care.651 Kushner generally provided a similar account of his
interactions with Simes.652
Among the Kushner-Simes meetings was one held on August 17, 2016, at Simes’s request,
in Kushner’s New York office. The meeting was to address foreign policy advice that CNI was
providing and how to respond to the Clinton Campaign’s Russia-related attacks on candidate Trump.653 In advance of the meeting, Simes sent Kushner a “Russia Policy Memo” laying out
“what Mr. Trump may want to say about Russia.”654 In a cover email transmitting that memo and
a phone call to set up the meeting, Simes mentioned “a well-documented story of highly
questionable connections between Bill Clinton” and the Russian government, “parts of [which]”
(according to Simes) had even been “discussed with the CIA and the FBI in the late 1990s and
shared with the [Independent Counsel] at the end of the Clinton presidency.”655
The so called questionable connections were with Viktor Vekselberg known as the Russian Silicon Valley organizer. He would later be sanctioned by Barak Obama. But, a referral to the FBI and CIA occurred during the time of Secretary Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State, because, Vekselberg made donations to the Clinton Foundation. It is reported that Secretary Clinton assisted him to visit the USA silicon valley. The Former President Clinton had also made a speech in Russia and was paid $500,000. All this occurred while Russia and the USA were interested in engaging each other as friends after the Russian invasion into Georgia.
Skolkovo (click here) was the company headed by Vekselberg. Former President Clinton received permission (click here) to make his speech and to meet with Russians that directed a nuclear energy firm named Rosatom (click here). The trip to Rosatom was to benefit a Canadian company, Uranium One, in a potential sale of the company. This was a consolation prize after it was discovered Rosatom was attempting to take over of Kazakhstan's uranium. This all occurred between 2006 and 2007 before sanctions were placed on Russia and Russian citizens after the violation of the treaty protecting Ukraine.
Europe objected to the relationship with Canada and Russia, as a NATO member, because it was believed it would lead to economic and military espionage. The story goes on from there, but, the bottom line was even after the FBI, CIA and the Republican-controlled US House in 2017, there was no wrong doing. It is this sale of Uranium One that Trump demands more investigation regardless of the findings already a matter of record.
January 14, 2019
By Christina Maza
In the midst of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation (click here) into Russian election interference, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has quietly cut its ties with a Russian billionaire who was once on its board of trustees.
Viktor Vekselberg, the Switzerland-based co-founder of Russia's Renovo Asset Management Company, was nicknamed Russian President Vladimir Putin's "American oligarch." His wife and children live in the United States, and his businessman cousin Andrew Intrater is a U.S. citizen. Over the years, Vekselberg has used his Russian business activities to build ties with U.S. institutions, and Renovo works closely with the U.S.-based investment firm Columbus Nova, which is owned by Vekselberg's cousin.
Vekselberg became the president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Russia's answer to Silicon Valley, in 2010, and quickly began forming partnerships with MIT. He was invited to join MIT's board of trustees in 2013, and as recently as 2015 an MIT news bulletin named him one of eight people who would serve a five-year term on the MIT Corporation's board. MIT planned to work with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, a "tech center" based on the outskirts of Moscow, for around $300 million...
There is a profound difference between the relationship with Russia and the USA before the Ukraine invasion and afterward. Russia was still a member of the G8 before the Ukraine invasion. That is not the case now and the idea Trump's campaign was involved with Russia at any level including Trump's outrageous demands of Russia to find 30,000 emails when "The Deep State" couldn't is outside the parameters of appropriate.
Kushner
forwarded the email to senior Trump Campaign officials Stephen Miller, Paul Manafort, and Rick
Gates, with the note “suggestion only.”656 Manafort subsequently forwarded the email to his
assistant and scheduled a meeting with Simes.657 (Manafort was on the verge of leaving the
Campaign by the time of the scheduled meeting with Simes, and Simes ended up meeting only
with Kushner).
During the August 17 meeting, Simes provided Kushner the Clinton-related information
that he had promised.658 Simes told Kushner that,
Personal Privacy 659 Simes claimed that he had received this information from former
CIA and Reagan White House official Fritz Ermarth, who claimed to have learned it from U.S.
intelligence sources, not from Russians.660
Simes perceived that Kushner did not find the information to be of interest or use to the
Campaign because it was, in Simes’s words, “old news.”661 When interviewed by the Office,
Kushner stated that he believed that there was little chance of something new being revealed about
the Clintons given their long career as public figures, and that he never received from Simes
information that could be “operationalized” for the Trump Campaign.662 Despite Kushner’s reaction, Simes believed that he provided the same information at a small group meeting of foreign
policy experts that CNI organized for Sessions.663
648 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 27.
649 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 27.
650 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 27.
651 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 27. During this period of time, the Campaign received a request for a highlevel Campaign official to meet with an officer at a Russian state-owned bank “to discuss an offer [that
officer] claims to be carrying from President Putin to meet with” candidate Trump. NOSC00005653
(5/17/16 Email, Dearborn to Kushner (8:12 a.m.)). Copying Manafort and Gates, Kushner responded, “Pass
on this. A lot of people come claiming to carry messages. Very few are able to verify. For now I think we
decline such meetings. Most likely these people go back home and claim they have special access to gain
importance for themselves. Be careful.” NOSC00005653 (5/17/16 Email, Kushner to Dearborn).
Footnote 652 Kushner 4/11/18 302, at 11-13.
Footnote 653 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 29-30; Simes 3/27/18 302, at 6; Kushner 4/11/18 302, at 12; C00007269
(8/10/16 Meeting Invitation, Vargas to Simes et al.); DJTFP00023484 (8/11/16 Email, Hagan to Manafort
(5:57:15 p.m.)).
Footnote 654 C00007981-84 (8/9/16 Email, Simes to Kushner (6:09:21 p.m.)). The memorandum
recommended “downplaying Russia as a U.S. foreign policy priority at this time” and suggested that “some
tend to exaggerate Putin’s flaws.” The memorandum also recommended approaching general Russianrelated questions in the framework of “how to work with Russia to advance important U.S. national
interests” and that a Trump Administration “not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” The
memorandum did not discuss sanctions but did address how to handle Ukraine-related questions, including
questions about Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea.
Footnote 655 C00007981 (8/9/16 Email, Simes to Kushner (6:09:21 p.m.)).
Footnote 656 DJTFP00023459 (8/10/16 Email, Kushner to S. Miller et al. (11:30:13 a.m.)).
Footnote 657 DJTFP00023484 (8/11/16 Email, Hagan to Manafort (5:57:15 p.m.)).
Footnote 658 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 29-30; Simes 3/27/18 302, at 6; Kushner 4/11/18 302, at 12.
Footnote 659 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 30; Simes 3/27/18 302, at 6.
Footnote 660 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 30.
Footnote 661 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 30; Simes 3/27/18 302, at 6.
Footnote 662 Kushner 4/11/18 302, at 12.
Footnote 663 Simes 3/8/18 302, at 30.
April 24, 2019
Dimitri Simes’ (click here) interactions with the Trump campaign were of keen interest to the special prosecutor and he was heavily featured in the Mueller report. Simes, who immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union and is now President and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, gives his exclusive interview to Christiane Amanpour.
Continued in next entry.
A reminder of Dimitri Simes
