Dirty Tricks Behind The Dossier
In recently released testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a key participant at the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. admits to being present at the same security conference in Canada where Sen. John McCain was reportedly first informed about the anti-Trump dossier.
Russian-born Washington lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin says he might have spoken to McCain and the senator’s assistant David J. Kramer at the Halifax International Security Forum in 2016. However, Akhmetshin claimed that he did not discuss the dossier with McCain or Kramer, and that he didn’t know about the existence of the controversial dossier.
The information raises immediate questions about the possibility of dirty tricks in arranging the infamous Trump Tower meeting. This considering a recent Breitbart News report that email transcripts and other information disclosed in Akhmetshin’s testimony reveal a significant relationship between the lobbyist and the controversial Fusion GPS firm that produced the infamous, largely discredited anti-Trump dossier.
It was at the security conference in Canada in November 2016 that McCain says he was approached by Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and friend of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier.
Wood briefed McCain and Kramer, a former State Department official and longtime McCain associate who agreed to meet Steele in London for a fuller briefing on the dossier contents.
The Washington Post reported in February that after meeting with Steele, Kramer went to Washington and received the dossier document directly from Fusion GPS. McCain then passed the dossier to FBI Director James Comey.
In a New York Times op-ed in January, GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritch wrote that they helped McCain share their anti-Trump dossier with the Obama-era intelligence community via an unnamed “emissary.”
In testimony reviewed in full by this reporter, Akhmetsin describes attending the Halifax security conference in 2016, but claimed he played no role in the contact where Wood connected with McCain and Kramer to inform them of the dossier’s existence. Ahmetshin also claimed he was not aware of the dossier at the time.
Akhmetshin said he “might” have “said hi” to McCain but could not say for sure. In other words, Akhmetshin is claiming he is not certain whether he spoke to one of the most famous American politicians, something that would seemingly be quite memorable to most people.
The Russian lobbyist also said he “might have spoken with” Kramer but would not give a definitive answer.
Speaking to Fox News, Trump Jr. previously explained that he took the meeting thinking it was about “opposition research” on Clinton and was disappointed that it wasn’t.
Clapper Criticizes Iran Deal
James Clapper, director of National Intelligence under the Obama administration, issued rare criticism of aspects of the Obama-brokered international nuclear deal with Iran.
While defending the agreement as making the world “a lot safer,” Clapper revealed in his recently released book that he “felt we had given away too much for what we’d gotten from Iran.”
Clapper also wrote that he wished the deal’s so-called sunset clause were longer than ten years. The accord contains key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program that expire in a decade, with deal opponents arguing the agreement would allow Tehran to enrich uranium to weapons grade after the timetable for the restrictions passes.
Bill Clinton Tries To Rewrite History
Linda Tripp, a pivotal figure in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, said that Bill Clinton’s interview last week with NBC News demonstrates the former president fails to understand that he “abused an emotionally fragile child-woman, and literally damaged the trajectory of her life.”
Speaking to this reporter, Tripp said that the televised exchange with Clinton shows he thinks that “he alone paid a price.”
“Poor guy,” she continued. “The rest of his victims were handily dismissed with more denials and blame the victim tactics. His stunningly self-consumed arrogance was completely familiar to me but had to be revealing to those who only knew the public faces of the Clintons, masks firmly in place.”
In last week’s interview, NBC News’ Craig Melvin grilled Clinton about whether he would have dealt with the Monica Lewinsky extramarital liaison differently in light of the #MeToo movement. Entirely unmentioned during the interview were the numerous sexual assault and harassment allegations against Clinton, including those from Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Clinton of rape, as well as sexual assault accuser Kathleen Willey and sexual harassment accusers Paula Jones and former reporter Leslie Millwee.
Clinton utilized the interview to suggest that his critics are “omitting facts” to group him together with other men accused during the #MeToo campaign.
For Tripp, the interview actually exposed Clinton’s true colors.
“May I present to you, Ladies and Gentlemen, the real Bill Clinton,” Tripp stated. “He’s the one who bumbled through his Today Show interview revealing a curious mixture of sheer insensitivity and an acute sense of entitlement. With a straight face, he even hopped on the #MeToo bandwagon. Who knew? As the world’s most prominent and notorious lifelong abuser of women, that was one for the books. The utter irony appeared lost on him.”
“The mask has slipped,” she said. “That’s a big deal. And more than anything else, indicates the Clinton gig is really, blessedly and finally up.”