How the Russia inquiry began: Trump aide told Australian diplomat Russia had dirt on Clinton

The FBI reportedly launched its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election after George Papadopoulos, then a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump, told an Australian diplomat that Moscow had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

According to a report published by the New York Times on Saturday, Papadopoulos made the revelation to Alexander Downer, the Australian high commissioner to the UK, “during a night of heavy drinking” at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London in May 2016.

Papadopoulos reportedly told Downer that Russian officials possessed thousands of emails that could harm Clinton’s candidacy.
www.theguardian.com...

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

It's a good thing Trump only hires the best people. Imagine the kind of trouble he would be in if he were making poor choices there. That's hard to imagine.

This whole thing seems more like the plot of a thriller than real life.

1. Trump gets into hot water with the FBI because his "coffee boy" gets drunk and claims collusion that never happened.

2. Trump is completely sidetracked by the investigation, and he obstructs justice because of it.

3. Trump gets impeached after the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in 2018 due to his obstruction of justice. He remains in office because the GOP won't remove him from office in the Senate.

4. Trump is too wounded politically to win reelection...

All because the "coffee boy" got drunk one day.

It's a good thing Trump only hires the best people.

i think u need to take a step back and think about the past and what was going on at the time. remember all those emails wikileaks released that everyone wants to claim were from the russians even though assange has never ever said it came from the russians and has always maintained it came from a whistleblower within a party. so anyone, especially a drunk person talking about the emails would most likely have heard the same crap from the media about the emails. btw it was well known prior to may of 2016 that assange had hill's emails. so the dates used in this article are suspect as hell. maybe take the 30 seconds it took me to inform yourself next time. if its true that they really used this drunken guys words to launch the investigation then its worse then the dossier

a reply to: TheScale

Amazing how many start threads without actually reviewing their own info , huh ?
"But , but , it was in the glorified headline (and that is all I read) " say these folk
And this US news(?) came straight from a Russian or British article. They should know , right ?
The only star I will be giving on this thread belongs to you.

a reply to: Gothmog

The scenario I wrote about in the original post is fairly likely.

Predict.org is giving the Democrats a 60% chance of taking control of the House of Representatives in 2018.

www.predictit.org...

Trump committed obstruction of justice because of Mueller's investigation in my opinion.

Diane Feinstein: Senate committee building obstruction case against Trump


www.youtube.com...

I read that piece... I bailed out after the first few sentences. There is a clear effort at "conflation", even assuming that everything being told in the NYT story is FACTUALLY correct.

That's how things work nowadays.

No one remembers... because it was scrubbed from the narrative very quickly after the "Clinton e-mail scandal" became a thing in all the media (because it WAS newsworthy)... but anyone who has even the most cursory understanding of Server OSs and network security KNOWS that the Clinton Server was compromised by our enemies and probably most of our "allies". Hell, Comey's original document, regards to foreign penetration described it... "... was almost certainly compromised." He was being generous.

What I say next will offend some folks... but please understand... I am speaking ONLY of reality here... not trying to be personally antagonistic... if you think the Clinton Server was NOT an open door, and completely exploited by every manner of foreign and domestic persons with interest in it... you are a gullible idiot.

I also feel very comfortable saying it is not your fault... because you don't have a working knowledge of servers, the OS they run... and network security considerations.

Anyway... my point is just, the NYT article is just a repackaging of another version of a tired story... that has so many holes in it, that only followers of the DNC Devotion Religion believe it.

a reply to: dasman888

This is a video from Jimmy Dore, "The Aggressive Progressive" , a guy who despises Donald Trump.

Mmmmuuuhahahah......

Now you know the secret.....of Who Really runs the World....

Its the Australians!!!

Assange is an Aussie.

Downer purposely got the Greek drunk, so he couldn't remember what he was blurting......

Murdoch, the pretend American.

Ah Haaa the secret is out.

We just pretend we are Down Under!!!.

How the Russia inquiry began:

“during a night of heavy drinking”

Weak sauce.

It seems this guy was a Democrat operative whose mission was to join the Trump campaign and then tell this Australian diplomatic this so FBI can bug Trump tower and collect intel to help Hillary in the election.

a reply to: TheScale

It looks like the e-mails were released by Wikileaks in July 2016 - two months after Papadopolous knew about them.

The 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak is a collection of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails stolen by Russian intelligence agency hackers and subsequently published (leaked) by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016.

Wikipedia: DNC Leak

Do you have a source or a link or something that shows that people knew the Russians or Wikileaks had these e-mails prior to May? I did a custom Google search using the dates January 1st to May 31st and found nothing indicating that anyone was talking about DNC e-mails and Wikileaks during that time period.

In fact, I believe this is the first time the public knew about it:

June 12, 2016 - During an interview on British television, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that the website has obtained and will publish a batch of Clinton emails.

CNN

There were, however, other Hillary Clinton e-mails released at the time that came from her private server. But these were not owned by Russia.

On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State.

Wikileaks

So this first batch of e-mails, from Hillary's private server, was released by the time Papadopolous got drunk. Is this what he was talking about?

Let's look deeper. At this point, I'm seriously interested and have no idea which e-mails PapaD was talking about. Where did Papadopoulos (okay, I seriously hate spelling this guy's name) get his information?

Less than a month earlier, he had been told that Russia had emails that would embarrass the former Secretary of State. That information came courtesy of Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with contacts in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who, in April 2016, told Papadopoulos he’d learned the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

Vox

All right, so when did PapaD get his information?

Papadopoulos affirms that an “overseas professor” whom he “understood to have substantial connections to Russian government officials…told him about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails.’” Papadopoulos says he was told this in April 2016, weeks after the hacking of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s e-mail account and months after the targeting of the Democratic National Committee began.

TheNation

All right... that was informative, apparently, PapaD and the Professor thought the Russians had e-mails, not Wikileaks. This would mean that they were more than likely talking about the DNC hack, which happened in March 2016, right before PapaD got his intel.

In March 2016, the personal Gmail account of John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff and the chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, was compromised in a data breach, and a collection of his emails, many of which were work-related, were stolen.

Wikipedia: Podesta E-mails

a reply to: darkbake

May 5 2016, 2:32 am ET
Hacker ‘Guccifer’: I Got Inside Hillary Clinton’s Server

by Cynthia McFadden, Tim Uehlinger and Tracy Connor

The Romanian hacker who first exposed Hillary Clinton’s private email address is making a bombshell new claim — that he also gained access to the former Secretary of State’s “completely unsecured” server.

“It was like an open orchid on the Internet,” Marcel Lehel Lazar, who uses the devilish handle Guccifer, told NBC News in an exclusive interview from a prison in Bucharest. “There were hundreds of folders.”

NBC news

This article is dated the same month as Papadopolous is said to have had his inebriated bout of blathering.

In March 2015, it became publicly known that Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as United States Secretary of State, had used her family's private email server for official communications, rather than official State Department email accounts maintained on federal secure servers. Those official communications included over 100 emails which contained classified information at the time they were sent, as well as nearly 2,100 emails which were not marked classified but would retroactively be ranked as classified by the State Department.

Wikipedia

How difficult would it be imagine that, knowing of Hillary's use of a private server, there would be dirt to be had about her?

BULLSH1T

The FBI are creating a cover story.

Using the Steele dossier was illegal to start the investigation. they know it and its obvious they were going to be called out on it.

So they create this alternative story that the investigation kicked off because of a comment made during a drinking session with lapdog aussie politicians?

What a load of crap

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Papadopolous got his information from Joseph Mifsud, who had contact with Russia. He also got the information in April 2016, which is prior to May 5, 2016, when Guccifer announced he had made it on to Hillary's private server. Wikileaks had already published the e-mails from Hillary's server by this time on March 16, 2016.

Was Papadopoulos talking about Russia having Hillary's e-mails even though they had already been released by Wikileaks? Or was he talking about the DNC e-mails, which hadn't been released yet?

a reply to: darkbake

Hm, Misfurd tells Papadopolous that:

the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

And a year three years prior to that Guccifer burst on the scene with:

confidential memos to Hillary Clinton that were stolen from the e-mail account of a former White House aide, a hacker has distributed some of the documents to a wide array of congressional aides, political figures, and journalists worldwide.
...
Though two IP addresses connected to the hacker’s recent online maneuvers have been traced to the Russian Federation, TSG has learned.

The Smoking Gun

a reply to: Agit8dChop

It sounds to me like there were multiple reasons for starting the investigation. The dossier was just one of them. I've been hearing stories of other red flags regarding Trump's campaign and Russia, as well.

Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added. Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

Also:

The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.

The Guardian: British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

You are correct, I got the date wrong regarding Guccifer's announcement. Your date actually makes more sense, as it was before Wikileaks released e-mails from Hillary's private server - which happened before Papadopolous heard about Russia having access to thousands of e-mails that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.

How did you cross out some text in one of your posts? I want to do that in my previous post where I made an error. Thanks.

a reply to: darkbake

If the FBI is going to try and hang their hat on Papadopolous' "night of heavy drinking," at a wine room, then their causes for investigation are even less substantial than before.

How did you cross out some text in one of your posts? I want to do that in my previous post where I made an error. Thanks.

use the [strike][/strike] bbcode

a reply to: antiantonym

Bill Clinton was impeached bc he lied about a BJ. He was not convicted in the Senate b/c a 2/3 majority of Senators is needed to find a conviction and removal from office.

Trump MAY be impeached for obstruction of justice bc he obstructed justice in the most classic sense there is. He told the cop (Comey) lay off Flynn, and "there is no Russia" and then fired Comey when he didn't.

Trump will not be convicted in the Senate unless the evidence that he actually colluded (the Republican Senators will think obstruction isn't enough to remove from office) with Russia to a significant degree.

I don't know if there is evidence that Trump actively colluded with Russians. I will wait for the report to find out.

I don't have any question that Trump has/had gigantic loans from Russian banks, controlled by Putin cronies, and therefore Russians have significant leverage over Trump, which means Trump will never do anything against the Russians, as proven by his refusal to even investigate Russian attempts to access U.S. voter databases, AND actively try to get Trump elected.

Trump fails to realize that the fact that Putin did a great deal to favor Trump and manipulate the election doesn't the least bit mean that Trump's done anything wrong. There's NO question Trump couldn't have forced Putin to do anything.

If Trump is completely compromised by Putin and there's evidence he agreed to do things for the Russians as president, if if if if if that happened and is proven with evidence, every single American everywhere should insist he be booted out of office. You do not agree to help another country in order to help yourself. You're a traitor.

But, the Fox News crew will NOT wait to see the evidence from the investigation and are intent upon killing the messenger prior to it, trying to make it sound like firing Mueller would be good.

That's plain awful. Every American should want to see whether evidence is found. If it isn't, then Trump has absolutely nothing to worry about.

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: TheScale

It looks like the e-mails were released by Wikileaks in July 2016 - two months after Papadopolous knew about them.

The 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak is a collection of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails stolen by Russian intelligence agency hackers and subsequently published (leaked) by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016.

Wikipedia: DNC Leak

Do you have a source or a link or something that shows that people knew the Russians or Wikileaks had these e-mails prior to May? I did a custom Google search using the dates January 1st to May 31st and found nothing indicating that anyone was talking about DNC e-mails and Wikileaks during that time period.

In fact, I believe this is the first time the public knew about it:

June 12, 2016 - During an interview on British television, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that the website has obtained and will publish a batch of Clinton emails.

CNN

There were, however, other Hillary Clinton e-mails released at the time that came from her private server. But these were not owned by Russia.

On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State.

Wikileaks

So this first batch of e-mails, from Hillary's private server, was released by the time Papadopolous got drunk. Is this what he was talking about?

Let's look deeper. At this point, I'm seriously interested and have no idea which e-mails PapaD was talking about. Where did Papadopoulos (okay, I seriously hate spelling this guy's name) get his information?

Less than a month earlier, he had been told that Russia had emails that would embarrass the former Secretary of State. That information came courtesy of Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with contacts in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who, in April 2016, told Papadopoulos he’d learned the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

Vox

All right, so when did PapaD get his information?

Papadopoulos affirms that an “overseas professor” whom he “understood to have substantial connections to Russian government officials…told him about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails.’” Papadopoulos says he was told this in April 2016, weeks after the hacking of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s e-mail account and months after the targeting of the Democratic National Committee began.

TheNation

All right... that was informative, apparently, PapaD and the Professor thought the Russians had e-mails, not Wikileaks. This would mean that they were more than likely talking about the DNC hack, which happened in March 2016, right before PapaD got his intel.

In March 2016, the personal Gmail account of John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff and the chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, was compromised in a data breach, and a collection of his emails, many of which were work-related, were stolen.

Wikipedia: Podesta E-mails

yeah the whole problem is whats real, whos telling the truth and is there any proof of it whatsoever. your dates from march about the initial 30k dump is correct and prior to that we had word that wikileaks had them for quite some time so it was public knowledge for awhile with alot of random theories around it. what i find most interesting about your qoutes is that a maltese professor told them back then during an investigation into hillary's illegal server and yet they use that knowledge to go after trump for some reason? not to use it to figure out if those are in fact emails hacked from hillary's own server, proving the fact that it put sensitive information into the hands of the russians due to her gross negligence.

looking in from the outside with stuff like this its really shocking as we find out just how screwed up so many facets of our nation are and im not sure we will ever be able to figure out the truth cause not one person knows whats real or fake any longer, even the major players i think have been lost in a mess of smoke and mirrors

a reply to: TheScale

I absolutely believe that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections, and was responsible for hacking the DNC. I think Russian interference (without anything to do with Trump) is a real issue that has a factual base. The intelligence community is almost certain that Russia will attempt to interfere in the 2018 elections, too. Russia even attempted to hack into many election machines in 2016, and although they were not successful this time, they could be in 2018.

As far as Trump goes, I am not convinced he colluded with Russia. I do think that the intelligence community had enough intel to justify looking into the matter. I also think that Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Papadopoulos were doing shady things, maybe a few other people on Trump's team, and that could have caught the attention of the intelligence agencies.