Qatari Investor Accused in Bribery Plot Appears w/ Michael Cohen in Picture Posted by Avenatti

Shown meeting w/ Cohen @ Trump Tower shortly after the election

MJN: 

Members of the Trump transition team appear to have met on December 12, 2016 with a group from Qatar that included Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, the former Qatari diplomat and current head of a division of Qatar’s massive sovereign wealth fund who is accused in a recent lawsuit of scheming to bribe Trump administration officials. 

Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, on Sunday shared an ambiguous tweet showing a group of unidentified men in a Trump Tower elevator with Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney. The photos include a person who appears to be Al-Rumaihi, who in late 2016 and 2017 was part of an aggressive Qatari effort to forge ties with members of the Trump administration. 

It has not previously been reported that Qataris, including Al-Rumaihi, met with Cohen in December 2016. Avenatti later followed up with another tweet asking why Cohen was meeting with Al-Rumaihi and Michael Flynn,
Trump’s former national security advisor...

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Documents Reveal How Russian Official Courted Conservatives In U.S. Since 2009

useful idiot

NPR: 

Kremlin-linked Russian politician Alexander Torshin traveled frequently between Moscow and various destinations in the United States to build relationships with figures on the American right starting as early as 2009, beyond his previously known contacts with the National Rifle Association. 

Documents newly obtained by NPR show how he traveled throughout the United States to cultivate ties in ways well beyond his formal role as a member of the Russian legislature and later as a top official at the Russian central bank. These are steps a former top CIA official believes Torshin took in order to advance Moscow's long-term objectives in the United States, in part by establishing common political interests with American conservatives...

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CHART: How Viktor Vekselberg + Other Russian Oligarchs are connected to Trump (& Each Other)

Dallas Morning News:

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Debt-Ridden Trump's Mysterious $400M CASH Property-Buying Spree Next to Come Under Scrutiny

As the ‘King of Debt,’ Trump borrowed to build his empire. 

Then he began spending hundreds of millions in cash...

The Washington Post:

In the nine years before he ran for president, Donald Trump’s company spent more than $400 million in cash on new properties -including 14 transactions paid for in full, without borrowing from banks- during a buying binge that defied real estate industry practices and Trump’s own history as the self-described 'King of Debt.' 

Trump’s vast outlay of cash, tracked through public records and totaled publicly here for the first time, provides a new window into the president’s private company, which discloses few details about its finances. It shows that Trump had access to far more cash than previously known, despite his string of commercial bankruptcies and the Great Recession’s hammering of the real estate industry. 

Why did the 'King of Debt,' as he has called himself in interviews, turn away from that strategy, defying the real estate wisdom that it’s unwise to risk so much of one’s own money in a few projects? And how did Trump -who had money tied up in golf courses and buildings- raise enough liquid assets to go on this cash buying spree..?

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FORGET Pee-Pee Tapes... the Kremlin Just Dropped a Bigger Bomb on the White House

John R. Schindler @ The Observer

As long as suspicion has surrounded President Donald Trump regarding his secret ties to Russia—that is, every day of his presidency—lurid rumors have swirled about what unpleasant things the Kremlin might know about the
Oval Office’s current occupant. In particular, tabloid-worthy speculation has it that the president’s unseemly personal habits were caught on video during his November 2013 visit to Moscow...

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History Will Show the Media Completely Butchered Coverage of the 'Access Hollywood' Tape

John Ziegler @ Mediaite 

The most important thing that consumers of the news media need to know is that the machinery of how news is produced is fundamentally broken. The bigger and more sensational a story is, and the more rapidly the story reported, the greater the chance that the reporting of that story will be dramatically screwed up... 

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