They don't even bother to try and hide their affair anymore.
What did Trump and Putin talk about in their private G20 chat, previously undisclosed?
Russian real estate firm employee was mystery 8th person at Don. Jr.'s Trump Tower meeting
The eighth person present at that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in which Donald Trump Jr. hoped to get a hold of damaging, hacked info on his dad's Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton?
We now know that mystery eighth person at the Don Jr. meeting was Ike Kaveladze.
US intel caught Trump team talking with Russians in 2015, before presidential campaign began
In 2015, U.S. intelligence agencies monitoring the communications of Russian agents overheard them talking "about meetings held outside the U.S. involving Russian government officials and Trump business associates or advisers.”
That was before Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign began.
The Wall Street Journal reports that “In light of the release of emails Tuesday by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, investigators are going back to” early reports of chatter between Russians in the U.S. and members of Trump's inner circle, to see if they can better understand the intercepted conversations.
That "ransomware" attack was really a cyberattack on Ukraine
According to Kaspersky, the Petya ransomware that raced around the world this week wasn't ransomware at all, and there is no way to get back your files after it does its work (that's why it was so easy to shut down the email address the ransomware used to negotiate payments and decryption with victims whose computers had been taken over). Read the rest
Ukraine is Russia's testbed for launching devastating cyberwar attacks with total impunity
Ever since the Ukrainian "Maidan" revolution, the country has been subjected to waves of punishing cyberwar attacks, targeting its power grids, finance ministry, TV networks, election officials, and other critical systems. Read the rest
Mammoth pirates plunder Russian arctic for "ethical ivory"
Reporter Amos Chapple went on an expedition with Russians engaging in the illegal but lucrative "ethical ivory" trade: pulling long-buried mammoth tusks from the permafrost, often by illegally gouging out entire hillsides. Read the rest
The Russian Britney Spears Instagram hackers also used satellites to hide their tracks
Pity poor Turla, the advanced persistent threat hacking group closely associated with the Russian government who were outed yesterday for their extremely clever gimmick of using Britney Spears's Instagram account as a covert channel for controlling compromised computers in the field while protecting their "command and control" servers; today, Turla faces another devastating disclosure, a report that Turla exploited gaps in the security model of satellite TV and internet systems to make it possible for compromised computers to contact the C&C servers without revealing their locations. Read the rest
Russian malware communicates by leaving comments in Britney Spears's Instagram account
A key weakness in malicious software is the "Command and Control" (C&C) system: a central server that the malware-infected systems contact to receive updates and instructions, and to send stolen data. Anti-malware researchers like to reverse engineer malicious code, discover the C&C server's address, and then shut it down or blacklist it from corporate routers.
A vending machine in a Moscow shopping mall sells Instagram likes
Journalist Alexey Kovalev is in Moscow, whence tweeted this picture of "a vending machine in a mall for buying Likes for your Instagram pics." Read the rest
Sen. Mark Warner: Russia attacks on U.S. elections were way worse than NSA leaks and Intercept article suggest
What we already know is bad. But it's worse than we know.
Senator Mark Warner, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says Russia's attacks on our election systems were more broad in scope, and targeted more states, than what the leaked NSA documents published yesterday by The Intercept indicate.
Leaked NSA docs: Russian military hacked US voting software company, spearphished 122 election officials
An anonymously leaked Top Secret NSA report on Russian state hackers interfering with the US elections has been published by The Intercept, which had the documents independently analyzed by a who's-who of America's leading security experts. Read the rest
Senators Leahy, Franken asked Comey to investigate AG Jeff Sessions for possible perjury
CNN reports today that Patrick Leahy and Al Franken, two democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked former FBI Director James Comey to investigate Attorney General Jeff Sessions over concerns Sessions may have had an undisclosed private meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
House Intel panel to subpoena former WH aide Michael Flynn, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and others
The House Intelligence Committee issued seven subpoenas today, as separate House and Senate investigations involving the 2016 U.S. presidential election accelerate and expand in scope. Four of the House subpoenas reported today are related to the Russia investigation, and three focus on the so-called ‘unmasking’ controversy, say unnamed sources cited in stories out today by the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, among other news organizations.
Occam's Razor and 'the worst case' in Trump's Russia scandal align
TPM's Josh Marshall shares how Occam's Razor is coming into play, and the worst case scenario of corruption and scandal is quickly becoming the most likely. The simplest explanation of Kushner's alleged behavior is money from Russia, with love.
Via TPM:
Read the restWe’ve heard it claimed that this secret channel to Moscow Kushner and Flynn wanted to set up was to discuss the situation in Syria. That is simply not plausible. At least it couldn’t have been just about Syria as there are numerous legitimate ways to do that. If the conversations were about Syria and ISIS, which I find dubious, they must have included other topics which had to be hidden from the US government, the intelligence agencies and US military.
The most plausible ‘bad’ story behind the Trump/Russia mystery has always been some kind of financial preferment to members of the Trump family in exchange for lifting the sanctions put in place after the Russian annexation of Crimea and subsequent low-intensity incursions into eastern Ukraine. This wouldn’t come out of the blue. It would probably come in the context of some ‘deal’ over Syria or Ukraine or perhaps some agreement about global counter-terrorism cooperation. As I’ve written, there is a more ‘innocent‘ explanation as well. It may not be any quid pro quo. It could simply be years of doing business with Russians and people from other parts of the former Soviet Union which has made Trump inclined to see their needs in a sympathetic light. His hostility toward the sanctions regime could also be driven by the fact that, with his dependence on Russian and FSU investments and purchases, they likely hurt him directly.
Marc Kasowitz, tapped as Trump's private attorney in Russia probe, also represents Russia's largest bank
Fox News and Reuters report that U.S. President Donald Trump has retained New York-based trial attorney Marc Kasowitz to defend him in the escalating federal investigations involving Russia, espionage suspicions, and possible criminal activities.
Russia criminal investigation expands to include senior WH official close to Trump: WaPo
"The intensity of the probe is expected to accelerate in the coming weeks."
GOP leader in 2016 said ‘I think Putin pays’ Trump
A month before Donald Trump became the 2016 Republican presidential nominee, his ally House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said privately among GOP peers on Capitol Hill that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin makes payments to Trump.
