Sam Nunberg just fucked Donald Trump so badly, that Michael Cohen just wrote him a check for $130,000.
— YS (@NYinLA2121) March 5, 2018
Erin Burnett has now accused him of being drunk (h/t to Cheryl for finding the tweet with the embedded video):
Here's CNN's Erin Burnett telling former Trump aide Sam Nunberg that she can smell alcohol on his breath. He says he hasn't been drinking. pic.twitter.com/tryye9AiqA
— Jim Dalrymple II (@Dalrymple) March 6, 2018
And in other news, the following also happened today:
An escort said she had more than 16 hours of audio recordings that could help shed light on Russian meddling in U.S. elections https://t.co/uMdImu3JFb
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 5, 2018
BANGKOK — A Belarusian escort with close ties to a powerful Russian oligarch said from behind bars in Bangkok on Monday that she had more than 16 hours of audio recordings that could help shed light on Russian meddling in United States elections.
The escort, Anastasia Vashukevich, said she would hand over the recordings if the United States granted her asylum. She faces criminal charges and deportation to Belarus after coming under suspicion of working in Thailand without a visa at a sex-training seminar in the city of Pattaya.
Ms. Vashukevich, who described herself as close to the Russian aluminum tycoon Oleg V. Deripaska, said that audio recordings she made in August 2016 included discussions he had about the United States presidential election with people she declined to identify.
“If America gives me protection, I will tell everything I know,” Ms. Vashukevich said on Monday. “I am afraid to go back to Russia. Some strange things can happen.”
Her assertion could be easy to disregard were it not for a 25-minute video investigation posted last month on YouTube by the Russian opposition figure Aleksei A. Navalny, which relies heavily on videos and photographs from Ms. Vashukevich.
Here’s Navalny’s expose video:
And this too:
NEW: Federal judge orders "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli to forfeit nearly $7.4 million—including his one-of-a-kind Wu Tang album & Picasso painting—to the US government, per prosecutors' request https://t.co/FAwmk1eQaj pic.twitter.com/598yHUOIwY
— Anna Massoglia (@annalecta) March 5, 2018
Update at 8:30 PM EST
Almost forgot this one:
A man who is critically ill after being exposed to an unknown substance in Wiltshire is a Russian national convicted of spying for Britain, the BBC understands.
Sergei Skripal, 66, was granted refuge in the UK following a “spy swap” between the US and Russia in 2010.
He and a woman, 33, were found unconscious on a bench at a shopping centre in Salisbury on Sunday.
Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury has been closed by police “as a precaution”.
The substance has not been identified, but Public Health England said there was no known risk to the public’s health.
Wiltshire Police are investigating whether a crime has been committed. They said the pair had no visible injuries but had been found unconscious at the Maltings shopping centre.
They have declared a “major incident” and multiple agencies are investigating. They said it had not been declared as a counter-terrorism incident, but they were keeping an “open mind”.
Col Skripal, who is a retired Russian military intelligence officer, was jailed for 13 years by Russia in 2006 for spying for Britain.
While the British authorities are investigating, this is not the first time this type of thing has happened to Russian nationals in Britain who have gotten crosswise with Putin. Buzzfeed ran a six part series on this last year. From part 1:
The British government is suppressing explosive intelligence that Alexander Perepilichnyy, a financier who exposed a vast financial crime by Russian government officials, was likely assassinated on the direct orders of Vladimir Putin.
Perepilichnyy, who faced repeated threats after fleeing to Britain, was found dead outside his home in Surrey after returning from a mysterious trip to Paris in 2012. Despite an expert detecting signs of a fatal plant poison in his stomach, the British police have insisted there was no evidence of foul play, and Theresa May’s government has invoked national security powers to withhold evidence from the inquest into his cause of death – which is ongoing.
Across the Atlantic, five current high-ranking US intelligence officials have warned that Britain is failing to get to grips with the increased threat from an emboldened Russia – and three of them have taken the extraordinary step of chastising British law enforcement. “The Kremlin has aggressively stepped up its efforts to eliminate and silence its enemies abroad over the past couple of years – particularly in Britain,” one senior US spy told BuzzFeed News. A second serving intelligence official said the “incompetent” British police “should have to answer for their actions and be held accountable” for shutting down any investigation into Perepilichnyy’s death.
So this is likely part of the wet work program that Putin has reinvigorated in recent years.
The intelligence pointing to a campaign of targeted killings in Britain comes amid mounting international concern that the Kremlin is brazenly interfering in the West, and as the investigation into Russian ties to President Donald Trump’s advisers gathers pace.
The Russian government passed new lawsgiving its agents a licence to kill enemies of the state abroad in 2006, the same year two assassins from the FSB, Russia’s spy agency, flew to London to poison the defector and one-time KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium. Last year, a British public inquiry found that Vladimir Putin had likely approved that assassination in an act of nuclear terrorism in the British capital that was impossible for the government to ignore. But high-ranking intelligence sources said other less glaringly obvious assassinations have gone unpunished.
Russian assassins have been able to kill in Britain with impunity over the past decade, 17 current and former British and American intelligence officials told BuzzFeed News. The reasons for Britain’s reticence, they said, include fear of retaliation, police incompetence, and a desire to preserve the billions of pounds of Russian money that pour into British banks and properties each year. As a result, Russia is making what one source called increasingly “bold moves” in the UK without fear of reprisals.
Walton said Russian assassins are often extremely adept at “disguising murder”. They are expert at staging suicides by planting evidence to make victims appear to have been depressed, counter-terror officers told BuzzFeed News, or even using drugs and psychological tactics to drive them into taking their own lives. In the case of state assassinations, Putin’s government had amassed “a suite of chemical and biological agents that were developed for targeted assassinations” so killers could do their work without leaving a trace, a former top-ranking MI6 official said. And Britain’s secret service was hamstrung in its ability to share intelligence pointing to Russian complicity, sources said, because of the need to protect confidential informants.
So even when intelligence strongly pointed to an assassination, police and intelligence sources said, there was often too little evidence to make a case stand up in court. In such instances, they said it could be easier to pronounce a death unsuspicious than to stoke diplomatic tensions and public alarm over an accusation of political assassination that probably wouldn’t stick.
I highly recommend the entire series.
Consider this an open thread!
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