1. With each passing year, people gain a better understanding of what I was writing in my coverage of Trump-Russia before the election. This is the key story, and I am going to begin highlighting things folks now should be to understand far better... https://t.co/O8Dz01j0h2— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
2...now, the quick criticism of American journalism before I begin. The general reaction from the rest of the press as I wrote these deeply reported stories was "Too crazy to be believed." Then they would return to another Hillary email story. But the information was all....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
3...available if people just did the damn reporting. So, I will fill in a few blanks.— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
In September, 2016, I heard through the intel grapevine that a FISA warrant application had been filed related to someone connected to the Trump campaign. (This was proved much later.) I...
4...started calling around and reached key intel sources. I asked "Trump campaign?" No one would answer. Not no comment, not a wave-off. No answer whatsoever. I had never experienced that before.— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
I understood, however, that if the USA had information that would apply to....
5...a FISA warrant application for the Trump campaign, the information either could have come from a foreign intel service or have been shared with a foreign service. So I started contacting intel sources with foreign services.— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
And whooo-boy. What I heard. This is BEFORE the....
6...election. Our allies, and our partial allies who were enemies of Russia, were going berserk. They had heard endless amounts re: Putin, Trump, and they found Trump's behavior to be inexplicable. They concluded that Trump was either stupid, crazy, or a Russian asset by....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
7...being compromised or something else. If you look at this paragraph from my big Russia story, you will see that our allied intel services had concluded that, in his pre-election actions with Trump, Putin had the goal of disrupting NATA, which is exactly what happened.... pic.twitter.com/Ug7ktMxAha— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
8...now the phrase there that for the reasons they had to explain Trumps behavior - the last one was "misleading the American public for unknown reasons." I could not write what they actually said, because they did not have enough basis for making a conclusion. But....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
9....the "unknown reasons" were that Trump - through extortion, bribery or ideological reasons - was a Russian asset. This was later talked around by another source with British intel service. This person said below:..... pic.twitter.com/Y48gYlWR44— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
10...now here the person said "there certainly are a lot of conspiracy theories being bandied about." As you may realize, no reporter would let that go without asking. The answer: "That he's been compromised by the Russians." Now, they would not share any info with me to....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
11...establish that they knew this. BUT - and here is the big but - NEVER have I received so much cooperation on a story from so many foreign intelligence services. It felt clear to me that they were dying to provide signals to the US that something untoward was going on. And....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
12...the refusal even to no comment questions about the Trump campaign was unprecedented in my contact with anyone connected with American intel. In other words, nothing was normal in this. People were clearly unnerved by whatever they knew.— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
Now, as I was working on this....
13...I received my now-infamous call from an American intel person telling me to watch Sputnik that day, the Russian disinformation site. A falsified document shot through a twitter account that Mueller has identified as controlled by the Russians, was picked up from that....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
14...account by Sputnik, and then was recited by Trump, all within the course of three hours. What this means is that, out of the 100s of billions of tweets a day, somehow the Trump campaign nabbed one from a Russian conspirator, or pulled it from a Russian disinformation site...— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
15...and then publicly recited the false document as fact. My article about this came out within two hours of Trump's recitation. Sputnik launched an attack on me, and almost immediately, the Trump campaign was emailing links to the Sputnik attack on me to the reporters....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
16...covering the campaign. When I proved Trump had violated the Cuban embargo, the campaign stayed silent. When I revealed he was doing business with the son of an individual who was laundering money for the Iranian military, he stayed silent. When I exposed his enormous...— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
17...conflicts in his international dealings that would threaten national security if he was elected, he stayed silent. They ONLY went after me when I pointed out they had seized Russian disinformation, and they used an article in a Russian disinformation site to do it.....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
18...the bottom line: Our allies don't trust him. Never have. They believe he is working in tandem with Putin for the purpose of tearing apart NATO. The evidence was all there to begin with. Maybe, rather than scoffing at real reporting, rather than writing that "the FBI found...— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
19...no links to Russia in Trump campaign" just a couple of weeks after the primary investigation began (I.E. - they COULDNT have reached a conclusion by that time), maybe if they had stopped obsessing about her emails, and do the reporting to find out what was going on....— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
20...around the world, we wouldn't be faced with daily "no kidding" surprises.— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
A final note: When Russiagate finally took off, Newsweek asked me to write stories matching what other outlets were saying. I pointed out - it was all in my original story. So, for the first time....
..."what we had published" (I assume. Twitter really needs an edit function.)
21...in my career, and perhaps for first time in Newsweeks history, to "catch up" to story, we reprinted what he had published so many months before, pointing out that this was all known pre-election.— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
Yah, bugs me. Reporters need to report, not conclude without reporting.
Done.
22....actually, an addendum. The foreign intel sources named three particular people they were most concerned about. Read em....from pre-election. Names familiar? pic.twitter.com/DORIz4ZKc0— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) January 13, 2019
From Steven Beschloss:
That interpreter needs round-the-clock protection until the House can get him/her under oath. Our governent is being held hostage and our White House is being occupied by a Russian operative. https://t.co/hQc1N1EcLZ— Steven Beschloss (@StevenBeschloss) January 12, 2019
We are so embroiled in the worst scandal & political disaster for our country and our democracy that we almost can't see it for what it is. But we are approaching the moment when we'll learn why Trump cares more about what the Russian President thinks or needs than any American.— Steven Beschloss (@StevenBeschloss) January 13, 2019
Even with Fox shows now, Trump can’t help digging himself in deeper. He can’t even just say no when asked if he’s working for the Russians.— Steven Beschloss (@StevenBeschloss) January 13, 2019
This is what unraveling looks like. This is what happens when a criminal knows he’s running out of alleyways to escape.
Can’t say it enough: As sickening as Trump’s betrayal of America in service to Putin & the Russians is, the whole lot of Republicans who’ve aided & abetted this—for money, for power, for protection from blackmail, for what?— remains even more appalling.— Steven Beschloss (@StevenBeschloss) January 12, 2019
Yes, that’s a lot of white men around Reagan and Gorbachev (14, in fact). But it sure beats one lonely interpreter with the felonious Trump and Putin. https://t.co/2Yb340OEK0— Steven Beschloss (@StevenBeschloss) January 13, 2019
From Pete Souza:
From David Rothkopf:
If Trump had never met a Russian, he should be impeached for his corruption while in office. Had he never been corrupt, he should be impeached for trying to defraud the American people with hush money payments during the campaign.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
If he had never done that, he should be impeached for his obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation. If he had never done that, he should be impeached for his willful dereliction of his presidential responsibilities in Puerto Rico and elsewhere.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
If he had never done that he should be impeached for his serial violation of human rights and international law at our borders. If he had never done that he should be impeached for his decades of hidden tax fraud.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
If he had never committed those crimes, he should be impeached for his company's serial efforts to launder money or defraud customers worldwide. If he had never done that, he should be impeached for covering up the known crimes of his cabinet and senior staff members.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
If he had never done any of those things there are undoubtedly other high crimes & misdemeanors we do not yet know of,lies to the special prosecutor, providing secrets to our enemies, secret pacts with foreign leaders, participating in the cover up of the murder of a US resident.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
While a case can be made to hold off impeachment hearings until the Mueller investigation is done, there can be no doubt that while the founders created the impeachment remedy with president's like Trump in mind, they had no idea such wide-ranging egregious crimes...— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
...would ever be committed by a single president. Nor could they have ever imagined that one of their carefully considered "checks and balances",the power of the U.S. Congress to oversee and offset the president, would be so ignored or suppressed by leaders like Mitch McConnell.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
Some say we should wait to remove Trump in the 2020 election...and if he is not removed before, he should surely be removed then. But that said, with each day we see the extraordinary nature of the threat posed by this profoundly corrupt, incompetent, unfit man.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
Each day he is in office that office is diminished, the country is done a disservice, our alliances are weakened, our enemies are strengthened, the rule of law is undercut, and our futures are put more in question. He must go.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
The patriotic path is to constrain him until we can remove him. But remove him we must just as soon as we can.— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 13, 2019
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