Donald Trump, Jr by Nancy OhanianIt's been clear for over a year now that Putin crony and deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank, Alexander Torshin, was funneling Kremlin money into the Trump campaign through the NRA. I've been looking forward to Mueller laying out all the evidence on that one in precise detail when his investigation of how Putin stole the 2016 presidential election is completed. Now Michael Isikoff is reporting that the FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations implications Trump Jr and Torshin.
José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.
“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”The comments by Grinda were the first clear sign that the FBI may be investigating Torshin, possibly as a part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Torshin-- a close political ally of Vladimir Putin-- had multiple contacts with conservative activists in the United States during the election, seeking to set up a summit between the Russian president and then candidate Trump. Although the summit never transpired, Torshin did meet briefly with the president’s son at a private dinner in Louisville during the May 2016 annual convention of the NRA. A member of the NRA since 2012, Torshin has been a regular attendee of the group’s conventions in recent years and hosted senior members of the group in Moscow.Grinda said that the FBI, in its request for the evidence to the Guardia Civil, the Spanish National Police, provided no explanation as to why it was interested in the material and he didn’t ask for one. “I don’t have to ask them why they want this information,” he said. But Grinda added that if Mueller or any other U.S. prosecutor seeks to use the material as part of a court case, they would have to make a second, more formal request to do so to the Spanish government....Despite the suspicions about his ties to Russian money laundering, Torshin continued to travel frequently to the United States and even showed up as part of a Russian delegation in February 2017 to the National Prayer Breakfast, where he was at one point scheduled to meet with President Trump. (The meeting was canceled the night before, after National Security Council officials raised concerns about it.) More recently, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden sent multiple letters to the NRA asking about its ties to Torshin and other Russian figures, questioning whether Russian money was funneled to the NRA to help pay for the more than $30 million the group spent on political ads and get out the vote efforts during the 2016 election.
Benjamin Lamdy, writing for Vanity Fair, raised a silly question yesterday: Is Don Jr. A Criminal Or An Idiot? He knows the answer; everyone knows the answer. Meanwhile former FBI director, James Comey, fired by Trump in a major obstruction of justice move, was on Conor O'Brien Friday night. Comey asserted that Trump was making up his spy gate nonsense. Watch: