Trump’s ‘Operation Legend’ Getting Results

July of 2020, President Trump announced Operation LeGend.

Operation Legend was announced in Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Operation Legend is a sustained, systematic and coordinated law enforcement initiative in which federal law enforcement agencies work in conjunction with state and local law enforcement officials to fight violent crime. The Operation was first launched on July 8 in Kansas City, Missouri, and expanded on July 22, 2020, to Chicago and Albuquerque. Additionally, Memphis and St. Louis are part of the initiative.

President Trump sending federal agents into U.S. cities is part of “Operation Legend,” named after a 4-year-old boy who was killed while sleeping in his home last month.

LeGend Taliferro was fatally shot while he lay asleep at home in Kansas City, Mo., on June 29.

“My one and only child who fought through open-heart surgery at four months is gone due to senseless gun violence,” LeGend’s mother Charron Powell said during a press briefing about Operation Legend on Wednesday at the White House.

“Children are supposed to be our future, and our 4-year-old son didn’t make it to kindergarten,” she said.

Trump on Wednesday said he’s sending federal officers into U.S. cities “plagued by violent crime” as part of Operation Legend: Combating Violent Crime in American Cities. More here.

As for results that the media and Democrats wont report, consider the following:

  1. KANSAS CITY, Mo. – U.S. Attorney Tim Garrison announced today that 59 additional arrests have been made in the past week by local and federal law enforcement officers in Operation LeGend, for a total of 156 arrests since the start of the operation.Among those arrested since Aug. 1, new federal charges have been filed against six defendants, for a total of 17 new federal cases in Operation LeGend. All of the new federal defendants were charged with firearms-related crimes. Four of the six new defendants were charged with being felons in possession of firearms. One defendant was charged with heroin trafficking and illegally possessing a firearm. One defendant was charged with participating in a conspiracy to commit armed robberies at several local businesses.

    Among the remaining 53 arrests in the past week, 35 were fugitives with either state or federal warrants for their arrest. The remaining 18 non-fugitive arrests were referred for prosecution in state court. Seven arrests were for homicides, for a total of 12 homicide arrests under Operation LeGend. Other offenses cited in the arrests included assault (including non-fatal shootings), drug trafficking, illegally possessing firearms, robbery, bank robbery, child molestation, sexual assault, possessing stolen property and possessing stolen firearms.

  2. MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — Local and federal law enforcement officers have made 32 arrests and recovered 27 firearms since the mid-July commencement of Operation Legend in Milwaukee according to United States Attorney Matthew D. Krueger of the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Officials say those arrested include individuals alleged to have committed firearms-related offenses, as well as fugitives wanted for violent crimes, including homicide, armed robbery, and recklessly endangering safety.
  3. Three men charged with illegally possessing guns and ammunition are the first in Chicago prosecuted under Operation Legend, officials announced Friday.

    Darryl Collins, 30, of Dolton, is charged with one count of illegal possession of ammunition by a convicted felon. Romeo Holloway, 21, is charged with illegal possession of a firearm by felon. And Darryl Phillips 22, is charged with illegal possession of a machine gun, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

Under Operation LeGend, if you have any information on these cases, please contact the FBI at tips.fbi.gov

The Lincoln Project Expands to Senators

Primer:

Since its inception of The Lincoln Project last November — announced with a blistering New York Times op-ed — the brainchild of George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and John Weaver has raked in more than $19.4 million, according to FEC filings, and has needled President Trump repeatedly with provocative TV ads.

But the group — which the National Review on Monday dubbed “The Grifter Project” and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) last week dismissed as a “cabal of political consultants all in it for the money” — don’t exactly practice what they preach.

Co-founder Weaver, a political consultant known for his work on John McCain’s and John Kasich’s presidential campaigns, registered as a Russian foreign agent for uranium conglomerate TENEX in a six-figure deal last year, filings with the Department of Justice show.

TENEX’s parent company is Rosatom, a Russian state-owned corporation that also owns Uranium One — the company that paid Bill Clinton $500,000 in speaking fees and millions to the Clinton Foundation after then-President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed off on the controversial merger in 2010.

Weaver backed out of the lobbying gig in May 2019 and called it “a mistake” in a tweet in which he denied having taken any money from TENEX. Read more here.

The Lincoln Project (aka Grifter Project) Out to Destroy ...

The former GOP operatives behind The Lincoln Project are expanding their list of Republican targets, infuriating allies of President Trump‘s and national Republicans scrambling to preserve the GOP majority in the Senate.

In addition to a relentless negative ad campaign against Trump, the group has so far spent more than $1.3 million attacking Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), who is among the most vulnerable GOP senators up for reelection. That’s by far the most they’ve spent on any Senate candidate.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings reveal The Lincoln Project has also targeted more than a half-dozen other Republicans up for reelection in 2020, including Sens. Cory Gardner (Colo), Martha McSally (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), John Cornyn (Texas) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

The group is running ads in support of Democratic Senate candidate Steve Bullock in Montana and independent Al Gross in Alaska, who are seeking to unseat Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), respectively.

Reed Galen, a strategist for the group, told The Hill that “the Senate map has expanded” and that off-cycle Senate Republicans “shouldn’t believe their day won’t come.” The Lincoln Project has invested very small amounts in ads going after Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

Galen said the group is also “taking a look at the House,” with a potential announcement on that front coming soon. In addition, The Lincoln Project is planning a “substantive and robust” effort to encourage voters to send in mail or absentee ballots.

Lincoln Project Ad Gets Twice As Many Views In 12 Hours As ...

The Lincoln Project is taking heat from Republicans for backing challengers to blue-state GOP senators and moderates, such as Collins, who voted against Trump’s efforts to repeal ObamaCare. Galen defended the attacks, saying they’ll target anyone who they believe has inadequately fought back against Trump.

The Lincoln Project has gone viral with ad campaigns attacking Trump and any GOP senator they believe has not done enough to stand up to the president.

The group’s senior members were well-known Washington Republicans before they turned to electing Democrats. The team includes lawyer George Conway, the husband of White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, as well as veteran GOP operatives and strategists Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt and John Weaver.

Republicans working to reelect Trump and maintain the majority in the Senate are hitting back, alleging that the former GOP operatives are “grifters” who have taken up electing Democrats because they lost their cushy establishment jobs when Trump was elected.

They’re accusing The Lincoln Project of being a “scam” PAC that funnels money directly to firms with close ties to the founders.

“The Lincoln Project is comprised of grifters who are nothing more than agents of the Democrat Party,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Steve Guest. “Above all else, these political opportunists are solely concerned with making a quick buck for themselves.”

The Lincoln Project has routed millions of dollars through firms owned or run by two of its co-founders, Galen and Ron Steslow, the president of the consulting firm TUSK Inc. More here from The Hill.

2 Deadly Explosions Rock Beirut

President Trump along with officials at the Pentagon are calling this an attack.

Primer: Tensions in Lebanon are high for a number of reasons, one being that Hezbollah faces a United Nations tribunal verdict on Friday in relation to the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. The head of Lebanon’s domestic security service has ridiculed the notion that fireworks were involved. He told reporters that the incident is a result of highly explosive materials being stored in a port warehouse. Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim refused to give further comment pending the outcome of the investigation. It should be noted here that while Ibrahim has good links to Western intelligence and counterterrorism units, his central interest rests in maintaining Lebanese political stability in avoidance of another civil war.

This is a hyper-relevant concern in the context of very significant political tensions over Lebanon’s growing economic crisis and an associated increase of pressure on the Lebanese Hezbollah. Identifying the explosives as the cause, while saying they had been stored over a period of time, allows Ibrahim to put Hezbollah on notice without directly confronting the group. But why those explosives would be stored in a highly traveled population center and not on a military base is unclear.

AFP/ Beirut: Two huge explosion rocked the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday, wounding dozens of people, shaking buildings and sending huge plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.

Lebanese media carried images of people trapped under rubble, some bloodied, after the massive explosions, the cause of which was not immediately known.

A security source confirmed that two explosions shook the port area of the city, Lebanon’s largest urban area, leaving dozens wounded.

An AFP correspondent at the scene said every shop in the Hamra commercial district had sustained damage, with entire shopfronts destroyed, windows shattered and many cars wrecked.

 

Injured people were walking in the street, while outside the Clemenceau Medical Centre, dozens of wounded people, many covered in blood, were rushing to be admitted to the centre including children.

Destroyed cars had been abandoned in the street with their airbags inflated.

A huge cloud of black smoke was engulfing the entire port area, the AFP correspondent said.

The loud blasts in Beirut’s port area were felt across the city and beyond and some districts lost electricity.

“Buildings are shaking,” tweeted one resident, while another wrote: “An enormous, deafening explosion just engulfed Beirut. Heard it from miles away.”

Online footage from a Lebanese newspaper office showed blown out windows, scattered furniture and demolished interior panelling.

The explosions came at a time when Lebanon is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades, which has left nearly half of the population in poverty.

Lebanon’s economy has collapsed in recent months, with the local currency plummeting against the dollar, businesses closing en masse and poverty soaring at the same alarming rate as unemployment.

The explosions also come as Lebanon awaits the verdict on Friday on the 2005 murder of former Lebanese premier Rafic Hariri, killed in a huge truck bomb attack.

Four alleged members of the Shiite Muslim fundamentalist group Hezbollah are on trial in absentia at the court in the Netherlands over the huge Beirut suicide bombing that killed Sunni billionaire Hariri and 21 other people.

A woman in the city centre told AFP: “It felt like an earthquake … I felt it was bigger than the explosion in the assassination of Rafic Hariri in 2005”.

FBI Raids Cleveland and Miami Optima Mgmt Offices

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The FBI on Tuesday raided the Cleveland offices of a company with ties to a Ukrainian oligarch that owns several downtown buildings.

Fderal Bureau of Investigation's evidence response team removes boxes of evidence and computer hard drives from the Cleveland offices of Optima Management Group, August 4, 2020, at the One Cleveland Center building.  John Kuntz, cleveland.com

FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson said agents searched the offices of Optima Management Group in One Cleveland Center at East 9th Street and St. Clair Avenue. A spokesman for the IRS also said his agency’s investigators were present.

 

Optima is a conglomerate of companies across the United States that has interests in real estate in Cleveland, including One Cleveland Center, the 55 Public Square building and the Westin Cleveland Downtown. Its offices are visible from an entrance and windows on the side of One Cleveland Center, and on Tuesday multiple agents were seen carrying and moving computers, boxes and other items both inside the office and later as they loaded materials into a van.

Anderson said agents also executed search warrants at an office in Miami.

Federal authorities in Cleveland have been conducting a wide-ranging probe involving Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky that has been ongoing for quite some time. Kolomoisky is a principal of the Privat Group, a large Ukrainian business company, and principals of the company are also part of Optima.

Ukraine Billionaire Igor Kolomoisky Investigated For Money ... source

Optima had a much larger presence in Cleveland about a decade ago when it bought several buildings under the leadership of executive Chaim Schochet. Its presence in Northeast Ohio has dwindled in recent years.

Optima also controlled Warren Steel Holdings, a mill northwest of Youngstown that closed in 2016.

Kolomoisky and a fellow Ukrainian billionaire formed PrivatBank in the early 1990s. It became one of the Ukraine’s key financial institutions, according to Forbes. The Ukrainian government nationalized the bank in 2016 after an investigation suggested there was large-scale fraud over a decade-long period, Forbes reported.

The financial news outlet places Kolomoisky’s net worth at about $1 billion. He remains a complicated political figure in his home country. He is a former governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

Published reports said that Kolomoisky had refused to set up a meeting with President Donald Trump’s ally Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an attempt to dig up dirt against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden last year.

Kolomoisky’s attorney Michael Sullivan declined comment.

The Daily Beast reported that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in northern Ohio and FBI are involved in a wide-ranging probe that involves Ihor Kolomoisky and whether he committed financial crimes, including money laundering. It bases the assertion on three people briefed on the investigation and said the investigation has been under way for some time. The financial news outlet places Kolomoisky net worth at about $1.2 billion. The Daily Beast, citing The Financial Times, said he lives in Tel Aviv and remains a complicated political figure in his home country. He is a former governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

***

Just last year, the relationship between the Ukrainian president and the oligarch became a source of controversy when it was revealed that two US business partners running the infamous back-channel campaign in Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden went to Kolomoisky to set up a meeting between Zelensky and Rudy Giuliani. The meeting ended abruptly when the oligarch refused.

Kolomoisky returned to his native country last year after spending two years in self-imposed exile in the wake of a government takeover of PrivatBank, which he cofounded in the 1990s.

A subsequent investigation by Ukraine regulators found a $5.5 billion shortfall in PrivatBank’s ledgers from what they called “a large-scale and coordinated fraud” that involved the bank’s major shareholders, Kolomoisky and fellow Ukrainian billionaire Gennadiy Bogolyubov. To keep the bank from collapse, the government tapped into taxpayer funds to plug the hole.

Kolomoisky’s attempt to wrest control of PrivatBank has also stirred unrest, especially among lenders like the International Monetary Fund, prompting a vote by Ukraine’s parliament last week aimed at stopping Kolomoisky from taking back the bank.

With the ongoing US grand jury investigation, federal agents have traveled multiple times to Ukraine — including in February — where they met with Riaboshapka and investigators from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to discuss the case against the 57-year-old oligarch and his partner, BuzzFeed News has learned. In an interview, Artem Sytnyk, director of the anti-corruption bureau, said he’s cooperating with the FBI in an “ongoing investigation,” but declined to give details because of a confidentiality agreement with the FBI. The Justice Department’s international money laundering and kleptocracy team took part in the trip.

For more than a year, federal agents have tracked millions of dollars that were wired into the US from companies owned by Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov to snatch up properties — including four skyscrapers in downtown Cleveland — in a spending spree that began around 2008 and lasted for the next five years, according to court records and a source familiar with the investigation.

In all, $622.8 million was funneled to the companies that were used to buy the real estate, according to the suit.

In addition to Ohio, purchases include a sprawling Motorola factory in Illinois that was shuttered, a 31-story skyscraper in downtown Louisville, and an iconic office complex in Dallas that was once the headquarters of Mary Kay Cosmetics.

Money also went to buy at least a dozen steel and ferroalloys plants across the country — including facilities in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois, and Michigan — that collectively became major suppliers to the North American steel industry.

The lawsuit claims that many of the purchases were carried out with the help of three Miami investors described as “trusted lieutenants”: Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber, who held ownership stakes in the real estate, and Korf’s brother-in-law, Chaim Schochet, an executive who ran the properties. At least two of the Cleveland skyscrapers have since been sold, records show.

In a forensic audit done for Ukraine’s top regulatory agency, analysts found 95% of the bank’s corporate lending had been to “parties related to former shareholders and their affiliates.”

Marc Kasowitz, a New York attorney for the Miami investors, said the accusations in the lawsuit “will be shown to be complete fabrications when the evidence in this case comes out.” Kasowitz represented President Trump in the Justice Department’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. “Our clients have earned a well-deserved reputation for honesty and high integrity over the past 20+ years and this lawsuit is nothing more than a fictional orchestrated political attack on an investor in our clients’ businesses.”

Valeria Gontareva, former chair of the National Bank of Ukraine, the nation’s chief regulator, said the level of fraud on the institution was larger than any crime ever perpetrated on a Ukrainian bank. “We called it an expanding universe,” said Gontareva, now a senior policy fellow at the London School of Economics.

Kateryna Rozhkova, first deputy governor of the nation’s regulatory agency, told BuzzFeed News that when the losses were first discovered, “we were simply freaked out and didn’t know what we should do about it.”

The government ordered a sweeping audit of the bank’s finances by Kroll Inc., the New York–based corporate investigative firm, which alleged the scheme was set up to “disguise the origin and destination of loan funds” with the help of employees in the bank, regulators said.

The larger issue looming in Ukraine is whether Zelensky will allow the National Anti-Corruption Bureau to work with the FBI and carry out its own inquiry and whether the country will extradite Kolomoisky if he is indicted in the US, according to Roman Groysman, a former Florida prosecutor who once lived in Ukraine.

“Is [President Zelensky] going to pressure the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the prosecutor general to thwart the possibility of extradition — that’s the question,” said Groysman. “Or is he going to remain neutral and let them do their jobs? That’s the best thing he could do.”

He said NABU was set up at the request of the IMF with the help of the US and European Union to investigate corruption in Ukraine. It’s supposed to be impervious to political pressure.

“If it’s finally allowed to operate as an independent investigative agency and do what it was supposed to do without undue political interference, then maybe that’s a signal. If not, then it’s going to be the same thing we have always seen.” More here.

CIA Fought with FBI over Unvetted Steele Dossier

Except perhaps if you challenge former CIA Director John Brennan.

CIA Director John Brennan: ISIS Could Carry Out More ...

Poor lil John, he is trying to write a book and wants access to some of his CIA files and notes. That request has been denied. His book titled Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad, slated for release in October may not have some citations or chapters in it because he has been denied access to classified material. President Trump and his security clearance was apparently never revoked. Hummm.

Meanwhile, it appears the large share of the RussiaGate operation against Donald Trump is in fact owned by the FBI. There are some CIA operatives however that do need to be explained, beginning with Eric Ciaramella.

The FBI continued to rely on intelligence from Christopher Steele, the former British spy who alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, even after the CIA warned his allegations were “very unvetted,” according to newly declassified documents.

“We would have never included that report in a CIA-only assessment because the source was so indirect. And we made sure we indicated we didn’t use it in our analysis, and if it had been a CIA-only product we wouldn’t have included it at all,” the CIA’s deputy director of analysis told the Senate Intelligence Committee in an April 21 report.

The report, declassified on Tuesday, shows that the FBI successfully pushed to include Steele’s information in a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election after a “bitter argument” with the CIA.

While multiple claims by Steele have since been debunked by investigators, the bureau had also used Steele’s intelligence to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Then- FBI director James Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe argued that Steele’s information was relevant to the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election and lobbied the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to include Steele’s dossier in the January 7, 2017 ICA.

On Dec. 20, 2016, Comey had tried to include Steele’s information in the body of the ICA but John Brennan, then- CIA director, “pushed back,” saying he was “very concerned about polluting the ICA with this material.” The agency eventually agreed to add the information in a two-page annex to the ICA on Dec. 29, 2016.

An assistant director for an intelligence agency supported the annex’s information regarding Russia’s election-related efforts, but warned allegations of collusion involving members of the Trump campaign was uncorroborated, according to the report.

“I can tell you that there is no information coming from [redacted] sources that would corroborate any of that,” the official told the Senate panel, adding that Steele’s Trump-related information was “very unvetted.”

Brennan told the committee that someone in the British government had called him to clarify that they were not involved in creating the dossier.

“He wanted to make sure that I understood and that others in the senior officialdom of the U.S. government understood that that officer, Steele, had been a former [redacted] but had no current relationship with [redacted] and that dossier was not put together in any way with [redacted] support,” Brennan said. “So he wanted to make sure there was a separation there.”