{"id":6487,"date":"2018-12-27T14:09:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T19:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/susanwright\/?p=6487"},"modified":"2018-12-27T14:09:13","modified_gmt":"2018-12-27T19:09:13","slug":"cell-phone-signal-confirms-parts-of-disputed-trump-russia-dossier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/susanwright\/2018\/12\/cell-phone-signal-confirms-parts-of-disputed-trump-russia-dossier\/","title":{"rendered":"Cell Phone Signal Confirms Parts of Disputed Trump-Russia Dossier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Say,\u00a0 remember that Trump-Russia dossier, compiled by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, that pretty much acted as the genesis point for the congressional Russia probe?<\/p>\n

It was a disturbing bit of unsubstantiated info, commissioned first by the conservative website, the Washington Free Beacon, dropped, and then picked up as oppo-research by members of the Hillary Clinton campaign.<\/p>\n

Among some of the bits in the dossier were reports of secretive meetings between Trump associates and Russian officials, as well as an alleged \u201cpee-pee\u201d tape.<\/p>\n

The tape supposedly is of Donald Trump in Moscow, allowing Russian prostitutes to perform certain sexual fetish acts, involving bodily waste.<\/p>\n

Maybe that is why Clinton\u2019s team decided to stop pursuing the dossier. It all just seemed so ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Then again, Donald Trump was such a monumental screw-up as a candidate, that Hillary Clinton, in her entitled, self-absorbed arrogance, felt she didn\u2019t need any extra help. She had the election in the bag.<\/p>\n

All of the polls certainly gave her reason for confidence.<\/p>\n

She was so confident, she blew off flyover states, feeling she didn\u2019t need them.<\/p>\n

It would prove fatal for her chances.<\/p>\n

The polls were right, of course. She won the popular vote, but polls aren\u2019t really set up to predict electoral vote counts, and that\u2019s where she failed.<\/p>\n

Oh, well. She was a horrendous choice and would have been an equally horrendous president, almost as scandal-ridden as the current occupant of the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

But back to the dossier\u2026<\/p>\n

Christopher Steele was not unknown to the FBI. He\u2019d been used as a source before, and was considered reliable.<\/p>\n

He has said that he felt an urgency over the information surrounding Team Trump and their connections to the Kremlin. He needed to get the information to someone in authority, before the election, even though his clients had decided against pursuing the information in the dossier.<\/p>\n

For the past several years, there has been a lot of back and forth, regarding the details in the dossier, with Trump proponents claiming the details to be false.<\/p>\n

The reality is, it\u2019s not so much \u201cfalse,\u201d as some of those details have remained unsubstantiated.<\/p>\n

Today, McClatchy<\/a> is reporting on one crucial portion included in the dossier, that, if true, could be a proverbial game changer.<\/p>\n

So, this one detail that has come under scrutiny puts former Trump attorney and \u201cfixer,\u201d Michael Cohen, in Prague, meeting with Russian officials.<\/p>\n

The purpose, according to the dossier, was to coordinate with Russian hackers (more appropriately called \u201cKremlin intelligence\u201d), in regards to election meddling.<\/p>\n

That seems like too much of a slam dunk to be true, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Cohen has denied he was ever in Prague, telling ABC News at one point, that he\u2019d never \u201cwalked the land\u201d in Prague, and that he had no passport stamps that would put him in the area.<\/p>\n

Maybe not.<\/p>\n

What McClatchy is reporting today, however, is that there are electronic records of his presence in Prague, late in the summer of 2016.<\/p>\n

A cell phone traced to Cohen \u201cpinged\u201d cell phone towers in Prague, according to four sources with knowledge of the revelation.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n

An Eastern European intelligence agency picked up conversations among Russians, with one of them mentioning that Cohen was in Prague.<\/p>\n

The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy\u2019s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump\u2019s campaign and Russia\u2019s election meddling operation.<\/p>\n

The dossier, which Trump has dismissed as \u201ca pile of garbage,\u201d said Cohen and one or more Kremlin officials huddled in or around the Czech capital to plot ways to limit discovery of the close \u201cliaison\u201d between the Trump campaign and Russia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So does special counsel Robert Mueller know about this?<\/p>\n

According to McClatchy, he does.<\/p>\n

They reported in April\u00a0 of this year that Mueller had evidence to support reports of Cohen traveling from Germany to Prague in August or September of 2016, well after Trump was named the GOP nominee.<\/p>\n

Cohen pleaded guilty to a number of charges, ranging from bank and tax fraud, to campaign finance law violations, involving the payoff to several of Donald Trump\u2019s mistresses.<\/p>\n

Most recently, he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and was sentenced earlier this month to three years in prison.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also indicated that he has been cooperating fully with special counsel, in regards to the Russia probe, but interestingly enough, still denies being in Prague.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s refused to answer too much about that subject, saying he doesn\u2019t want to do anything that would disrupt special counsel\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n

The spokesman for Mueller\u2019s office has refused to comment, as well.<\/p>\n

So who is talking?<\/p>\n

Lanny Davis, the attorney and longtime Democratic operative, is now acting as Cohen\u2019s spokesman. He insisted earlier this week that his client told them truth, when he denied being in Prague.<\/p>\n

Cohen \u201chas said one million times he was never in Prague,\u201d Davis said. \u201cOne million and one times. He\u2019s never been to Prague. \u2026 He\u2019s never been to the Czech Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis, however, is no longer part of Cohen\u2019s legal team. He acknowledged that he has not been fully briefed on what Cohen has told Mueller\u2019s investigative staff in some 70 hours of interviews dating to last August, when Cohen pleaded guilty. Earlier this month, Mueller advised Cohen\u2019s sentencing judge that Cohen has provided substantial assistance in four areas, including in \u201ccore\u201d areas of the Russia inquiry. Mueller did not elaborate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Davis also had nothing to say about the foreign intelligence that puts Cohen in or at least quite near Prague.<\/p>\n

I would think that something this potentially explosive is not something they would want to let out of the bag, too soon.<\/p>\n

Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said that if disclosures of the foreign intelligence intercepts are true, \u201cThis is a very significant break, because it looks like a direct link between Donald Trump\u2019s personal fixer and Russians most likely involved in the disruption of our election.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would prove that lying was going on, not only about being in Prague, but much beyond the Prague episode,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It still doesn\u2019t pin down some of the more critical parts of the dossier, such as explaining why Cohen was there, or what was discussed.<\/p>\n

The dossier, which was gleaned from Steele\u2019s intelligence sources from the Kremlin adds details such as who attended the meeting.<\/p>\n

One name was Konstantin Kosachev, a member of the Russian Senate, as well as chairman of the Federation Council\u2019s Foreign Affairs Committee. He served as the facilitator.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s big, if true, simply given Kosachev\u2019s status.<\/p>\n

He, like Cohen, has denied being in Prague in 2016.<\/p>\n

Among the goals of the meeting, the dossier said, was to limit negative news reports about the Russia-friendly relationships of two Trump campaign aides\u2014 foreign policy adviser Carter Page and just-ousted campaign Chairman Paul Manafort \u2014 and to ensure that European hackers were paid and told to \u201clie low.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the foreign intelligence about Cohen does not confirm a meeting even occurred, it provides evidence that he traveled to the Czech Republic, where the sources said his phone was momentarily activated to download emails or other data.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a lot, and I\u2019m sure there will be more questions regarding the specifics surrounding this new information.<\/p>\n

For now,\u00a0 there is only speculation, at least, for the public.<\/p>\n

You can rest assured, however, that if Mueller has this info (and he does), he\u2019s using all the resources at his disposal to pin down what he needs for his work.<\/p>\n

Mueller\u2019s team have already secured indictments against 25 Russians for their part in meddling in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say,\u00a0 remember that Trump-Russia dossier, compiled by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, that pretty much acted as the genesis point for the congressional Russia probe? It was a disturbing bit of unsubstantiated info, commissioned first by the conservative website, the Washington Free Beacon, dropped, and then picked up as oppo-research by members of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3473,"featured_media":1988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1558,41,1555,443,1561,44],"class_list":["post-6487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christopher-steele","tag-donald-trump","tag-prague","tag-robert-mueller","tag-russia-dossier","tag-russia-probe"],"yoast_head":"\nCell Phone Signal Confirms Parts of Disputed Trump-Russia Dossier<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A phone, belonging to Michael Cohen, "pinged" cell phone towers in Prague, in the late summer of 2016.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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