For those following the how Robert Mueller is connecting the dots to how the Russians helped Donald Trump beat the odds and wiggle the job of President?
Here’s a quiet move by Mueller & Co. that will go unnoticed by IS important and HAS TO have Donald Trump and his legal team worried …..
It ‘s about Sam Patten, who just coped a plea with Mueller & Co. adding himself to list of people implicated and coming in from the cold in the operation that got Trump to be the 45th President of the United States, probably it is looking like, some what illegally…..
Who is Sam Patten? That’s what a lot of people were asking on Friday afternoon. Seems there’s a lot to unpack here.
- Sam Patten traveled in the same pro-Russian Ukranian circles as another longtime Republican insider — Paul Manafort, President Trump’s campaign manager during the key summer months of 2016, convicted last month of eight felony counts related to money laundering. In the mid-2010s, Patten — like Manafort — worked closely with the network of allies of ousted pro-Vladimir-Putin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, helping to reelect an ally as mayor of Kiev.
- Sam Patten had a close business and working relationship with a man that Mueller’s probe has identified as an active member of Putin’s intelligence network — a Russian spy. That man is Konstantin Kilimnik, also a close associate of Manafort and Manafort’s ex-partner Rick Gates, who also has pleaded guilty to felony charges and was a witness in Manafort’s recent trial. In 2015, as the American presidential campaign was starting to heat up, Patten and Kilimnik incorporated a business called Begemot Ventures International that promised to do political messaging at home and abroad.
- Sam Patten — and this is where it gets more interesting — took a detour in 2014 and worked in the Oregon office of Cambridge Analytica, the controversial firm that Trump’s campaign would later pay millions of dollars to use data it had mined, without authorization, from Facebook to conduct a stealthy social media campaign aimed at stirring up voter sentiment and tipping the election.
- Sam Patten — and this is where it gets even more interesting — also admitted during his guilty plea on Friday that he illegally steered $50,000 from a Ukrainian businessman closely tied to Yanukovych to allow him and two other Ukrainians to attend Trump’s inaugural festivities in January 2017. Foreigners are barred from donating to the inauguration. Patten’s admission opens a window into an event that raised over $100 million — far more than any prior inauguration — with major questions about how those dollars were spent.
- Sam Patten also acknowledged in court on Friday that he misled the Senate Intelligence Committee when he testified before the panel earlier this year — a potentially huge legal can of worms for Team Trump, given the web of often contradictory testimony that’s been presented to lawmakers and investigators so far.
Critically, Patten has promised to tell Mueller’s team and other prosecutors everything he knows. Despite the list of potential crimes, he pleaded guilty to just one felony count — failing to register as a foreign lobbyist while working on behalf of a Ukrainian political party — that carries a maximum of five years in prison. He definitely won’t serve that long, especially if he can help answer one of the biggest unanswered questions of 2016: Did Russia’s internet trolls get help from Americans in targeting U.S. voters…..
Note…
Anybody who thinks Robert Mueller is in a hurry, or will be done when Rudy Giuliani THINKS/HOPES he would be is fooling themselves….
Mueller seems to have a a LONG way to go to check out EVERYBODY involved in Trump’s campaign and election to the Presidency….
image…cbc.ca