1) Boris Epshteyn: Russian Intelligence Embed for Trump's 2016 Presidential Campaign

Epshteyn hasn't gotten nearly the attention he deserves, so I want to lay out the context for one of the key events he was involved in surrounding Trump's 2016 liaison with the Kremlin.

2) Let's go back to the December 2015 dinner for RT (Russia Today) in which Michael Flynn sat beside Vladimir Putin. We can learn a lot about what was to come just by observing the identities of who else joined these two at the dinner table.

3) Let's focus for this thread on Sergey Ivanov and Dmitry Peskov. You can see their respective roles in Putin's Presidential Adminstration in the picture above, with Ivanov being Putin's Chief of Staff and Peskov being his Spokesman or Press Secretary.

4) But, beyond this, the Steele dossier tells us that Peskov and Ivanov were key, rival figures in the Kremlin's election interference operation in support of Trump. Most importantly, Peskov is known to have close ties to the FSB (think NSA) and Ivanov to the SVR (think CIA).

5) Keeping that in mind, notice what @MingGao26 reminded us this morning by posting the below image. In the context of Trump Tower Moscow discussions, Felix Sater established a precedent of getting important messages to Putin by passing the Kremlin tailored recordings of Trump.

6) Once Manafort comes onto the campaign in March, the Cohen-Sater connection will recede somewhat in importance, only to reemerge in August when Manafort is fired from the campaign. However, the precedent of passing secret recordings from Trump to Putin has now been established.

7) Warrant affidavits show that, two months later, Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi meet privately with someone who is likely Aras Agalarov. I have argued that at this meeting Agalarov informed the Trump team of impending criminal charges ("October surprise") for human trafficking.

8) Two weeks later, at the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya, the Russians inform Trump what they want in exchange for not bringing charges: the dropping of the Magnitsky sanctions. But, as Kaveladze notes, the meeting was abortive because the needed lawyers weren't present.

9) If the charges drop, Trump loses not just the election, but Trump Tower Moscow and his entire business empire because of the punitive measures of the Dima Yakovlev Law under which he would be charged. He needs a way to communicate his openness to cutting a deal with Putin.

10) At this point, Louise Mensch (before it became clear she was going to go through some things for releasing extremely sensitive information) tells us what happened next. https://patribotics.blog/2017/04/16/carter-page-went-to-moscow-with-a-tape-of-donald-trump-offering-treason-for-hacking/

11) Manafort, who has a GRU cutout in Konstantin Kilimnik, also has an FSB cutout in Boris Epshteyn and an SVR cutout in Carter Page. Epshteyn denies being an actual agent, but Page admitted in his FBI interviews to being a "top level source" who passed information to the SVR.

12) Thus, these three huddled together, perhaps with Trump himself, to strategize how to signal Trump's openness to Putin's offer. You can see Epshteyn and Page working together a bit later in the August 10, 2016 memo of the Steele dossier.

13) INTERMISSION:

Your friendly neighborhood Twitter sleuth needs some lunch!

14) They decided to revert to precedent and have Page take a recording of Trump on his early July trip to Moscow. The Mueller Report (1:98-101) makes it clear the Russians wanted to hear from Trump, but understood Page's low level as a sign that Trump wanted to be more discrete.

15) The playing of this recording for SVR agents reporting back to Ivanov may well be what is under the redactions on page 1:101. In any case, for Trump to have the charges shelved, he had to drop the Magnitsky sanctions, and in order to drop the sanctions he had to win.

16) Thus, he offered to drop the sanctions if the Russians both withheld the charges AND helped him win. But how did he expect the Russians to accomplish the latter? By using the "plausibly deniable" WikiLeaks to release information damaging to Clinton.

17) Before Page's trip, hacked materials had been dropped only through DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. But, less than a week after Page's trip, Mueller (1:46) tells us the GRU transferred the first batch of emails to WikiLeaks, setting up a release to damage both Clinton and the DNC.

18) Now, the dossier makes clear that the Trump team "knew and approved" of the DNC hack, and we've seen a message from Stone to Kushner offering to brief the latter on that hack. Mifsud has also told Papadopoulos that the Russians have "[personal?] emails of Clinton."

19) But the Trump team doesn't know what concessions they'll have to make for which batch of emails, nor which batch will be released first. Thus, when the DNC emails drop on July 22, there is some level of frustration that Hillary's personal emails are still "missing."

20) Thus, knowing that Russia is indeed listening, Trump has his infamous press conference five days later in which he says "Russia, if you're listening." I think Trump made this statement to cover his butt both for what he had done AND for what he is about to do. Let me explain.

21) First, he knows in the recording taken to Moscow he has asked the Russians to help him win the election. But he wants to make it seem like he is JUST asking for the release of information they already have and NOT for hacking to get new information.

22) Second, as I have discussed elsewhere, the operation to obtain Hillary's missing emails eventually became just a ruse to hide the plan to hack voting infrastructure. Thus, we find Peter Smith inventing meetings with Russian hackers.

23) My interpretation in 21 above is supported in almost the exact words of this thread by a source who is apparently about to make the news for his own Jeffrey Epstein reasons, Alan Dershowitz. See the below.

24) This is from his book "The Case Against Impeaching Trump," and he wants to assure you the things in this thread NEVER, EVER happened, but if they did, it's only a "political sin" and certainly not an impeachable crime. Dershowitz seems clearly to be protesting far too much.

25) The truly horrible part is that, after the best of the DNC emails were released and the missing emails couldn't be hacked, the Trump team, according to the dossier, realized that it was not enough and that Trump was still going to lose, so they turned to even darker crimes.

26) On August 9, the following email arrived from Aras Agalarov:

"Roger-As per PM we have one last shot before moving on. Can you deliver? History will not forgive us. TRUMP
IN FREE FALL. OCTOBER SURPRISE COMING !"

The "October surprise" was the human trafficking charges.

27) Then, on August 12, another email:

"Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical
intell. The key is in your hands!"

Stone would respond by sending an article about how to hack voting machines to Guccifer 2.0.

28) I've discussed the events that followed in other threads, but suffice it to say that this "intervention" for which Stone gave the go-ahead is what Stone meant when he told Bannon he knew how to "save [Trump's] ass" in a way that, admittedly, "wasn't pretty."

29) So, I worked Epshteyn in there, but it kind of went elsewhere after that! Hope you found this thread enlightening and helpful. DMs are open for any questions or requests for clarification.