Patterico's Pontifications

9/17/2017

Six-Part Series on Sergei Magnitsky and Natalia Veselnitskaya Begins Tomorrow

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:57 pm



Tomorrow I begin a six-part series on Sergei Magnitsky and Natalia Veselnitskaya. It’s better than reading a 4300-word blog post in one sitting.

The series will run at 9 a.m. Pacific each day, from tomorrow until next Saturday. The impetus for the posts is this amazing piece by Michael Weiss. Go ahead and read that for some background and to whet your appetite.

I decided it’s about time I did a full review of Bill Browder’s book Red Notice, and told the full story of Sergei Magnitsky — and explained what it has to do with that meeting that Veselnitskaya had with Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner.

The point of the series of posts is not to establish that Trump colluded with the Russians. It doesn’t really deal at all with what happened from the U.S. side. It is, rather, to shed light on what happened from the Russian side — by giving you, the reader, the full context of what it means to discuss Russian adoption with American officials. The background involves Russian kleptocrats, a $230 million tax refund fraud scheme, and the arrest, torture, and murder of a bookish stubborn, patriotic tax lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky.

I doubt most people here know the full story about Sergei Magnitsky. Since I have said that this is not about allegations of collusion between Trump and the Russians, it should be of interest even if you think there is absolutely nothing to that story from the U.S. end. The story sheds some light on the nature of the Russian government and its priorities.

It’s an interesting and tragic story. I hope it will interest you.

54 Responses to “Six-Part Series on Sergei Magnitsky and Natalia Veselnitskaya Begins Tomorrow”

  1. My plan is to ignore people who ignore the content of this posts and the posts I will publish this week, to articulate tired and irrelevant complaints about how they don’t like reading about the Russia scandal.

    In fact, if felipe can explain to me how that “ignore a commenter” script works, such comments may motivate me to enable that on my own computer. I understand Beldar made it work somehow?

    Patterico (115b1f)

  2. The first few paragraphs bring to mind some former Texas state district judges with whom I’ve been acquainted, men who took the bench as solid middle-class small-town lawyers with a net worth in the low six figures, who were paid a five-figure judicial salary for their full-time employment, and who left the bench with eight-figure net worths. Property flips were indeed involved, but in at least one instance, a quantity of frozen bull semen was the investment vehicle, and paid two-hundred-fold returns six months later without ever having been defrosted. Those guys would have been perfectly at home in post-Soviet Russia, I think.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  3. Sergei Magnitsky is the type of human Russia needs.

    mg (31009b)

  4. Of course fusion partnered with another outfit, derwick partners who dud some of the same things in venezuela

    narciso (d1f714)

  5. “in fact, if felipe can explain to me how that “ignore a commenter” script works, such comments may motivate me to enable that on my own computer. I understand Beldar made it work somehow?”

    It’s a concept:work in progress. You just have to BELIEVE!

    Ben burn (b3d5ab)

  6. Beldar: name dropper.

    Ben burn (b3d5ab)

  7. Allow me pump-priming

    https://www.find.net/us-news/2017/Aug/02/trump-weighed-in-on-son-s-russia-statement-white-house-confirms/26d91bb7d04ab4e5

    “For Trump to draft a “knowingly false” statement for his son, who could be considered a material witness in the Russia investigation, “very likely will be deemed to be obstruction of justice”, Painter said.

    Asha Rangappa, an associate dean at Yale law school, said the report that Trump was behind the misleading statement on his son’s meeting suggested “a personal investment in wanting to cover up something that may tie his campaign to the Russians”.

    “Intent would be the hardest thing to prove in terms of obstruction, because you need to show that the person acted corruptly. That’s the legal standard,” Rangappa said.

    Natalia Veselnitskaya

    A Russian lawyer whose work has focused on ending US sanctions on Russia and who met with Trump representatives Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower in June 2016. Read further.

    Sergey Kislyak

    Until recently, the Russian ambassador to the US. A hub for contacts with Trump representatives including Kushner, attorney general Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and the president himself. Read further.

    Sergey Gorkov

    The Kremlin-connected head of Russian state investment bank Vnesheconombank. He met with Kushner during the presidential transition, but “no specific policies were discussed”, according to Kushner. Read further.

    Dimitri Simes

    Ben burn (b3d5ab)

  8. @ Patterico, re #1: I did no editing to the script, which you already have (and earlier emailed to me at my request), beyond replacing “user1,” “user2,” and so forth with the names of the commenters I wanted to block. All credit for this ought to go to felipe and milhouse.

    (1) I can’t reprint the script here in these comments because it uses characters that confuse the readers’ browsers and that will make the script incomplete. So instead of printing it here in comments for people to cut and paste, here’s instead a link to a tiny simple ASCII text file called “patterico_blocker_script.txt” that anyone can right-click and select “save link as” to download and save the file to his/her own computer. Feel free to rename it if you like.

    (2) Once downloaded and saved, open that file with any text editor. Since it has “.txt” as its extension, whatever your computer is set up to use as its default ASCII editor will likely open it when you double-click the file name. I use the old reliable Windows Notepad for this type of dirt-simple text-file editing; other programs might add formatting and stuff you don’t want or need unless you’re careful to specify ASCII.

    (3) Look (or text-search) for “user1” and replace that with the screenname of the first commenter you wish to block. Extras don’t matter; you can leave “name4” in the script, for example, if you only want to block three commenters. But likewise, if you wish to block more than four, just start adding those names in that same part of the script, using the up-and-down symbol | as the separator.
    (I’m not sure if this is case-sensitive and haven’t tested that; I just copied the commenters’ names from here and pasted them verbatim to replace “name1,” etc., one at a time.)

    (4) When you’re done editing, re-save the text file on your own computer. Again highlight the whole text string as edited (CTRL+A), copy it to your clipboard (CTRL+C), and then go back to your browser window.

    (5) Now you’re then going to create a new bookmark. The difference from bookmarks you usually create and use is that this isn’t a bookmark that tells your browser to go to some particular URL. Instead, it stays at the URL you’re already at, and simply runs the commands in the script on whatever webpage you currently have open.

    Every popular browser has multiple different ways to create and edit bookmarks. It might be easier just to bookmark some random webpage the way you’re usually used to doing, and then to simply edit that one, than to try to create one from scratch.

    But to create one from scratch, for me, using the Chrome browser, the easiest way was simply to open an empty browser tab, and type CTRL+D to open the small text box for new bookmarks. There will be a suggested title of “New tab”; ignore that. Instead, left-click on the “Edit” button so that a slightly bigger window will pop up with more options. I decided to name my new bookmark “Patterico+script” and I decided to save it in my “Bookmarks bar” (which I have enabled regularly), but not inside one of my folders (because I don’t want to have to open a bookmarks folder every time I use this new bookmark — which is quite a bit, after every page reload.) Below the “Name” text field is one for “URL.” Delete whatever Google’s suggested, and instead paste (CTRL+V) your edited text script into that tiny field-box, like this. Don’t worry that it spills over and can’t all be read, it won’t matter. Click the Save box at the bottom.

    (6) Now every time you visit a page with comments at Patterico.com, you can tap that bookmark and it will execute the script, which tells your browser to redraw that page leaving out the text — but not the comment numbers or commenters’ names — from all the objectionable commenters you’ve blacklisted, like this.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  9. I vouch that it works on Chrome when installed the way Beldar says.

    Beldar, please accept my thanks but more than that my praise for your superlative tutorial.

    And, of course, my thanks again to felipe.

    nk (dbc370)

  10. E. Kept veselnitskaya was in the country by authorization of the Obama administration, the meetungin Cleveland wee part of Obama administration outreach, I don’t know enough about vnexportbank, but pretty much every outfit in Russia has ties to the regime, but fusion was receiving from these same counterparties, renaissance capital had made sizable investments in the Clinton’s, and that back was directly tied to the hackers.

    narciso (d1f714)

  11. The first few times may be disconcerting because when you post a comment or otherwise refresh the page, the script “disconnects” and the bum comments are again visible. Just click your blocking script bookmark again as an additional step to commenting or refreshing. Like Beldar’s, mine is right at my visible Bookmarks Bar next to Google, a finger-flick away. I call it “Blocking Script”, BTW. 😉

    nk (dbc370)

  12. Beldar,

    The script is not case sensitive. Ben burn, Ben Burn and ben burn all work.

    JoeH (f94276)

  13. Beldar (fa637a) — 9/17/2017 @ 7:05 pm

    Thanks for taking care of that, Beldar. I already emailed your screen shots, comments, and my own detailed step-by-step instructions to Patterico -but I may have made a mess of it.

    I think your link may finally make things easier for everyone.

    felipe (023cc9)

  14. Sergei Magnitsky is the type of human Russia needs.

    Hence the need for the Putin regime to kill him.

    kishnevi (a77570)

  15. nk, I called mine “cleaner.”

    felipe (023cc9)

  16. @ JoeH (#12) — thanks! It also seems to accommodate embedded blanks and punctuation (as with “Q! bert”).

    Beldar (fa637a)

  17. @ felipe (#15) & nk (#11): I thought about calling my bookmark “Send-to-the-Kiddy-Table” — so the grownups can talk — but it took up too much room on my bookmarks bar.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  18. The script exhibits a potential problem, demonstrated by my signature to this post, which I’ve changed. I can suggest a modification, which I have tested but not thoroughly.

    JoeH

    The JoeH who does not have a doppelgänger like Dana does (f94276)

  19. The JoeH who does not have a doppelgänger like Dana does

    Somehow, I feel honored. However, the solution becomes pretty obvious: use the identity code (such as your f94276) as the blocking target.

    The original Dana (e11fc4)

  20. Sorry, but I always manage to botch posting of links. In any case, you can find the Barron’s article by searching for “Barron’s Hermitage Capital”.

    JoeH (f94276)

  21. The original Dana,

    Yes, but the search variable would need to be changed from

    var n=/^(user1|user2|user3)/

    to

    var n=/^.*(code1|code2|code3)/

    felipe or Millhouse will understand why.

    JoeH (f94276)

  22. What I love about the script being available is that every reader has the power to “ban” anyone without affecting anyone’s ability to comment. If there is a good-faith poster of uncomfortable truths, sure some people might choose to block that person, but there will be enough people of good will who won’t, that little harm will done thereby.

    And the trolls HATE it. They can’t tell if they’re ignored or being blocked, so they comically double or triple their efforts to see if it’s having any effect–and making it perfectly plain what their real motive for commenting is.

    Frederick (80401a)

  23. I seem to recall reading here that those parentheticals are hash-value derived (?) by Patterico.com’s software to help him track commenters because with the proper authorization, they can be used by the blog proprietor to keep track of IP addresses. But I think they also change periodically, every few days perhaps. I know I’m in over my head about these particulars, though. Our host wouldn’t want to be publishing IP addresses directly, in the interests of privacy, so the rest of us probably have to play whack-a-mole using commenters’ names if I’m right that they regularly change.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  24. Dana Who will never be on my block list in any incarnation anyway. 😉

    Beldar (fa637a)

  25. Beldar, stop me if I’m wrong but I don’t hate. I just finished my last set of squats for the night, and another 15 pushups. Hate is an expensive emotion. I can’t afford it. Please, vouch for me. I am a poor man.

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  26. Nobody is rich enough to afford hate.

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  27. Browder testified before Congress back in the summer, and I heard him interviewed on a couple of different radio outlets. I can’t figure out why his story has never gained more traction than it has. He seems to have the entire episode well documented, and its ugly.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  28. @ Steve57 (#26), I can’t recall any occasion on which you and I have had any trouble getting along. I am feeling guilty now for not working out at all this weekend, but that’s not your fault.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  29. It seems to be hard to write about javascript using web browsers on the internet. It makes me imagine a Monty Pythonesque skit in which magicians are attending a convention whose featured speaker will lecture on casting spells to make people deaf.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  30. Beldar,

    Perhaps our proprietor can comment on the codes. I don’t think they change but I could be wrong. Just as a check, I looked for old posts by you, and I found one posted on 2/28/2016 which had the same code as now.

    JoeH (f94276)

  31. Zeilin wasn’t it?

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  32. Mendota, Dubuque, Cherokee, I loved then all.

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  33. Or maybe it’s a static versus dynamic IP thing. I dunno, I’m an old dog now, JoeH. Thanks for your insights & comments, though!

    Yes, Steve57, the Mighty Z, and she still steams beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in late 1945 and in black & white, in a frame above my computer monitor.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  34. Felipe’s instructions are clear and work, and I again really appreciate the amount of time he put into the instructions, which should be a sticky on the sidebar or something.

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  35. i don’t get why the cnn fake news article only mentions Rob Goldstone only once in passing and the Agalarovs or Kaveladze not at all

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  36. You know, when you add it all up, I have more time in fighting indians than indian fighters,

    Steve57 (0b1dac)

  37. The hundreds dead in caracas, the living death in havana, which foggy bottom has subjected its cadre almost without complaint,
    babalublog.com/2017/09/17/breaking-tillerson-says-closing-u-s-embassy-in-cuba-is-under-review

    narciso (d1f714)

  38. *dusts off hands*

    Well, I just finished all the cross-posting (actually cross-scheduling) of the posts I already scheduled at RedState.

    I may blog other stuff this week, but I may not. I dunno. In any event, this project is now done.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  39. Sure are a lot of lurkers on the fringe of discussion. Thanks for bringing them out felipe.

    Ben burn (b3d5ab)

  40. I’m here for you lurkers.

    Ben burn (b3d5ab)

  41. Patterico.

    It’s done? When does it post?

    Ben burn (b3d5ab)

  42. Each part of the 6-part post will post, he said, each day at 9 a.m. Pacific time, which is noon Eastern Daylight Time, probably automatically.

    Sammy Finkelman (e3cf91)

  43. 39. Patterico (115b1f) — 9/18/2017 @ 7:53 am

    Well, I just finished all the cross-posting (actually cross-scheduling) of the posts I already scheduled at RedState.

    Are they also cross-linked, at least each one to earlier ones?

    Sammy Finkelman (e3cf91)

  44. Ah. I was looking at Red State first.

    Ben burn (b3d5ab)

  45. 24. Beldar (fa637a) — 9/17/2017 @ 9:41 pm

    I seem to recall reading here that those parentheticals are hash-value derived (?) by Patterico.com’s software to help him track commenters because with the proper authorization, they can be used by the blog proprietor to keep track of IP addresses. But I think they also change periodically, every few days perhaps.

    No, they don’t change, but the same person may have more than one, if they use different ways of gaining access to the Internet.

    Our host wouldn’t want to be publishing IP addresses directly, in the interests of privacy, so the rest of us probably have to play whack-a-mole using commenters’ names if I’m right that they regularly change.

    No person probably has more than 3 or 4, except maybe on special occasions when they’re visiting somewhere, ormaybe in a hotel, who knows, unless you’re dealing with a person who specializes in getting around things.

    Sammy Finkelman (e3cf91)

  46. narciso @38 Re; u.S. diplomats in Havana: When they saw the United States was taking it seriously, and went public (!), and maybe might even close its embassy, and/or expel some Cuban diplomats from the United States or restrict what they could do at the United Nations, and/or might figure out at a technical level what’s happening, and/or get some hard evidence of how and why this was occuring and who exactly was doing this, they (temporarily?) stopped.

    The State Department seems to have applied a rule of “innocent until prroven guilty” and “presumption of coincidence” for much too long.

    Sammy Finkelman (e3cf91)

  47. Liar they did with the murdered of Noel and Moore, who were known to Abu ammar and controlled by Ali salameh, the black prince who was responsible for Munich.

    narciso (d1f714)

  48. I think Sammy is correct, Beldar. My number identifier hasn’t changed in years, but it will change if I get a new internet provider or if my internet provider changes my IP address. It also changes when I comment from other locations with different IP addresses/providers, such as when I am at the hospital with my son.

    DRJ (15874d)

  49. Commenters can manipulate the numbers by posting from spoofing websites.

    DRJ (15874d)

  50. 50. Yes, the State Department found the identity of the persons who okayed the murders of those U.S. diplomats in Sudan in 1973 to be a very inconvenient fact.

    http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15420

    In thiss days terrorist attacks weren’t suicide missions, the terrorists tended to take hostages and make (impossible, that is pretextual) demands, and they didn’t have an Islamic ideology but rather a Twentieth Century secular one usually Marxist or nationalist. Well, Marxist is more Nineteeth Century, but was considered intellectual or rational in the Twentieth,

    Sammy Finkelman (e3cf91)

  51. Are they also cross-linked, at least each one to earlier ones?

    Yes.

    Patterico (115b1f)


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