U.S. Political Retrospective: those first investigations into presidential candidate Donald J Trump

Sometime in September or October 2015 Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS began a broad investigation of then Republican presidential candidate nominee Donald J Trump under contact for an unspecified client and later commenced another investigation of Trump as official Republican presidential candidate for a different client in the first half of 2016.

Simpson later confirmed the clients to be in the first instance The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor and in the second instance the Democratic National Committee and Clinton presidential campaign.

Excerpts from Christopher Steele’s 35-page ‘dossier’ created under contract for research company Fusion GPS:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html

U.S. SENATE, WASHINGTON, D.C., SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE, excerpts from a partial transcipt of INTERVIEW OF: GLENN SIMPSON, 22 August 2017 (released 9 January 2018 in response to his request) , in which he explains how and where he looked for initial information about Donald Trump:

“In the early -- the very first weekend that I

started boning up on Donald Trump, you know, I

found various references to him having connections

to Italian organized crime and later to a Russian

organized crime figure named Felix Sater,

S-A-T-E-R. It wasn't hard to find, it wasn't any

great achievement, it was in the New York Times,

but as someone who has done a lot of Russian

organized crime investigations as a journalist

originally that caught my attention and became

something that, you know, I focused on while other

people looked at other things.

So from the very beginning of this organized

crime was -- Russian organized crime was a focus of

interest. I guess I should just repeat, you know,

this is a subject that I covered extensively at the

Wall Street Journal. I wrote a series of front-

page articles about various corrupt politicians

from Russia, oligarchs, and one of the things that

I wrote about was the connections between western

politicians and Russian business figures. So, you

know, I was sort of an amateur student of the

subject and I had written about some of these same

Russian crime figures, you know, years earlier in

the U.S. and various frauds and things they were

involved in……

You know, we also conducted a much broader

sort of look at his entire career and his overseas

investments in places like Europe and Latin

America. You know, it wasn't really a Russia

focused investigation for the first half of it.

That was just one component of a broader look at

his business career, his finances. We spent a lot

of time trying to figure out whether he's really as

rich as he says he is because that was the subject

of a libel case that he filed against a journalist

named Tim O'Brien for which there was quite a lot

of discovery and litigation filings detailing

O'Brien's allegation that he was worth, you know,

maybe a fifth to a third of what he claims and

Trump's angry retort that he was worth far more

than that.

So we did things like we looked at the golf

courses and whether they actually ever made any

money and how much debt they had. We looked at the

bankruptcies, how could somebody go through so many

bankruptcies, you know, and still have a billion

dollars in personal assets. So those are the kinds

of things. We looked at a lot of things like his

tax bills. Tax bills are useful because you can

figure out how much money someone is making or how

much they're worth or how much their properties are

worth based on how much they have to pay in taxes.

One of the things we found out was that, you

know, when it comes to paying taxes, Donald Trump

claims to not have much stuff. At least the Trump

organization. So they would make filings with

various state and local authorities saying that

their buildings weren't worth much……

For instance, in the early stage of an

investigation, you know, particularly of Donald

Trump you want to get every lawsuit the guy's ever

been in. So, you know, we collected lawsuits from

around the country and the world. And I do

remember one of the earlier things we did was we

collected a lot of documents from Scotland because

he'd been in a big controversy there about land

use. There had been another one in Ireland. There

was a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests

and that sort of thing.

So in the early phases of something you're

collecting lots of paper on every subject

imaginable. So in the course of reading that

litigation we would follow up on things that were

interesting, such as a libel case against a

journalist that he settled, which, in other words,

he didn't prevail in his attempts to prove that he

was a billionaire.”……

It was, broadly speaking, a kind of

holistic examination of Donald Trump's business

record and his associations, his bankruptcies, his

suppliers, you know, offshore or third-world

suppliers of products that he was selling. You

know, it evolved somewhat quickly into issues of

his relationships to organized crime figures but,

you know, really the gamut of Donald Trump.

What we generally do at the beginning of a

case if it's possible is to order all the books

about the subject from Amazon so we're not

reinventing the wheel and we know what's been

written and said before. So this was typical. We

ordered every Donald Trump book and, to my

surprise, that's a lot of books. I was never very

interested in Donald Trump. He was not a serious

political figure that I'd ever had any exposure to.

He's a New York figure really.

So anyway, we read everything we could read

about Donald Trump. Those books cover his

divorces, his casinos, his early years dealings

with labor unions and mafia figures. I'm trying to

think what else. His taxes certainly have always

been a big issue. Again, it was sort of an

unlimited look at his -- you know, his business and

finances and that sort of thing……

That calls for a somewhat long answer. We

had done an enormous amount of work on Donald Trump

generally at this point in the project and we began

to drill down on specific areas. He [Christopher Steele] was not the

only subcontractor that we engaged. Other parts of

the world required other people. For example, we

were interested in the fact that the Trump family

was selling merchandise under the Trump brand in

the United States that was made in sweat shops in

Asia and South America -- or Latin America. So we

needed someone else for that. So there were other

things. We were not totally focused on Russia at

that time, but we were at a point where we were --

you know, we'd done a lot of reading and research

and we were drilling down on specific areas.

Scotland was another one

So that's the answer. What happens when you

get to this point in an investigation when you've

gathered all of the public record information and

you've begun to exhaust your open source, you know,

resources is that you tend to find specialists who

can take you further into a subject and I had known

Chris since I left the Wall Street Journal. He was

the lead Russianist at MI6 prior to leaving the

government and an extremely well-regarded

investigator, researcher, and, as I say, we're

friends and share interest in Russian kleptocracy

and organized crime issues. I would say that's

broadly why I asked him to see what he could find

out about Donald Trump's business activities in

Russia……

I mean, one of the key lines here in the

second paragraph says "However, he and his inner

circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence

from the Kremlin, including on his democratic and

other political rivals."

So the issue with the Trump Tower meeting, as

I understand it, is that the Trump people were

eager to accept intelligence from a foreign

government about their political rivals and that

is, you know, I would say, a form of interference.

If you're getting help from a foreign government

and your help is intelligence, then the foreign

government's interfering. I mean, you know, I

think that also -- of course, in retrospect we now

know this was pretty right on target in terms on

what it says. So anyway --

I mean, it clearly refers to, you know,

them being interested in and willing to -- it

depicts them as accepting information. What we

have seen to date with the disclosures this year is

they were at a minimum super interested in getting

Information……

We've seen hacking in politics before, but this

kind of, you know, mass theft of e-mail and then to

dump it all into, you know, the public sphere was

extraordinary and it was criminal.

So the question by now of whether this was

Russia and whether this might have something to do

with the other information that we'd received was,

you know, the immediate question, and I think this

is also -- by the time this memo was written Chris

had already met with the FBI about the first memo.

So he's -- if I can interpret a little bit here.

In his mind this is already a criminal matter,

there's already a potential national security

matter here.

I mean, this is basically about a month later

and there's a lot of events that occurred in

between. You know, after the first memo, you know,

Chris said he was very concerned about whether this

represented a national security threat and said he

wanted to -- he said he thought we were obligated

to tell someone in government, in our government

about this information. He thought from his

perspective there was an issue -- a security issue

about whether a presidential candidate was being

blackmailed. From my perspective there was a law

enforcement issue about whether there was an

illegal conspiracy to violate the campaign laws,

and then somewhere in this time the whole issue of

hacking has also surfaced.

So he proposed to -- he said we should tell

the FBI, it's a national security issue. I didn't

originally agree or disagree, I just put it off and

said I needed to think about it. Then he raised it

again with me. I don't remember the exact sequence

of these events, but my recollection is that I

questioned how we would do that because I don't

know anyone there that I could report something

like this to and be believed and I didn't really

think it was necessarily appropriate for me to do

that. In any event, he said don't worry about

that, I know the perfect person, I have a contact

there, they'll listen to me, they know who I am,

I'll take care of it. I said okay. You know, I

agreed, it's potentially a crime in progress. So,

you know, if we can do that in the most appropriate

way, I said it was okay for him to do that……

A second and complete interview transcript is available:

Glenn Simpson Testimony by Anonymous MS54FL on Scribd

Trump's wild and inappropriate response to the release of Glenn Simpson interview transcript:

Five years on and the Royal Commission into Insitutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse formally closes

Then Australian Labour Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced her intention to call a royal commission into child sexual abuse on 12 November 2012.

By 11 January 2013 six commissioners had been appointed and on 3 April 2013 the first of fifty-seven public hearings was underway.

These public hearings conducted 57 case studies, 30 of which examined responses to child sexual abuse in religious institutions.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse formally closed on 15 December 2017 when it presented its final report to the Governor-General.

By that time the Royal Commission had heard evidence from nearly 8,000 historic abuse survivors with 6,875 survivors being heard in private sessions, of whom 4,029 (58.6 per cent) spoke about child sexual abuse in religious institutions. 

There were more allegations of child sexual abuse in relation to the Catholic Church than any other religious organisation, followed by the Anglican Church, The Salvation Army and others.  

ABC News created this graph on 15 December 2017:



During the course of its investigation the Royal Commission referred 2,575 matters to authorities, including to police.

The full 17 volume Final Report can be read here.

It is worth noting that the Turnbull Government has introduced a bill allowing child sexual abuse survivors who experienced abuse in government or participating non-government institutions to claim up to $150,000 compensation. 

The Commonwealth Redress Scheme for Survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse commences on 1 July 2018 and operates for ten years. However it intends to deny compensation to any survivors who have have themselves been convicted of sex offences, or sentenced to prison terms of five years or more for crimes such as serious drug, homicide or fraud offences. A measure likely to exclude thousands of child abuse survivors - if the fact that 10.4% of survivors were in prison at the time they were heard in Royal Commission private session is any guide.

It is further noted that elements within the Catholic Church in Australia intend to resist certain recommendation in the Royal Commission's final report - particularly Recommendation 7.4 relating to reporting of child sexual abuse admissions/allegations heard during confession.

Three days after the Royal Commission's final report was published the Diocese of Ballarat gave up the pretence of empathy it donned for the duration of the inquiry and cut hundreds of brightly coloured ribbons off the fence at St Patrick's Cathedral placed there by abuse victims, their friends, families and supporters.

Crime trends in the Clarence Valley October 2007 to September 2017

In the ten years between October 2007 and September 2017 crime trends in the Clarence Valley Local Government Area have remained numerically and statistically small in 5 crime categories covering murder and violent robbery.

While crime trends remain stable in 6 crime categories (assault unrelated to domestic violence, sexual assault & other sexual offences, stealing from a car and stealing from a store ) and fallen in another 4 crime categories (stealing motor vehicles and break, enter dwellings & non-dwellings and malicious damage).

Crime trends have only risen in 2 out of 17 commonly listed crime categories over these ten years – Fraud up 10.5 per cent & Assault –Domestic Violence Related up 3.6 per cent.

October 2007 to September 2017

Fraud, Clarence Valley Local Government Area

Statistically significant Upward trend over the 120 month period.

The average annual percentage change was: 10.5%

October 2007 to September 2017
Assault - domestic violence related, Clarence Valley Local Government Area

Statistically significant Upward trend over the 120 month period.
The average annual percentage change was: 3.6%

Other crimes that are often mentioned whenever the subject of crime arises.

October 2007 to September 2017
Sexual assault, Clarence Valley Local Government Area

No statistically significant upward or downward trend over the 120 month period.

October 2007 to September 2017
Indecent assault, act of indecency and other sexual offences, Clarence Valley Local Government Area

No statistically significant upward or downward trend over the 120 month period.

October 2007 to September 2017
Break and enter - dwelling, Clarence Valley Local Government Area

Statistically significant Downward trend over the 120 month period.
The average annual percentage change was: -5.5%

October 2007 to September 2017
Motor vehicle theft, Clarence Valley Local Government Area

Statistically significant Downward trend over the 120 month period.
The average annual percentage change was: -4.2%

October 2007 to September 2017
Malicious damage to property, Clarence Valley Local Government Area

Statistically significant Downward trend over the 120 month period.
The average annual percentage change was: -5.9%

As for drug and alcohol offences in the Clarence Valley Local Government Area (est. resident population 51,367), the data collected over the ten year period revealed that cannabis cultivation was stable but possession and use of cannabis had risen over that period. While possession and use of cocaine, ecstasy,narcotics and other drugs was numerically small and statistically insignificant over those same ten years.

Click on images to enlarge

Selected crimes across 17 major crime categories.

Clarence Valley Local Government Area Crime Trends - October 2007 to September 2017 by clarencegirl on Scribd

NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research Crime Trends Interactive Tool to create graphs and tables for other NSW local government areas.

Sexual harassment & sexual assault make Sydney University residential colleges unsafe for students

“The cultural conditioning of girls as gatekeepers and surrogate mothers is supposed to keep boys in a perpetual state of liberation. They can do as they please and trust that the consequences of their actions will be held against any woman they choose to hurt in the process. This form of gendered entitlement is particularly evident in men who enjoy wealth and privilege, both of which can be found in overbearing quantities on the campuses of residential university colleges.”  [Clementine Ford in The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 2017]

Honi Soit, 29 November 2017:

In 2009, amidst allegations of sexual violence at the colleges and the formation of a “Define Statutory” facebook group by St Paul’s students, several students, activists and academics wrote to St Paul’s, urging the college to undertake a wide-scale review of their culture with special attention being paid to sexual assault. This did not happen. Instead, St Paul’s hosted a White Ribbon fundraising dinner.

In 2011, calls for a review into college culture were raised again. Broderick’s review of how women were treated in the Australian Defence Force Academy, which followed an incident where a male cadet livestreamed himself having sex with a female cadet via Skype, recommended that similar reviews be undertaken at university college campuses where the same issues existed.

However, following years of discussion, in 2014 the prospect of a college review was killed off by Group of Eight Universities, including the University of Sydney, amidst concerns for reputational damage.

“I think some of those objections were based on perception of reputational risk,” Dr Damian Powell from the University of Melbourne told the Sydney Morning Herald. 

“The honest answer is it was put in the ‘too hard’ basket.”

According to Funnell, “It was incredibly disappointing when in 2014, the Go8 killed off an earlier attempt to review the colleges. It demonstrated how defensive and reputation-conscious they were.”

Incidents of sexual harassment and bullying continued. In 2016, University of Sydney Union media outlet Pulp revealed instances of slut-shaming at Wesley College, where a widely distributed college publication included a ‘Rack Web’ detailing “inter-college hook-ups”. A week later, Honi detailed ongoing incidents of bullying and sexual harassment across all residential colleges.

Months later, in October 2016, Broderick was engaged by the University of Sydney and all colleges, except for St Paul’s, to undertake a review of college culture, and “evaluate the strengths and challenges of residential life”…..

The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 2017:

As many as 32 per cent of women at University of Sydney colleges have experienced sexual harassment and 6 per cent of female college students have experienced actual or attempted sexual assault, with other college students making up the vast majority of perpetrators, a review of college culture has found.

The review, led by former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, found that sexual misconduct, "hazing" and a problematic drinking culture persist at five of the university's six residential colleges, a number of which have come under fire for repeated incidents of sexual misbehaviour by students.

More than 1000 students from Sydney University's Sancta Sophia, St Andrew's, St John's, Wesley and Women's colleges were surveyed by Ms Broderick's team and more than 630 students were interviewed since October last year, with a 69 per cent participation rate across the five colleges…..

St Paul's College, which initially refused to participate in the review but recently joined the process, is not included in the findings and will receive a separate report in June next year.

Female students from St Andrew's College and Women's College reported some of the highest rates of sexual harassment and actual or attempted sexual assault, with 32 per cent of students at Women's College and 30 per cent of women at St Andrew's College saying they have experienced sexual harassment since starting at college.

At both colleges, 8 per cent of women said they have experienced actual or attempted sexual assault…..

Across all five colleges, 25 per cent of women and 6 per cent of men said they have experienced sexual harassment and 6 per cent of women and 1 per cent of men said they have experienced actual or attempted sexual assault.

Of these, 96 per cent of students who experienced sexual harassment and 73 per cent of students who experienced sexual assault said a fellow student from their college or a different college was the perpetrator.

About 90 per cent of all incidents occurred on college grounds.

The review also found that only 9 per cent of college students who experienced sexual assault and 3 per cent of those who experienced sexual harassment made a formal report.

About 31 per cent of those who experienced sexual assault and 49 per cent of those who experienced sexual harassment did not seek any assistance, the review found, with common reasons including that students "didn't think it was serious enough", "did not think I needed help" or "thought I could sort it out myself".

The review also found that 15 per cent of all college students reported that there was too much focus on drinking alcohol at their college and 13 per cent of students said they have been pressured to drink when they did not want to.

Read the full article here.

The review report Cultural Renewal at the University of Sydney Residential Colleges can be read here.

ICAC investigating water theft and allegations of NSW government corruption involving party donors

Eventually full details of this investigation will become public, as it cannot seriously be thought to be in the public interest for the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) not to publish findings.

The Australian, 27 October 2017:

ICAC has begun a preliminary ­investigation into whether NSW public officials favoured Nationals donor and irrigator Peter ­Harris by not prosecuting him over ­alleged water theft.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is also investigating whether public officials made decisions in favour of western NSW irrigator and lobbyist Ian Cole by changing water sharing arrangements to benefit him.

A day after The Australian ­revealed that the corruption watchdog was investigating a case where Multicultural Affairs Minister Ray Williams wrote to ­Primary Industries Minister Niall Blair asking for prosecutorial ­action against constituent Garry Bugeja to be dropped, it has emerged that the NSW government is facing a ­series of inquiries over its water policies.

The Berejiklian government is facing the real spectre of a public ICAC inquiry potentially involving the two ministers and at least one former primary industries minister, Katrina Hodgkinson, just months out from the 2019 state election.

ICAC is investigating whether former deputy director-general of the Department of Primary ­Industry Gavin Hanlon disclosed confidential information to ­Barwon-Darling irrigators, allegations that have been the subject of a government inquiry and led to Mr Hanlon’s resignation.

The commission is also understood to be looking at whether any public official failed to properly investigate or prosecute Mr Harris, a cotton farmer from Moree, in northern NSW. ICAC is also understood to be investigating why the department’s strategic investigations unit was disbanded, leading to the abandonment of several water compliance operations.

There is also an investigation into whether any public official acted inappropriately in making changes to the Barwon-Darling Water Sharing Plan to benefit ­irrigator Mr Cole.

Another line of investigation is understood to be whether any person improperly gave access to departmental files and confidential material for the benefit of Mr Harris. Investigations into Mr Cole are understood to also involve whether pumps were attached to a property and were authorised by the department in breach of water laws…..

It was revealed earlier this year that Mr Blair sought law changes which may have benefited Mr Harris by retrospectively approving water-trading rights granted to him that appeared to not comply with the law. But Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton blocked the changes.

Mr Blair also legislated to allow past illegal works to be retrospectively approved — another piece of law which may have helped Mr Harris….

Mr Bugeja was not prosecuted for an alleged ­illegal dam in Sydney after Mr Williams wrote to Mr Blair

File this one under 'Who's guarding the guards?'

The politicians forming Australian state and federal governments assure us they are upright, ethical people with histories as pure as the driven snow. They tell us their advisors are trustworthy beyond doubt and their senior public service appointees & finance/security consultants ditto. While their big business mates like Gina, Twiggy and Co are genuinely true blue and philanthropic.

Yet, as step by step these same politicians lead us towards authoritarian governance and Big Brother mass surveillance, their feet of clay can’t help but show.

North Coast Voices readers may remember that SMEC Holdings Limited (now SMEC and Surbana Jurong) has been a favourite of Malcolm Turnbull's since he was the Minister for the Environment and Water Resouces in the Howard Government ministry.

This company provided an error-ridden desktop study for Turnbull supporting damming and diverting water from NSW North Coast river systems, with a preference for visiting this environmental vandalism on the Clarence River system.

It is now allegedly a corrupt multinational corpration.

The Age, 4 October 2017:

An arm of the company tasked with advising the Turnbull government on its signature infrastructure project, Snowy Hydro 2.0, has been banned by the World Bank for alleged bribery and corruption, prompting further calls for a federal anti-corruption watchdog……

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull poses for a photo during his announcement of Snowy Hydro 2.0 in March.

Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Engineering company SMEC had five of its subsidiaries banned by the World Bank last week after an investigation into "inappropriate payments" linked to projects in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. 

SMEC was chosen to undertake the $29 million feasibility study back in May and the work is due to be finished by the end of the year. The firm was selected by the state and federal government-owned Snowy Hydro corporation, which runs the current power plant.

Last year, Fairfax Media revealed the details of some of the allegations around improper payments involving SMEC, including allegedly corrupt dealings between the firm and Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena when he was a cabinet minister in 2009.

Those dealings and others are still under investigation by the federal police.

This is one wealthy individual audited by the Australian Taxation Office - venture capitalist and independent consultant to business & government for over twelve years, Anthony ‘Tony’ Castagna.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 October 2017:

Anthony Castagna's company helps protect the cyber secrets and detect financial crimes within the world's most powerful institutions, including the Serious Fraud Office in Britain, US Homeland Security, the Australian defence force, ASIC, even the Office of the President of the US.

Now the Sydney-based co-founder and chairman of Nuix, majority owned by Macquarie Bank, faces a potential 20-year jail term after being charged with tax evasion and dealing with the proceeds of crime.

Dr Castagna, 70, has been the target of two of Nuix's major clients: the Australian Federal police and the Australian Tax Office through Project Wickenby, their long-running tax probe.

The charges relate to payments from Macquarie Bank which were allegedly channelled into offshore companies controlled by his cousin Robert Agius, who was sentenced to a non-parole period of 6 years and 8 months' jail in 2012 for operating unrelated tax avoidance schemes via his Vanuatu-based accountancy firm.

In addition to Dr Castagna's criminal charges, the ATO is pursuing him for unpaid taxes and penalties in excess of $10 million.

For decades, the tech guru has been a rainmaker for Macquarie Bank. The bank has ploughed millions of dollars into his cyber security and forensic services company Nuix. A totally owned Macquarie Group subsidiary owns more than 70 per cent of Nuix and over the last year Macquarie advisors have been talking up a billion-dollar float of Nuix on the Australian stock exchange....

Dr Castagna, who denies any wrongdoing and is vigorously defending the charges....