Crypto Cocaine: Google Search For ‘Buy Bitcoin With Credit Card’ Reaches Peak

As Bitcoin reaches hyperbolic levels of insanity and smug crypto investors at coffee shops across the nation let everybody know about it, signs are emerging that we’re approaching a blow-off top.

I've been watching charts for some time now but haven't seen a slope as vertical as Bitcoin's. Price just cleared $9,500 pic.twitter.com/oQbd8aZrVN

— David Ingles (@DavidInglesTV) November 27, 2017

Demand for the crypto currency is being fueled in part by news that Mark Zuckerberg’s Square payment gateway is exploring adding Bitcoin to its platform, while the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) rolls out Bitcoin futures – opening the door to Bitcoin-tracking ETFs.

Signs of a top?

Not one, but two aging baby boomers in my extended family emailed me over the weekend about buying Bitcoin. Historically, this has been an excellent sell signal for whatever Porter Stansberry type of investment they’ve just been spooked into.

Aside from that, CNBC’s Jeff Cox reports that the google search term “buy bitcoin with credit card” has reached historic highs.

The quest to find whether cryptocurrency bitcoin is in a bubble could be found on search engines, where one bubbly sounding term is on the rise.

Google Trends says the search term “buy bitcoin with credit card” is around its historic peak, notes Nick Colas, co-founder of Data Trek Research and the first Wall Street analyst to take the digital currency seriously. –CNBC

In other words:

CNBC continues:

Other search trends show that bitcoin holds a solid lead in Google quests for digital currencies, even though it has a growing list of competitors. In all, 15 cryptocurrencies now have market valuations above $1 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. At $162.4 billion, bitcoin is more valuable than the next 70 or so competitors combined.

Colas said bitcoin “still holds a strong lead in terms of global attention in crypto-land.”

Bitcoin also has come in from the shadows in terms of the attention it’s getting on Wall Street. Investing heavyweight Michael Novogratz, head of Galaxy Investment Partners, thinks bitcoin will hit $10,000 before the end of the year, and Tom Lee at Fundstrat has a mid-2018 price target of $11,500, nearly double what it was in mid-August.

But Mitchell Goldberg, head of ClientFirst Strategy, told clients he’s skeptical and sees the bitcoin craze as analogous to the dot-com bubble and a sign that “we’ve entered the final and stupidest part of the bull market.”

Originally published by ZeroHedge

Update: Bitcoin has continued to soar intraday – now topping $9,300 – with a total market cap over $156 billion, leaving the cryptocurrency worth more than Merck, Disney, and GE.

Coinivore notes that the digital currency, once a toy for computer nerds, is now soaring in price, triggering a new gold rush. Is it just another bubble, or a glimpse into a radically different financial future?

As Rick Falkvinge, CEO of BitCoin Cash and founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, warns “bitcoin is an extinction-level event for banks” and probably governments too…

*  *  *

As we detailed earlier, less than 24 hours ago, we noted that Bitcoin had broken above the recent resistance level around $8,300 and hit a fresh all time high of $8,650, observing that the world’s biggest cryptocurrency by market cap is now rising at a pace that has put the $10,000 price target by both Mike Novogratz (and Jose Canseco) firmly in its sights. It didn’t take long however for bitcoin to find a new round of eager buyers, and in early Asian trading, a burst of buying out of Korea’s Bithumb exchange, has sent bitcoin surging another several hundred dollars higher, and around midnight ET bitcoin had surpassed $9,000, sending its market cap to $150 billion, making it more valuable than corporations like Siemens, Mastercard or McDonald’s.

The sharp gains come as the combined market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies also peaks at new highs – currently standing at just shy of $300 billion.

At this rate of appreciation, the crypto may hit the key psychological level of $10,000 in under a week. Needless to say, the long term chart is about as exponential as it gets, so as usual, buyer beware.

Bitcoin started the year just above $1,000, and the YTD gain is now over 900%, which however pales in comparison to Ether’s nearly 5,000% YTD return and Litecoin’s 20x.

However, it’s not just Asian demand as CoinTelegraph reports that in a sign of growing mainstream acceptance, digital currency exchange Coinbase now boasts more accounts than brokerage firm Charles Schwab.

According to its website, Coinbase has 13 mln users while the number of Schwab brokerage accounts stood at 10.6 mln as of the end of 2016. These numbers don’t paint a complete picture, since the amount of assets controlled by Schwab certainly vastly exceeds those of Coinbase users. Nevertheless, the actual number of users indicates a massive volume of adoption, as the public begins to dabble in cryptocurrencies. Coinbase user numbers have grown by 167% this year.

One month ago, Mike Novogratz was the first to predict a $10,000 price in 6 to 10 months. It may come in that many weeks instead.  As a store of value, Novogratz likened bitcoin to digital gold, and said the technology is beginning to make “more and more sense” as we move increasingly into the digital. Novogratz continued to say that, while bitcoin is a bubble, the mania is justified, because it is a technological advancement that promises to fundamentally alter our lives.

“Remember, bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live,” he said. “The railroad bubble. Railroads really fundamentally changed the way we lived. The internet bubble changed the way we live. When I look forward five, 10 years, the possibilities really get your animal spirits going.”

Bitcoin is set to become “the biggest bubble of our time,” he added, and could reach $10,000 very soon due to fast-building interest. In retrospect, he may be right much faster than even he anticipated.

A former Clinton Foundation official who is now an independent director at a company which operates private schools in China has found himself embroiled in a bizarre child abuse scandal involving needles, pills, “brown syrup,” nudity, and sexual molestation, according to parents.

The head of a Beijing kindergarten has been fired after China launched a nationwide investigation into a chain of private schools operated by RYB Education Inc. ($RYB) following claims of abuse at multiple locations. Parents report at least 8 toddlers with mysterious needle marks, while others said their children were forced to take white pills that were supposed to be “a little secret” between the children and teachers, along with some sort of “brown syrup” given to the students. Children were also allegedly stripped naked and forced to stand, or locked in a dark room, one parent said.

An unidentified mother who made a viral video about the abuse told reporters Thursday that her son was was injected with a brown liquid by a teacher and made to strip along with other students before being “examined” by a naked adult male stranger, describing it as an “action like sexual intercourse.” When the mother pressed the principal to allow her to review closed circuit footage from the school, she was denied.

Medeical examination of eight children confirmed that the injuries were in fact caused by needles, Guanzhuang police report.

Furious parents gathered in front of RYB Education New World Kindergarten on Friday demanding answers, while China’s Xinhua news agency reports that children were also sexually molested, with no further details.

The Beijing kindergarten at the heart of the controversy is located next to a large military base, sparking rumors that military officials had been sexually abusing the children. Notably, the husband of the kindergarten’s director was previously an official at the base, however Fun Junfeng, the base’s political commissioner told PLA daily that there was “no evidence” that military personnel are involved in the abuse.

Mail Online reports:

Li Jing, mother of a three-year-old girl, told AFP her daughter had not been abused but said other children had explained how they were coerced into taking pills.

“Other kids were saying it’s not to be called taking a pill, but a reward. And the pill is not to be called a pill, but a jelly bean, and is a little secret between the child and the teacher,” Li said.

“I asked my child after I heard what other parents said and my child said that they had taken two white pills after lunch, and slept after eating the pills,” one father told CCTV outside the school on Thursday.

These latest allegations are not the first involving RYB schools. In April, the head of a different RYB kindergarten in Beijing was suspended after admitting that teachers had made “severe mistakes” when videos emerged of children being thrown and kicked in the back. In October, 2016 two teachers from an RYB kindergarten in the northeast Julin province were sentenced to 34 months in prison after jabbing children in the buttocks, head, and insides of their mouths with sewing needles. 

Link to the Clinton Foundation

RYB Education operates 80 kindergartens and has another 175 franchised locations across 130 cities in China, according to filings. All of it’s directors are all Chinese, with the odd exception of former Clinton Foundation executive and associate dean at Yale, Joel Getz, 52, who is listed as an Independent Director.

Mr. Joel A. Getz is Independent Director of the Company. Prior to that, Mr. Getz served as Director of Development for the William J. Clinton Foundation in New York and was President of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City.

The RYB Investor Relations page lists Getz as a member of the Audit Committee and the Compensation Committee.

Bill Bishop of the Sinocism China Newsletter and Axios contributor points out that it’s a bit odd that an Associate Dean at Yale would be on the board of directors of a Chinese kindergarten chain, suggesting that perhaps Getz thought it would be “easy money.”

Why is Joel Getz, an associate dean at Yale, on the board of RYB Education? Must have thought would be easy money, form now at the center of child abuse scandal https://t.co/tmAtuIFzr1 pic.twitter.com/xpVDXRsr5f

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) November 24, 2017

Shares of RYB plummeted on Friday after the investigation was announced, falling over 42% in early trade only to recover slightly, ending the day down 38.41%.

With the S&P at record highs and volatility in the doldrums, Reuters reports that U.S. equity options data suggests that investors are becoming more cautious.

Via Reuters: 

Positioning in options on S&P 500 index .SPX and CBOE Volatility Index .VIX shows investors have been gradually adding to hedges over the last few months.

“We didn’t see it on our desk and no one seems to care much about hedging but somehow it’s happening,” said Jim Strugger, derivatives strategist MKM Partners in New York.

The S&P 500 index .SPX has climbed 16 percent this year and is on pace for its eighth straight month of gains, the longest such streak since just before the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Some investors warn that heightened reliance on strategies that profit from continued calm in stocks, and months of frustration over hedges that have gone to waste while the market powered on, have left the market extremely vulnerable to a shock.

Reuters notes that the put/call ratio for S&P 500 index options is at 2.1 – approaching the highest it’s been in years. Meanwhile, the call/put ratio for VIX options are once again at Aug 2014 levels.

VIX options also show similarly elevated positioning in out-of-the-money VIX calls – contracts that are not profitable yet would reap gains if volatility spikes.

“When open interest on VIX out-of-the-money calls is really high, I would tend to think that the market is more aggressively hedged,” said Aashish Vyas, director of portfolio strategy at Durango, Colorado-based Swan Global Investments.

“To me, that matters more than the absolute level of the VIX,” he said. –Reuters

Don’t get complacent

Participants at the Reuters Global Investment 2018 Outlook Summit in NY said one of the largest worries that should on on investors’ minds is boom-time complacency.

“I don’t think the market is complacent,” said Joe Tigay, chief trading officer at Equity Armor Investments in Chicago.

Gunmaker Remington Outdoor – which has been making crappy guns for years, may become the first American gun manufacturer to go bankrupt amid a sharp decline in gun sales after President Trump’s election.

The NICS Firearm Checks database has recorded its largest year-to-year drop in history:

Credit rating agency S&P cut the corporate credit of the country’s second-largest U.S. gunmaker two full notches by from CCC+ to CCC- as a “backlog of unsold, unwanted firearms will force Remington to operate at a loss and pressure the company’s sales and profitability through early 2018,” according to Philly.com.

…a backlog of unsold, unwanted firearms will force Remington to operate at a loss and “pressure the company’s sales and profitability at least through early 2018, resulting in insufficient cash flow for debt service and fixed charges,” unless Remington gives up cash to pay for ongoing operations.

S&P expects “a heightened risk of a restructuring” of Remington’s $575 million senior secured loan and asset-based lending facility, which it is supposed to pay back in 2019.

If Remington defaults on its payments, based on the company’s current value, S&P expects first-lien creditors may receive around 35 cents back from every dollar they have lent or invested. Lower-rated creditors would get back less, or nothing. –Philly.com

While Remington isn’t public, is this a canary in the coal mine for other gun manufacturers? 

Both American Outdoor Brands Corporation (formerly Smith & Wesson) and Ruger have fallen since the election

Check out the sharply declining revenues, courtesy of Exodus:

While Remington’s default isn’t “a virtual certainty” yet, it’s obvious that the industry is under immense pressure now that a pro-2nd Amendment President is in the White House.

Amid flacid website traffic, PornHub – in partnership with the Museum of Sex, has erected a physical “pop-up” shop in the Manhattan, NY shopping district of SoHo. The store will sell limited edition PornHub clothing, gear, and premium sex toys.

The New York space is designed to simulate the look and feel of the PornHub homepage, with a giant bed inside that customers will be encouraged to sit on while their antics are broadcast to the web.

PornHub VP Corey Price told Retail Dive:

As an online brand, we’ve been limited to interacting with our fans on the site and through social media. As we continue to increase brand awareness, and expand into new verticals, like retail, we are looking for new ways to interact with our fans.

We thought it would be great to open up a store where fans can come check out the recent streetwear pieces we’ve collaborated on and some of our product lines. And what’s a better time to open up a new store than Black Friday? Now people can get gifts for friends, family and loved for the holidays!

Look at that – gifts for friends, family and loved ones! Because when you’re done jerking off to PornHub videos, who doesn’t think of family? Not only that, you can meet your favorite porn stars while you’re shopping for that blackmaster 5000 you know Grandma’s going to love.

According to High Snobiety,

During the opening, you’ll be invited to interact with a camera that submits a live feed straight to Pornhub.com. Across the entirety of the opening weekend, a limited release of reissued garments from Pornhub’s recently sold-out capsule collection with streetwear brand Richardson will again be available for purchase, as well as other branded Pornhub garments.

The store’s launch is in partnership with the Museum of Sex, making various products from the Museum’s gift shop, including Taschen books, specialty aphrodisiac apothecary herbs and sex games. For lucky attendees, some of Pornhub’s most popular porn stars will also be making appearances, including Dani Daniels and Asa Akira during opening weekend. The SoHo store will be open for one month beginning on Black Friday (November 24).

Not everybody’s happy

Irene Richard, 68, from the Upper West Side told the NY Daily News that she was “perturbed” to see smut in SoHo, and that the PornHub shop “evoked memories for her of sleazy Times Square before new zoning laws put sex shops out of business in the mid-’90s.”

“I’m not so happy,” Richard said. But she also said the popup storefront appeared to be a far cry from the shady days of Times Square.

“I don’t think it’s going to be people turning tricks in there. This is like extremely clean and corporate-looking,” she said. “Times Square was completely funky.”

Andy’s happy

The NY Daily News goes on to report that “Andy Romer, 28, who lives around the corner from the Pornhub shop, said he couldn’t wait for the doors to open. “I kinda dig it. I’ll definitely come by. Weirder things have happened in SoHo,” he said. He wasn’t at all disturbed at the idea of sex paraphernalia on display on a ground-floor commercial store.”

“You can buy sex toys around the corner,” he said. “I think they’ve done it up very classy.” –Andy Romer

Website woes

Hopefully the store can stimulate PornHub’s bottom line, as their website’s popularity appears to be going limp at an alarming rate:

Fear not, Europeans – while SoHo’s store may be filling up with Black Friday shoppers, PornHub plans to thrust into Milan as well this holiday season, much to the excitement of ham-fisted Italians.

Update 11/23/17

Apparently McCain was simply giving his left leg a rest – by walking on his torn tendon…

Thank you for your support & best wishes. My left leg was doing extra work to compensate for the boot, so I'm giving it a break. I still hate wearing this boot, but it won't slow us down from frying 7 turkeys today!

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 23, 2017

81 year old John McCain (R-AZ) has had a string of heath issues. In mid-july, the Arizona Senator underwent brain surgery for aggressive cancer – returning to Washington D.C. five days later to cast his vote against the healthcare bill.

Then, at the beginning of November McCain was treated for a tear to his achilles tendon at Walter Reed medical center – emerging on November 6th in a walking boot on his RIGHT leg:

I can't tell you how much I hate wearing this boot! https://t.co/W6zClDRpFb pic.twitter.com/x3mDC4n11H

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 6, 2017

Somehow, some way, it appears McCain’s tear has switched sides two weeks later:

Mother, father & puppy of the bride in beautiful Cornville #Arizona yesterday! pic.twitter.com/sd3rsye1OV

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 22, 2017

Maybe the honorable Senator from AZ is feeling so great two weeks after tearing his tendon that he forgot which side the injury was on?

Looks like @SenJohnMcCain forgot which Achilles tendon tore two weeks after he walked out in a boot on Nov 6th. pic.twitter.com/z5si5J40Bq

— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) November 22, 2017

To verify that the images weren’t reversed, one can observe the buttons on McCain’s blazer on McCain’s right side in both pictures.

Next – in the November 6th picture, McCain can be seen standing next to the Richard B Russell memorial statue in its proper orientation:

Also – reversing the image from today puts Cindy McCain’s ring on the wrong hand. John McCain meanwhile is never pictured without his wedding ring (not visible in picture clutching cane).

Here he is a eight days ago with his ring on:

Update: McCain was wearing the boot on his right on Nov. 14th (h/t @mark_woodard)

Deeply honored to be with @ArmyChiefStaff & @USArmy for tonight's "Salute from the Chief" Twighlight Tattoo. Watch live at 6:30pm ET: https://t.co/whxI7v45o5 pic.twitter.com/2WcsrRSg4i

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 14, 2017

Senator "One Boot" McCain in his own tweetshttps://t.co/60xLQDH9ezhttps://t.co/TckTMadYXb pic.twitter.com/RZWanrFvpu

— skankworks (@TheSkankworks) November 22, 2017

Now maybe McCain’s tendon healed in two weeks and he simply forgot which leg it was during a senior moment. If that’s the case – is he fit to hold his Senate seat? Was he fit to cast the deciding vote which killed the healthcare repeal? Then there was his strange rambling line of questioning during the Comey hearing.

Curious…

An exclusive investigation published yesterday by Quartz revealed that Android phones have been tracking users using cell towers since the beginning of 2017, “even when location services are disabled,” sending the information back to Google.

This goes “far beyond a reasonable consumer expectation of privacy,” says Quartz.

Even a brand new Android OS phone with no sim card or service plan will report tracking data once the device is connected to a WiFi network or activated.

Even devices that had been reset to factory default settings and apps, with location services disabled, were observed by Quartz sending nearby cell-tower addresses to Google. Devices with a cellular data or WiFi connection appear to send the data to Google each time they come within range of a new cell tower. When Android devices are connected to a WiFi network, they will send the tower addresses to Google even if they don’t have SIM cards installed. –Quartz

In response, Google is ending the data collection by the end of November and offered the following explanation:

“To ensure messages and notifications are received quickly, modern Android phones use a network sync system that requires the use of Mobile Country Codes (MCC) and Mobile Network Codes (MNC). In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery.”

In addition, what Google didn’t touch on is the fact that they sell ad space to advertisers who want to target customers based on geographic location – through the company’s online AdWorks platform. Without cell-tower data, Google can still use data collected via GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

Is anyone surprised?

Via Zack Guzman, CNBC:

At the Old Homestead Steakhouse in New York City, you can experienceAmerica’s most extravagant Thanksgiving — it might just set you back a bit.

The restaurant is offering a $76,000 Thanksgiving package that is so over-the-top, it’s hard to imagine ever going back to a home-cooked meal. To put the cost in perspective, it’s about $16,000 more than the median U.S. household income, according to the Census Bureau.

“What we focused on is using the most expensive ingredients that we possibly could find from all over the world,” explains Marc Sherry, who co-owns the restaurant with his brother Greg. “Not only is this a culinary extravaganza, it’s a cornucopia of inedible amenities.”

The restaurant started offering the concept three years ago at a price of $35,000, but has added something different each year. A Thanksgiving dinner in 2015 featured a 2-carat emerald cut diamond engagement ring hidden in the stuffing at the base of the turkey, which one customer used to propose to his girlfriend at the restaurant.

This year’s edition, which features everything from $475-per-pound imported Japanese Wagyu beef lollipops to gravy infused with $3,300 special reserve Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, is meant to impress up to 10 diners. But that’s just the beginning.

Whipped sweet potatoes are topped with $1,600-per-ounce black caviar sourced from the Caspian Sea. The meal’s traditional mashed potatoes boast $455-per-pound, imported Swedish moose cheese. Even the stuffing is a combination of $46 sourdough bread shipped in from the U.K., $54-per-pound foie gras and Wagyu beef.

The free-range, organic turkey, which costs $105 per pound, is basted with a $17-per-ounce Italian olive oil and seasoned with a blend of spices from the Middle East. Organic whole cranberries are mashed and infused with Grand Marnier and a touch of a $1,750 French Cabernet Sauvignon to complete the sauce.

For dessert, mixed wild berries are served with a vintage 1968 Cristal sabayon cream sauce.

After the meal, the Thanksgiving experience continues with non-edible exuberance. This year’s package boasts four tickets to Hamilton, a $7,500 shopping spree on Fifth Avenue in NYC, a two-night stay at a Mandarin Oriental luxury suite overlooking Central Park and a watch from Swiss manufacturer Ulysse Nardin that costs more than $20,000. Transportation for the weekend also includes personal limousine service and a carriage ride through Central Park, complete with flowers and chocolates.

“When you spend $76,000 on a Thanksgiving dinner, you’re not just buying dinner you’re creating memories,” Sherry says.

Last year, Old Homestead sold seven of its Thanksgiving packages at $50,000 each. So far this year, Sherry has sold two, and he’s confident the clientele shares his appreciation for the tradition.

“I’m in love with the holiday. I’m in love with the creativity of a $76,000 dinner. I’m proud of my staff and the way they put it out,” Sherry says, adding that his team spends a couple of months putting the experience together. “I love seeing the people buy this. I love seeing the expression on their faces.”

Whether or not the facial expressions are induced by the cost of the whole thing remains to be seen, but for those more financially conscious patrons, Sherry notes the restaurant still offers a more traditional Thanksgiving meal for under $100 per person.

—Video by CNBC’s Mary Stevens and Nate Skid.

Unsealed court documents reveal that the firm behind the salacious 34-page Trump-Russia Dossier, Fusion GPS, was paid $523,000 by a Russian businessman convicted of tax fraud and money laundering, whose lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was a key figure in the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower arranged by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone.

In short, D.C. opposition research firm Fusion GPS is the common denominator linked to two schemes used to damage the Trump campaign.

Founded in 2011 by former Wall St. Journal journalist Glenn Simpson and two other WSJ alumni, Fusion was responsible for the Clinton/DNC – funded dossier (which two Kremlin officials participated in), and was also involved in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with the Russian attorney of another Fusion client – an encounter some suspect may have been used to obtain a FISA wiretapping warrant on the Trump campaign.

He worked closely with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who also showed up at the infamous Trump Tower meeting held on June 9, 2016.

Simpson’s research ended up in the Trump Tower meeting in the form of a four-page memo carried by Veselnitskaya. She also shared Simpson’s work with Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general of Russia.

Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week that he did not know that Veselnitskaya provided the Browder information to Chaika or to Donald Trump Jr., the Trump campaign’s point-man in the Trump Tower meeting. –Daily Caller

Of note, the 34-page dossier created by Fusion was reportedly used to obtain a FISA surveillance warrant on one-time adviser to the Trump campaign, Carter Page.

Quite a bit more notable is the fact that Glenn Simpson met with Natalia Veselnitskaya hours before the Trump Tower meeting, and also met with Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta the day after the 34-page dossier was published by BuzzFeed. Glenn gets around.

InFusion of Funds

The Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross – who has done an outstanding job turning over stones and finding gold – now reports that the heavily redacted Fusion GPS bank records unsealed Tuesday reveal DNC law firm Perkins Coie paid Fusion a total of $1,024,408 in 2016 for opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump – including the 34-page dossier.

Ross also reports that law firm Baker Hostelter paid Fusion $523,651 between March and October 2016 on behalf of a company owned by Russian businessman and money launderer Denis Katsyv to research Bill Browder, a London banker who helped push through the Magnitsky Act – named after deceased Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who Browder hired to investigate Russian corruption.

Veselnitskaya, through Baker Hostetler, hired Glenn Simpson of the firm Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against me and Sergei Magnitsky in advance of congressional hearings on the Global Magnitsky Act. –Bill Browder, Testimony to Senate Judiciary Committee, 7/26/17

Magnitsky Act

Magnitsky uncovered a high level embezzlement and money laundering scheme, sanctioned by Russian Officials, in which large sums of money were stolen from the Russian government and invested in New York real estate. Some of the missing funds were traced to Katsyv‘s firm, Prevezon Holdings Ltd., which settled with the Justice Department in 2017 – paying $5.9 million in fines.

Magnitsky was arrested and thrown in prison for just under a year, where he died seven days before he was to be released. He developed gall stones, pancreatitis, and a blocked gall bladder for which he received little to no medical care, and was found to have been physically assaulted shortly before he died.

In response to Magnitsky’s horrific death and because Russian money laundering occurred on US soil, Congress and President Obama enacted the Magnitsky act in 2012 – imposing sanctions on Russia and barring Russian officials believed to be involved in Magnitsky’s death from entering the United States. Russia retaliated by halting an adoption program for US foster parents.

Enter Natalia

What’s strange is that Katsyv’s attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya – a John McCain fan, was initially denied entry into the United States, only to be granted entry under “extraordinary circumstances” by Obama’s Homeland Security Department and approved by former AG Loretta Lynch so she could represent Fusion GPS client Denis Katsyv’s company, Prevezon Holdings – and attend the meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. – arranged by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone.

Let’s Review:

• Russian businessman Denis Katsyv was a key figure in an embezzlement and money laundering scheme involving New York real estate, uncovered by Russian lawyer and accountant Sergei Magnitsky. Magnitsky died in Moscow’s Butyrka prison after a year of inhumane treatment.
• The embezzlement scheme uncovered by Magnitsky along with the circumstances behind his death resulted in the Magnitsky Act – a bipartisan bill signed in December 2012 by President Obama which imposed sanctions on Russia.
• Katsyv settled with the U.S. Justice department in 2017, paying a paltry $5.9 million in 2017 to settle the case – less than 3% of the amount originally sought by federal prosecutors.
• Katsyv’s attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, lobbied to remove the sanctions imposed by the Magnitsky Act.
• Fusion GPS was paid $523,651 by Katsyv to investigate London Banker Bill Browder who pushed for the Magnitsky Act
• Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone set up the infamous meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Katsyv’s lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and various associates. The meeting was pitched to Trump Jr. as a “discussion on adoption” (not opposition research on Hillary Clinton) and was shut down by Trump after it became clear Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss the Magnitsky Act, which Don Jr. apparently didn’t realize was linked to the adoption issue. Others present at the meeting include Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Goldstone.
• Hours before the Trump Tower meeting, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson met with Veselnitskaya.

Meanwhile…

• Fusion GPS was paid $1,024,408 by a DNC law firm, funded in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, to create the salacious 34 page dossier.
• Fusion paid former British spy Christopher Steele $168,000 to assemble the document (which had the cooperation of two senior Kremlin officials).
• Clinton campaign manager John Podesta met with Fusion CEO Glenn Simpson the day after the 34 page dossier was made public.

For their efforts, Fusion GPS was paid over $1.5 million dollars between Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and the holding company owned by pro-Kremlin businessman Denis Katsyv.

Russian Ties Galore!

Looking at other Russian affiliations on the left – since that’s the entire impetus of the witch hunt against President Trump:

• Russia gained control over 20% of United States uranium after the Clinton Foundation received $145 million from Uranium One affiliates and Russian oligarchs connected to the deal.
• The Obama administration approved the transaction after the FBI knew of a Russian plot to corner the US Uranium market and a racketeering scheme involving a Kentucky trucking company. Over 5,000 documents and a video of Russians preparing a briefcase stuffed with bribe money for Obama administration officials were obtained by an FBI informant.
• Bill Clinton met with Vladimir Putin at his house in Russia, the same day he collected $500,000 for a speech to a Russian bank which upgraded Uranium One stock. Clinton sought approval from Hillary Clinton’s State Department to meet with 15 Russians.
• Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta, lobbied for Uranium One after Russia state-owned energy giant Rosatom owned the company outright.
• Tony Podesta met regularly with Clinton Foundation and was considered “basically part” of the organization, according to a former long-time executive of the Podesta Group, who also said Podesta was “peddling Russian oligarchs” all over D.C.
• Clinton campaign chief and longtime DNC operative John Podesta recommended that Tony Podesta hire Hillary Clinton’s chief legislative advisor at the State Department, David Adams, which allowed a direct link between the firm’s Russian clients and the Obama administration.
• John Podesta sat on the board and owned shares in Joule Unlimited – a green-energy company which received $35 million from the Russian government while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. In addition to Podesta, Joule’s board of directors included senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Reuben Vardanyan – a Putin appointee to the Russian economic modernization council. Podesta jettisoned his shares before the 2016 election, transferring them to his daughter via a shell corporation.

Unfortunately, Attorney General Jeff Sessions feels there isn’t ‘enough basis‘ to investigate any or all of the above.