The United States on Friday pulled out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty to develop its own new warheads after the Russians refused to destroy their new missiles NATO says violate the pact.
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A judge in New York on Tuesday dismissed the Democratic National Committee lawsuit against members of the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, saying they were not legally liable for publicizing emails that Russian hackers stole from the party’s computer systems.
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One America News Network (OANN) demanded retractions from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and The Daily Beast, threatening a lawsuit, after both suggested links to the network and Russian propaganda.
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by Kaylee Greenlee Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced recently on Twitter the “need” for a federal investigation into the popular Russia-based image-editing technology for smartphones called “FaceApp.” “BIG: Share if you used #FaceApp: The FBI and FTC must look into the national security and privacy risks now because millions of Americans have used it; it’s owned by a Russian company; and users are required to provide full, irrevocable access to their personal photos and data,” Schumer said in his tweet. FaceApp allows users to morph an uploaded photo to make the subject appear older, younger, or even a different gender or ethnicity. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz-J1E7FhzD/?utm_source=ig_embed FaceApp’s terms and conditions state: You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you. Yaroslav Goncharov, a chief executive at Wireless Lab, started developing FaceApp in 2014 after spending time as a technical lead at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. “Goncharov told the Moscow publication Afisha.ru in 2017 that he…
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by Fred Lucas Russia isn’t the only threat to election security going into 2020, as Trump administration officials say they are preparing for meddling from Iran, China, and North Korea. The federal government anticipates that Russia will again meddle in the U.S. election in 2020 through “Russian-controlled or influenced English-language media, false-flag operations, or sympathetic spokespersons,” a senior intelligence official said. China’s government finances English-language media outlets in the United States to influence U.S. perceptions on various issues, such as trade, the senior intelligence official told reporters during a briefing on election security. “No surprise to you: Iran is increasing their use of social media to promote strategic goals and perspectives to the American public,” the official continued. “Its influence campaigns have included denigrating U.S. decisions to leave [the Iran nuclear deal], downplaying the effectiveness of sanctions, and promoting pro-Iranian interests.” Administration officials asked reporters that the conference participants’ names not be used. North Korea is also in the mix, said a senior law enforcement official, who spoke of the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force set up in 2017 to combat the international meddling. “We’ve since expanded our scope to look at any nation-state actors involved in foreign influence,…
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by Robert Romano The Hill’s John Solomon made big news on June 6 when he reported that Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, said in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report to be a Russian agent, was an intelligence source for the U.S. State Department. “In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence… What it doesn’t state is that Kilimnik was a ‘sensitive’ intelligence source for State going back to at least 2013 while he was still working for Manafort, according to FBI and State Department memos I reviewed.” This is as startling revelation as any that has been discovered, since it calls into question whether somebody purported to be a Russian intelligence officer by the Justice Department really was. It also calls into question other contacts Trump campaign officials were said to have had with supposed Russian agents, and other actions said to have been perpetrated by supposed Russian agents. Kilimnik was practically the entre basis for saying that Paul Manafort had at least been in touch with somebody connected with Russian intelligence. The Mueller report stated, “[O]n August 2, 2016, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met…
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by George Rasley In a bombshell report, former CIA Director John O. Brennan claims the need for secrecy was so great that he hand-delivered information from a critical informant close to Russian President Vladimir Putin to President Barack Obama and required the envelope to be returned after the President read it. Daniel Chaitin and Jerry Dunleavy of The Washington Examiner report that now, one day after President Trump gave Attorney General William Barr “full and complete authority to declassify information” related to the origins of the federal investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the New York Times reports this source is in jeopardy. Specifically, write Chaitin and Dunleavy, this informant was the U.S. intelligence community’s source in determining that Putin personally “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election” to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in favor of Trump. Obama made this public before he left office. The informant is described by Chaitin and Dunleavy as being a long-nurtured source who rose up the Russian ranks. Believed to still be alive, the well-being of the informant is one concern as Barr digs into the earliest days of the Russia investigation. Former…
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Attorney General William Barr has appointed long time U.S. attorney John Durham to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was “lawful and appropriate,” a person familiar with the issue told The Associated Press on Monday. Durham’s appointment comes about a month after Barr told members of Congress he believed “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016. He later said he didn’t mean anything pejorative and was gathering a team to look into the origins of the special counsel’s investigation. Barr provided no details about what “spying” may have taken place but appeared to be alluding to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on a former Trump associate, Carter Page, and the FBI’s use of an informant while the bureau was investigating former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Trump and his supporters have seized on both to accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of unlawfully spying on his campaign. The inquiry, which will focus on whether the government’s methods to collect intelligence relating to the Trump campaign were lawful and appropriate, is separate from an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The agency’s watchdog…
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week, as the two countries clash over a number of issues including Venezuela, Iran, and Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Pompeo heads to Moscow Sunday, in his first visit to Russia as chief U.S. diplomat. Top U.S. officials, including Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, have accused Russia of working against Venezuela’s democratically elected opposition leader Juan Guaido in his attempts to oust embattled President Nicolas Maduro. The United States accuses Russia of seeking a foothold in the Western Hemisphere through Venezuela. “We are concerned about Russia’s actions in Venezuela, and we think the support for Maduro is a losing bet.So our support to the Venezuelan people continues, and that will be a subject for the discussion,” a senior State Department official told reporters last week. Pompeo arrives in Russia on Monday to meet with American diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow before meeting with U.S. business leaders.He will also lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in honor of those who fought against the Nazi regime. The secretary of state will then travel to…
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by Nick Givas Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez said America is “at war” with Russia and claimed President Donald Trump is “compromised.” “Our fiercest foreign adversary attempted to interfere with our election to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton,” he said Thursday on CNN’s “New Day.” “We are at war right now,” Perez added. “It is a cyber war. Unfortunately, because our commander in chief is compromised, the federal government is asleep at the switch. And that is why the DNC and others in the Democratic Party ecosystem are working tirelessly to make sure that we are protecting our data. We’re working with every campaign to provide cybersecurity training because we can’t expect help from this administration.” Host Alisyn Camerota asked Perez if Democrats would use stolen information to even the score with Trump, and he said their findings would be the result of subpoenas. When Camerota followed up about possible Democratic leaks, Perez did not give a direct answer. “Maybe it’s going to be leaked. What if that’s leaked to you? Are you saying that the Democrats shouldn’t use that?” she asked. “Well, again, we are entitled to that — if you look at the law…
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by Christopher Roach The Mueller Report was released last week. Undoubtedly it will be discussed much more than it is read. Many of the salient facts were already well-known, including Russian efforts to sow chaos and division among Americans during the 2016 presidential election using “active measures.” This sophisticated propaganda and narrative-making tools find their origins in the Soviet KGB. While some are pleased to deem President Trump a potential Russian agent because of his stated hopes for better relations with Russia and his tongue-in-cheek calls for Russia to find Hillary’s missing emails, it was clear long before last week that the Russian influence and hacking operations were not directed chiefly to aid his election. One can assume that Russia, like nearly every other observer, presumed Hillary would win. Consistent with this, the report states: “The [Russian Internet Research Agency] conducted social media operations targeted at large U.S. audiences with the goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system.” Thus, they created fake grassroots organizations “(with names such as “Being Patriotic,” “Stop All Immigrants,” “Secured Borders,” and “Tea Party News”), purported Black social justice groups (“Black Matters,” “Blacktivist,” and “Don’t Shoot Us”), LGBTQ groups (“LGBT United”), and religious…
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by Chuck Ross The FBI was investigating Michael Flynn’s possible relationship with the Russian government much earlier than previously known, the special counsel’s report revealed. Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, was also under investigation for four separate sets of allegations, says the report, which was released Thursday. It was already known that Flynn was under investigation over phone calls he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December 2016, during the presidential transition period. Flynn pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s investigation on Dec. 1, 2017 for making false statements about those phone calls. But special counsel Robert Mueller’s report reveals for the first time that Flynn was a target of the FBI’s Russia probe before the Kislyak calls. “Previously, the FBI had opened an investigation of Flynn based on his relationship with the Russian government,” reads the report, which cited FBI interviews given by former Justice Department official Mary McCord and former FBI Director James Comey. “Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak became a key component of that investigation,” it said. It is unclear what would have prompted scrutiny of Flynn’s ties to Russia prior to his Kislyak calls. Flynn was reportedly one of…
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by Chuck Ross The Justice Department recommended an 18-month prison sentence Friday for Maria Butina, a Russian national who prosecutors claim helped the Russian government by reporting back to Moscow on key political figures in the U.S. Prosecutors said in their court filing that Butina “was not a spy in the traditional sense” and is not a trained intelligence officer of the Kremlin. Instead, the government claims that Butina took part in a “spotting and assessing” operation on behalf of the Russian government to identify potential intelligence assets in the U.S. Butina worked with a Russian government official identified as Alexander Torshin to infiltrate conservative groups like the National Rifle Association and to establish contacts with Republican presidential campaigns, according to prosecutors. “Acquiring information valuable to a foreign power does not necessarily involve collecting classified documents or engaging in cloak-and-dagger activities,” prosecutors said in Friday’s filing. “Something as basic as the identification of people who have the ability to influence policy in a foreign power’s favor is extremely attractive to those powers,” it said. “This identification could form the basis of other forms of intelligence operations, or targeting, in the future.” Butina was indicted on July 17, 2018 and…
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by Chris White Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report suggests Russia’s troll job likely paved the way for Democratic officials who would eventually go on to create a similar campaign ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The size, scope, and tactics the Internet Research Agency (IRA) used to troll social media users in the U.S. leading up to the presidential election are virtually identical to those a slew of Democratic operatives allegedly used before a 2017 midterm election in Alabama. The IRA kicked off its ploy in 2014, when operatives focused on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube users to tilt them toward polar political positions. IRA created Twitter accounts in the names of fictitious U.S. grassroots groups and used them to pose as anti-immigration groups, Tea Party activists, Black Lives Matter protesters, among other conservative advocates, according to the report. The technique, which included creating conservative-sounding accounts like @TEN_ GOP, was designed to get some groups within the U.S. animated as elections neared. IRA ultimately worked to support then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at the expense of the president’s 2016 opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the report notes. The group’s reach was expansive and required a mixture of trolling and…
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Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was officially released to the public Thursday. Reactions from Minnesota’s congressional delegation were predictably divided. Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) said she was “deeply distributed” as she reviewed the report, claiming it has “proved Russian interference in the 2016 election.” “Second, there is ample evidence of attempts by the president to obstruct the investigation and the special counsel left it to Congress to decide whether that amounts to a crime. And the report demonstrates that the lies Trump associated told materially affected the course of the investigation,” Smith wrote in a statement posted to Facebook. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) agreed and pointed out that the report states that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election “in a sweeping and systematic fashion.” “So despite the endless doubts cast by the president, this happened. Case made for my bill for backup paper ballots and post-election audits,” Klobuchar wrote on Twitter. First Page of Mueller report says that Russian government interfered in 2016 presidential election “in sweeping and systematic fashion.” So despite the endless doubts cast by the President, this happened. Case made for my bill for backup…
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by Robert Romano Thanks to the Russiagate hoax that sought to falsely frame President Donald Trump as being a Russian agent when he wasn’t, the world has undeniably become a more dangerous place, as America’s partners overseas have had to contend with the real possibility that Trump would be removed from office. As it turns out, President Trump is not going anywhere, with Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluding the Justice Department’s three-year investigation, quoted in Attorney General William Barr’s letter to Congress: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” But what deals overseas were lost because of the specter of the investigation? A recent example came last month when President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s summit in Hanoi, Vietnam abruptly ended without a deal on denuclearization. Democrats on Capitol Hill had cynically arranged for former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to testify before the House Oversight Committee against his former boss the same day, which dominated news headlines while the summit was ongoing. It didn’t matter that Cohen ultimately offered testimony that was exculpatory for Trump — he had never been…
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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-04) blasted his Democratic colleagues for their “collusion delusion” during several cable news appearances this week. Fox and Friends, America’s Newsroom, Hannity, Ingraham Angle—if there was coverage of the Russia investigation, then Jordan was likely there to talk about it, and his message was clear: “no new indictments, no sealed indictments, no collusion, no obstruction.” But he didn’t stop there. Jordan, along with Rep. Mark Meadows (R-SC-11), believes that the other side of the story needs to be investigated. “Let’s do everything we can to work with Chairman Graham to get to the bottom of this and expose how they used one party’s opposition research document to get a secret warrant to spy on the other party’s campaign and launch this whole ridiculous thing that we saw unfold over the last several years,” Jordan said during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. During an appearance on Fox New’s Ingraham Angle, Jordan agreed with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that the Democratic Party is “in denial” after the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. “It was so strong what Bill Barr said about Bob Mueller’s investigation. Remember the numbers – 19, 40, 500, 2,800. 19 lawyers, most…
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U.S. President Donald Trump says Russia “has to get out” of Venezuela, following the recent arrival of Russian military personnel in that country. “All options are open,” Trump repeated several times in response to a reporter’s question Wednesday about whether the United States is willing to put “boots on the ground” to remove the Russians. Trump added that Moscow is well aware of the U.S. stance. Trump spoke to reporters at the White House alongside Fabiana Rosales, the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader and self-declared interim President Juan Guaido. She went into the Oval Office following a meeting with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. “The United States views Russia’s arrival of military planes this weekend as an unwelcome provocation,” Pence said alongside Rosales in the Roosevelt Room. “We call on Russia today to cease all support of the Maduro regime and stand with Juan Guaido, stand with nations across this hemisphere and across the world until freedom is restored.” “Today, in Venezuela, it is freedom or dictatorship. It is life or it is death,” Rosales said. “And those who are paying the price of this hate are the children.” She added that children are dying in hospitals which are without…
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U.S. Rep. Dr. Mark Green (R-TN-07) said “Democrats talk tough” when it comes to Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential elections, but they are only after President Donald Trump, who has acted to counter that nation’s aggression. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence President Donald Trump, his campaign or associates conspired or coordinated with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a summary released Sunday by Attorney General William Barr, as The Tennessee Star reported. Green tweeted, “Democrats talk tough, but their actions reveal they’re interested only in “getting” Donald Trump. GOP has long seen Russia as a threat, and we – including the president – have acted to counter its aggression. Read my thoughts via @WSJopinion” Democrats talk tough, but their actions reveal they’re interested only in “getting” Donald Trump. GOP has long seen Russia as a threat, and we—including the president—have acted to counter its aggression. Read my thoughts via @WSJopinion https://t.co/sdfaOZJLIa — Rep. Mark Green (@RepMarkGreen) March 25, 2019 Green’s tweet links to an op-ed he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, which is also available here. Green said that threats by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff to investigate Mueller’s investigation…
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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-04) sat down for an interview with George Stephanopoulos Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” where he said his Democratic colleagues viewed Robert Mueller as “next to Jesus” heading into the Russia investigation. Prior to his interview, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA-28) was on the show and suggested that a lack of indictments in the Mueller report doesn’t necessarily vindicate President Donald Trump. “Well we’ve got to read the report, but what I do know is to date not one bit of evidence to show any type of coordination, collusion, conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the election. And that was the charge, George, when this thing started almost two years ago,” Jordan said in response. “The Democrats were all saying that the president of the United States worked with a hostile foreign country to steal the election, and again, there has not been one bit of evidence to suggest that any of that happened.” Jordan repeatedly emphasized that the focus of the special counsel investigation was to determine whether or not there was “collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to impact the election.” “And again, remember, this is Bob Mueller, this was the guy…
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U.S. officials have warned at an energy conference in Brussels that the Trump administration will take punitive action against European companies that are building the Kremlin-favored Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which will deliver energy from Russia to Germany while bypassing Ukraine. Nord Stream 2 (NS2) will largely replace an older pipeline running through Ukraine and Poland that has the backing of the German government. But it is prompting the alarm of Central European governments, increasingly infuriated with Berlin’s dismissal of their concerns. They object to Nord Stream 2 — which will run 1,200 kilometers from Vyborg, Russia, to Lubmin, Germany, and snake under the Baltic Sea — not only because they’ll lose lucrative transit fees from the older pipeline, but because they fear the Kremlin wants to develop NS2 largely for political reasons, not commercial ones. Speaking at the energy conference in the Belgian capital, Nicole Gibson, deputy director of the U.S. State Department’s office for Europe, warned that if European companies resume laying pipe later this year they “risk significant sanctions.” Declining to go into any details about the threatened sanctions, Gibson said Washington doesn’t accept that Nord Stream 2 is a done deal. “Some people say…
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Voting experts say time is running short for states to replace voting machines in time for the start of the 2020 presidential primaries. Time and money are running short for states to replace aging or inadequate voting machines before the 2020 presidential primaries, according to a report released Tuesday. State and local election officials in 31 states say they want to replace their voting equipment before the elections, but the vast majority said they don’t have enough money to do so, according to The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s School of Law. “We basically have this year and then it’s too late,” said Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the center’s Democracy Program and author of the report. It can take months to decide on replacement machines, secure the funding, develop security protocols, train workers and test the equipment. States received $380 million in election security grants from Congress last year, but experts have said that’s merely a down payment on what is needed. Pennsylvania received $13.5 million from the federal government, but that’s just a quarter of what it would cost to switch to voting machines that use paper ballots, said J. Alex Halderman, director of the Center for…
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by Michael Walsh In the course of a high-stakes negotiation, the player who walks away from the table is the one with the least to lose. Ronald Reagan did it to Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986, and Donald Trump did it to Kim Jong-un this week in Vietnam. Good for the president. A lot of people have brought up Reykjavik; I discussed the similarities on the Hugh Hewitt radio show with guest host Kurt Schlichter on Thursday. Reagan met Gorbachev in Iceland in the fall of 1986 and the two men were approaching an agreement that might have included the abolition of all nuclear weapons. But the Soviet premier wanted the Americans to drop the Strategic Defense Initiative, colloquially known as “Star Wars.” That was a bridge too far for Reagan, who abandoned the talks and went home. Naturally, the hostile press was appalled—the abolition of all nukes! And this cowboy won’t give up a pet program that probably won’t work anyway! Warmonger! Reagan was widely viewed at the time as an “amiable dunce” who didn’t understand the first thing about the complexities of international diplomacy; why, the doddering old fool actually thought “We win, they lose” was…
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by John Venable The U.S. just moved one step closer to creating a Space Force. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Defense to draft legislation to establish the Space Force as a new branch of the military under the secretary of the Air Force. This move is an important step toward defending the space domain, which is home to critical assets that deliver everything from precision targeting and missile launch warning, to the communications and signals that allow banking, commerce, travel, and almost every other aspect of our high-tech society to function. Russia and China are aware of our near-complete reliance on space systems, and they have positioned themselves to move against them. It’s been over 11 years since China proved it is capable of destroying satellites in space using ground-based missiles, and in the years since, Russian satellites co-orbiting in close proximity with ours have been equally provocative. In 2018, an independent report emerged from a bipartisan congressional directive that recommended the U.S. establish an independent Space Force through a two-phased approach that would re-establish our dominance in the space domain. In the months since, the Trump administration has used the president’s current authorities to…
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned during a trip to NATO allies Slovakia and Hungary that Russia and China are trying to fill a political vacuum in central Europe caused by what he described as the United States’ absence in the region over recent years. Arriving Tuesday in Bratislava, Pompeo said the United States had been a friend through three decades of post-Soviet independence. The warm sentiments echoed those given to Hungary during a visit Monday to Budapest, where he urged his Hungarian counterpart to offer more support to Kyiv following Russia’s forced annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. “I spoke with the foreign minister about the urgent importance of supporting Ukraine in its quest for sovereignty and territorial integrity. We must not let [Russian President Vladimir] Putin drive wedges between friends and NATO. Hungarians know all too well from their history that an authoritarian Russia will never be a friend to the freedom and sovereignty of smaller nations,” said the top U.S. diplomat. Budapest is often accused by allies of being too close to Russia. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has regularly visited Putin in Moscow, while Russia is set to build two nuclear reactors in…
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by Lawrence W. Reed Except for a fishing trip to northern Canada in the 1960s, my first visit to a foreign country was to the old Soviet Union in March 1985. It was the month in which Soviet leadership passed from the aging old guard of communist hardliners into the hands of a younger and less rigid generation personified by Mikhail Gorbachev. Almost immediately, life loosened up. The Fall of Communism Between 1985 and 1991, I traveled four more times to the USSR. On my fifth visit, two weeks before the August 1991 failed coup against Gorbachev, I stopped in Kiev, Ukraine, and participated in a mass demonstration for Ukrainian independence from the Evil Empire. Other former satellites from Poland to Romania had already liberated themselves, and in December 1991, the USSR itself ceased to exist. Ukraine and 14 other constituent parts of the USSR became independent nations again. Those were heady days. Transformative ideas, circumstances, and personalities—the three elements that must be aligned to produce big changes—assembled in an extraordinary constellation. It yielded the most explosive geopolitical alterations of my lifetime. As a person whose first appreciation of liberty sprung from a teenage aversion to communist tyranny, witnessing…
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U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) on Thursday sent a letter urging President Donald Trump to protect the United States’ Kurdish partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Blackburn posted a copy of the letter on Twitter, tweeting, “This morning, I joined @SenDuckworth in writing a letter to the president to express the importance of protecting our Kurdish friends as the administration plans its withdrawal of American troops from Syria.” “The protection of our Kurdish friends and allies is in the national security interest of the United States,” said Blackburn. “The Kurds have been a reliable partner in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and we must not abandon them now.” Nashville is home to the largest Kurdish population of any city in the United States, Blackburn said. The letter comes as the administration considers a withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Syria. Blackburn and Duckworth are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The White House officially announced Dec. 19 that nearly 2,000 U.S. troops would leave Syria, Townhall reported. “Five years ago, ISIS was a very powerful and dangerous force in the Middle East, and now the United States has defeated the territorial caliphate. These…
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The White House says President Donald Trump reinforced his “strong support” for efforts to restore democracy in Venezuela during a conversation Wednesday with opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has proclaimed himself as the country’s president. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump and Guaido also committed to maintaining “regular communication to support Venezuela’s path back to stability, and to rebuild the bilateral relationship” between the two countries. Trump said earlier Wednesday that embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is willing to negotiate with representatives of Guaido’s opposition movement to solve the political crisis in the South American nation, but warned Americans not to travel to Venezuela “until further notice.” Trump’s early morning tweet referred to Maduro’s offer to hold talks with the country’s opposition forces and hold early legislative elections. He added the threat of U.S. sanctions, including cutting off Venezuelan oil revenues, contributed to the apparent softening of Maduro’s stance. Maduro made the offer earlier Wednesday during an interview with Russia’s RIA news agency, saying he is willing to sit down at the negotiating table “for the good of Venezuela.” But he said there will not be a new presidential election until 2025, rejecting a demand by Guaido, president…
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Reuters Russia and China pose the biggest espionage and cyber-attack threats to the United States and are more aligned than they have been in decades, the leader of the U.S. intelligence community told U.S. senators on Tuesday. While the two countries seek to expand their global reach, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said, some American allies are pulling away from Washington in reaction to changing U.S. policies on security and trade. “China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways – to steal information, to influence our citizens, or to disrupt critical infrastructure,” Coats said. “Moscow’s relationship with Beijing is closer than it’s been in many decades,” Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual hearing on worldwide threats, where he testified with the director of the CIA, FBI and other top intelligence officials. He also said some U.S. allies are seeking more independence, responding to their perceptions of changing policies on security and trade and “are becoming more open” to new partnerships. “The post-World War Two international system is coming under increasing strain amid continuing cyber and WMD proliferation threats, competition in space and regional…
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by Chris White Billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized Wednesday for funding an effort to dupe Alabama voters into believing Russian bots were fueling Republican Roy Moore’s failed senatorial bid. But he left crucial questions unanswered. His statement left several important facts about the so-called experiment unaddressed, including a detailed accounting of everyone involved in the caper, as well who crafted and executed the campaign. The effort was the subject of a closed-door presentation in Washington, D.C., to a group of liberal technology experts, The Washington Post reported, citing anonymous sources. “I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing,” Hoffman said in his statement. “For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET — the organization I did support — more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject.” The Hoffman-financed group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman referred to a group he funded, American Engagement Technologies (AET), as being involved in the effort. He poured $750,000 into the organization, much of it going to the project, the report notes. Democratic operatives associated with the…
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by Chuck Ross California Rep. Adam Schiff said Sunday that he is prepared to subpoena a report from the special counsel’s Russia investigation should the White House try to block its release. “At the end of the day, this is just — this case is just too important to keep from the American people what it’s really about,” Schiff said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” CNN host Jake Tapper had asked Schiff, a Democrat, whether he would use his subpoena power when he takes over next month as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to obtain the report, should the Trump administration attempt to block its release. https://youtu.be/_BY7odWtwrw?t=1591 “I’m prepared to make sure we do everything possible so that the public has the advantage of as much of the information as it can,” Schiff said. “That sounds like a yes,” said Tapper. “Well, that pretty much is a yes, from my point of view,” Schiff replied, adding that “we ought to make sure this report is public.” Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly planning to send his report to the Justice Department as early as mid-February, NBC News reported Friday. The Justice Department, which is…
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by Joe Simonson While the debate rages on over how much Russia really influenced the results of the 2016 presidential elections, one detail put the entire controversy in perspective: Democratic operatives spent an identical amount of money on their project to create a Russian bot “false flag” campaign during the Alabama 2017 special election. Multiple reports detailed the Russian government-backed Internet Research Agency spent up to $100,000 on Facebook advertisements throughout their entire disinformation operation. As The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Wednesday, billionaire-backed Democrats “created more than a thousand Russian-language accounts that followed [Roy] Moore’s Twitter account overnight.” The group of Democrats behind the “elaborate ‘false flag’ operation,” as described in an internal report obtained by The New York Times, also created fake conservative Facebook accounts for the purpose of convincing voters not to support Republican candidate Roy Moore. The cost of the effort totaled $100,000 — the identical amount Facebook says the Russian IRA spent during the last presidential election. Much of Russia’s activity during the 2016 campaign, however, cost little-to-nothing. According to analyses of the IRA’s activity, many of the Facebook posts created by the organization were seen by millions of Americans without a single dollar spent. The $100,000 spent by the Russian…
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by Chris White Google CEO Sundar Pichai appeared to catch Democratic lawmakers off guard Tuesday after disclosing in a congressional hearing the paltry amount of money Russia spent on ads on the 2016 election. Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler asked Pichai about the extent to which Russia used Google to interject itself in that year’s presidential election. Pichai’s answer seemed to genuinely surprise the New York Democrat. “We undertook a very thorough investigation, and in 2016, we now know of two main Russian accounts linked to Russia which advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising,” Pichai said. Nadler then asked him to repeat the number one more time. Facebook came under similar scrutiny in 2017, when the Silicon Valley company admitted to congressional investigators to selling political ads to a suspicious Russian outlet in 2016. Most of the ads did not focus on then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and the ad sales cost roughly $100,000. Instead, the ads touched on hot-button issues, like race, gun rights, gay rights and immigration. Meanwhile, Twitter told lawmakers it found about 200 Russian-linked accounts based on what Facebook had identified. Twitter sold more than $274,000 worth of ads to the news outlet RT, a…
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Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Saturday expressed his “deep condolences” to the family of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush and all Americans following his death. Gorbachev worked closely with Bush to bring an end to the Cold War in the late 1980s and 1990s, and lauded the former president for his abilities as a politician and his personal character. “It was a time of great change,” he told the Interfax news agency, “demanding great responsibility from everyone. The result was the end of the Cold War and nuclear arms race.” Gorbachev said that he and his wife, Raisa, “deeply appreciated the attention, kindness and simplicity typical of George and Barbara Bush, as well as the rest of their large, friendly family.” Pavel Palazhchenko, who worked as Gorbachev’s translator during those years, said that a tireless search for common ground and mutual understanding paved the way for some of the greatest achievements in the history of U.S.-Russia relations. “Bush always took a balanced approach to things,” Palazhchenko told The Associated Press on Saturday. “He was not one to rush and took everything into account. He was always very well briefed. Gorbachev was too, and together they just looked…
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by Chuck Ross President Donald Trump reportedly told special counsel Robert Mueller in writing earlier in November that he did not know about his son’s infamous June 2016 meeting with Russians before it occurred and that he was not informed by his longtime confidant, Roger Stone, that WikiLeaks planned to release information damaging to the Clinton campaign, according to CNN. Trump submitted the answers Nov. 20, after months of tense negotiations with Mueller’s team over the scope of the questions. Trump’s lawyers fought to exclude questions about possible obstruction of justice over the firing of James Comey as FBI director. They also opposed a sit-down interview with prosecutors, vying instead for responses provided in writing. The two sources familiar with the matter did not give CNN any direct quotes. The Trump Tower meeting and WikiLeaks email dumps have been a central focus of Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. Donald Trump Jr. met with a group of Russians on June 9, 2016, after an associate contacted him offering information on Hillary Clinton. “If it is what you say I love it,” Trump Jr. responded to the associate, a music publicist who worked for Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian…
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U.S. President Donald Trump is declaring that he “probably” won’t sit for an in-person interview with special counsel Robert Mueller probing links between his 2016 campaign and Russia, suggesting that his written answers to the prosecutor’s questions will be his final response. Trump told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that in recent days he gave “very, very complete answers to questions I shouldn’t have been asked. Probably this is the end.” In an interview at the White House taped Friday and broadcast Sunday, Trump said his lawyers are completing answers to Mueller’s two dozen or so questions, but that, “They’re writing what I tell them. It wasn’t a big deal.” https://youtu.be/g8ohzFy6eP0 Trump’s lawyers are expected to turn over his written responses in the coming days, although Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said last week some of the questions created “more issues for us legally than others.” Giuliani described some of the questions as “unnecessary,” some were “possible traps” and that “we might consider some as irrelevant.” The questions concerned events leading up to the November 2016 national election, not the two-plus months while Trump was the president-elect, or of events during Trump’s presidency, where Mueller is investigating whether Trump…
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by Ted Bromund Nearly a month ago, Meng Hongwei, the Chinese president of Interpol, disappeared during a visit home from France. Meng – or someone acting for him – has since submitted his resignation to Interpol, and Beijing has announced that he’s under investigation for corruption. His wife, who is still in France, now calls Chinese authorities “cruel” and says she’s not sure whether he’s still alive. He has not been seen or heard from since Sept. 25. Meng wasn’t a diplomat. He was a vice minister in China’s Ministry of Internal Security. In other words, he was a high-ranking official in the Chinese Communist Party and a political policeman. He almost certainly sent a lot of people to prison for their beliefs, and he evidently didn’t have any problems with the cruelty of the system he helped to run. Perhaps he and his wife should have considered the possibility that the cruel communist system might devour him before he started working for it. It was unseemly for Interpol to have a Chinese political policeman as its president to begin with. It’s also true that the danger of having the Chinese political police at the helm of Interpol was not quite…
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by Chris White German Chancellor Angela Merkel is offering government support for a for project that would supply Germany with U.S. natural gas — the move comes as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to loosen Russia’s hold on Europe’s energy markets. Merkel told lawmakers in early October that her government will co-finance the construction of a $576 million liquefied natural gas shipping terminal, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The project had failed for years to gain any traction in a country that receives the bulk of its gas from Russia. Trump has lobbied intensely for European countries — Germany in particular — to shift their energy imports from Russia to the U.S., if for no other reason than to diversify their energy markets. He told world leaders at a Group of 20 summit in 2017 that the U.S. wants to make it easier for companies to ship natural gas products to Eastern Europe. German and U.S. officials said Berlin is hoping that forging ahead on the project might help lessen the possibility of Washington leveling sanctions against Nord Stream 2, an unbuilt gas pipeline that would double Russia’s energy exports to Germany. Some U.S. officials believe the White House’s…
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President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would pull the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty because Russia had violated the agreement, but he provided no details of the violations. The 1987 pact, which helps protect the security of the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Far East, prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing ortest-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles. “Russia has violated the agreement.They have been violating it for many years,”Trump said after a rally in Elko, Nevada. “And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to.” The agreement has constrained theU.S. from developing new weapons, but America will begin developing them unless Russia and China agree not to possess or develop the weapons, Trump said. China is not currently party to the pact. “We’ll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to usand say let’s really get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it, and we’re adhering…
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by Chuck Ross Special Counsel Robert Mueller is planning to present key findings from his investigation of President Trump after next month’s midterm elections, according to a report from Bloomberg News. Two U.S. officials told Bloomberg that Mueller could very well continue his investigation after presenting his findings to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Trump-Russia probe because of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal. Rosenstein will then have the option of releasing the Mueller findings to the public and making recommendations to Congress. Since May 2017, Mueller has been investigating whether members of the Trump campaign conspired with Russian government officials to release emails stolen from Democrats. He is also investigating whether Trump himself obstructed justice by firing James Comey as FBI director. Comey’s firing, on May 9, 2017, paved the way for Mueller’s appointment as special counsel. Mueller’s investigation so far has received mixed reviews, largely along partisan lines. Trump often calls the probe a “witch hunt” that he considers illegal. Mueller has obtained guilty pleas from former Trump associates Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, and Rick Gates, though none have admitted to colluding with Russia. He has also indicted another 25 Russian nationals…
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by Chuck Ross President Donald Trump took aim Tuesday at Glenn Simpson and Bruce Ohr, two central figures in a congressional investigation into the FBI and Department of Justice’s (DOJ) handling of the infamous Steele dossier. In a series of tweets, Trump noted that Simpson, the founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS, is planning to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination during a congressional appearance Tuesday. Trump noted Ohr, a DOJ official, provided testimony to Congress in August that directly conflicts with what Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee in November. Ohr told lawmakers Aug. 28 that he met Simpson twice, once in August 2016 and once in December 2016. That conflicts with Simpson’s Nov. 14, 2017, testimony in which he claimed only to have had contact with Ohr after the election. “Conflict between Glen Simpson’s testimony to another House Panel about his contact with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. Ohr was used by Simpson and Steele as a Back Channel to get (FAKE) Dossier to FBI. Simpson pleading Fifth,” Trump wrote, quoting Fox News’s Catherine Herridge. “Where is Jeff Sessions?” Trump asked, referring to the attorney general. “Conflict between Glen Simpson’s testimony to another House Panel about his…
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by Chuck Ross A Democratic senator outsourced parts of the investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion to a former Senate staffer with links to George Soros and Fusion GPS, according to a New Yorker report. The New Yorker reports the unidentified senator contacted Daniel Jones, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, around March 2017 to review data regarding a possible link between the computer servers of the Trump Organization and a Russian bank called Alfa Bank. Jones, who worked under California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein when she chaired the intelligence panel, had just formed a non-profit group called the Democracy Integrity Project. The organization worked closely with Fusion GPS and former British spy Christopher Steele, the tag-team duo that produced the Democrat-funded dossier accusing the Trump campaign of colluding with the Kremlin. Jones’s operation was also funded by a small group of billionaires, including left-wing philanthropist George Soros. Jones told the FBI in March 2017 that between 7 and 10 billionaires had put up $50 million to continue an investigation into Russian meddling in elections. Jones also told the FBI that he had secured the services of Steele and Fusion GPS “to continue exposing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.” The goal…
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by Jason Hopkins President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser said the U.S. is capable of upending Russia’s “hegemony” in the international energy market. “Some of the things we’re talking about do focus on the energy sector,” Larry Kudlow said during an interview with Hill.TV that aired Monday. “We are the dominant energy power. We will be producing 15 million barrels of oil per day in a couple of years. We’re passing the Saudis. We’re passing Russia.” Kudlow, who currently serves as director of the National Economic Council, bragged that there is so much natural gas coming out of the Permian Basin, for example, American producers don’t even know what to do with it. Numerous regions across the U.S. are experiencing a natural gas boom, thanks in large part to the implementation of hydraulic fracturing. “So what does that mean? Means we have to have infrastructure for pipelines, east, west, west, east. Get this stuff to the northeast, get this stuff to Europe and challenge Russia’s hegemony on nat gas and LNG [liquified natural gas],” he said. “This is doable. We have to really focus on the energy sector. Most of this stuff can be done privately.” Kudlow ended the segment by explaining that the…
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by Jarrett Stepman The Soviet Union did not free the world of tyranny in World War II. It merely helped defeat one evil while ruthlessly attempting to supplant it with another one. But you wouldn’t know that from reading an Associated Press article from early September. The Associated Press originally stated that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were “allies” at the beginning of World War II. It then issued the following correction: … In 1939, despite sharp ideological differences, the two powers entered into a non-aggression pact that paved the way for them to carve up Poland and for the Soviet Union to take the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. That pact was never formally recognized as an alliance, and in 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union. It’s noteworthy that according to Haaretz, this correction took place after Russia put pressure on the publication. The Daily Signal reached out to AP about the correction, but it didn’t respond to the request for comment. The truth is that the USSR and Nazi Germany were functionally allies in the early stages of World War II, as historian Timothy Snyder explained in his book “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.” The “sharp ideological differences”…
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by Carla Babb Chinese military vessels are now operating in the Northern Atlantic, and Russian submarines are prowling those same waters at a pace not seen since the end of the Cold War, the Navy’s top admiral told VOA in an exclusive interview. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said China’s military movements from the North Atlantic into the Mediterranean Sea is a “new dynamic.” “Even five years ago, we wouldn’t have seen anything like this,” Richardson said. According to Richardson, the Chinese navy is a global one that is both “ready and capable” of operating wherever Beijing wants. “They’re certainly a pacing competition for us in terms of the naval threat,” he told VOA. However, Chinese operations near the United States’ eastern shore are not as threatening as Russian vessels lurking below the ocean’s surface. NATO allies from North America to Europe are increasingly concerned about the uptick of Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic. “We’re talking about more (activity) than we’ve seen in 25 years,” Richardson said. U.S. officials worry that Moscow may try to use its submarines to cut or tap into undersea cables that connect the two continents. 2nd Fleet Due to these…
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by Robert Romano Whatever case Special Counsel Robert Mueller intends on bringing against President Donald Trump, it does not look like it will be a collusion-with-Russia case. So far, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has not brought a case against anybody from the 2016 Trump campaign for assisting Russia with hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta emails and putting them on Wikileaks. That is the crime that Mueller was tasked by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteinwith investigating on May 17, 2017: “a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election” and “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” In short, that Russia hacked the Democrats, put the emails on Wikileaks, and Trump helped, or so the allegation goes. No collusion Since that time, Mueller has brought two cases on election interference by Russia, for purchasing Facebook ads, and to be certain, for hacking the DNC and Podesta emailsand putting them on Wikileaks. But nobody from the Trump campaign is named in those indictments. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in announcing each of these indictments, took great pains to remind everyone that neither…
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by Jeffery Rendall Why can’t we be friends, Why can’t we be friends, Why can’t we be friends, Why can’t we be friends?… I’d kinda’ like to be the president So I could show you how your money’s spent… ~ War, 1975 This classic War (the musical group) song came to mind after enduring the barrage of establishment media (and #NeverTrump’s) insults after last week’s summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It’s evident from the over-the-top reactions of some in the political chattering class that being “friends” with Russia is not possible – or even desirable. The whiners and complainers acted as though Trump gave away the keys to the American military’s lockbox and set the tone for a surrender to the diminutive Putin and his pseudo-commie lackeys. Hardly; Trump was merely advancing the widely held and accepted notion that peace is a good thing. It’s hard to fathom how advocating for perpetuating and furthering tensions with a major nuclear power would be beneficial to the average American, yet if some of these media people had their way U.S. forces would be on the doorstep of the Kremlin hoping to get a clean shot at the Russian brain trust.…
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As experts comb through the newly-released, heavily redadcted FISA application to surveil former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, John Hinderaker at PowerLineBlog noticed four key takeaways. First, he notes, the application – which was renewed several times by the Obama-Holder-Lynch Department of Justice – strongly suggests Page is a Russian agent actively engaged in criminal activity. However, to date, Page has never been charged with a crime. Secondly, the government describes Christopher Steel and the origin of the dossier in a way that Hinderaker generously calls “misleading at best.” The application says: US-based law firm had hired the identified US person to condict research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia (the identified US person and Source #1 have a long-staning relationship). The identified US person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified US person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified US person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign. Legend: Identified US person = Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS Source #1 = Christopher Steele Candidate #1 = Donald Trump Hinderaker explains: The…
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by Ryan Pickrell A senior CIA official warned of the dangers of China’s rise Friday, stressing that Beijing is determined to see China replace the U.S. as the world superpower. Arguing that China is fundamentally waging a “cold war” against the U.S., Deputy Assistant Director for the CIA’s East Asia Mission Center Michael Collins indirectly described China as a “country that exploits all avenues of power — licit and illicit, public and private, economic and military — to undermine the standing of [its] rival relative to [its] own standing without resorting to conflict.” “At the end of the day, they want every country around the world, when it’s deciding its interests on policy issues, to first and foremost side with China and not the United States, because the Chinese are increasingly defining a conflict with the United States and what we stand behind as a systems conflict,” he argued at the Aspen Security Forum. Emphasizing that China represents the greatest challenge to American interests, he stressed that Chinese ambitions set “up a competition with us and what we stand behind far more significantly by any extreme than what the Russians could put forward.” His statements echo those of FBI Director Christopher Wray, who spoke at…
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by Steve Herman U.S. President Donald Trump, amid the uproar over his initial summit this week with Russia’s president, is indicating there could be a second such meeting with Vladimir Putin. Trump, writing on Twitter, called Monday’s summit in Helsinki “a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media.” The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media. I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear…….. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2018 In another Thursday morning tweet, the U.S. president accused mainstream media in the country of desiring “so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war.” The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war. They are pushing so recklessly hard and hate the fact that I’ll probably have a good relationship with Putin. We are doing MUCH better than any other country! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19,…
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