Tag Archives: Russia

CNN reports: The Trump administration remained largely silent Wednesday as leaders around the world expressed concern and demanded answers from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government over the revelation that a leading opposition figure had been poisoned by a Soviet-era chemical nerve agent. Leaders around the world, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, offered strong condemnation …

ABC News reports: In early July the Department of Homeland Security withheld publication of an intelligence bulletin warning law enforcement agencies of a Russian scheme to promote “allegations about the poor mental health” of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to internal emails and a draft of the document obtained by ABC News. The draft bulletin, titled “Russia Likely to …

The Washington Post reports: Facebook took down a small network of fake accounts and pages associated with Russian operatives that had recruited U.S. journalists to write articles targeting left-leaning readers on topics such as racial justice, the Biden-Harris campaign, and President Trump’s policies, the company said Tuesday. The network of 13 fake accounts and two pages was in its early …

“When I went through confirmation, people watched that. They heard me make a couple of promises. One of them was to always follow the law. “The other was that I would do everything I could to protect the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, allowing people to leak it for political purposes. “The action that I announced yesterday is entirely consistent …

From a statement issued today by Joe Biden: This is not how democracy works. But it is how American national security and sovereignty are violated. The tools of our government are meant to defend the American people and our system of governance against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And yet, at a moment when we know that our elections are …

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department secretly took steps in 2017 to narrow the investigation into Russian election interference and any links to the Trump campaign, according to former law enforcement officials, keeping investigators from completing an examination of President Trump’s decades-long personal and business ties to Russia. The special counsel who finished the investigation, Robert S. Mueller …

Reuters reports: Thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday in Russia’s far eastern city of Khabarovsk to protest against President Vladimir Putin’s handling of a regional political crisis and the suspected poisoning of his most vocal critic. “Putin, have some tea,” protesters chanted as they marched on the city’s main thoroughfare, in a reference to the case of …

The Independent reports: Donald Trump exploded with anger at one of his most senior aides about missing a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a former No 10 official. The US president’s rant about the missed call happened “right in front” of former prime minister Theresa May in Washington, her ex-chief of staff Nick Timothy has revealed. …

Sky News reports: German doctors treating Russian dissident Alexei Navalny say tests indicate he was poisoned. Doctors at Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin, where the Putin critic has been since being transferred from Siberia on Saturday, said: “The clinical findings indicate intoxication by a substance from the cholinesterase inhibitor group. “The specific substance has not been identified so far and a further wide-ranging …

Reuters reports: As QAnon gained adherents and took on new topics, with President Donald Trump as the constant hero waging a misunderstood battle, social media accounts controlled by a key Kremlin ally joined in. In 2019 the Internet Research Agency sent a high volume of tweets tagged with #QAnon and the movement slogan #WWG1WGA, short for Where We Go One, …

Axios reports: Former FBI director James Comey argued on Sunday that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on 2016 Russian interference “blows up” President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr’s claims that the FBI’s Russia investigation was unjustified and a “hoax.” The 966-page bipartisan report, which goes into more detail than the Mueller report, found that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort …

Just in from the Department of Justice: According to court documents, from December 1996 to January 2011, Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins, 45, a former member of the U.S. Army, allegedly conspired with agents of a Russian intelligence service. During that time, Debbins periodically visited Russia and met with Russian intelligence agents. In 1997, Debbins was assigned a code name by …

From an exhaustive report published today by Forbes: A new report from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence offers a damning portrait of the people Donald Trump chose as his partners for potential projects in Russia. They include individuals with alleged connections to the mob, to Vladimir Putin and to human trafficking. The group would comprise an extraordinary list …

The BBC reports: Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is unconscious in hospital suffering from suspected poisoning, his spokeswoman has said. The anti-corruption campaigner fell ill during a flight and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Kira Yarmysh said, adding that they suspected something had been mixed into his tea. The Kremlin said that it wished Mr Navalny a …

From the editorial board of the New York Daily News: A major reason Donald Trump doesn’t deserve re-election: The suspected original sin of this presidency — cheating to win with Russian collusion — has mostly proven true. So says near-1,000-page fifth and final bipartisan report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence detailing a wide web of contacts between Russian …

Courthouse News reports: The World Health Organization warned against “vaccine nationalism” on Tuesday at a moment when the race to vaccinate world populations against the novel coronavirus is entering a new combative phase after China joined Russia in declaring it has developed a vaccine against the virus. The dual announcements by Russia and China, adversaries to the U.S. and its …

The New York Times reports: The Senate report said that the unusual nature of the Trump campaign — staffed by Mr. Trump’s longtime associates, friends and other businessmen with no government experience — “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.” The Senate investigation found that two other people who met at Trump Tower in 2016 with senior …

Axios reports: The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released the fifth and final volume of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which details “counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities.” The report found that the former Trump campaign chairman began working on influence operations for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs in 2004. Manafort hired and …

Politico reports: Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone has unexpectedly dropped the appeal of his seven federal felony convictions for seeking to thwart a House investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Stone’s lawyers submitted a notice to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit withdrawing the appeal Monday night, about a month after President Donald Trump …

Deutsche Welle reports: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko today accused NATO of deploying tanks and planes to Belarus’ western border, a claim the military alliance rejected. Speaking at a rally of his supporters in central Minsk, the 65-year-old leader dismissed opposition calls for a new election and urged Belarusians to defend their country. “I called you here not to defend me, …