Tag Archives: Russia

The New York Times reports: During the 2016 presidential campaign and transition, Donald J. Trump and at least 17 campaign officials and advisers had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, a New York Times analysis has found. At least 10 other associates were told about interactions but did not have any themselves. Knowledge of these interactions is …

Reuters reports: Private military contractors who do secret missions for Russia flew into Venezuela in the past few days to beef up security for President Nicolas Maduro in the face of U.S.-backed opposition protests, according to two people close to them. Russia, which has backed Maduro’s socialist government to the tune of billions of dollars, this week promised to stand …

Mediaite reports: Fox & Friends take? Where is the Russian collusion? The indictment appears to connect the Trump campaign to information hacked by Russian officials who have already been indicted by Mueller for interfering in the election. But Steve Doocy’s take? “When you look at seven counts from the grand jury, obstruction of an official investigation, false statements to Congress, …

The Associated Press reports: Roger Stone, a confidant of President Donald Trump, was arrested Friday morning on several criminal charges stemming from the special counsel’s Russia investigation. Stone is charged in a seven-count indictment with witness tampering, obstruction and false statements about his interactions related to the release by WikiLeaks of hacked emails during the 2016 presidential election. Some of …

CNN reports: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has expressed interest in the Trump campaign’s relationship with the National Rifle Association during the 2016 campaign. “When I was interviewed by the special counsel’s office, I was asked about the Trump campaign and our dealings with the NRA,” Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide, told CNN. The special counsel’s team was …

Axios reports: Donald Trump Jr. placed the blame for a Trump Tower Moscow project solely on President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen in an interview on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” Monday night, saying, “We don’t know anything about it.” Trump Jr.’s statement contradicts multiple facts that have already been made public about the Moscow project — mentioned publicly in …

The New York Times reports: When the Trump administration announced last month that it was lifting sanctions against a trio of companies controlled by an influential Russian oligarch, it cast the move as tough on Russia and on the oligarch, arguing that he had to make painful concessions to get the sanctions lifted. But a binding confidential document signed by …

Talking Points Memo reports: President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani said Sunday that conversations about a potential Trump Tower deal in Moscow — conversations involving then-candidate Trump — occurred “as far as October, November” of 2016. Giuliani’s timeline extends beyond what Cohen acknowledged in pleading guilty to lying to Congress about the deal: In that timeline, discussions about the …

The Daily Beast reports: Russian campaigners have told The Daily Beast that Chechen authorities have ordered people to kill LGBT members of their own families, and have demanded ransoms for the release of detained LGBT relatives. According to reports, at least 40 people have been arrested in the last two to three weeks, many of them tortured, in a new …

Posted to the State Department’s website: We are deeply disturbed by credible reports out of Chechnya about renewed attacks against individuals perceived to be members of the LGBTI community. Civil society groups report that at least 40 individuals have been illegally detained since December, including two who reportedly died in custody after being tortured. We call on Russia to live …

Maggie Haberman reports at the New York Times: President Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani backtracked on Thursday from a surprising assertion he made a night earlier that left open the possibility that Trump campaign aides might have coordinated with Russia’s election interference in 2016. “There was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form,” Mr. Giuliani …

Mediaite reports: Facebook announced that it has removed hundreds of pages “for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior” as part of a disinformation campaign being run by employees of Russian news outlet Sputnik. The stunning announcement, made early Thursday, revealed that Facebook has removed 364 pages — boasting 790,000 followers and $135,000 in ad buys between them — that were “part …

The Washington Post reports: Rudolph W. Giuliani claimed Wednesday night that he “never said there was no collusion” between President Trump’s campaign and Russia leading up to the 2016 presidential election. In a remarkable, at times contentious, interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, the president’s lawyer appeared to contradict his own past statements about collusion as well as what Trump and …

Reuters reports: Russia said on Wednesday that it had caught former U.S. marine Paul Whelan, who is being held in Russia on spying charges, while he was in the act of carrying out illegal activities in his Moscow hotel room. Whelan, a former U.S. marine who also holds British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service …

ABC News reports: Special counsel Robert Mueller has filed a heavily-redacted court document Tuesday afternoon outlining the underlying evidence to support its claims that Paul Manafort, the president’s onetime campaign chairman, lied to federal investigators. At a hearing in December, the federal judge overseeing that case asked the government to provide some “underlying evidence” to support the scant details they’ve …

The Washington Post reports: The stepson of conservative writer Jerome Corsi has been summoned by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to testify before a grand jury, according to Corsi, a sign that Mueller’s team remains focused on the writer and his interactions with Roger Stone, a close associate of President Trump. Corsi said in a Fox Business Network interview …

“We now know top people within the FBI, filled with hatred, and frankly, anti-Trump rage, have put aside all values, and their blatant political bias, were seeking redemption for the firing of James Comey. They actually plotted to destroy your duly-elected president, and this goes way beyond what we already knew up until this point. Now, according to this report, …

The New York Times reports: There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years. Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States. …

“What scares me the most is, is if the FBI can decide on its own to go and investigate a duly-elected president of the United States and just decide to go after him because they want to. Guys, I’m going to tell you something, this is incredibly damaging to the way our constitutional republic is supposed to work, and for …

The Associated Press reports: The Russian republic of Chechnya has launched a new crackdown on gays in which at least two people have died and about 40 people have been detained, LGBT activists in Russia charged Monday. The new allegations come after reports in 2017 of more than 100 gay men arrested and subjected to torture, and some of them …