Majorityrights News > Category: Russian Politics

Buzzfeed, “Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream”, 5 Oct 2017:

Milo Yiannopoulos at the One Nostalgia Tavern in Dallas, belting out a karaoke rendition of “America the Beautiful” in front of a crowd of “sieg heil”-ing admirers, including Richard Spencer.

A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.”

In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that “there’s no room in American society” for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.

But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”

The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was Milo Yiannopoulos, the site’s former tech editor known best for his outrageous public provocations, such as last year’s Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and September’s canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year, Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices “a fair hearing.” In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted “we’re not a hate site.” Breitbart’s media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to “computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.”

These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.

It’s a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings “America the Beautiful” in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes.

These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website — and, in particular, Yiannopoulos — links the Mercer family, the billionaires who fund Breitbart, to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content, and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate.

They capture what Bannon calls his “killing machine” in action, as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world, sifts through these grievances for ideas and content, and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld, collecting advertisers’ checks all along the way.

And the cache of emails — some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public — expose the extent to which this machine depended on Yiannopoulos, who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannon’s grand plan for Yiannopoulos, whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often, the documents reveal, this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, suburbia, and everywhere in between.

“I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “But everyone who knows me also knows I’m not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots. I have been and am a steadfast supporter of Jews and Israel. I disavow white nationalism and I disavow racism and I always have.”

He added that during his karaoke performance, his “severe myopia” made it impossible for him to see the Hitler salutes a few feet away.

Steve Bannon, the other Breitbart employees named in the story, and the Mercer family did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Like all the new media success stories, Breitbart’s alt-right platform depends on the participation of its audience. It combusts the often secret fury of those who reject liberal norms into news, and it doesn’t burn clean.

Now Bannon is back at the controls of the machine, which he has said he is “revving up.” The Mercers have funded Yiannopoulos’s post-Breitbart venture. And these documents present the clearest look at what these people may have in store for America.

A year and a half ago, Milo Yiannopoulos set himself a difficult task: to define the alt-right. It was five months before Hillary Clinton named the alt-right in a campaign speech, 10 months before the alt-right’s great hope became president, and 17 months before Charlottesville clinched the alt-right as a stalking horse for violent white nationalism. The movement had just begun its explosive emergence into the country’s politics and culture.

At the time, Yiannopoulos, who would later describe himself as a “fellow traveler” of the alt-right, was the tech editor of Breitbart. In summer 2015, after spending a year gathering momentum through GamerGate — the opening salvo of the new culture wars — he convinced Breitbart upper management to give him his own section. And for four months, he helped Bannon wage what the Breitbart boss called in emails to staff “#war.” It was a war, fought story by story, against the perceived forces of liberal activism on every conceivable battleground in American life.

Yiannopoulos was a useful soldier whose very public identity as a gay man (one who has now married a black man) helped defend him, his anti-political correctness crusade, and his employer from charges of bigotry.

But now Yiannopoulos had a more complicated fight on his hands. The left — and worse, some on the right — had started to condemn the new conservative energy as reactionary and racist. Yiannopoulos had to take back “alt-right,” to redefine for Breitbart’s audience a poorly understood, leaderless movement, parts of which had already started to resist the term itself.

So he reached out to key constituents, who included a neo-Nazi and a white nationalist.

“Finally doing my big feature on the alt right,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a March 9, 2016, email to Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, a hacker who is the system administrator of the neo-Nazi hub the Daily Stormer, and who would later ask his followers to disrupt the funeral of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer. “Fancy braindumping some thoughts for me.”

“It’s time for me to do my big definitive guide to the alt right,” Yiannopoulos wrote four hours later to Curtis Yarvin, a software engineer who under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug helped create the “neoreactionary” movement, which holds that Enlightenment democracy has failed and that a return to feudalism and authoritarian rule is in order. “Which is my whorish way of asking if you have anything you’d like to make sure I include.”

“Alt r feature, figured you’d have some thoughts,” Yiannopoulos wrote the same day to Devin Saucier, who helps edit the online white nationalist magazine American Renaissance under the pseudonym Henry Wolff, and who wrote a story in June 2017 called “Why I Am (Among Other Things) a White Nationalist.”

The three responded at length: Weev about the Daily Stormer and a podcast called The Daily Shoah, Yarvin in characteristically sweeping world-historical assertions (“It’s no secret that North America contains many distinct cultural/ethnic communities. This is not optimal, but with a competent king it’s not a huge problem either”), and Saucier with a list of thinkers, politicians, journalists, films (Dune, Mad Max, The Dark Knight), and musical genres (folk metal, martial industrial, ’80s synthpop) important to the movement. Yiannopoulos forwarded it all, along with the Wikipedia entries for “Alternative Right” and the esoteric far-right Italian philosopher Julius Evola — a major influence on 20th-century Italian fascists and Richard Spencer alike — to Allum Bokhari, his deputy and frequent ghostwriter, whom he had met during GamerGate. “Include a bit of everything,” he instructed Bokhari.

“Bannon, as you probably know, is sympathetic to much of it.”

“I think you’ll like what I’m cooking up,” Yiannopoulos wrote to Saucier, the American Renaissance editor.

“I look forward to it,” Saucier replied. “Bannon, as you probably know, is sympathetic to much of it.”

Five days later Bokhari returned a 3,000-word draft, a taxonomy of the movement titled “ALT-RIGHT BEHEMOTH.” It included a little bit of everything: the brains and their influences (Yarvin and Evola, etc.), the “natural conservatives” (people who think different ethnic groups should stay separate for scientific reasons), the “Meme team” (4chan and 8chan), and the actual hatemongers. Of the last group, Bokhari wrote: “There’s just not very many of them, no-one really likes them, and they’re unlikely to achieve anything significant in the alt-right.”

“Magnificent start,” Yiannopoulos responded.

Over the next three days, Yiannopoulos passed the article back to Yarvin and the white nationalist Saucier, the latter of whom gave line-by-line annotations. He also sent it to Vox Day, a writer who was expelled from the board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for calling a black writer an “ignorant savage,” and to Alex Marlow, the editor of Breitbart.

“Solid, fair, and fairly comprehensive,” Vox Day responded, with a few suggestions.

“Most of it is great but I don’t want to rush a major long form piece like this,” Marlow wrote back. “A few people will need to weigh in since it deals heavily with race.”

Also, there was another sensitive issue to be raised: credit. “Allum did most of the work on this and wants joint [byline] but I want the glory here,” Yiannopoulos wrote back to Marlow. “I am telling him you said it’s sensitive and want my byline alone on it.”

Minutes later, Yiannopoulos emailed Bokhari. “I was going to have Marlow collude with me … about the byline on the alt right thing because I want to take it solo. Will you hate me too much if I do that? … Truthfully management is very edgy on this one (They love it but it’s racially charged) and they would prefer it.”

“Will management definitely say no if it’s both of us?” Bokhari responded. “I think it actually lowers the risk if someone with a brown-sounding name shares the BL.”

Five days later, March 22nd, Marlow returned with comments. He suggested that the story should show in more detail how Yiannopoulos and most of the alt-right rejected the actual neo-Nazis in the movement. And he added that Taki’s Magazine and VDare, two publications Yiannopoulos and Bokhari identified as part of the alt-right, “are both racist. … We should disclaimer that or strike that part of the history from the article.” (The published story added, in the passive voice, “All of these websites have been accused of racism.”) Again the story went back to Bokhari, who on the 24th sent Yiannopoulos still another draft, with the subject head “ALT RIGHT, MEIN FUHRER.”

On the 27th, now co-bylined, the story was ready for upper management: Bannon and Larry Solov, Breitbart’s press-shy CEO. It was also ready, on a separate email chain, for another read and round of comments from the white nationalist Saucier, the feudalist Yarvin, the neo-Nazi Weev, and Vox Day.

“I need to go thru this tomorrow in depth…although I do appreciate any piece that mentions evola,” Bannon wrote. On the 29th, in an email titled “steve wants you to read this,” Marlow sent Yiannopoulos a list of edits and notes Bannon had solicited from James Pinkerton, a former Reagan and George H.W. Bush staffer and a contributing editor of the American Conservative. The 59-year-old Pinkerton was put off by a cartoon of Pepe the Frog conducting the Trump Train.

“I love art,” he wrote inline. “I think [Breitbart News Network] needs a lot more of it, but I don’t get the above. Frogs? Kermit? Am I missing something here?”

Later that day, Breitbart published “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” It quickly became a touchstone, cited in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, CNN, and New York Magazine, among others. And its influence is still being felt. This past July, in a speech in Warsaw that was celebrated by the alt-right, President Trump echoed a line from the story — a story written by a “brown-sounding” amanuensis, all but line-edited by a white nationalist, laundered for racism by Breitbart’s editors, and supervised by the man who would in short order become the president’s chief strategist.

The machine had worked well.

It hadn’t always been so easy.

The previous November, Yiannopoulos emailed Bannon with a bone to pick. Breitbart London reported that a London college student behind a popular social justice hashtag had threatened the anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller.

“The story is horseshit and we should never have published it,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Reckless and stupid. … Strongly recommend we pull. it’s insanely defamatory. I spoke to pamela geller and even she said it was rubbish. We’re outright lying about this girl and surely we’re better than that. We can and should win by telling the truth.”

Six minutes later, Bannon wrote back to his tech editor in a fury. “Your [sic] full of shit. When I need your advice on anything I will ask. ... The tech site is a total clusterfuck—-meaningless stories written by juveniles. You don’t have a clue how to build a company or what real content is. And you don’t have long to figure it out or your [sic] gone. … You are magenalia [sic].”

(Geller clarified to BuzzFeed News in a statement that she believed it was “rubbish” that the London university characterized the threats against her as “fake.”)
“Dude—we r in a global existentialist war where our enemy EXISTS in social media and u r jerking yourself off w/ marginalia!!!!”

On December 8, the New York Times published a major story about the radicalization of American Muslims on Facebook. Yiannopoulos published a story called “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

That afternoon, Bannon emailed Yiannopoulos and Marlow.

“Dude—-we r in a global existentialist war where our enemy EXISTS in social media and u r jerking yourself off w/ marginalia!!!! U should be OWNING this conversation because u r everything they hate!!! Drop your toys, pick up your tools and go help save western civilization.”

“Message received,” Yiannopoulos wrote back. “I will do a Week of Islam next week.”

“U don’t need that,” Bannon responded. “Just get in the fight—-ur Social Media and they have made it a powerful weapon of war. … There is no war correspondent in the west yet dude and u can own it and be remember for 3 generations—or sit around wasting your God-given talents jerking off to your fan base.”

Over the next several months, Yiannopoulos began to find the right targets. First it was a continued attack on Shaun King, the writer and Black Lives Matter activist whose ethnicity Yiannopoulos had called into question. Next it was then–Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who Bannon called in an email to Yiannopoulos the “poster child for the narcissistic ecosystem.”

And increasingly it was enemies of Donald Trump. In response to a Yiannopoulos pitch accusing a prominent Republican opponent of Trump of being a pill-popper, Bannon wrote: “Dude!!! LMAO! … Epic.” And Bannon signed off on an April story by Yiannopoulos imploring #NeverTrumpers to get on board with “Trump and the alt-right.” (Bannon did, however, veto making it the lead story on the site, writing to Yiannopoulos and Marlow, “Looks like we have our thumb on the scale.”)

Why was Bannon so concerned with the focus of his tech editor’s energies? In a February email exchange before Yiannopoulos appeared on Greg Gutfeld’s Sunday Fox News show, Bannon wrote, “Gutfeld should become an object lesson for u. Brilliant cultural commentator who really got pop culture, the hipster scene and advant [sic] garde….got on fox and tried to become a political pundit…lost all credibility. … You r one of the potential heirs to his cultural leadership so act according.” Bannon was grooming the younger man for something greater.

In May, Bannon invited Yiannopoulos to Cannes for a week for the film festival. “Want to discuss tv and film with u,” he wrote in an email. “U get to meet my partners, hang on the boat and discuss business.”

The boat was the Sea Owl, a 200-foot yacht owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who is a major funder of Breitbart and various other far-right enterprises. That week, Yiannopoulos shuttled back and forth from the Cannes Palace Hotel to the pier next to the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès and the green-sterned, “fantasy-inspired” vessel complete with a Dale Chihuly chandelier. The Mercers were in town to promote Clinton Cash, a film produced by Bannon and their production studio, Glittering Steel. On board, Yiannopoulos drank, mingled, and interviewed Phil Robertson, the lavishly bearded patriarch of Duck Dynasty, for his podcast.

“I know how lucky I am,” Yiannopoulos wrote to Bannon on May 20. “I’m going to work hard to make you some money—and win the war! Thanks for having me this week and for the faith you’re placing in me chief. The left won’t know what hit them.”

“U just focus on being who u are—we will put a top level team around u,” Bannon wrote back. “#war.”

On July 22, 2016, Rebekah Mercer — Robert’s powerful daughter — emailed Steve Bannon from her Stanford alumni account. She wanted the Breitbart executive chairman, whom she introduced as “one of the greatest living defenders of Liberty,” to meet an app developer she knew. Apple had rejected the man’s game (Capitol HillAwry, in which players delete emails à la Hillary Clinton) from the App Store, and the younger Mercer wondered “if we could put an article up detailing his 1st amendment political persecution.”

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Scotland’s ban on fracking poses something of a dilemma for nationalists. While it is indisputable that fracking is environmentally destructive, it is also the case that the destruction can be mitigated some in that the process can be turned off such that it is not an endless source of pollution; and it can be turned on when, for example, Russia threatens to withhold oil supply for not yielding to its political pressure as an oil supplier; which it aspires to do and that’s why Russian Active Measures has a certifiable presence in anti-fracking movements, including that of Scotland.

BBC, “Scottish government backs ban on fracking”, 3 Oct 2017:

The Scottish government has announced an “effective ban” on fracking.

Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse told MSPs that the practice “cannot and will not take place in Scotland”.

He said an existing moratorium on the technique, which has been in place since 2015, would continue “indefinitely” after a consultation showed “overwhelming” opposition.

The government will seek Holyrood’s endorsement for the ban in a vote following the October recess.

But with only the Conservatives now opposed to a ban, the vote is likely to be a formality.

The move was welcomed by environmental groups but has been slammed by Ineos, operators of the huge Grangemouth petrochemical plant, which holds fracking exploration licences across 700 square miles of the country.

  Scotland and fracking: how did we get here?

The Scottish government has previously imposed a similar block on underground coal gasification (UCG) - a separate technique used to extract gas from coal seams deep underground - on environmental grounds.

It followed the introduction of a moratorium on both fracking and UCG in 2015, which saw a series of expert reports published on the potential health, environmental and economic impact of the controversial techniques, as well as a public consultation being carried out.

Mr Wheelhouse said the consultation came back with “overwhelming” opposition to fracking, with 99% of the 60,000 respondents supporting a ban. He said this showed that “there is no social licence for unconventional oil and gas to be taken forward at this time”.

The move comes almost exactly a year on from the UK government giving the go-ahead to horizontal fracking in Lancashire.

Shale gas is currently processed in Scotland at a site in Grangemouth, having been shipped in from abroad, but cannot be extracted from beneath Scottish soil under the current moratorium, which is enforced through planning regulations.

Mr Wheelhouse said local authorities would be instructed to continue this moratorium “indefinitely” - calling this “action sufficient to effectively ban the development of unconventional oil and gas extraction in Scotland”.

He said: “The decision I am announcing today means that fracking cannot and will not take place in Scotland.”

Mr Wheelhouse’s announcement was welcomed by environmental groups, with Friends of the Earth Scotland and WWF Scotland both hailing a victory for campaigners.

WWF Scotland official Sam Gardner said it was “excellent news”, saying “the climate science is clear” that fossil fuels should be “left in the ground”.

Mary Church from Friends of the Earth Scotland said it was a “huge win for the anti-fracking movement” which would be “warmly welcomed across the country and around the world”.
‘Poor decision’

However Ineos said the move could see “large numbers of Scottish workers leaving the country to find work”.

Tom Pickering, operations director of Ineos Shale, said: “It is a sad day for those of us who believe in evidence-led decision making. The Scottish government has turned its back on a potential manufacturing and jobs renaissance and lessened Scottish academia’s place in the world by ignoring its findings.”

Ken Cronin of UK Onshore Oil and Gas also said it was a “poor decision”, which ignored “extensive independent research” and was “based on dogma not evidence or geopolitical reality”.

And the GMB Scotland trade union said the move was “mired in dishonesty” and “an abandonment of the national interest”, saying Scotland would now be dependent on gas shipped in from “the likes of Qatar and Russia”.

The Scottish Conservatives also said Scotland would miss out on a “much needed economic boost” and high-skilled jobs as a result of the decision.

Tory MSP Dean Lockhart said ministers had ignored scientific and economic evidence to take a “short-sighted and economically damaging decision which is nothing more than a bid to appease the green elements of the pro-independence movement”.

However Labour MSP Claudia Beamish said the move did not go far enough, arguing that ministers were merely extending the existing moratorium which “could be overturned at any point at the whim of a minister”.
‘Legally shaky’

Ms Beamish has a member’s bill tabled at Holyrood calling for a “full legal ban”, but Mr Wheelhouse said this would not be needed until his proposals.

The Scottish Greens said the announcement was “a step in the right direction”. However, they also wanted a more permanent ban, with MSP Mark Ruskell saying the moratorium was “legally shaky” and open to challenge.

This was also echoed by Friends of the Earth Scotland, with Ms Church saying ministers should “go further than relying on planning powers” and “instead commit to passing a law to ban the fracking industry for good”.

Scottish Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur welcomed the decision, saying that ministers had taken the “scenic route” but had ultimately decided “effectively to ban fracking”.

MSPs have previously voted to support a ban on fracking, but SNP members abstained from that vote.
What is fracking and why is it controversial?

- Fracking is the process of drilling down into the earth before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside.
- The extensive use of fracking in the US, where it has revolutionised the energy industry, has prompted environmental concerns.
- The first is that fracking uses huge amounts of water that must be transported to the fracking site, at significant environmental cost.
- The second is the worry that potentially carcinogenic chemicals used may escape and contaminate groundwater around the fracking site.
- But the industry suggests fracking of shale gas could contribute significantly to the UK’s future energy needs

  find out more…

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ABC.Net.Au, “Twitter shuts down 201 accounts linked to Russian propaganda operatives who posted to Facebook”, 29 Sept 2017:

Twitter has shut down hundreds of accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads to Facebook during the 2016 US election.

The company said it found 22 accounts which were directly linked to the 450 Facebook accounts, found earlier this month.

It also found a further 179 accounts related or linked to those Twitter accounts.

None of these accounts had been registered as advertisers, and all of them had already been or were immediately suspended, most for violating spam rules.

Twitter said Russian media outlet RT — which has strong links to the Kremlin — spent at least $274,100 on advertisements on the platform in 2016.

The three accounts — @RT_com, @RT_America, and @ActualidadRT — also promoted 1,823 tweets the company says “definitely or potentially targeted” the US market.

Those ad buys alone topped the $100,000 that Facebook had linked to a Russian propaganda operation, a revelation that prompted calls from some Democrats for new disclosure rules for online political ads.

Although Twitter’s disclosures in briefings to US congressional staff and a public blog post were its most detailed to date on the issue, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee called the company’s statements “deeply disappointing”.

Senator Mark Warner, whose panel is investigating alleged Russian interference in the election, said Twitter officials had not answered many questions about the Russian use of the platform and that it was still subject to foreign manipulation.

Twitter has been criticised as being too lax in policing fake or abusive accounts.

Technology companies including Twitter, Facebook and Google were asked by intelligence committees earlier this week to testify at a public hearing on November 1 about alleged Russian interference.

The pressure on the companies reflects growing concern among politicians in both parties that social networks may have played a key role in Moscow’s attempts to spread disinformation and propaganda to sow political discord in the United States and help elect President Donald Trump.

Moscow denies any such activity and Mr Trump has denied any talk of collusion.

In front of building at 55 Savushkina Street in St Petersburg, Russia, where the Kremlin has a workforce of hundreds patrolling the internet as trolls. Youtube video

ABC.Net.Au, “Inside Russia’s Troll Factory: Controlling debate and stifling dissent in internet forums and social media”, 12 Aug 2015 -

Inside an anonymous building in St Petersburg, the Kremlin commands a workforce of hundreds that patrol the internet as trolls — assuming false identities online.

Their task is to control debate and stifle dissent in forums and on social media.

The department at the centre of this effort is officially known as the Internet Research Agency.

But its reputation has earned it another name by which it is widely known: the Troll Factory.

Andrei Soshnikov is the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory.

“Generally, they produce lies in a 24-hour regime, seven days a week,” said Andrei Soshnikov, the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory.

“In the morning, in the day, at night, something going on in world, or in Russia or St Petersburg, you will always find the comments from the Troll Factory.”

Soshnikov started monitoring the activities at the Internet Research Agency a few years ago, not long after he graduated from journalism school.

After his first reports were published, he hit the jackpot.

He was contacted by activist Luda Savchuk, who had been hired to work as a troll.

“I spent two months there,” Ms Savchuk told 7.30.

Photo: Luda Savchuck said she accepts the consequences that come with shining the light on Russia’s trolls. (7.30)

“I saw that this is really a big factory to produce paid comments, posts, pictures, video, any content we face on the internet is produced there.

“There are four floors there, very many departments dealing with social networks, LiveJournal (the popular Russian online forum), YouTube, forums with the websites of different cities.”

Working together, Ms Savchuk and Soshnikov published details of the Troll Factory’s operations.

At least 300 employees are believed to work in the building.

Ms Savchuk managed to capture the only video ever filmed inside — a few shaky seconds of trolls at work.

Ms Savchuk managed to capture the only video ever filmed inside — a few shaky seconds of trolls at work.

“News is sent to your computer with instructions about how it should be presented,” she said.

“It is not just objective information that is required, but in which tone it should be presented, to which conclusion one should drive a reader.”

When opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead within sight of the Kremlin in March, suspicion immediately fell on those with links to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Ms Savchuk said the orders at the Troll Factory were handed down quickly.

“They were just told: ‘Nemtsov is killed. Everyone should urgently concentrate on this job. We shall write this and that’,” she said.

“On that day they were writing that it was a provocation against the authorities, that he was killed by ‘his own people’.”
Kremlin moves focus to social networks

After smothering political dissent, the Kremlin is now targeting social networks.

They have been viewed as a threat since anti-Putin protests seemingly sprung up out of nowhere in late 2011.

The driving force behind the brief opposition surge was social media.

Journalist Andrei Soldatov writes about Russia’s security agencies and their extensive online surveillance.

“You don’t need any kind of organisations to do these things,” he told 7.30.

Andrei Soshnikov is the investigative journalist who has led the efforts to expose the Troll Factory

“And that frightened the Kremlin in 2011.

“They still believe social networks [are] a major tool that might, if you have any kind of crisis, help people to send people in the thousands to the streets.”

Right now, the priority topic for the Kremlin’s trolls is Ukraine.

As the war in eastern Ukraine has dragged on, the Troll Factory has played a key role in the huge Russian propaganda campaign to demonise the Ukrainian government.

“In Ukraine, you don’t have people, you don’t have someone you can talk to,” Soldatov said summing up the stereotypes reinforced by the Kremlin’s trolls.

“You have only fascists.”

The Troll Factory’s actual address is 55 Savushkina Street, St Petersburg.

The building is surrounded by cameras, and employees do not appreciate being filmed.

Consequences for revealing secrecy behind trolls

“You have not just enemies, but someone who [is] completely unhuman.”

7.30 tried to speak with someone from the Internet Research Agency, but the request was denied.

All of the companies listed in the directory in the building’s foyer are fake.

Soshnikov said none of them could be found on St Petersburg’s corporate register.

The secrecy makes Ms Savchuk’s revelations about the work going on here all the more exceptional.

“I think Luda is a hero,” Soshnikov said.

“I had serious concerns about my safety and I still have them now.” - Luda Savchuk.

“Here in Russia is big atmosphere, strange atmosphere, of fear, of lies. And not everyone will act as a normal citizen, or patriot, in this situation.”

Ms Savchuk and others are prepared to fight back against the methodical re-establishment of the security state in Russia.

She accepts the consequences that come with shining the light on Russia’s trolls.

“I had serious concerns about my safety and I still have them now. Because the people who run this factory are quite serious,” she said.

But she has no regrets.

“I did this with my eyes open.”

AltRight round table discussion on politics: Toward the end of the podcast Richard Spencer expresses his ideal that The US should have explicitly accepted imperialism as the way of the world; and upon the end of WWII and the Cold War acted upon it explicitly as they found themselves the lone super power - in his ideal they would oust Great Britain from NATO, foster Germany as the land power in Europe while Russia should be incorporated within NATO, should have been starting in that Yeltsin era to facilitate an Imperium from Lisbon to Vladivastok.

Now, speaking from a very personal standpoint of where I was coming from (circa 1992), I probably would not have been offended by the idea of a Russian expanse that went all the way to Vladivastok.

But knowing what I know now, I would raise a couple of serious objections to Richard Spencer’s ideal. First of all, it violates the principle of ethnonationalism, pretty much ensuring ongoing catastrophic wars - moreover, in which the friend/enemy lines are disastrously drawn.

- i.e., there is no way for European peoples to pursue this plan without the cooperation of Jews and Israel. Especially because you would be turning Asia into your enemy with such a plan - exactly a mass of people whom we don’t need as an enemy, a people we need on our side against Jewry and Islam.

Richard is not particularly concerned about the new US military base in Israel, nor does he seem unready to play Muslims off of Asians if need be, saying that Aung San Suu Kyi was “once the darling of ‘the left’ but now that her anti-Muslim stripes have shown, she has fallen into disfavor - of “leftists” as Richard and (((co.))) misdefine them, not as left nationalists are.

Related Story: European & Asian Regional Alliance

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Why I Left The Altright, Sept 20, 2017:

viz., regarding AltRight.com Inc.

Jason Reza Jorjani writes:

A recent piece of trash ‘journalism’ in The New York Times entitled “Undercover With the Alt-Right” features video footage of me that was obtained surreptitiously and under false pretenses. It has been deceptively edited to make it appear as if I am advocating genocidal extreme right-wing policies. The five minute clip has been spliced together from a two hour meeting in a pub. My nightmarish prediction of a future that would follow from Western policymakers’ failure to address the Muslim migrant crisis in the present has been taken out of context and made to appear as if it is advocacy for “concentration camps and expulsions and war… at the cost of a few hundred million people.” It is one thing for such a deceptive film clip to have been produced by the Antifa organization Help Not Hate, it is another altogether for it to be embedded into a New York Times article. Jesse Singal and the Times are responsible for libel – or worse. I had a long and heated conversation with Mr. Singal in the course of which I clarified the concealed context of my butchered statements, but he did not convey my clarification in a responsible fashion when reproducing Antifa’s slanderously spliced misquotes of me.

The article also suggests that the Alt-Right Corporation was created in a context that involved my dialogue with individuals in the Trump Administration, and that our aim was to become their policy advisement group (comparable to the Straussian think tank inside the Bush-Cheney Administration). In this context, the one-sentence parenthetical reference to my August 15th resignation from the Alt-Right Corporation and Arktos Media makes it appear as if I left the corporation only because lines of communication to people who had the ear of President Trump were cut off. It is true that my greater responsibilities to the Iranian opposition were not the sole cause of my departure. The formation of the Iranian United Front during the very same days as the Charlottesville disaster were only an opportunity to leave an organization with which I was already profoundly dissatisfied – an organization that I created. The New York Times hit piece did get one thing right, I was in fact “the architect of the Alt-Right Corporation.” I suggested it to Richard Spencer. I’m afraid the time has come to confess why I did that, and to explain what the organization was supposed to be as opposed to what it has become.

Just after a very warmly received speech on “Occult Science and the Organic State” at the Identitarian Ideas conference in Stockholm in October of 2016, Daniel Friberg hired me as the Editor-in-Chief of Arktos Media – the press that had published my first book, Prometheus and Atlas, which went on to win the 2016 Parapsychological Association Book Award (the PA is a serious scientific organization accredited by the AAAS). In November of 2016, on the heels of President Trump’s electoral victory, I attended the National Policy Institute conference in Washington DC in my capacity as a book distributor. In addition to being Editor-in-Chief, I was also the Head of Arktos US, so I was there manning the book stand. Richard Spencer and I had barely known each other for 24 hours when he called me up to the stage to present my vision for the future evolution of Arktos under my editorship. But subsequent events would draw us together.

You see, on account of the grossly distorted propaganda perpetrated by mainstream media infiltrators who lingered at our private dinner after the NPI press conference was dismissed, a mere handful of Roman saluting folks out of the more than 300 attendees cheering for Richard’s speech were used to tar the entire gathering as some kind of Neo-Nazi rally. Less than a month after #Hailgate, a very prominent academic Philosophy blogger ran a story branding me as a “Neo-Nazi”. The Leiter Report on me identified both my doctoral granting institution, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and my place of work, the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Shortly thereafter, at a SUNY Stony Brook faculty meeting, I was denounced as an “Aryan White Supremacist” and a review of my doctorate was suggested with a view to making a public statement that would, for all intents and purposes, invalidate my degree in the eyes of my present employer and any future employers. The faculty forgot that I was still subscribed to the department listserv, and I was afforded the possibility of preparing a preemptive response that warranted further media coverage within the academic sphere. Leiter, however, dug his heels in.

Even the community of rebel scientists who had embraced me just months earlier, by honoring Prometheus and Atlas with the highest award in their circles, turned on me with a vengeance. Fortunately, thanks to the intervention of two prominent scientists whose names I will not mention, but one of whom is a Nobel Laureate, discussions about expelling me from the Parapsychological Association (PA) and the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) ended with a decision to publicly uphold the apolitical character of these organizations. Privately, however, the damage was done. I became a heretic even among heretics.

When the post-Hailgate writing was on the wall for me in academia, Richard Spencer visited New York for a few days. His right hand man, former Radix journal editor ‘Hannibal Bateman’ (who I really respect), slept over in my apartment and Richard and I got to spend a lot of time together. Between a business lunch at my favorite Persian restaurant on one day, and a long evening that ended with a Dionysian, intoxicated hours-long discussion at my apartment, my idea for a corporatist unification of the major institutions of the Alt-Right movement was seeded in Richard’s psyche. But Richard did not know something about this act of inception, which I commemorated by leaving an Easter egg for the future in this picture that I suggested we take in front of Hermes, the Trickster, that evening.

       

What Richard did not know I disclosed to him about a month later during a late night dinner at the Hamilton restaurant in DC. After publishing Prometheus and Atlas with Arktos Media, I was approached by some people who had already been aware of my (entirely voluntary and unpaid) high-level advisement work with the (501c3 non-profit) Iranian Renaissance organization. These individuals facilitated some initially promising private meetings with incoming Trump Administration policy makers, with the aim of interesting them in our vision for an Iranian cultural revolution. They wanted to help build a new Persian Empire that would offer the West a staunch ally in the war against a nascent Islamic Caliphate. I was told that my book, Prometheus and Atlas, expressed exactly the kind of vision that they had for the future evolution of Man.

Hillary Clinton had given the so-called “Alt-Right” a great deal of unwarranted media attention, to the point where she helped to damn-near mainstream what she herself had described as a “fringe” movement. If the total mess that was then the Alt-Right could be unified, under my intellectual and ideological leadership, then it could be used to forward the aims that these backers claimed to share in common with me. This would have involved a course-correction that extricated the Alt-Right from the ghetto of “White Nationalism” – or as the mainstream media calls it, “White Supremacy” – toward a discourse of Indo-European identity. This inclusion of the Persian, Indian, and Buddhist traditions of the Eastern Aryan world was integral to another key aim: to transform divisive and defensively weak ethno-nationalism into a different vision for a new world order than the deracinating one of soulless globalist financiers. An inclusively identitarian Indo-European Community would be strong enough to take on China and Islam in the battle for planetary hegemony, as humanity faces existential threats from convergent advancements in technology that promise a superhuman future but could also yield a horrifyingly transhuman dystopia. My second book, World State of Emergency, basically lays out what we had in mind.

I corporatized the Alt-Right because a corporate structure allows for both outside investment and hierarchical governance. The key was to have a real brain installed at the pinnacle of the hierarchy. I was supposed to be the conduit for a major investment during the formative phase of the Alt-Right Corporation, and thereby assume its leadership – at least as far as fundamental questions of ideology were concerned. After listening to my explanation of who my potential backers were, and of what capabilities they had (which I urge him, even now, not to disclose for his own sake), Richard agreed that granted such an investment would be forthcoming I would be on point. What was especially compelling to him was the promise of direct engagement, through me, with people inside the White House such as Steve Bannon – something my backers suggested that I could, and should do, but that would not be possible with Richard at the helm. (Bannon, an avid reader of Julius Evola, is consequently familiar with Arktos, one of the only two English language publishers of Evola’s writings.) After this meeting with Richard, I went on to discuss this scenario with every single core board member of our company, including Arktos CEO Daniel Friberg. In February of 2017, during another Identitarian Ideas conference in Stockholm, where the lead-in to my speech on “The Failure of Democracy” hinted at my central role in forming the Alt-Right Corporation, Daniel and I even shook on this deal.

That policy speech, in February of 2017, just a few weeks after the formation of the Alt-Right Corporation in late January, was supposed to be a prelude to the investment that I was promised would come later the same month. Well, the investment did not come in February. I was told that the funds would certainly be available by March. Then it was explained to me why there would have to be another delay until May. Meanwhile, Daniel Friberg had moved from a 53% shareholding in Arktos Media to 82%. This was never supposed to happen. I was promised the funds to buy out troublesome shareholders at Arktos and become Daniel’s partner, rather than his employee.

I am afraid that I cannot disclose the reason for the repeated delays without also revealing the precise source of the funding and classified information about the particular persons involved in securing it. Suffice it to say, consulting open source material in the mainstream media will inform you that beginning in February of 2016, there was a sustained campaign by Neo-Cons and Neo-Liberals to derail the Trump Train. This began with the dismissal and threatened prosecution of General Michael Flynn, and continued with the sidelining of Steve Bannon. (Eventually this ended with the train-wreck of Bannon being forced out in August, the month I resigned from the Alt-Right.)

In addition to losing my opportunity to acquire a major shareholding in Arktos, Richard and Daniel increased their shares in the Alt-Right Corporation at my expense by making a deal involving what Richard admits was “monopoly money.” Richard “sold” his website altright.com to the corporation, while Daniel made his website Metapedia a joint holding as well. At a board meeting on May 9th, Richard and Daniel came up with arbitrary monetary values for their websites, $10K and $15K respectively, and gave themselves 25% and 30% of our corporate shares, reducing my shareholding to 10% in the process. Initially, we had a ‘knights of the round table’ share structure, with each partner as an equal shareholder, a provisional arrangement arrived at as we awaited the funding that would have established me as the majority shareholder. If I were to apply the same principle that they did with their “monopoly money” deal, the scale of investment that I was supposed to bring in to the Alt-Right Corporation would have left me with something like a 95% shareholding.

Moreover, once the ownership of altright.com was officially handed over to our board, during a board meeting Tor Westman, who I insisted be brought onto the board in the first place (against Richard’s objection), suggested that not everyone on the board should have access to the domain account information. Daniel added that not everyone on the Arktos Board had access to the Arktos website domain information (he meant me), and that it should be handled on a “need to know” basis. While this discussion, which took place with me present, was couched in terms of a suspicion of Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice, who was absent, Richard rightly understood Daniel’s remarks as aiming to exclude me and agreed by replying, “I don’t think Jason would go in and change anything, but…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. He only added that after restricting the access to Richard, Daniel, and Tor, the passwords should be changed.

What is worse is that in the long months of the Spring of 2017, as I waited for funding to materialize, I watched the corporation that was my brainchild turn into a magnet for white trash. Exactly the kind of people who were supposed to be sidelined by my centralization and corporatization of the Alt-Right were cultivated by Richard as the populist base for ‘his’ movement. I was sorry to see Daniel’s Arktos affiliated and European-centered Right On journal, which had been in the business of publishing serious intellectual content when John Morgan was editing it, merged into an altright.com news and ‘perspective’ platform that has about as much perspective as a tabloid. The comments sections of our website devolved into a cesspool filled by the most despicable pond scum, former 4-chaners who would routinely pile on in trolling attacks against me every time I published something with a bit of intellectual content. “Iranians is brown poo-poo people” kind of sums it up. I decided to stop contributing until the investment came in and I could really clean things up. When Daniel and Richard agreed to lazily use Daniel’s “Points of Orientation” from his pamphlet, The Real Right Returns, as the basis for an ideological statement to appear on the website, consulting the serious philosopher on the board to help edit it was only an afterthought to them.

In May, at a meeting in London, I was assured by the investors that the obstacles had at last been cleared and I could expect our collaboration to begin in June. When I reported this to Richard at a New York lunch at the end of the same month, he thoughtlessly and angrily dismissed a plan that the investors had shared with me for creating an economic and security corridor from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and across to the Caucasus. This “Neo-Scythian” Ukraine-based approach to the long-term revitalization and liberation of Europe – linked to a future, post-Islamic Greater Iran via the Caucasus – offended the Russophilia that has been fostered by his wife.

So I cannot say I was surprised when the backers ultimately failed to follow through with their long-promised investment. By late June the movement was long past its embryonic stage. A deformed creature, a mindless Frankenstein’s monster had already entered the world. Of course this would not have happened if, between February and May, the angel investors had made good on their promises. Even though they are now responsible for my being libeled in the New York Times, potentially at the cost of my career in academia, I will not reveal their identities. It would catalyze a mainstream media scandal that none of us want to see. I am not interested in testifying before Congress, because the truth I would have to tell is stranger than fiction.

Related Story: European & Asian Regional Alliance

Newsweek, “Charlottesville’s Alt-right Leaders Have a Passion for Vladimir Putin”, 16 Aug 2017:

The alleged ties between the administration of President Donald Trump and Russia are currently the subject of intensive media scrutiny. But perhaps less well known are the connections between a Kremlin ideologue described as “Putin’s brain” and key members of the U.S. alt-right and white supremacist movement, including those behind the Charlottesville protest.

Alexander Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist and former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016. Dugin supports Orthodox Russia’s role as a bulwark against what he has portrayed as the decadent forces of the liberal West.

Amongst Saturday’s headline speakers was Richard Spencer, who claims to have invented the term “alt-right,” and has disseminated its white nationalist ideology via his National Policy Institute think-tank, as well as a network of websites and publishing ventures.

Spencer has not disguised his fondness for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, describing the country as the “sole white power in the world.” In May, he led a smaller protest in Charlottesville, in which torch wielding white nationalists chanted “Russia is our friend.”

       
Neo-Eurasianist ideologue Alexander Dugin sits in his TV studio in central Moscow on August 11, 2016. Francesca Ebel/AP

In 2014, Spencer invited Dugin to an international far-right conference he planned to hold in Hungary, however international sanctions prevented Dugin attending and Hungarian police raided the meeting. Dugin has since become a frequent contributor to Spencer’s AltRight.com website, and has also contributed to his online journal Radix. Spencer has returned the favor, penning an article for Dugin’s Katehon website.

       

Spencer’s ex-wife is Nina Kouprianova, a tireless promoter of Russian nationalism and self-described “Kremlin troll leaders” who writes under the penname Nina Byzantina. She is also Dugin’s English translator.

Matthew Heimbach, co-founder of the white supremacist Traditional Workers Party, also attended Saturday’s rally and is a big fan of Putin.

“I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now,” he recently told Business Insider. “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination.”

       
In 2015, he led a rally at which Russian and Confederate flags were flown alongside each other.

  Casey Michel@cjcmichel
  Replying to @cjcmichel

  Heimbach: “Russia is the leader of the free world right now.” http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-connections-to-the-alt-right-2016-11 …

  Follow
  Casey Michel@cjcmichel

  And, for good measure, here’s Heimbach with the Novorossiya flag, and leading a rally with both Confederate and Russian imperial flags: pic.twitter.com/5mHjHisfr7
  12:26 AM - Jan 5, 2017

       
Heimbach, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the “face of a new generation of white nationalists”, has made several trips to Europe to meet the leaders of far-right parties, and at the official launch of the Traditional Workers Party in 2015 Heimbach hosted a Skyped-in congratulatory speech from Dugin.

  Casey Michel@cjcmichel
  Replying to @cjcmichel

  One additional note: Heimbach specifically cited the USSR’s dissolution as his vision for the US. http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/In-Age-of-Trump-Profile-of-Maryland-White-Nationalist-Grows-397694981.html … pic.twitter.com/BcJacTMPxP

  Follow
  Casey Michel@cjcmichel

  And one more shot: Heimbach holding both a Dugin book and a neo-Confederate “League of the South” flag. ht @JvanDijkS pic.twitter.com/aY0KfVEhyS
  6:41 PM - Jan 5, 2017

     

The following year he planned his first trip to Russia for the far-right World National Conservative Movement conference, which was ultimately postponed.

Infamous former KKK leader David Duke also made an appearance at the rally, which he called a “turning point” and pledged that white nationalists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

Like his allies Spencer and Heimbach, Duke has made no secret of his admiration for Russia, describing the country as the “key to white survival,” and has been pictured alongside Dugin. 

  Just Rich @JustMeRich
  Replying to @splcenter

  Trump is in the side of David Duke and the Klan. Further speculation isn’t needed.

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  Trevor Smith @MrTSmith81

  And david Duke and the klan are on the side of Russia, where’s that list of people trump won’t attack again? White supremacists and putin.. pic.twitter.com/4Nricps1N7
  11:16 PM - Aug 15, 2017

       

Duke once lived in Moscow and owns an apartment in the Russian capital, which he reportedly sub-let to U.S. Neo-Nazi Preston Wigginton, who has in turn hosted web chats by Dugin at the University of Texas A&M college.

On Monday, the college announced it was cancelling a planned white nationalist rally on its campus to be led by Spencer.

Russian state media has also given a platform to Spencer and Duke, where their extremist beliefs were not flagged, and they expounded their racist views unchallenged. Spencer has frequently commented on the Syrian civil war on RT, where he has expressed support for Russian ally and alt-right icon President Bashar al-Assad.

Dugin himself has frequently appeared on Infowars, Alex Jones’ pro-Trump conspiracy theory site.

Anton Shekhovtsov, author of Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir, tells Newsweek that ties between U.S. and Russian fascists were longstanding.

“There is no evidence that the Kremlin - as an official body - has ever tried to build ties with the US neo-Nazis such as Spencer or Duke. However, both have long-standing relations with their Russian fascist counterparts,” he says in an email.

In Europe, the story is different, with Neo-Nazis in Germany reportedly recruited by Russian intelligence via martial arts clubs, and Hungarian neo-Nazi István Győrkös, who shot dead a police officer last October, running paramilitary training camps for right-wing extremists alongside Kremlin officials.

In a blog posting Tuesday, former NSA analyst John Schindler explained the appeal of Russia to the U.S. far-right.

“Although our country has always had white supremacists, Russia has given them renewed focus and energy, as well as a ready-made worldview. This take on the world includes overt white nationalism which despises the United States as a decadent and multiracial society,” he wrote.

Michael Cohen, liaising with the Russian Federation.

Washington Post, “Top Trump Organization executive asked Putin aide for help on business deal”, 28 August, 2017:

A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.

The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.

“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled.

“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.

Click to page showing Trump-Russian links

Cohen’s email marks the most direct outreach documented by a top Trump aide to a similarly senior member of Putin’s government.

Cohen told congressional investigators in a statement Monday that he did not recall receiving a response from Peskov or having further contact with Russian government officials about the project. The email, addressed to Peskov, appeared to have been sent to a general Kremlin press account.

The note adds to the list of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials that have been a focus of multiple congressional inquiries as well as an investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III exploring Russian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin intervened to help elect Trump.

Cohen’s email to Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests.

Cohen told congressional investigators that the deal was envisioned as a licensing project, in which Trump would have been paid for the use of his name by a Moscow-based developer called I.C. Expert Investment Co.

Cohen said that he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015. He said the Trump company began to solicit designs from architects and discuss financing.

However, he said that the project was abandoned “for business reasons” when government permission was not secured and that the matter was “not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”

Cohen’s request to Peskov came as Trump was distinguishing himself on the campaign trail with warm rhetoric about Putin.

Cohen said in his statement to Congress that he wrote the email at the recommendation of Felix Sater, a Russian American businessman who was serving as a broker on the deal.

In the statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Cohen said Sater suggested the outreach because a massive Trump development in Moscow would require Russian government approval.

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