Majorityrights News > Category: Russian Politics

Reuters, “Ex-FBI chief Comey tells U.S. senators Trump pressured him on Russia probe”, 7 June 2017:

Former FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump asked him to drop an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of a probe into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In written testimony released the day before he appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said Trump told him at a meeting in the White House in February: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”

The testimony puts more pressure on Trump, a Republican, whose presidency has been overshadowed by allegations that Moscow helped him win last year’s election.

Some legal experts said Comey’s testimony could strengthen any impeachment case built on obstruction of justice, but U.S. markets shrugged off the news from the testimony for lack of any major disclosures.

To build a criminal obstruction of justice case, federal law requires prosecutors to show that a person acted with “corrupt” intent. It does not matter whether the person succeeds in impeding an investigation.

While a sitting president is very unlikely to face criminal prosecution, obstruction of justice could form the basis for impeachment.

NPR, 7 June 2017: Full text of Comey’s opening statement.

The Intercept, “Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election”, 5 June 2017:

Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

       

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Even more than through Alex Navalny’s protests against the Putin/Medvedev government of the Russian Federation, a nation-wide trucker’s strike, and what its proponents have to say throw light upon the facts of people, unlike Putin and Medvedev, whom we ethno-nationalists might identify with as having a similar end in mind, in hope for a ethnonationalist basis that might be allied against its propositional imperialism.

A far cry from Putin apologetics of the Atl-Right, through these folk the corruption and imperial disconnect of the Russian Federation’s leadership is highlighted as analogous to The US Government’s propositional disconnect from peoplehood - the ethnostate.

Though the segment in this Vice News episode about Milo is sufficiently unflattering and won’t hurt anybody to watch, nor the other segments, it is the two corresponding segments - from 2:17 - 9:05 - that I would like to bring to your attention. Starting at 2:17, there is a brief segment discussing the mass “bourgeois” government protest and problems of its national organizer, Alex Navalny, who, after having recently gotten out of jail for organizing the protests, suffered a chemical attack on two occasions with no one being arrested for the attacks.

But this protest - whether it could be Soros backed or what - is not the most interesting one from an ethno-nationalist standpoint.

What is more interesting for ethno-nationalists is the subsequent story which more clearly indicates that the government of the Russian Federation is cutting into the meat of would-be ethno-national constituents. It is further indication that the Russian Federation is not functioning at an ethnostate, but is functioning to serve its political class as divorced from ethno-nationalism - particularly as its implications bear upon European and Asian peoples - while it might serve the group interests of others - Jews, blacks, even Muslims. Indeed it is a comparable beast to The United States: It’s leadership is corrupt and functioning with a different agenda from the rank and file. (((Medvedev))) is highly disapproved-of for having implemented such a schism, but Putin is looked upon critically as well, as an intimate part of the same system as Medvedev, a manifestation of a corrupt system that will simply grow another head like him when he goes away.

That outlook - which you will see a trucker’s unionist discuss in the clip - that outlook upon a systemically corrupt leadership of the Russian Federation is where to look for a way for ethno-nationalism to organize and overthrow the Russian Federation’s propositional imperialism - its growing connection with propositionalism and prescription against would-be ethno-states. A propositional imperialism emanating from its right-wing leadership in coalition with YKW, a corruption quite similar to that of the U.S. leadership (Trump et al.) which it supports and which is “coincidentally” acting quite like the YKW in this prescription to advance by contrast to ethnonationalism their own elite imperialism.

What that means for ethnonationalists is that there is a level headed perspective among the working Russian populace which sees things from an incipient ethnonationalist perspective, which might ultimately cooperate with us against the kind of supremacist imperialism of which Medvedev, Putin and the vastly aggrandized Russian Federation are a part.

The truckers talk about their travails in Irkutsk - a good ride east; and a little beyond Lake Baikal might form the border of one of the biggest ethno states in the world, where they might see fit that enough is enough; better that there be less conflict and more natural support by peacefully coordinating with native ethnonationalists to the east of that.

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Not only is the network (((NPR))) backeted, but so is the (((interviewee))), a New York Times Reporter.

Taking that with a grain of salt, one can save time by orientation on the ‘lie of the land’, the broad circumstance, and sort the bracketry afterward: Rosenberg covers intelligence and national security for the Times and has been covering the investigations into General Michael Flynn, whom he met in person - Flynn confided some issues to Rosbenberg personally during his time in Afghanistan.

NPR, “How Gen. Michael Flynn Became A Central Figure In The Russia Hacking Scandal”, 25 May 2017:

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Late in the day yesterday, The New York Times broke a story reporting that American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over candidate Donald Trump through his advisers.

My guest, Matthew Rosenberg, is one of the three reporters who wrote that story. Rosenberg covers intelligence and national security for the Times and has been covering the investigations into General Michael Flynn and his communications with and payments from Russia. Flynn was part of the Trump campaign and was appointed President Trump’s national security adviser. He was forced to resign after 25 days because of his undisclosed communications with Russian officials.

Several articles are discussing Flynn’s dubious relation to Turkey and the Erdigon regime, including Flynn’s efforts to help Erdogon capture the man responsible for the attempted secular coup of Erdogan’s Islamic Turkish state.

DM, Michael Flynn ‘discussed plan to snatch exiled dissident Turkish cleric suspected of being behind attempted coup from his rural US home and return him to the Mid East’, 17 March 2017:

General Michael Flynn reportedly said he wanted to remove a Turkish cleric from his compound in Pennsylvania

Former CIA Director Woolsey said Flynn wanted to ‘whisk’ Fethullah Gulen away

Fethullah Gulen (image Wikipedia)

A spokesperson for Flynn denied the accusations of wrongdoing

The coup on Erdogan’s Turkey should have succeeded and Western nations should have supported it. Flynn is squarely on the wrong side of that issue.

Bloomberg, “Flynn’s Turkey Connection Is the Case Worth Pursuing”, 25 May 2017:

What’s been missing so far in the scandals surrounding the Trump White House is a concrete act taken at the behest of foreign powers. Now there’s strong evidence of one: Michael Flynn reportedly stopped an attack on the Islamic State capital of Raqqa by Syrian Kurds, a military action strongly opposed by Turkey, after receiving more than $500,000 in payments from a Turkish source. The Kurds’ offensive had been greenlighted by Barack Obama’s administration, and is now back on track, reapproved by President Donald Trump sometime after Flynn was fired.

EuroNews, “Russian President Putin says his country’s relationship with Turkey has fully recovered after a recent crisis.”, 3 May 2017.

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First on CNN: Russian officials bragged they could use Flynn to influence Trump, sources say,” 20 May 2017:

Washington (CNN)Russian officials bragged in conversations during the presidential campaign that they had cultivated a strong relationship with former Trump adviser retired Gen. Michael Flynn and believed they could use him to influence Donald Trump and his team, sources told CNN.

The conversations deeply concerned US intelligence officials, some of whom acted on their own to limit how much sensitive information they shared with Flynn, who was tapped to become Trump’s national security adviser, current and former governments officials said.

“This was a five-alarm fire from early on,” one former Obama administration official said, “the way the Russians were talking about him.” Another former administration official said Flynn was viewed as a potential national security problem.

The conversations picked up by US intelligence officials indicated the Russians regarded Flynn as an ally, sources said. That relationship developed throughout 2016, months before Flynn was caught on an intercepted call in December speaking with Russia’s ambassador in Washington, Sergey Kislyak. That call, and Flynn’s changing story about it, ultimately led to his firing as Trump’s first national security adviser.

Officials cautioned, however, that the Russians might have exaggerated their sway with Trump’s team during those conversations.

Flynn’s lawyer declined to comment.

“We are confident that when these inquiries are complete there will be no evidence to support any collusion between the campaign and Russia,” a White House official said in a statement. “... This matter is not going to distract the President or this administration from its work to bring back jobs and keep America safe.”

Flynn has emerged as a central figure—and Trump’s biggest liability—in the intensifying investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. His financial ties to Turkish government interests, which paid him $530,000 in a lobbying deal that he failed to disclose during the campaign, are also under scrutiny by federal investigators.

One major concern for Obama administration officials was the subject of conversations between Flynn and Kislyak that took place shortly after President Barack Obama slapped new sanctions on Russia for meddling in the election. Sources tell CNN that Flynn told Kislyak that the Trump administration would look favorably on a decision by Russia to hold off on retaliating with its own sanctions. The next day, Putin said he wouldn’t retaliate.

Sources say Flynn also told Kislyak that the incoming Trump administration would revisit US sanctions on Russia once in office. The US has applied sanctions on Russia since 2014 for its actions in Ukraine.

Flynn’s calls with Kislyak in December have received the most attention, but his relationship with the Russian ambassador goes back four years.

He first met Kislyak in June 2013 during an official trip to Russia, according to The Washington Post. He led the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time and met his counterparts at the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU.

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Massively botted to cover-up Trump’s tactless disclosure to Lavrov and firing of Comey, the Seth Rich story is more of a non-story than many people realize; nevertheless, it has been massively botted (probably through Russia) to distract and obfuscate:

- Trump’s tactless disclosure to Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, that the Mossad has infiltrators among Isil. While ethno-nationalists should be grateful for this tactless implication of the Mossad and Israel, it is not necessarily a feather in Trump’s genius cap and he and his proponents would naturally want to distract from that fact.

- Trump’s tactlessly clear motives in his firing of FBI director James Comey. Again, while we ethno-nationalists might be happy that he is exposing himself to be a disingenuous/naive oaf with regard to issues and inquiries touching upon the Russian Federation, it would not necessarily be in his interest to have a great deal of attention paid to that perception.

Trump’s motives were exposed when firing Comey by tactlessly expressing ‘gratitude’ to Comey for having “assured him ‘three times’ that he was not under FBI investigation.” Moreover, Trump’s motivation to obstruct further inquiry by Comey into his (Trump’s) ties to Russia were exposed by his opposition to Comey’s investigation into Flynn’s Russian ties:

Vice, 16 May, “Trump asked Comey to drop investigation into Flynn.”  [...]  “A source told CNN that Trump’s request so appalled Comey, he felt compelled to document it.”

Reuters, 18 May: U.S. President Donald Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to end the agency’s investigation into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia, according to a source who has seen a memo written by Comey.

The explosive new development on Tuesday followed a week of tumult at the White House after Trump fired Comey and then discussed sensitive national security information about Islamic State with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The Comey memo, first reported by the New York Times, caused alarm on Capitol Hill and raised questions about whether Trump tried to interfere with a federal investigation

..Tillerson is another elephant in the room.

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Konbini, 11 May 2017: “Coverup? FBI Director Comey’s Firing Ignites Trump-Russia Suspicions.”

There are so many questions that need to be answered about the bombshell breaking news that shook Washington D.C. to its core on Tuesday. President Trump summarily dismissed FBI Director James Comey at the same time that Comey was leading an investigation into the Trump campaign’s shady connections (and possible collusion with) the Russian government’s meddling in the U.S. elections.

What are we to make of all the comparisons to the Watergate scandal? What does this all mean for the ongoing FBI, Congressional and Senate investigations into Trump-Russia? What does this mean for the functioning of the United States government - are we officially in a constitutional crisis?

If so, does America have the institutional integrity and fortitude to survive it?

No one is buying the official reasoning from the White House that FBI Director James Comey was dismissed by President Trump because of his “unfair” treatment of candidate Hillary Clinton last summer. No one is buying the implication that Comey simply had to be removed because the FBI was getting “too political” in recent months.

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly and vocally praised Comey’s actions in making disclosures about the investigation into Clinton’s email scandal. In October, then-Senator Jeff Sessions (now the Attorney General who wrote a letter recommending Comey’s firing) claimed Comey had “no choice” but to reignite the controversy surrounding Clinton’s emails just days before the election.

Based on the New York Times’ Michael Schmidt’s reporting, it seems Trump had a set outcome in mind, and tasked his attorney general with digging up some justifications for it:

Michael S. Schmidt
✔
@nytmike

WH and DOJ had been working on firing Comey since at least last week. Sessions had been working to come up with reasons.
12:28 AM - 10 May 2017

This is exactly the kind of dissembling, smoke screening and naked dishonesty that has churned up such distrust of this administration only 110 days into Trump’s presidency. If Sessions and Trump were so utterly appalled by Comey’s toe-dipping into the political arena, they could - and should - have fired him way back in January.

Oh, by the way, didn’t Attorney General Sessions recuse himself from all questions involving the Trump-Russia investigation..?

Here we are in May, with the FBI suddenly decapitated and with no replacement lined up ready to step in. As suspicion mounts that Trump is simply trying to make the FBI’s Russian meddling investigation go away, the comparisons to Watergate are growing louder by the second.

But are Richard Nixon’s actions during Watergate really the most apt comparison to shed light on current events? Or is this an entirely different political animal?

We should be more eager to suspect Jewish deep state insiders who wanted Trump to win.

‘It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump.’

Indeed, and that is why it looks like she may have gotten some “gentle encouragement” (read, subtle bum steer - part of ‘a lot of work’ from (((insiders)))) to not bother addressing typical White Americans - she would have won if she could have been at all bothered to treat them like normal human beings with legitimate concerns; rather than placing herself exclusively on the side and among an entourage of blacks, liberal feminists, married gay couples, etc. - anything to be in-the-face of Whites about the new, “tolerant”, America; i.e., basically anything to represent a cartoon of the political correctness that is totally intolerant of, and eager to ignore the concerns of White Americans; demonstrating more of the same, not giving a fig about them, as they’ve experienced for decades.

The Hill, “Axelrod on Clinton: ‘It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump”, 3 May 2017:

Democratic strategist David Axelrod says Hillary Clinton would be well served to move on from last year’s presidential election and stop talking about it.

“It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump,” Axelrod told CNN on Wednesday. “Let me tell you, he was the least popular presidential candidate to win in the history of polling.”

Clinton on Tuesday said she takes responsibility for her 2016 presidential election loss, but added she would have won if not for FBI Director James Comey, Russian hackers and WikiLeaks.

“If the election had been on Oct. 27, I would be your president,” she told CNN at a Women for Women event in New York on Tuesday, referencing Comey’s letter informing Congress that the FBI had discovered new emails that appeared pertinent to an investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified material.

“It wasn’t a perfect campaign - there is no such thing - but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off.”

Axelrod called the 2016 race a “miserable slog” and said nobody in America wants to relive it “except the combatants who keep going back to it.”

“She has a legitimate beef because Comey’s letter was instrumental I think in her defeat, so in a narrow sense she is right about it,” Axelrod said.

“But Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention. Jim Comey didn’t say don’t put any resources into Michigan until the final week of the campaign,” he continued.

“And one of the things that hindered her in the campaign was a sense that she never fully was willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, particularly that server.”

Axelrod then offered a piece of advice for Clinton.

“If I were her, if I were advising her, I would say, ‘Don’t do this. Don’t go back and appear as if you’re shifting responsibility.’ ... She said the words ‘I’m responsible,’ but the — everything else suggested that she doesn’t really feel that way,” he said.

“And I don’t think that helps her in the long run, so if I were her I would move on.”

Axelrod was chief strategist for both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and worked in the Obama White House as a senior adviser.