Majorityrights News > Category: Russian Politics

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.

Visigrad Post, “Poland: French presidential candidate Macron wants quick sanctions”, 28 April 2017:

France, Paris – The Liberal-Libertarian candidate for the French presidency assured that he would take, once elected, measures against Poland. According to him, Poland violated “all the principles of the European Union”.

“In the three months following my election, there will be a decision on Poland. I put my responsibility on the table on this subject,” Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on Thursday, April 27th.

“One cannot have a country that plays social tax differentials within the European Union and which is in breach of all the principles of the Union,” he warned.

But for the candidate who faces Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential elections, the question also concerned the “values” of the European Union.

“I want sanctions on those who disrespect the rights and values ​​of the European Union,” he said. “We cannot have a Europe that debates to the decimal each of the budgetary subjects on each country when there’s a European Union member state that behaves like Poland or Hungary on such topics as University and knowledge, refugees, fundamental values, and decides not to do anything.

“According to his adviser for European affairs, Clément Beaune, this issue is close to the 39-year-old banker and former minister of the socialist government under François Hollande’s presidency.

“He assumes to be pro-European but we cannot be European without respecting fundamental principles,” his adviser told Reuters. “It is also a signal of strength and general credibility vis-à-vis Russia, vis-à-vis the United States and, internally, vis-à-vis Europeans.”

Emmanuel Macron is the favorite to win the French presidential elections which will end on May 7th.

Claus Hjort Frederiksen [Council]

Euractiv, “Minister: Russia hacked Danish defence for two years”, 23 April 2017:

Russia has hacked the Danish Defence Ministry and gained access to employees’ emails in 2015 and 2016, NATO member Denmark’s defence minister told newspaper Berlingske on Sunday (23 April).

The report comes at a time when several Western governments, including the United States, France and Britain, have accused Russia of hacking in order to influence elections — allegations Moscow has repeatedly dismissed as baseless.

A report from the Danish Defence Intelligence Service’s unit for cyber security said “a foreign player” had spied against Danish authorities and gained access to non-classified documents.

It did not name the country behind the espionage, but Foreign Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen told Berlingske it was Russia.

“It is linked to the intelligence services or central elements in the Russian government, and it is a constant battle to keep them away,” Frederiksen told the newspaper.

A spokeswoman from the Danish Defence Ministry confirmed that the minister had been quoted correctly but said he would give no further comments for the time being.

Spokespeople at the Kremlin were not available to comment on Sunday.

Frederiksen told Berlingske the hacking had been possible due to insufficient security around emails with non-classified material, something that has since been improved.

The group behind the attack went under the name APT28 or Fancy Bear and was one of two groups which allegedly gained illegal access to US Democrats’ emails last year, according to Berlingske.

Frederiksen said in January that Denmark plans to increase military spending in response to Russian missile deployments in the Baltic region that it perceives as a threat.

Polish Minister of National Defence Antoni Macierewicz told EURACTIV.com last June that Russia had conducted a cyber-attack against the Polish ministry of defence and stole the telephone numbers of 10,000 Polish soldiers.

Polish defence minister: ‘Helpless requests’ don’t work with Russia

“Bon voyage” to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Russia. He should know that Moscow only understands equal partnerships from a position of strength, Polish Minister of National Defence Antoni Macierewicz told EURACTIV.com in an exclusive interview.

Montenegro has reportedly been hit by cyber-attacks on the day of its last elections – 16 October 2016.

Montenegro hit by cyber-attacks on election day

The Ministry for Information Society and Telecommunications of Montenegro has announced that several important websites were targeted by cyber-attacks on Sunday (16 October), the day of the country’s parliamentary elections.

Hans-Georg Maassen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency BfV, recently said that his services are seeing increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties.

German spy agency warns of rise in Russian propaganda and cyber-attacks

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency yesterday (8 December) reported a striking increase in Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilising German society, and targeted cyber-attacks against political parties.

Active Measures, er, RT reports the following:

Tillerson and Lavrov

RT, ‘Highly provocative: Lavrov says agreed with Tillerson no future US strikes on Syrian govt.’, 13 Apr 2017:

Moscow and Washington have reached an understanding that further US strikes similar to the one carried out against Syria’s Shayrat Air Base “should not occur again,” the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Lavrov emphasized that this issue was raised during his discussions with the US Secretary of State on Wednesday when Rex Tillerson was visiting Moscow.

“We have discussed this issue with the US Secretary of State in details yesterday and agreed upon the fact that a similar should not occur again,” he told journalists ahead of his meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallem, in Moscow.

Lavrov further underlined that the US missile strike against the Shayrat Air Base played “a highly provocative role.”

He went on to say that the US confirmed its commitment to the idea that there is no other option of resolving the Syrian conflict other than the political dialog, adding that this offers hope for the future of the peace process.

“It is encouraging to some extent that Rex Tillerson confirmed yesterday that [the US still holds] the opinion that there is no alternative to the political process [of the resolution of the Syrian crisis] despite all the recent negative developments,” he said.

A “right and responsible step” is how Lavrov described the Syrian government’s decision to invite experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to conduct an investigation of the chemical weapon incident in Idlib province.

A blog called Jewish Power posted the following back on February 2016. It looks far more like prescience than conspiracy theory:

Netanyahu and Lavrov

Jewish Power, ‘Sergey Lavrov’, 13 Feb 2016:

Medvedev the Russian token Prime Minister has said a new cold war is on the horizon.

Medvedev is easy to identify as a crypto Jew.

Lavrov the foreign minister is also a Jew, no doubt he goes along with Medvedev.

Lavrov’s daughter attended Columbia University and lived in the US for a long time.

Putin’s daughter married a Jewish banker.

All the rhetoric like these comments from Medvedev-steen are just so much bullshit.

The Jews objective is to destroy Syria..via a long drawn out civil war. It does not make any difference whether it is the Americans or Russians who are bombing the country..as long as the bombing continues.

Put it like this: The Russian government likes Russian nationalists …up to a point. However, if Russian nationalists choose to identify the role of the Jews…the Jewish oligarchs…the pillaging of Russia by Jews like Abramovich and all the rest of them…THEN something goes dramatically wrong….the nationalists start being targeted by the Russian government!!…which is just what you would expect IF Russia was controlled by the Jews…and it is.

So, as many people have pointed out…all this posturing by Russian, American, British politicians is a COMPLETE CHARADE.

Armed with this knowledge about Jewish power you can make very accurate predictions in certain areas. For example…The next president of the USA will definitely 101% be a Jew…no ifs, buts or mmaybes…the next president in the Oval Oriface will be a JEW. That is a money back guarantee of certainty.

        And remember that it was The Russian Federation that de-fanged Syria in the first place:

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar in the Jewish Museum in Moscow, Thursday, June 13, 2013. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Kumiko Oumae / Majorityrights.com, ‘Russia uses its leverage in the Arab world to aid Israel where it can feasibly do so.’, 10 Jun 2016:

[...]

The Jewish lobby doesn’t place all their eggs in one basket, and Russia’s economic and military connections to the Arab world can always be used as leverage to produce outcomes that are favourable to Israel.

One memorable example of this can be found during the earlier stages of the Syrian conflict in 2013, when John Kerry demanded that the government of Syria must come to the table and agree to surrender its chemical weapons and dissolve its chemical weapons battalions, thus ceding all of the strategic gains against Israel that had been secured through the development and enhancement of those weapons.

People were sceptical as to the enforceability of this demand. After all, couldn’t Syria simply go to Russia and ask to be supplied with the S-300 and some Su-30s, and thus severely decrease the ability of the United States to threaten them?

That was not to be, as Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov would ‘rise’ to Kerry’s challenge of ridding Syria of weapons within a week, by turning around and using their leverage over Syria to force them into accepting the challenge, by refusing to supply Syria with the S-300, and then brokering the handover of all Syria’s chemical weapons to the international community. [...]

                  Michael Flynn seated with Vladimir Putin and Jill Stein right.

ITV News, “Trump administration ‘will be having restless nights over Flynn testimony offer”, 31 March 2017:

Flynn was famously pictured sitting next to Vladimir Putin at a gala in Moscow in December 2015 and it was his conversations with Russian officials that ultimately led to his downfall.

President Trump and his administration will have endured a “restless night’s sleep” following Michael Flynn’s offer to testify about possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia in exchange for immunity from prosecution, Barack Obama’s former press secretary has told ITV News.

Flynn, ousted as national security adviser in February following an onslaught of damaging headlines about his ties to the Kremlin, has told the FBI and Congress that he “has a story to tell” but wants assurances “against unfair prosecution”.

Josh Earnest, who served as the former president’s top spokesman for three years, said Flynn’s offer “is an indication that he is concerned about the information he may reveal”.

“My guess is that there were a lot of restless night’s sleep last night after that Wall Street Journal story posted,” Earnest told ITV News.

“Because everybody who thought they were having a private conversation with Mike Flynn in the last two years or anybody who sent an email over the last two years or anybody who has been responsible for publicly defending him over the last two months is now in a position where that information could be revealed to the FBI or congressional investigators.

“That has to be a little disconcerting to everybody - including the president of the United States.”

Trump’s young presidency has so far been blighted by the ongoing suspicion that his campaign colluded with the Russian government in its efforts to sway the election in his favour.

Flynn is one of a number of Trump associates under investigation by the FBI as part of the probe into Russian meddling.

Earnest said Trump’s decision to appoint Flynn to a role “so crucial” to America’s national security would again come under scrutiny.

“Appointing someone like General Flynn to be his national security adviser and have him resign after 24 days because he was being dishonest and now potentially has some criminal liability - it’s concerning and does raise questions about the president’s judgement in putting somebody like General Flynn into a position that is so crucial to our national security.”

Earnest, who now works as a political analyst for NBC, urged observers not to jump to conclusions over Flynn’s offer to testify, saying it was too early to say whether the retired three-star Army general would provide the “smoking gun” which directly links the president to Russia’s aggressive operation to meddle in the election process.

“He’s got a story he wants to tell - we’ll see what happens.”

Flynn was one of Trump’s closest confidantes on the campaign trail, gaining prominence for his raucous attacks on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server.

In comments likely to come back to haunt him, Flynn told NBC last September: “When you are given immunity, that means you have probably committed a crime.”

After Trump’s victory, Flynn was appointed as the new administration’s top security adviser despite concerns over his desire to forge closer ties to the Russian government.

He was famously pictured sitting next to Vladimir Putin at a gala in Moscow in December 2015 and it was his conversations with Russian officials that ultimately led to his downfall.

       
Michael Flynn, pictured above left with Donald Trump, was ousted as national security adviser in February following an onslaught of damaging headlines about his ties to the Kremlin Credit: AP

Flynn was forced to quit after a less than a month in the role when it emerged that he had discussed sanctions that the Obama administration had imposed on the Kremlin with the Russian ambassador - conversations which he then subsequently lied about to the Vice-President Mike Pence.

It is one of a number of scandals to have engulfed the president since he took office on January 20.

“Everyday seems to be a day of new drama in this White House and it is part of the leadership style that we’ve seen from President Trump - he likes to preside over chaos and keeping people off balance,” Earnest said.

“It’s the way he ran his campaign and it worked; But I think we are seeing that running a campaign is a lot different to running a country. When you are running a country people expect you to be a source of stability, not chaos.”

Illustrations by Sophia den Breems

”Why Trump’s ties to Russia would be way worse than Watergate”

- Sarah Kendzior, Flyover Country Correspondent, 30 March 2017:

At 5:25 am on Monday, March 20, Donald J. Trump logged onto Twitter and wrote: “James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!”

Hours later, at a congressional hearing assembled to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, FBI director James Comey confirmed the FBI probe into Trump’s ties to Russia that same day. Comey confirmed that Trump and “individuals associated with the Trump campaign” had been under investigation for Russian collusion since late July, and that the investigation was still ongoing.

Contrary to Trump’s assertion, this statement was not “fake news,” nor was it news at all to those who had followed the Russian interference story since it broke last summer.

In August 2016, former Democratic Senator Harry Reid implored Comey to reveal information about Russian interference that he said “is more extensive than is widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results,” adding that the public had the right to know before the November election. Comey responded, notoriously, not by revealing that Trump was under FBI investigation, but by implying that Hillary Clinton was, in an “October surprise” faux email scandal that was retracted only after the rumor had damaged her campaign.

Reid wrote to Comey again in late October and reemphasized the Russian threat: “It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity… and yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.”

After Trump won, calls for an investigation into Russian interference began in late November, led by Republicans like John McCain and Lindsay Graham as well as Democrats like Elijah Cummings, Maxine Waters, and Adam Schiff, the latter of whom led the interrogation of Comey and NSA head Michael Rogers at the March 20 hearings. Though it has falsely been portrayed by both the Trump administration and some media outlets as a Democrat-led witchhunt, Russian interference in the election was always a bipartisan concern. Any threat to both national security and sovereignty is a bipartisan concern, and the reluctance of the Trump administration to cooperate with the investigation has long been an ominous indication of his limitations and loyalties.

Instead of watchdogs, we have lapdogs

If you were the president of the United States, sworn under oath to protect and serve the public, wouldn’t you want foreign interference in your campaign to be investigated – at the very least, to prevent the recurrence of similar actions?

Or would you try to impede the investigation, by smearing those who seek it (among them intelligence officials, legislators, and reporters) and by installing officials who either benefit from the Russian relationship (like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson), seem selected in order to obfuscate the Russian relationship (like Attorney General Jeff Sessions), or both?

Trump chose to assemble an administration designed to cover up and aid his shady dealings with the Kremlin, leading to an administration so spectacularly corrupt and inept it has no corollary in US history.

Here’s where it currently stands:

The President is under investigation for colluding with a foreign power. He is being investigated by an oversight committee, the head of which, Republican representative Devin Nunes, has functioned less as a watchdog than a lapdog, providing information about the investigation of Trump to Trump in a breach of protocol. And this was not Nunes’ only misdeed: he was also present at a January meeting between Turkish officials and Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, who in February resigned in disgrace after being revealed to be working secretly for the Turkish and Russian governments for millions of dollars.

In short, the US has employed a president suspected of treason, an oversight committee head who refuses to do oversight, and a national security advisor who undermined US national security.

The Trump clan and the Russian spy recruiter

Unfortunately, that’s only the beginning. There is also attorney general Jeff Sessions, who has had to recuse himself from the Russia interference investigation because he is implicated due to multiple meetings with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the campaign. (Sessions is not alone; Kislyak, rumored to moonlight as a spy recruiter, also met with Flynn, Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner, and Trump, though all have mysteriously foggy memories of these encounters.)

Then there’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, recipient of an “Order of Friendship” medal from Vladimir Putin, who does not seem to know why he is even in office, admitting this week, “I didn’t want this job, my wife told me to do this.” Unfortunately, Tillerson came to that revelation only after inflaming military tensions with North Korea.

On top of that, the Trump administration contains a burgeoning and possibly illegal nepotistic dynasty (Jared and Ivanka, currently getting security clearances and White House office space despite no experience in government)....

READ MORE...

Jewish Daily Forward, ‘Epshteyn To Leave Trump TV’, 25 Mar 2017:

Boris Epshteyn, a prominent Trump surrogate during the election campaign, is expected to quit his post at Trump TV, Politico is reporting from many sources close to the administration.

The Trump TV project was widely seen as a post-election project if the Republican candidate had failed to win and needed to build yet another alternative to news that would outflank Fox and Breitbart on the right, and give Trump an ongoing political platform.

Epshteyn, a 35-year old attorney from a Russian-Jewish family and a college friend of Eric Trump, is expected to join the administration in an official capacity.

It’s rapidly becoming the case that The Forward is one of the most authoritative mainstream news sources on what is happening inside the Trump administration, because so many of the Trump administration’s most prominent and influential figures are Jewish.