MOSCOW — The ransomware hackers suspected of targeting Colonial Pipeline and other businesses around the world have a strict set of rules.
First and foremost: Don’t target Russia or friendly states. It’s even hard-wired into the malware, including coding to prevent hacks on Moscow’s ally Syria, according to cybersecurity experts who have analyzed the malware’s digital fingerprints.
They say the reasons appear clear. Continue reading.
As Congress debates changes in the articles of impeach-ment, we see on full display how GOP representatives have, for Donald Trump, abandoned any pretense of principle, rule of law and national loyalty.
House Republicans have embraced Trump’s win-for-Trump-at-all-costs philosophy.
Think of them as the kind of cowards who would never jump on a hand grenade, but would instinctively push the person next to them onto the explosive.
Kristian Rouz appears on segments for One America News Network—ironic given he is working for a Russian outlet fingered in the 2016 election attack.If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.”
View the complete July 22 article by Kevin Poulsen on the Daily Beast website here.
The following article by Josh Delk was posted on the Hill website May 26, 2018:
The FBI has obtained wiretapped conversations of a Kremlin-linked banker who later met with Donald Trump Jr. during the 2016 presidential election.
Spanish national police provided the FBI with tapes of Russian oligarch Alexander Torshin’s phone calls with a convicted Russian money launderer, according to a special prosecutor from Spain’s attorney general’s office, Yahoo News reported.
“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” according to the special prosecutor, José Grinda Gonzalez, speaking at the Hudson Institute on Friday. Continue reading “FBI obtained wiretap conversations of Kremlin-linked banker who met with Trump Jr: report”
The following article by Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Jaffe was posted on the Washington Post website December 25, 2017:
The Washington Post examines how, nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject evidence that Russia supported his run for the White House. (Dalton Bennett, Thomas LeGro, John Parks, Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)
The first email arrived in the inbox of CounterPunch, a left-leaning American news and opinion website, at 3:26 a.m. — the middle of the day in Moscow.
“Hello, my name is Alice Donovan and I’m a beginner freelance journalist,” read the Feb. 26, 2016, message.
The FBI was tracking Donovan as part of a months-long counterintelligence operation code-named “NorthernNight.” Internal bureau reports described her as a pseudonymous foot soldier in an army of Kremlin-led trolls seeking to undermine America’s democratic institutions. Continue reading “Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options”
The following article by Graham Lanktree of Newsweek was posted on the National Memo website November 25, 2017:
A former television news editor for Russian state media outlet Rossiya says that the Kremlin used to call and give instructions about how to cover Hillary Clinton during the 2016 U.S. election.
“Sometimes it was a phone call. Sometimes it was a conversation,” Dimitri Skorobutov told The New Yorker Thursday. “If Donald Trump has a successful press conference, we broadcast it for sure. And if something goes wrong with Clinton, we underline it.”
“Me and my colleagues, we were given a clear instruction: to show Donald Trump in a positive way, and his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in a negative way,” Skorobutov said at a recent speech at a journalism conference in Maastricht in the Netherlands. Continue reading “Russian TV Editor Says Kremlin Ordered Clinton Takedown”
The following article by Andrew Roth was posted on the Washington Post website August 30, 2017:
MOSCOW — A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Wednesday that he had received a request for assistance on a stalled Trump Tower real estate project in Moscow from a close aide to President Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, but added that the Kremlin did not respond to the letter.
“I confirm that among a number of emails one from Mr. Michael Cohen came to us. This indeed happened,” said Dmitry Peskov, a personal spokesman for Putin, during a telephone briefing with Russian and foreign journalists. “But as far as we don’t respond to business topics, this is not our job, we did not send a response.” Continue reading “Kremlin says it got the Trump Tower email but didn’t respond”
