Tag: Russia

Trump’s bizarre history lesson on the Soviet Union, Russia and Afghanistan

During a Cabinet meeting Jan. 2, President Trump spoke about foreign involvement in Afghanistan and his decision to withdraw U.S. troops. (The Washington Post)

President Trump said a lot of strange, untrue things after Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting. But the most bizarre snippet might have been his “history” lesson on the Soviet Union.

Trump, who has assured us he is the foremost expert on many topics for which he has no formal education or training, gave his own version of why the USSR collapsed. And to be clear, it is his own version.

Here’s what he said:

“Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia. … The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you’re reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan.”

Cell signal puts Cohen outside Prague around time of purported Russian meeting

WASHINGTON — A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.

During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.

The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.

View the complete December 27 article by Peter Stone and Greg Gordon on the McClatchyDC website here.

Trump’s chaos in Syria gets praise from Putin — and no one else

President Trump in the Oval Office. Credit: Andrew Harnik, AP

Trump’s sudden announcement on Syria confused American agencies and leaders. But Vladimir Putin praised it loudly.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Trump announced that America would be withdrawing the 2,000 troops in Syria. The major foreign policy initiative came as a surprise to both the Department of Defense and the State Department, the two departments who would be tasked with executing Trump’s whims.

Defending his latest amateurish blunder on foreign policy, Trump tweeted, “Russia, Iran, Syria & many others are not happy about the U.S. leaving, despite what the Fake News says.”

But Putin does like it. A lot. Speaking to reporters, the Russian leader said Trump had made “the right decision,” and went on to slam the actions of American soldiers on the ground in the region.

View the complete December 20 article by Oliver Willis on the ShareBlue.com website here.

Flynn associates claim he was in contact with Russian ambassador about a ‘grand bargain’ during 2016 campaign

“Trump’s chief national security aide was secretly interacting with the representative of a foreign power as that government was mounting information and cyber warfare against the United States.”

When Michael Flynn, former national security advisor in the Trump Administration, agreed to cooperate in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, he admitted to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the late 2016 lame duck session. But according to a new David Corn/Dan Friedman article for Mother Jones, Flynn was in touch with Kislyak not only after the 2016 presidential election, but during the election as well.

For the article, published December 13, Mother Jones’ reporters interviewed two Flynn associates who asked for anonymity—and both of them discussed their conversations with Flynn. One of them, according to Corn and Friedman, alleges that Flynn and Kislyak discussed “a grand bargain in which Moscow would cooperate with the Trump Administration to resolve the Syrian conflict and Washington would end or ease up on the sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine.”

According to Corn and Friedman, the other Flynn associate alleges that Flynn and Kislyak discussed “Syria, Iran and other foreign policy matters that Russia and the United States could tackle together were Trump to be elected.”

View the complete December 13 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet.org website here.

This Russian oligarch reportedly bragged of his U.S. influence after Trump’s election — and he has a direct tie to Michael Cohen

Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The sprawling connections between Trump and Russia never end.

Viktor Vekselberg is among the Russian oligarchs that Michael Cohen came into contact with during his years as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. The 61-year-old Ukraine-born Vekselberg has had business and political contacts in the U.S. for decades—and after the 2016 presidential election, reportedly bragged about his ties to the Trump Organization.

“Soon,” Bloomberg News reports in a new article, “Trump would be in the White House, and Vekselberg would be privately boasting of having the pull needed to help achieve the sanctions relief the Kremlin was craving.”

But sanctions relief, according to Bloomberg, is the last thing Vekselberg experienced after Trump was sworn in as president—and his U.S. activities have cost him billions of dollars in the Trump era.

View the complete December 7 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet.org website here.

The lies that Mueller has already documented

Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 election Credit: Andrew Harnik, AP

To date, the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with President Trump’s campaign has resulted in criminal charges against 33 individuals and three companies. Of those 33 individuals, six are U.S. nationals, 25 are Russian, one is Ukrainian and one is Dutch. Of the six U.S. nationals, five had some direct association with Trump’s campaign — with the addition on Thursday of Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

All five have admitted criminal liability in some form or another. All five — Cohen, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former campaign adviser and national security adviser Michael Flynn — have agreed to cooperate with the Mueller probe to some extent. Four are awaiting sentencing. One is currently serving time in prison.

For the most part, the charges faced by the non-Russian individuals stem from having made false statements to federal investigators or, in the case of Cohen, to Congress. In the cases of Gates and Manafort, the plea agreements include admissions of guilt on these charges because they are relatively minor compared to other charges they faced.

View the complete November 30 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Cohen pleads guilty for misstatements to Congress about contacts with Russians

President Trump‘s former personal attorney Michael Cohen on Thursday pleaded guilty for misstatements he made to Congress while testifying about his contacts with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Cohen appeared in a federal court in Manhattan after reaching a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.

He pleaded guilty to making a false statement about the effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign while testifying before Congress, according to court documents, and made false statements about the timing of the project.

View the complete November 29 article by Justin Wise on The Hill website here.

Top 6 Russia Revelations To Know From This Week

It was another bad week for Trump. We now know Trump lied about his Russia ties, and Mueller’s investigation is closing in and has reached Trump’s children. With so much Russia-related news, it’s hard to keep up. Here are the top 6 revelations to know:

  1. TRUMP’S LIES: Time and again Trump told the American people that his business had nothing to do with Russia, but discussions on Trump Tower Moscow went on at least until June 2016 — and Trump was briefed on it.

  1. IN TALKS WITH THE KREMLIN: Cohen admitted in court that he was in direct contact with the Kremlin about Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign. What was the extent of their involvement?

Continue reading “Top 6 Russia Revelations To Know From This Week”

Trump attacks the Emmy Awards more often than he criticizes Putin

Trump’s prolific tweeting shows he is more willing to attack television shows and American patriots than Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Since moving into the Oval Office, Trump has used his Twitter account to attack Americans like John McCain and Dianne Feinstein way more often than his pal Vladimir Putin.

According to a comprehensive analysis by the New York Times, Trump has attacked the FBI 24 times as often as Putin, and his own Department of Justice 8 times as often.

The Times catalogued 547 people, places, or things Trump has insulted on Twitter since he first announced his campaign for president.

View the complete November 21 article by Dan Desai Martin on the ShareBlue.com website here.

Putin touts downfall of US as a global leader: ‘It’s almost done’

Putin used his annual public address to celebrate America’s fading global influence under the Trump administration.

In his annual public address before the nation, Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed that America’s global influence has come to end — a development he attributed in large part to Trump’s presidency.

Speaking about the position of the U.S. on the global stage, Putin celebrated the waning influence of what he described as America’s “monopoly” on power, saying it would give Russia the ability to exert more influence in the world.

“Empires often think they can make some little mistakes. Because they’re so powerful,” Putin said, according to the Financial Times. ”But when the number of these mistakes keeps growing, it reaches a level they cannot sustain.”

View the complete October 19 article on the ShareBlue.com website here.