Tag: Russia

Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist

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.

In Japan, Trump appears to make light of Russian election interference during meeting with Putin

Washington Post logoPresident Trump met with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, and appeared to make light of Moscow’s election interference. Here are the highlights:

  • “Don’t meddle in the election,” a grinning Trump told Putin in response to reporters’ questions.
  • Trump and Putin also appeared to briefly discuss their mutual dislike of the news media with Trump saying “Fake news is a great term, isn’t it.”
  • Russian state media said Trump “responded very positively” to an invitation from Putin to visit Moscow next year.
  • Other leaders at the summit, notably British Prime Minister Theresa May, took a tougher stand against Putin, citing Russia’s “destabilizing” behavior.

OSAKA, Japan — President Trump on Friday appeared to make light of Russian election interference, telling President Vladi­mir Putin with a grin during a bilateral meeting, “Don’t meddle in the election,” after reporters shouted questions about the topic.

View the complete June 28 article by David Nakamura, Seung Min Kim and Damian Paletta on The Washington Post website here.

‘None of your business!’ Trump lashes out when reporter asks him about meeting with Putin

AlterNet logoWhile leaving for his trip to Japan on Wednesday, President Donald Trump stopped to speak with the press on the South Lawn of the White House, where one reporter asked a question that clearly struck a nerve.

Sarah Westwood, a reporter for CNN, asked Trump whether he planned on telling Russian President Vladimir Putin at their upcoming meeting not to interfere in the 2016 election.

While leaving for his trip to Japan on Wednesday, President Donald Trump stopped to speak with the press on the South Lawn of the White House, where one reporter asked a question that clearly struck a nerve.

Sarah Westwood, a reporter for CNN, asked Trump whether he planned on telling Russian President Vladimir Putin at their upcoming meeting not to interfere in the 2016 election.

View the complete June 26 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

House Intelligence Committee to subpoena Trump associate Felix Sater

The Hill logoThe House Intelligence Committee says it will issue a subpoena for President Trump’s onetime business associate Felix Sater after he did not show up to testify behind closed doors before the panel on Friday.

“The Committee had scheduled a voluntary staff-level interview with Mr. Sater, but he did not show up this morning as agreed. As a result, the Committee is issuing a subpoena to compel his testimony,” committee spokesman Patrick Boland said in a statement Friday morning.

The committee, led by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), had requested Sater’s testimony as part of its investigation into Russian interference and Trump’s business dealings with Russia and other foreign entities.

View the complete June 21 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Former US ambassador to Russia dissects Trump’s affection for dictators: ‘Things that the president says serves Russia’s national interest’

Remember when President Trump admitted that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election?

That was less than two weeks ago, but our news cycle moves at such a brisk clip it’s easy to forget. There is no denying that on May 30, the same president who has repeatedly denied or downplayed Russia’s interference in American elections tweeted that “I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” While Trump apparently thought he was defending himself with that remark — and later retracted it once he realized how it came across — it sure sounded like Trump admitting that Russian meddling happened and conceding that he benefited from it, even if only through a Freudian slip.

Whether Trump likes it or not, his presidency is inextricably linked to his unusual relationship with the Russian government. To learn more about how the Trump-Russia relationship has changed history, Salon reached out to Michael McFaul, a foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul was also briefly in the news after the Helsinki summit last year. When Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Trump to hand over McFaul for questioning on a variety of trumped-up charges, the president reportedly considered doing so. If Trump had the kind of unchecked power he wishes he did, McFaul’s life might have been in danger.

View the complete June 9 article by Matthew Rozsa from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Russia May Decide Our Next Election, Thanks To Trump

Leading up to the 2016 presidential election, a foreign adversary conducted a devastating attack on the United States. It was stealthy, strategic and effective. Russian agents, likely acting under orders from President Vladimir Putin, managed to boost the campaign of Donald J. Trump; to further polarize, anger and embitter American voters; and to weaken democratic institutions.

But that’s not the worst news from what will go down in history as a seminal strike on the United States. The worst news is this: Russia is poised to strike again as the 2020 presidential election nears, and the U.S. government is not doing nearly enough to stop it.

That’s because President Donald J. Trump insists on minimizing — or dismissing outright — the threat. And it’s now clear why: With the release of the report of special counsel Robert Mueller, it’s evident that Trump and his top campaign officials were aware, by the spring of 2016, of efforts by some Russian actors to assist his campaign, and that Trump benefitted from that help. If the Russians are to be stopped, then, Congress, state legislatures and top Trump officials brave enough to contradict the president will have to step up their efforts to thwart them.

View the complete May 3 article on the Cynthia Tucker on the National Memo website here.

Bolton accuses CNN host of lying about a call between Trump and Putin so he can pick a fight about Russia — then gets hit with the transcript

In a contentious exchange on CNN Wednesday, National Security Advisor John Bolton claimed CNN’s John Berman was “missing the point” of an interview he gave earlier on Fox News where he appeared to say there’s a scheduled phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The back-and-forth began when Berman asked what Trump has “said to Vladimir Putin on this subject” of Venezuela. Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was prepared to flee the country until the Kremlin advised him not it. The U.S. has pledged to support an uprising against the Maduro regime.

“We’ve made it clear to the Russians in a lot of conversations and a lot of different levels, some of which are going to continue today, why we think this behavior is unacceptable to us,” Bolton replied.

View the complete May 1 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.

Trump: Russia investigations an attempted ‘coup’

President Donald Trump on Thursday called the FBI probe into his 2016 campaign and subsequent investigations into Russian election meddling “an attempted overthrow” of his administration.

“This was a coup,” Trump told host Sean Hannity on Fox News’ “Hannity” in his first interview since the Mueller report’s release. “This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government.”

Trump insisted that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election had gone “hog wild to find something about the administration which obviously wasn’t there.”

View the complete April 26 article by Bianca Quilantan on the Politico website here.

What Mueller Really Knows About Trump (And Russia)

Robert S. Mueller knows a great deal more than he put in his richly detailed 448-page report.

He says so again and again right in the report.

Two crucial words he put into the report at least eight times are messages to our Congress and the rest of us about how his investigation was hamstrung by rules from telling all that he and his team learned.

View the complete April 24 article by David Cay Johnston of the DC Report website  on the National Memo website here.

5 unresolved mysteries about Russian meddling in Mueller’s report

Even in a 448-page report, the special counsel left several big questions unaddressed or only partially answered.

Over 448 pages, special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report covered a huge amount of ground, from Trump campaign contacts with Russian operatives to President Donald Trump’s efforts to thwart Mueller’s probe.

But while Mueller found that the Trump campaign did not conspire with the Russian government, he didn’t resolve every mystery surrounding the Kremlin’s 2016 presidential election interference scheme.

Several lines of inquiry that Mueller and the FBI — not to mention countless journalists and amateur internet sleuths — had reportedly been pursuing went unaddressed in the copious document. They include mysterious interactions between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank computer servers, the inner workings of the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, and influence-peddling by Middle Eastern countries targeting Trump’s fledgling administration. Other avenues, like whether compromising tapes exist of the president and what a Russian oligarch did with the internal Trump campaign polling data he was given, were left open-ended.

View the complete April 19 article by Natasha Bertrand on the Politico website here.