Tag: with Trump it’s always Russia

Trump Thought He Had a Nuclear Deal With Putin. Not So Fast, Russia Said.

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Trump administration officials want to broaden the New START accord and warn that the price of a new deal will rise after the election. Joe Biden supports a straight five-year extension of the deal.

President Trump had a pre-election plan to show he had gotten something out of his mysteriously friendly relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In the weeks before the election, the two men would announce that they had reached an agreement in principle to extend New START, the last remaining major arms control agreement between the two countries. It expires on Feb. 5, two weeks after the next presidential inauguration.

Mr. Trump has long refused to sign off on a clean five-year extension of the agreement, a step both leaders could take without Senate approval. He has described the Obama-era treaty as deeply flawed — the same thing he said about the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Iran nuclear accord — because it did not cover all of Russia’s nuclear arms, or any of China’s. Continue reading.

Another pro-Trump ad uses footage from Russia

This is the fourth time a Trump-affiliated group has used Russian footage in an ad.

A new pro-Trump super PAC ad uses stock footage from Russia and Belarus in a major ad buy that’s airing in three swing states. It’s the fourth time in three months that an ad promoting President Donald Trump’s reelection has used footage from Russia.

America First Action last Thursday launched an ad called “Pandemic Tax” in Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as part of a $10 million ad campaign slamming Joe Biden for supporting bad trade deals and arguing that he would raise taxes on “all of us.” But some of the people featured in the ad were actors in stock footage from Russia and Belarus.

At about 14 seconds in, the ad features a shot of new parents in dark silhouettes holding up their baby in front of a window as the phrase “HIGHER TAXES ON EVERY INCOME GROUP” appears on the screen. That specific footage, titled “Man And Woman Playing With Baby Near The Window,” is available for salefor $65 on stock footage website Pond5 by a user who goes by Kmikidov. Continue reading.

Trump Tweeted About Releasing All “Russia Hoax” Documents, But He Didn’t Mean It Literally

BuzzFeed News went to court after the president’s tweets. Now the White House is saying “not so fast” when it comes to declassifying documents related to the Mueller probe.

Two tweets by President Donald Trump last week stating he had “fully authorized the total declassification” of all documents related to the Russia investigation should not be taken literally, the Justice Department said in court documents Tuesday.

Trump claimed in one tweet that he had ordered the declassification of the “Russia Hoax Scandal” information long ago.

But it seems the Justice Department never got the message.

The Justice Department was told by the White House counsel that Trump’s “statements on Twitter were not self-executing declassification orders and do not require the declassification of any particular documents.” Continue reading.

Microsoft seeks to disrupt Russian criminal botnet it fears could seek to sow confusion in the presidential election

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The software giant won a court order to seize servers used by the Trickbot botnet, a network of infected computers that Microsoft says might have been used to lock up voter-registration systems.

SEATTLE — Microsoft has taken legal steps to dismantle one of the world’s largest botnets, an effort it says is aimed at thwarting criminal hackers who might seek to snarl state and local computer systems used to maintain voter rolls or report on election results.

The company obtained an order from a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia last week that gave Microsoft control of the Trickbot botnet, a global network it describes as the largest in the world. The company wants to disrupt hackers’ ability to operate with the election barely three weeks away.

Run by Russian-speaking criminals, the botnet poses a “theoretical but real” threat to election integrity by launching ransomware attacks, in which data is rendered inaccessible unless the victim pays a ransom, said Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president of customer security and trust. Continue reading.

CIA director ‘suppressed’ information on Russia to avoid angering Trump: Intel officials

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Intelligence officials are worried that CIA Director Gina Haspel is intentionally withholding information about Russian activities from the White House to avoid angering President Donald Trump.

Nine current and former intel officials tell Politico that intelligence on Russia “is being suppressed” because Trump simply does not want to hear about any nefarious activities being conducted by the Russians.

In fact, several sources said that Haspel has assigned CIA general counsel Courtney Elwood to review every piece of intelligence about Russia before it gets sent over to the White House, which these officials said was “unprecedented that a general counsel would be involved to this extent.” Continue reading.

Secret CIA assessment: Putin ‘probably directing’ influence operation to denigrate Biden

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top aides are “probably directing” a Russian foreign influence operation to interfere in the 2020 presidential election against former vice president Joe Biden, which involves a prominent Ukrainian lawmaker connected to President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, a top-secret CIA assessment concluded, according to two sources who reviewed it. 

On Aug. 31, the CIA published an assessment of Russian efforts to interfere in the November election in an internal, highly classified report called the CIA Worldwide Intelligence Review, the sources said. CIA analysts compiled the assessment with input from the National Security Agency and the FBI, based on several dozen pieces of information gleaned from public, unclassified and classified intelligence sources. The assessment includes details of the CIA’s analysis of the activities of Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach to disseminate disparaging information about Biden inside the United States through lobbyists, Congress, the media and contacts with figures close to the president.

“We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia’s influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. Vice President, supporting the U.S. president and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November,” the first line of the document says, according to the sources. Continue reading.

CIA clamps down on flow of Russia intelligence to White House

Critics of the shift in approach say it seems designed to appease the president.

The CIA has made it harder for intelligence about Russia to reach the White House, stoking fears among current and former officials that information is being suppressed to please a president known to erupt in anger whenever he is confronted with bad news about Moscow.

Nine current and former officials said in interviews that CIA Director Gina Haspel has become extremely cautious about which, if any, Russia-related intelligence products make their way to President Donald Trump’s desk. Haspel also has been keeping a close eye on the agency’s fabled “Russia House,” whose analysts she often disagrees with and sometimes accuses of purposefully misleading her.

Last year, three of the people said, Haspel tasked the CIA’s general counsel, Courtney Elwood, with reviewing virtually every product that comes out of Russia House, which is home to analysts and targeters who are experts in Russia and the post-Soviet space, before it “goes downtown” to the White House. One former CIA lawyer called it “unprecedented that a general counsel would be involved to this extent.” Continue reading.

Newsmax: FBI Director Slated For Dismissal By Trump After Testifying On Russian Interference

The White House is preparing a list of names for President Donald Trump to use as it prepares to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray, just one day after he testified before Congress that Russia again is attacking the U.S. election.

“The White House is preparing a shortlist of candidates to replace Christopher Wray as FBI Director,” Newsmax White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson reported, which has not been confirmed by other reporters.

Wray would be the second FBI director Trump will have fired over Russia. Continue reading.

Trump ad asks people to support the troops. But it uses a picture of Russian jets.

The Trump Make America Great Again Committee is run by both the Republican National Committee and the campaign.

A digital ad released by a fundraising arm of the Trump campaign on Sept. 11 calling on people to “support our troops” uses a stock photo of Russian-made fighter jets and Russian models dressed as soldiers.

The ad, which was made by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee,features silhouettes of three soldiers walking as a fighter jet flies over them. The ad first appeared on Sept. 8 and ran until Sept. 12.

“That’s definitely a MiG-29,” said Pierre Sprey, who helped design both the F-16 and A-10 planes for the U.S. Air Force. “I’m glad to see it’s supporting our troops.” Continue reading.

Former FBI Agent Peter Strzok: Trump Clearly ‘Compromised By The Russians’

“They hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interests … ahead of his own,” Strzok said.

A former FBI agent who worked on then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election said it’s “clear” that President Donald Trump was “compromised by the Russians.”

Former FBI counterintelligence officer Peter Strzok told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he believed the Kremlin gained “leverage” over Trump through certain “financial entanglements.”

“Look, I think it is clear: I believed at the time in 2016, and I continue to believe that Donald Trump is compromised by the Russians,” Strzok told host Chuck Todd. “And when I say that, I mean that they hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interests, the national security, ahead of his own.” Continue reading.