Tag: with Trump it’s always Russia

Treasury Sanctions ‘Active Russian Agent’ Behind Giuliani Smears Of Biden

The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions Thursday on a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker the agency said had been serving as “an active Russian agent for over a decade.”

The lawmaker, Andrii Derkach, is the son of a former KGB officer and also happens to be a key source of disinformation for top allies of Donald Trump who have been actively working to smear Joe Biden with baseless claims of corruption. Chief among those allies are Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. 

In sanctioning Derkach, the Treasury Department did not name Biden but accused Derkach of releasing “edited audiotapes” and “unsubstantiated allegations against U.S. and international political figures,” according to The New York Times. The Times writes that the sanctions announcement “appears to describe recordings Mr. Derkach released of Mr. Biden talking to Petro O. Poroshenko, the former president of Ukraine, that Mr. Derkach claimed revealed corruption.” Continue reading.

New report paints a disturbing picture of the Kremlin’s ability to wreak havoc in the 2020 election

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin have a preference in the United States’ 2020 presidential election, and it isn’t former Vice President Joe Biden. Efforts by Russian operatives to interfere in this year’s election — just as they interfered in 2016’s presidential election — and help President Donald Trump win a second term have been well documented. Journalist Franklin Foer, this week in an article for The Atlantic, warns that the Kremlin will be relentless this time.

“Events in the United States have unfolded more favorably than any operative in Moscow could have ever dreamed,” Foer explains. “Not only did Russia’s preferred candidate win (in 2016), but he has spent his first term fulfilling the potential it saw in him — discrediting American institutions, rending the seams of American culture, and isolating a nation that had styled itself as indispensable to the free world. But instead of complacently enjoying its triumph, Russia almost immediately set about replicating it. Boosting the Trump campaign was a tactic; #DemocracyRIP remains the larger objective.”

The United States’ election vulnerabilities, Foer warns, have “widened, not narrowed, during the past four years.” And Trump, according to Foer, “has dismissed Russian interference as a hoax and fired or threatened intelligence officials who have contradicted that narrative, all while professing his affinity for the very man who ordered this assault on American democracy.” Continue reading.

The Trump team welcomed Russian disinformation, the Trump administration further confirms

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President Trump, in August, promoted information that the U.S. government has increasingly connected to a Russian disinformation campaign in the 2020 election — after his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, worked with the man promoting it. Now the U.S. government says explicitly that the man behind it is a Russian agent.

The Treasury Department on Thursday identified Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach as an “active Russian agent for over a decade” — a label that could lead to more direct penalties. It added that Derkach has “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

“This action is a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated,” the Treasury Department said. Continue reading.

Trump’s ‘Sleepy Joe’ Slur Is Direct From The Kremlin — And It’s Fake News

In the real world, that is to say the non-televised part of our lives remote from social media, we would shun somebody who went around spreading ugly rumors about neighbors, relatives or co-workers. Not that it never happens. I have a woman friend who resigned from a local charity after a clique of rivals spread a false tale that she’d slipped into dementia, poor thing.

She decided that she wanted nothing more to do with them.

Alas, from the gossips’ point of view, the smear campaign worked. Not that my friend isn’t better off without them. More than anything, the pretense of compassion made her furious. In time, they’ll probably turn against each another, because that’s what such people do.  Continue reading.

Trump says he has seen no proof of Navalny poisoning, awaiting German findings

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President Trump on Friday cast doubt on the consensus from Germany that leading Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned in an assassination attempt in Siberia, saying he is waiting to review the evidence.

“We haven’t had any proof yet,” Trump said during a briefing at the White House.

“I would be very angry if that’s the case, so we’ll take a look at the numbers and the documents, because we’re going to be sent a lot of documents over the next few days,” he added. Continue reading.

Facebook Confirms Russia Is Intervening In 2020 Election

It’s no secret that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin are hoping that President Donald Trump will defeat his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in November — as they rightly view Trump as much more sympathetic to Russian interests. The Trump administration has already confirmed that they are intervening once again. And according to Facebook, Russian operatives are trying to manipulate U.S. voters this year on the social media platform just as they did during the 2016 presidential election.

CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan reports Facebook announced that a St. Petersburg, Russia-based troll group that interfered in the 2016 election, the Internet Research Agency, is trying to interfere in this year’s election as well. O’Sullivan notes that a “network of Facebook accounts and pages” that the social media platform removed was “set up to look and operate like a left-wing news outlet.” Facebook removed the Russian troll pages after receiving a tip from the FBI.

“This is the first publicly available evidence that people connected to the Russian troll group, which is known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), are using unwitting Americans in an attempt to meddle with the 2020 election and stir discord,” O’Sullivan reports. “The operation seems to have been shut down before it could get much traction on Facebook or the rest of the internet.” Continue reading.

DHS withheld publication of intel bulletin showing Russian plot to attack Biden’s mental health: report

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According to ABC News, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security withheld publication, in early July, of an intelligence bulletin describing a Russian scheme to push “allegations about” Biden’s “poor mental health.”

ABC News has obtained a copy of the bulletin, titled “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of U.S. Candidates to Influence 2020 Election.” And ABC reporters Josh Margolin, Lucien Bruggeman, Will Steakin and Jonathan Karl note that the document was submitted to the DHS’ office of legislative and public affairs for review on July 7.

“The analysis was not meant for public consumption,” according to the reporters. “But it was set to be distributed to federal, state and local law enforcement partners two days later, on July 9, the e-mails show.” Continue reading.

Facebook takes down Russian operation that recruited U.S. journalists, amid rising concerns about election misinformation

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The social media giant acted against a small network of pages and accounts that directed users to a fake left-leaning news site called Peace Data

Facebook removed a network of fake accounts and pages created by Russian operatives who had recruited U.S. journalists to write articles critical of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris, in an apparent bid to undermine their support among liberal voters.

Facebook said it caught the network of 13 fake accounts and two pages early, before it had a chance to build a large audience — an action that the company said was evidence of its growing effectiveness at targeting foreign disinformation operations ahead of the 2020 election. The takedown emerged as a result of a tip from the FBI and was one of a dozen operations tied to the Russian Internet Research Agency or individuals affiliated with it that Facebook has disrupted since the last presidential election, when IRA-backed pages amassed millions of views on the platform. The pages had about 14,000 followers.

“They’ve gotten better at hiding who they are, but their impact has gotten smaller and smaller,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said of the foreign operations. Continue reading.

Rosenstein blocked FBI from probing Trump’s Russian ties — then ordered Mueller to ignore them as well

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One of the many oddities of the now-terminated Robert Mueller probe into Russian election interference and its links to various members of the Trump campaign and family, and in fact of all known federal probes into Russia’s Trump-related actions, has been the seeming lack of any counterintelligence probe on Donald Trump’s myriad, longstanding financial connections to Russia—and what role those financial ties have played both in the Russian government’s actions on behalf of Trump and their possible leverage over the now-president.

A new story from The New York Times‘ Michael Schmidt reports that that’s because in the first months of the new Trump administration, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein shuttered that investigation—then ordered special counsel Robert Mueller to steer clear of it himself. It’s not that the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s known ties to Russian crime figures, to money laundering, and his family’s stated reliance on Russian cash has been kept closely-held: It never existed. And it still doesn’t.

The accusation being leveled by acting Federal Bureau of Investigation director Andrew McCabe against Rosenstein goes further, suggesting that Rosenstein intentionally misled him. Schmidt reports that McCabe launched a counterintelligence probe into Trump’s Russian ties immediately after Trump’s firing of former FBI director James Comey, a move that was widely publicly speculated to be a Trump move to quash investigations into Russian election actions and into numerous of Trump’s top advisers and allies. The fear within the intelligence community was that Trump’s behaviors could be impacted by unknown Russian pressures, representing an immediate national security threat. Continue reading.

Justice Dept. Never Fully Examined Trump’s Ties to Russia, Ex-Officials Say

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The former deputy attorney general maneuvered to keep investigators from completing an inquiry into whether the president’s personal and financial links to Russia posed a national security threat.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department secretly took steps in 2017 to narrow the investigation into Russian election interference and any links to the Trump campaign, according to former law enforcement officials, keeping investigators from completing an examination of President Trump’s decades-long personal and business ties to Russia.

The special counsel who finished the investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, secured three dozen indictments and convictions of some top Trump advisers, and he produced a report that outlined Russia’s wide-ranging operations to help get Mr. Trump elected and the president’s efforts to impede the inquiry.

But law enforcement officials never fully investigated Mr. Trump’s own relationship with Russia, even though some career F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators thought his ties posed such a national security threat that they took the extraordinary step of opening an inquiry into them. Within days, the former deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein curtailed the investigation without telling the bureau, all but ensuring it would go nowhere. Continue reading.