Tag: with Trump it’s always Russia

Ukraine language in GOP platform underscores Trump tensions

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The absence of an updated Republican party platform for the 2020 election is allowing President Trump to avoid hard commitments on the sensitive foreign policy issue of Ukraine, where his withholding of $400 million in military assistance was at the heart of his impeachment by the House. 

The GOP’s decision to preserve the 2016 platform keeps in place toned down language related to Ukraine that was negotiated at the time by Trump’s then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is serving a seven and a half year prison sentence on charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections.

Manafort, who was found by the Senate Intelligence Committee to have had direct contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 campaign, successfully removed any commitments to lethal military assistance to Kyiv as part of efforts to soften language towards Moscow. Continue reading.

Kremlin-linked businessman boasted he knew about president’s ‘relationships with women’ in Moscow and hotel bosses talked about elevator tape of Trump with two ‘hostesses’ Senate Intel report reveals – but says Putin’s spies did NOT have kompromat

The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s final Russia report lays out new claims about Donald Trump‘s ‘relationships with women in Moscow’ – including new allegations about a ‘tape’ of the future president in a luxury hotel elevator.

The explosive 1,000 page report caps off a multi-year investigation where investigators concluded that Russia sought to influence the 2016 campaign and that some officials in Trump’s orbit welcomed the assistance. 

The fifth volume in the probe, which began after Trump’s 2016 victory, points to the role played by Trump’s disgraced former campaign chair Paul Manafort, who is currently serving a 7 1/2 year sentence on fraud and corruption charges. It accuses Manafort of collaborating with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and feeding internal Trump campaign information to Konstantin Kilimnik, who it identifies for the first time as a Russian intelligence officer. Democrats on the committee wrote in their own addendum that Kilimnik ‘may have been connected’ to the Russian military intelligence unit that carried out the 2016 election hacking of Democratic emails.  Continue reading.

How Paul Manafort promoted Russian disinformation that has been embraced by Trump

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The effort began only days after Paul Manafort resigned as chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in August 2016.

Manafort faced scrutiny for accepting millions in off-book payments from pro-Russian Ukrainian officials — an uncomfortable situation for the longtime lobbyist, since accusations were then emerging that Russia was interfering in the White House race to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.

According to a new bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee released Tuesday, Manafort began quickly working with a Russian employee based in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on a counternarrative — that it was the Ukrainians who were actually interfering in the U.S. election, not Russia, and that they were framing Manafort to help the Democrats. Continue reading.

Trump Phone Calls Add to Lingering Questions About Russian Interference

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A Senate committee went further than the Mueller report on key points about Russia’s election sabotage operations and the Trump campaign.

WASHINGTON — More than 200 pages into a sprawling, 1,000-page report on Russian election interference, the Senate Intelligence Committee made a startling conclusion endorsed by both Republicans and Democrats: Donald J. Trump knew of and discussed stolen Democratic emails at critical points late in his 2016 presidential campaign.

The Republican-led committee rejected Mr. Trump’s statement to prosecutors investigating Russia’s interference that he did not recall conversations with his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. about the emails, which were later released by WikiLeaks. Senators leveled a blunt assessment: “Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”

The senators did not accuse Mr. Trump of lying in their report, released Tuesday, the fifth and final volume from a three-year investigation that laid out extensive contacts between Trump advisers and Russians. But the report detailed even more of the president’s conversations with Mr. Stone than were previously known, renewing questions about whether Mr. Trump was truthful with investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, or misled them, much as prosecutors convinced jurors that Mr. Stone himself misled congressional investigators about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks. Continue reading.

Trump Tweets Russian Propaganda Against Biden

Donald Trump retweeted an audio recording that U.S. intelligence cited as a key element in a Russian campaign to smear Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

The alleged conversation between Biden and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, purportedly occurred on Feb. 18, 2016, and concerns the removal of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor.

When Trump promoted the recording to his tens of millions ofTwitter followers, he demonstrated how easily Russian propaganda invades the election debate — even when loyal intelligence officials designate its origins explicitly. Russia routinely spreads disinformation as “news,” according to those officials. Continue reading.

What Trump doesn’t want you to know about Russia’s election interference

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Last Friday, William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released a statement that “Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment.’” It also noted that both China and Iran prefer that Trump be defeated in the November election.

The timing of that wasn’t lost on New York Times reporter Robert Draper who was about to publish an article titled, “Unwanted Truths: Inside Trump’s Battle With U.S. Intelligence Agencies.”

Just as this article was going to press — and shortly after I submitted a list of questions to the O.D.N.I. relating to its struggle to avoid becoming politically compromised — Evanina put out a new statement. In it, the O.D.N.I. at last acknowledged publicly that Russia “is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment.’” In the same statement, however, Evanina also asserted for the first time that both China and Iran were hoping to defeat Trump. As with the preceding statement, the O.D.N.I. made no distinction between Russia’s sophisticated election-disrupting capabilities and the less insidious influence campaigns of the two supposedly anti-Trump countries. Like its predecessor, the statement seemed to be tortured with political calculation — an implicit declaration of anguish rather than of independence.

Continue reading.

Legal experts explain how a GOP senator’s Ukraine probe enabled ‘three channels of Russian disinformation’

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In an 11-page letter sent on Monday, August 10, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin vigorously defended his Ukraine-related investigations. The Republican senator has denied that any of his investigations have been used to promote Russian government disinformation, but legal experts Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa — in an article published by Just Security on August 11 — argue that Johnson has often promoted Russian talking points.

In the letter, Johnson wrote, “It is neither me, (Senate Finance Committee) Chairman (Chuck) Grassley, nor our committees that are being used to disseminate Russian disinformation.” But according to Goodman and Rangappa, “Fellow Republican senators — including the previous and current chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sens. Richard Burr and Marco Rubio — have warned Senators Johnson and Chuck Grassley that their Ukraine investigations could aid the Kremlin. Johnson and Grassley appear committed to going further down that path regardless, taking some of their Republican colleagues down with him.”

According to Goodman and Rangappa, “There are three channels of Russian disinformation that have apparently affected Sen. Johnson’s Ukraine-related investigations.” And those channels are “Russian-linked Ukrainian operatives communicating directly with Sen. Johnson and his staff” and “Russian-linked Ukrainian operatives spreading disinformation via media outlets, which have been picked up and expressly relied upon by Sen. Johnson” as well as “Russian-linked Ukrainian operatives providing information via Team (Rudy) Giuliani.” Continue reading.

White House Forced Changes In Intel Warning That Russia Wants Trump To Win: Report

Then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was forced out after refusing to water down the language so it might not enrage the president.

The White House last year forced changes in a pointed intelligence conclusion that the Kremlin wanted President Donald Trump reelected, according to The New York Times Magazine.

Wording was dramatically watered down concerning Russia’s strong backing for Trump shortly after then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was forced into early retirement when he refused to make the changes, the Times reported. The classified document reportedly also discussed Russia’s ongoing efforts to influence U.S. elections in 2020 and 2024.  

“I can affirm that one of my staffers who was aware of the controversy requested that I modify that assessment,” Coats told the Times. “But I said, ‘No, we need to stick to what the analysts have said.’” Continue reading.

Foreign policy experts struggle to explain Trump’s devotion to Vladimir Putin

AlterNet logoAmericans who are old enough to remember the Cold War find it ironic that President Donald Trump has such a favorable view of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s relationship with Putin is the focus of an op-ed that Jim Sciutto, CNN’s chief national security correspondent, wrote for its website — and according to Sciutto, their relationship is one that foreign policy experts and former members of Trump’s administration have a hard time explaining.

“When interviewing current and former Trump administration officials for my upcoming book, ‘The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World,’ I found that explaining Trump’s deference to Russia was one of the most difficult questions for them to answer,” Sciutto explains. “And even they acknowledged the record fails to back up the president.”

Sciutto asked Susan Gordon, former principal deputy director of national intelligence, what Trump believes he needs Putin for — and she responded, “To not be an adversary. To not drive up (Trump’s) need to respond militarily. To not force (him) to spend money in places (he doesn’t) want to. To not have someone who (he) won’t deal with. To not create another front where (he has) to engage militarily. (Russia) are so powerful that to have them as an enemy is not in (the) best interest of what he’s trying to achieve globally, and from a U.S. perspective.” Continue reading.

Lt. Col. Vindman accuses Trump of ‘bullying and intimidation’ in scathing WaPo op-ed

AlterNet logoOn Saturday, writing for The Washington Post, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, one of the key witnesses in the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump, slammed the president and stood up for his principles.

“After 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian. I made the difficult decision to retire because a campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation by President Trump and his allies forever limited the progression of my military career,” wrote Vindman. “At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving.”

Since his testimony, Vindman was denied a routine promotion through the military ranks after White House officials dug up dirt on him and passed it along to the Pentagon. Vindman decided to retire from service, with his lawyer citing a culture of retaliation. Continue reading.