In this episode of Narativ With Zev Shalev, We delve into the intriguing and controversial events surrounding the 2018 publication by American Media Inc. (AMI) that featured Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and its aftermath.

Our discussion begins with MBS’s portrayal as an ally of the U.S. against terrorism despite Saudi Arabia’s alleged involvement in 9/11. The show details the peculiar events that followed Jeff Bezos’s dinner with MBS, including hacking Bezos’s phone via Pegasus malware. This hack led to the National Enquirer, also owned by AMI, exposing Bezos’s affair using the data obtained from Bezos’s phone.

We’ll link these events to a broader narrative of autocratic manipulation, drawing parallels to similar tactics used by Donald Trump and David Pecker to influence the 2016 election by silencing stories about Trump’s scandals, including the Stormy Daniels affair. The core theme is the ‘subversion of democracy,’ highlighting how personal information was weaponized to influence political outcomes and manipulate public perception.

The trial of Donald Trump is framed not just as a matter of hush money or personal misconduct but as a critical instance of democracy being undermined for personal and political gain.

00:00 Introduction to the Narrative

00:55 The Bezos-MBS Connection

02:09 The National Enquirer Exposé

03:23 Autocracy and Media Manipulation

03:37 Trump’s Scandal Management

05:16 The Subversion of Democracy

07:27 The 2016 Election Interference

10:45 The Epstein Connection

14:03 The Role of Foreign Influence

18:30 The Legal Battle and Its Implications

25:07 The Smoking Gun Tape

26:48 The Consequences of Trump’s Presidency

27:30 The Fight for Democracy

27:52 America’s Unique Freedom

31:26 Global Threats to Democracy

35:14 The Importance of the 2024 Election

37:38 Supporting Independent Journalism

41:01 Conclusion and Call to Action

The post Subversion of Democracy: Explaing Trump’s Charge appeared first on Narativ.

The Moscow Tower had everything to do with Donald Trump’s presidential run and was negotiated with Vladimir Putin’s closest advisors. Why did Robert Mueller find no evidence of a conspiracy?

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 18 2019

Fred C. Trump, the real estate developer and father to a future president, presided over the demolition with food, drink, and “no less than six – count ’em – six bikinied beauties,” the New York Times reported. It was a September morning in 1966. Trump came to Coney Island to cheer on the wrecking crew as they demolished the last vestiges of the iconic Steeplechase Park before city officials could declare it a historic landmark.

Trump partied as they tore down the ‘Pavilion of Fun’ and promised to build yet another bleak, brown, stark apartment building in a neighborhood already reeling from population growth, increased crime, and poverty from the blight Trump and other developers had brought to the area.

By the time nine-year-old Felix Sater arrived in America with his parents as part of a wave of immigrants from the Soviet Union in 1974, only the Cyclone stood as a reminder of Coney Island’s happier days, and even that was slated for demolition.

The Soviet immigrants who came to Coney Island in the 1970s brought with them much more than recipes for pirozhki and borscht. They had a very different way of doing business. Felix’s father, Mikhail Sheferovsky, set up shop as a crime boss, earning a living by extorting grocery stores, restaurants, and medical clinics, according to the FBI.

The easy flow of dirty Russian mob money that flowed in with the immigrants was music to Fred Trump’s ears. He sucked up the dirty cash and washed it through his apartment projects – many with names like Trump Village – giving life to a Russian underworld in Brooklyn which has since swamped the world.

Felix was not all that unique. His friends’ parents were also involved in activities of varying shades of legality. His friend Laura Shusterman’s father owned a taxi company that allegedly helped Russian immigrants launder their money through taxi medallions and also through Trump properties.

Laura introduced Felix to her boyfriend Michael, the son of a wealthy doctor from a far more affluent neighborhood up Long Island. Michael would also visit his Uncle Morty, who owned the “El Caribe Country Club,” a dining hall popular among Brooklyn’s Russian mob.

In those days, the term “mafia” was used almost exclusively to describe Italian crime families, but that changed when the Russians arrived. What began with laundering money through taxi medallions expanded into racketeering and protection rackets. Eventually, the Russians “rolled up” the Italians, first in New York and then down the Eastern seaboard to Florida.

Two boys from Brooklyn

On Felix and Michael’s home turf, the screech from nearby amusement rides had long been replaced by the shrill of well-fed and inebriated Russians. The boardwalk was now lined with eateries like Tatiana’s, whose tables overflow today with impossible amounts of seafood and vodka 365 days a year while buskers and barely clothed dancers work the crowd for tips.

At Tatiana’s, one of Putin’s henchmen was spotted during an American visit to tour the new Russian mob outpost. Viktor Zolotov commands Putin’s 20,000-strong elite guard and once contemplated mass murdering all of Putin’s enemies. Still, when he saw the list, even he was forced to concede, “There are too many, it’s too many to kill – even for us,” according to an account in a book by author Boris Volodarsky. Zolotov is a billionaire – not evil for a bodyguard.

It’s against this background of criminality that Felix became a stock trader, although that was short-lived when he lost his license after a bar brawl. Michael became a lawyer and eventually became Trump’s fixer. Sater was indicted for a $40 million stock trading scheme “involving 19 stockbrokers and organized crime figures from four Mafia families,” according to the New York Times. Cohen got into business with Tatiana, running casino cruises in Florida that cops ultimately shut down.

Neither Cohen nor Sater could have imagined how their paths would intersect with Fred Trump’s son decades later. Sater said, “Two boys from Brooklyn getting the U.S.A. president elected.”

Double crossed

Sater never served time for that $40 million tax scheme. That’s because for over two decades, Sater has been a valuable asset to the FBI and American intelligence, including helping convict twenty members of La Cosa Nostra.

Sater cooperated with the FBI when he first met Donald Trump in 2002, he cooperated when he first went to work at Bayrock, two floors below Donald Trump, in 2003, and he cooperated when he and Trump built Trump Soho together in 2006—the same year he escorted Ivanka and Don, Jr. to Moscow.

Sater’s cover was publicly blown by the New York Times in 2007. Trump was undeterred and continued to work with Sater, while Sater kept working with the FBI.

Being exposed by the New York Times would ordinarily dull the effectiveness of someone cooperating with the Feds. But not Sater, who spent the years after that Times article building monuments to money laundering for Trump while delivering Osama Bin Laden’s cell phone number and almost proving the Trump-Russia conspiracy.

Preet Bharara calls it the most unholy alliance in justice. “Cooperators assist cops and, as a result, may literally get away with murder,” the former SDNY prosecutor writes in “Doing Justice”. “They operate as double agents against the people closest to them.”

The FBI never paid Sater for his work but allowed him to walk away with the proceeds of his criminality, which may explain why Trump would still trust Sater.

Who’s trapping whom?

Republicans and the GOP are committed to framing the Mueller Report as a trap set by dirty cops. They will most certainly question Sater’s FBI cooperation for the entire decade he worked alongside Trump and his work with the FBI beforehand.

Republicans will no doubt point to Mueller and his crucial prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann. Weissmann, then an assistant US attorney, signed Sater’s 1998 FBI cooperation agreement for the Department of Justice. Loretta Lynch authorized the deal. Mueller was the FBI director for most of the time Sater served as a source.

Sater also worked with other staff at the Special Counsel’s Office: FBI Special Agent William McCausland and crossed paths with Zainab Ahmad and Greg Andres.

Sater also worked with other staff at the Special Counsel’s Office: FBI Special Agent William McCausland and crossed paths with Zainab Ahmad and Greg Andres.

These “entrapment” claims are, of course, unfounded. The FBI always starts organized crime investigations proactively. It’s possible they placed an inside man at the Trump Organization a decade before Trump had even announced his candidacy because they had good reason to suspect he was committing crimes. Narativ has learned that the Southern District of New York and New York DA’s office had already initiated criminal investigations into the Trump Organization before 2015.

These “entrapment” claims are of course unfounded. The FBI always starts organized crime investigations proactively. It’s possible they placed an inside man at Trump Organization a decade before Trump had even announced his candidacy because they had good reason to suspect he was committing crimes. Narativ has learned that the Southern District of New York and New York DA’s office had already initiated criminal investigations into the Trump Organization prior to 2015.

“I never forgive.”

Trump had even more swagger than usual when he took to the stage on October 28, 2015, for the third Republican debate.

“Maybe my greatest weakness is that I trust people too much. I’m too trusting,” Trump told the audience. “And when they let me down, if they let me down, I never forgive. I find it very, very hard to forgive people that deceived me,” Trump said. So, I don’t know if you would call that a weakness, but my wife said: “let up.”

This vindictiveness was at odds with what should have been a celebratory day. Earlier that day, Trump signed a letter of intent to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

On its surface, the Moscow project appeared to have been a straightforward barter: Putin would wield his influence to help Trump get elected. Once elected, Trump would drop sanctions, and the Moscow Tower would be green-lit.

Just three weeks after inking the Letter of Intent, Putin publicly praised Trump. “He is a bright and talented person without any doubt,” Putin said, adding that Trump is “an outstanding and talented personality.”

On the campaign trail, Trump ramped up the chants at his rallies. “No Russia, no Russian contacts, no Russian deals…” he would say – and then, minutes later, he would turn to Cohen to ask: “What’s going on in Russia with the Tower Project?”

Inside the Trump Organization, the “Moscow Project” was Cohen’s file. Ivanka and Don Jr. were involved but only from behind Cohen’s firewall. Sater was the go-between.

In email after email, Sater described the quid pro quo. “Putin gets on stage for a ribbon cutting for Trump Moscow, and Donald owns the Republican nomination,” Sater wrote in one. “Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA, and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in another. “I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this and manage this process.”

All told negotiations on the Trump Tower Moscow began in mid-2015 and were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won,” Trump told Rudy Giuliani, according to the New York Times. Think about that: negotiations for the Tower lasted for over a year, all predicated on Trump winning the election, running on a parallel track to the campaign, yet just as they reached their stated goal, negotiations ground to a halt.

Spy v. Spy

Felix Sater’s frequent trips to Russia and continued access to Putin’s confidantes, despite the Kremlin likely knowing about his role as an FBI informant, raise intriguing questions.

Between 2007 and 2015, Sater traveled to Russia to form partnerships for a Trump Tower Moscow project. While Sater claims to be a “Jewish James Bond,” there may be more to his story than he reveals, like his connections to Russian intelligence.

Shortly after the letter of intent for Trump Tower Moscow was signed in late 2015, Sater reached out to his friend Evgeny Shmykov, a former general of Russian military intelligence, to help organize Donald Trump’s proposed visit to Moscow. It seems rather excessive to involve a GRU general in a task that a travel agent could easily handle.

However, Sater and Shmykov had a history of espionage exploits that previously yielded valuable intelligence for the U.S. In 2004, Sater successfully persuaded Shmykov to provide the identity and photographs of a North Korean operative procuring nuclear equipment, as well as classified information about al-Qaida.

According to Russian-American author Yuri Felshtinsky, Shmykov could not have shared such sensitive material without Putin’s authorization without facing severe consequences.

Given his ongoing communications with a Putin-linked former GRU official, it is unclear if Sater was acting as a double agent —witting or unwitting.

Adding to the intrigue, Trump’s Moscow tower ambitions had previously been linked to Russian intelligence. In 2009, a subsidiary of Oleg Deripaska’s company – a man Felshtinsky alleges has been an FSB spy since the 1990s = hosted the Trump family during a visit to Moscow.

Cashing in?

There’s an essential footnote to what we know about this deal. The proposed Moscow Tower’s Russian developer, Andrei Rozov, had been Sater’s friend for almost two decades before they both worked at Russia’s Mirax. Sater contends that he works for himself, but according to Rolling Stone, Sater was employed by Rozov.

A month after Trump and Alex Rozov signed the Letter of Intent for the Moscow Tower, Felix Sater and Rozov sold an office building they co-owned in New York. Despite owning the building for only a year, they managed to earn a profit of $8 million from the sale. Sater refused to comment on the reason behind the ownership listing and sale of the office building when asked.

Catch 22

Despite the abundant evidence of suspicious connections and interactions, why did Robert Mueller not find sufficient evidence to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia?

Russian intelligence expert Yuri Felshtinsky is not surprised by the absence of a smoking gun, which is unsurprising:” An excellent secret service never leaves any tracks.” However, another critical factor may be at play—Felix Sater’s dual roles as a Trump associate and an FBI informant.

Sater’s status as an informant, which provided him with some immunity from prosecution, could have hindered Mueller’s ability to build a conclusive case around the Trump Tower Moscow dealings. It’s plausible that Russian intelligence could have exploited Sater’s immunity from prosecution by using him as a conduit to pass information and proposals, thus avoiding legal consequences.

This creates a Catch-22 situation where the person who could have been central to proving a conspiracy may have also been shielded from prosecution, making it nearly impossible to connect the dots conclusively. Sater may have genuinely acted in the best interests of the U.S. by informing them of these dealings, or his actions ultimately insulated the Trump Organization and Russian government from accountability.

The post The Spy Games 2024 appeared first on Narativ.

Welcome to Narativ.org – the official home of the Narativ blog, the ‘Narativ with Zev Shalev’ and ‘After Show’ podcasts.

I continue to post ‘Narativ with Zev Shalev’ podcasts in separate audio and video feeds which you can link to below. My podcasts are available wherever you get your podcasts including Spotify, and Google podcasts.

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A Reflection with Tal Shalev

As the Israeli-Gaza crisis continues to spiral, with the devastating effects of political and militant volatility, I had an exclusive conversation with Tal Shalev, one of Israel’s leading political commentators. In this insightful discussion, we ventured into the complexities, the setbacks, and possible pathways toward resolving this escalating conflict.

The Situation in Gaza

The turbulence in Gaza can be traced back to the relentless ground offensive by Israeli forces, which was triggered by Hamas’ attacks on October 7. The devastating impact and the loss of life in Gaza have been underestimated. Many describe the situation as catastrophic, with international calls for a “humanitarian pause” led by figures like President Biden. However, the situation remains dire, and the Biden administration is exploring alternative solutions beyond Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Personal and Political Perspectives

In our conversation, Shalev also shared her personal perspective on the crisis. With thousands of people, including Israeli civilians, children, and women, held hostage, the nation is overwhelmed with fear, anxiety, and grief. This crisis has not only affected Israel internally but has also led to a rise in global anti-Semitism, worsening the consequences of the conflict.

Potential Solutions and Future Implications

Despite the challenges, there are potential solutions and pathways towards resolution. One proposal suggests increasing the role of the Palestinian Authority in governance, with support from Israeli security forces and international security presence. However, this depends on successfully negotiating the release of the hostages, a significant stumbling block that urgently needs to be resolved.

The Leadership Crisis

Netanyahu’s refusal to take responsibility for the security breaches leading up to the Hamas attacks has undermined both domestic and international confidence in his leadership. Combined with his low approval ratings, there is speculation about a possible change in political leadership, which could shape the future of the war and Israeli politics.

Final Thoughts

In these turbulent times, the resilience of the Israeli people shines through as they come together to support one another. Despite the erosion of trust in their leadership and security forces, their belief in the strength of their community remains unwavering, providing a glimmer of hope in these challenging circumstances.

These devastating events have prompted reflections not only on the immediate crisis but also on Israel’s political landscape and the need for effective leadership. While the path to resolution is complex, a thoughtful, inclusive, and resolute approach is crucial in guiding the region towards a future of peace and stability.

The post Confronting the Crisis in Gaza appeared first on Narativ.

BREAKING: Special Counsel Jack Smith unseals indictment of Donald J. Trump for “an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy” on January 6, 2023. Trump’s alleged attack was “targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U S government.”

Here is the unsealed indictment:

The post Trump Indicted For Jan 6 appeared first on Narativ.

“It should chill every American to the bone that Donald Trump remains a viable political animal,” says Zev Shalev as he announces the upcoming season of Narativ.

Donald Trump is flipping the script and accusing Joe Biden of what he is likely guilty of, which is neither unhinged nor deranged; as one commentator put it, it’s sophisticated spycraft.

What elevates Trump’s post to a real and present danger to US national security is that this reverse projection is being amplified to his base through – to borrow a phrase from Steve Bannon – a mindfuck machine – a complex web of highly compromised media assets from FOX News to Twitter that has trapped millions of our fellow Americans in a fake paradigm.

Rather than silence these foreign enemy media fronts, we’ve normalized them. Because Trump is much louder about Biden’s alleged crimes than Biden is on Trump’s, guess who the voting public will believe next November? It won’t matter what’s true; the loudest megaphone wins.

Narativ is just four weeks away from the launch of Season 5. It should chill every American to the bone that Donald Trump remains a viable political animal after the extraordinary body of evidence by Narativ, among others, that exposed him as an enemy of the American state.

Narativ was the first online publication to articulate that threat beginning in December 2016. Since then, we have exposed his ties to the mob and foreign intelligence agencies, revealing many of the crimes Trump was responsible for while in power, from coronavirus to January 6. We’ve also reported on the ecosystem of organizations and individuals that created the MAGA framework – from the Council for National Policy to Leonard Leo – and we’ve exposed the members of the alliance we called The Enemies of Democracy.

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We’ve offered appropriate solutions and actionable policies that may have avoided Donald Trump’s return. Some of our suggestions have been implemented, but many have not.

Today, we stand on the precipice of a world war. The implications of this are devastating for all of humanity. Still, they are particularly destructive to American democracy and the incredible human rights progress and advancements in knowledge that have been won over the last century under an enlightened USA hegemony. A global conflict can achieve nothing good, but the Enemies of Democracy continue to signal their military intentions in overt and covert ways.

That is why I am dedicating Season 5 to putting a definitive stop to Donald Trump’s political ambitions and ensuring that the next election results in an undeniable and resounding victory for democracy that echoes across the planet and permanently breaks up the Enemies of Democracy.

I am committing to produce a refreshed NARATIV with Zev Shalev that will contextualize the news events we live through and the consequences they foretell in the coming years. These episodes will run weekly on Wednesday nights at 9 PM ET beginning Wednesday, September 6.

I also intend to open my Trump files for premium subscribers only. Season 5 will include an embedded premium serial revealing never-before-reported secrets of Donald Trump’s life, how he ascended to power, and the people who enabled him. “Trump: The Untold Story” This serial will be available only to paid subscribers of Narativ. (At the $10 tier or higher who have subscribed to Narativ for at least four months or as standalone digital downloads at $20 per episode.)

As things stand, Narativ’s operational costs far exceed incoming revenue. My genuine hope is that there are enough people who recognize the value of my work and who care about democracy and human rights, and who will find the resources to fund my work for this season. I urge as many of you as possible to join Narativ on Patreon today. This season will be our best yet, and it’s critical that as many global citizens as possible hear the truths I’ll be reporting.

This is not a drill or a manufactured subscription drive – if you can afford it and care about democracy, sign up for Narativ today. You will gain valuable insight into the events that challenge our world today from the only journalist who has gotten it right since 2016 and my thoughtful forecast of what the next five years have in store for us.

Finally, I should share that this season’s title, “Democracy’s Last Stand,” is an homage to Ronald Reagan’s 1964 warning: “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.” Reagan’s words echo resoundingly today. If the GOP nominee wins in ’24, they will immediately begin dismantling democracy as we know it, all under the growing threat of a global conflict. It is the most consequential election in history, and Narativ will be essential to understanding events in its lead-up. Sign up today to fund season 5, “Democracy’s Last Stand,” at Patreon.

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Elon Musk’s new creator payouts need to be investigated as foreign interference in a federal election. Musk hand-picked several Twitter creators as recipients of thousands of dollars in earnings in what Twitter calls a “monetization” scheme for creators.

Most of Musk’s recipients were “far-right” creators espousing views Musk himself holds. But regardless of their political leanings, the scheme needs to be investigated as a way for foreign intelligence operatives to launder money into the hands of political influencers who align with their views and interests.

There are no publicly available criteria for inclusion into this lucrative club, and the final recipients are selected by human screening for inclusion (the identity of the human screener is unknown).

Twitter claims the payouts are determined by the number of replies and influencer receives on their Twitter posts. This is an imprecise and uneven criteria because Twitter is awash with armies of paid trolls and bots who reply to content they want boosted. These trolls are often paid for by foreign intelligence operations.

Where is Musk getting the money? If reports are true that he is haemorrhaging millions of dollars in ad spend and that he has failed to pay Google and Amazon for their services, this politically motivated creator slush fund must have non-traditional origins.

Musk’s takeover of Twitter was largely funded by Saudis and other businesses aligned with the enemies of democracy. This means that in an election, foreign-backed influencers are able to thrive and be boosted on a foreign-owned social media network like Twitter, while reasonable fact-based voices are being starved.

Musk previously failed to include non-aligned independent voices from Twitter’s subscription service and explicitly banned me for broadcasting live on Twitter.

The only way to meaningfully oppose this undue influence is for advertisers to boycott Twitter and for the FEC and Department of Justice to launch investigations into this malign influence operation.

The post Elon Musk’s Creator Payout Scheme Is a Foreign Influence Operation appeared first on Narativ.

Just as our founding fathers summoned the courage to sign the Declaration of Independence 244 years ago, you’re invited to defend the values enshrined in that document by becoming a patron of Narativ.

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The Birth of a Nation: Honoring the Courage of the Declaration’s Signers

In 1776, 56 brave men inscribed their names onto the Declaration of Independence, risking their lives for what was then merely an idea. This single act gave birth to a nation that has become a beacon of hope, freedom, and democracy the world over. Today, the nation they created remains under serious threat from outside our borders and from within. As we approach the most consequential election in US history, we invite you to support Narativ and our quest to preserve our founders’ vision.

Narativ was founded with the same principles of freedom, democracy, and civil liberties in mind. We are committed to speaking truth to power, uncovering the stories that are shaping our world, and providing leading-edge analysis of events in real-time. We have remained steadfastly independent, despite constant challenges, threats, and rumors to the contrary.

Urgent Call to Action: Become a Patron and Support Democracy

As a valued member of the Narativ family, I’m reaching out to you today to make an urgent call to action. Please join us as we continue the fight for democracy by becoming our patron today.

Narativ depends on your patronage to maintain our independence. Your support helps us continue to produce high-quality podcasts and live shows, conduct in-depth investigations, and deliver coverage without fear or favor. By becoming our patron, you become part of our family and actively defend American democracy.

By joining our community, you gain access to exclusive content, behind-the-scenes updates, and direct engagement with our team. You will receive early access to our podcasts, live shows, thought-provoking articles, investigative reports, and impactful stories. Your contribution allows us to delve deeper into the issues that matter.

Celebrate Independence Day by Supporting Narativ’s Mission for Freedom and Truth

Celebrate Independence Day by supporting Narativ and our mission for freedom, democracy, and truth. Just like the brave men who signed the Declaration of Independence, you can help defend the values that shape our nation. Become a patron today. Together, we can protect democracy.

I hope you and yours are having a fabulous 4th of July.

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Watch above as we discuss the evidence and testimony being levied against Trump, which includes insight into his state of mind in the days leading up to the Jan 6 insurrection. Zev explores the potential for indictments of Trump’s top lieutenants and MAGA congressmen. He’s joined for this riveting conversation by Meagann Cuniff. Read Meagann’s substack at https://www.legalaffairsandtrials.com.

Evidence Suggests Charges Imminent

Special counsel Jack Smith may be preparing to charge Donald Trump with seditious conspiracy charges for the Jan 6 coup attempt. Smith has not made a final decision, but much of the publicly available evidence suggests this is no longer a matter of if but of when. Here’s Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr on Face The Nation:

20 YEARS IN PRISON

The indictment of any former U.S. President gets your attention – his indictment for espionage and now possibly sedition would raise important questions about any actual prison time.

Legal analysts and sources close to the investigation have suggested Smith is preparing to charge Trump with seditious conspiracy, which could carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

The charge is believed to be based not only on evidence that Trump played an active role in inciting the violence that took place that day but on a vast body of evidence that links him to months of plotting to overturn the valid result of the 2020 election.

Months of Plotting and Key Witnesses

Testimony from key witnesses, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows – who is believed to be a cooperating witness – and Steve Bannon, is believed to form the cornerstone of the special counsel’s case.

As with the espionage case in Mar-a-Lago, much of the evidence being leveled against Trump comes from Trump loyalists like Barr, who has been critical in building the case against Trump. They have provided insights into Trump’s state of mind in the days leading up to January 6th and have suggested that he was fully aware of the potential for violence.

Implications for Trump’s Top Lieutenants

But indicting Trump is only the beginning. Smith may also implicate some of Trump’s top lieutenants, including Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, Jack Eastman, Sidney Powell, and potentially former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

But it’s perhaps Capitol Hill where the most shocking indictments may land. Where the fates of Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert loom large, seditious conspiracy charges against these individuals could also be on the horizon.

If indicted, Trump would be one of the most high-profile individuals to face charges in connection with the January 6th attack; the seditious conspiracy charge would suggest that the former President was actively seeking to overthrow the government.

Whatever the outcome of the investigation, one thing is clear: Attorney General Merrick Garland and Special Counsel Jack Smith have come through on their commitment to investigate and charge anyone involved in Jan 6.

The post Seditious Conspiracy Charges Looming For Trump appeared first on Narativ.

Former US President Donald Trump Arrested on Espionage Charges: Narativ Live Podcast Reveals Shocking Implications and Ties to Russia

Episode Title: The Espionage Arrest of Former President Trump

Introduction:
In this episode of Narativ Live, we discuss the shocking and unprecedented arrest of former US President Donald Trump on espionage charges. We delve into the implications of such an event and its potential impact on the nation and the world.

Segment 1: Ties to Russia
In this segment, we examine the deepening suspicions surrounding Trump’s alleged ties to Russia from the 2016 election campaign continuing through the 2020 indictment. We scrutinize suspicious meetings and Trump’s own admission of guilt during the Helsinki Summit, revealing an intricate web of an extensive propaganda campaign by Russia and other countries to control the narrative.

Segment 2: Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago
This segment highlights the classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, detailing US defense and weapons capabilities and potential vulnerabilities to foreign attack. The investigation probes Trump’s actions in moving these documents around and the consequences of having them potentially accessible to anyone present at the club.

Segment 3: Connections to Russian Operatives
In this segment, we examine Trump’s connections to Russian operatives and his contact with a KGB Washington spy chief in 1983, shedding light on the massive propaganda effort by Russia and other countries to control the narrative. We also discuss the importance of understanding the espionage involved in Trump’s arrest.

Conclusion:
As the nation and the world watch this case unfold, it is crucial to remember that this is not merely about classified documents. This is an espionage case, the most significant in American history.

The post Unraveling The Espionage Web: Trump’s Arrest And The Global Implications appeared first on Narativ.

Zev Shalev on Unmasking Foreign Secrets and FBI Mistakes.

The recently released Durham Report, an inquiry into the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump in 2016, has brought to light startling findings on the influence of foreign money, primarily from Saudi Arabia, on U.S. elections and the potential implications for democracy.

In this podcast episode, we dissect special counsel John Durham’s report and explore the FBI’s mishandling of the investigation into Trump, including their confirmation bias and failure to corroborate allegations in the Steele dossier.

We also investigate the possible involvement of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia in the 2016 U.S. election and the events of 9-11. Foreign Influence on U.S. Elections The Durham Report offers a glimpse into the power of foreign money through its analysis of the $6.5 million report.

It reveals a rich history of GOP candidates funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which could have significant consequences for the future of U.S. democracy. Furthermore, Twitter, which is owned by foreign money, mostly Saudi Arabian, has been accused of potentially engaging in foreign interference in elections by promoting certain right-wing extremist channels.

FBI Missteps in the Trump Investigation The FBI’s handling of the investigation into Trump in 2016 was seriously flawed, leading to severe reputational harm for the agency. Confirmation bias caused the FBI to proceed with the probe despite a lack of evidence, and they failed to corroborate a single substantial allegation in the Steele dossier.

The key character in the case is George Papadopoulos, who provided false information to the FBI. The chain of possession for the information he provided can be traced from Joseph Mifsud to Alex Downer to the legal attache in the US embassy and ultimately to Charles McGonagall. Investigating Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia’s Involvement in the 2016 U.S. Election and 9-11 This episode explores the possible involvement of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia in the 2016 U.S. election and the events of 9-11.

We examine the role of FBI agent Marc Rossini, who is now releasing information about 9-11, and the tactics of the Saudi government in trying to cover up their involvement, particularly the role of Omar Abayumi, a Saudi agent operating in San Diego.

We discuss the economic and political realities of the Middle East and the importance of always pursuing the truth, no matter how long ago an event occurred. Supporting the Pursuit of Truth In this episode, we explore the connections between George Papadopoulos, Charles McGonigal, Oleg Deripaska, and Walter Soriano. We discuss the narrative that Durham is piecing together in his investigation and the implications of those connections. We examine the dangers of fighting for truth and justice in the face of powerful opposition.

Finally, we provide an update on our own work, detailing our project to reposition for the fall and how you can support us. In conclusion, the Durham Report exposes the twisted trail of foreign influence and FBI mistakes that surrounded the 2016 election. As we continue to delve into this complex web of connections, it is essential to remain vigilant in our quest for truth and justice.

The post UNRAVELlING DURHAM appeared first on Narativ.

Here’s what Open AI said about Spy Murdoch.

Spy Murdoch is the latest addition to the Narativ original serials, and it is already taking the world by storm. The gripping story uncovers the covert operations and secret ties of media mogul Rupert Murdoch to world leaders. From his early days as a newspaperman to his rise as a media mogul, Murdoch’s dealings with politicians, intelligence agencies, and other shadowy figures are laid bare in this explosive series.

The series is the brainchild of renowned journalist and storyteller Zev Shalev, who has earned a reputation for digging deep into the underbelly of the news and bringing out the untold stories. With Spy Murdoch, Shalev has done it again, taking us on a journey that spans continents, decades, and some of the most pivotal moments in modern history.

But what sets Spy Murdoch apart from other shows is its real-time narrative. Unlike traditional shows filmed weeks or months in advance, Spy Murdoch is filmed and edited mere hours before it is released. This means that as events unfold in real life, the show can incorporate them seamlessly into its storyline, creating a thrilling and immersive experience for its audience.

Meanwhile, Google’s Bard AI suggested ways to grow Spy Murdoch’s audience.

I also recently asked Google’s new BARD AI how to get more people to experience “Spy Murdoch”, and it gave a fantastic suggestion: offer an introductory promotion with lower prices. And since it sounded like an excellent plan, I’m putting it to the test.

LIMITED! UP TO 80% OFF FOR ACCESS TO NEW NARATIV SERIAL “SPY MURDOCH” ON NOW.

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Please note these subscriptions are strictly to access SPY MURDOCH content. No other Narativ content will be accessible. Cancel at any time.

So, without further ado, starting tonight, you can access “Spy Murdoch” for less than $1/month on Apple podcasts, $2 on YouTube, and $3 on Patreon. Yes, you read that right! That’s an incredible 60% off of the regular price! Choose one of the three platforms below. The buttons will take you to the relevant platform.

The post I ASKED AN AI BOT ABOUT MY NEW SERIAL SPY MURDOCH appeared first on Narativ.

Exclusive: Retired FBI counterintelligence executive and the current subject of twin indictments Charles McGonigal was part of a Kremlin scheme to replace US operators of Albanian oil fields with affiliates of Russia’s sanctioned behemoth Gazprom.

On March 15, 2023, Narativ broadcast Zev Shalev’s interview with Mark Crawford, honorary chairman of the Albanian American Chamber of Commerce. Crawford was an eyewitness to some of the Albanian dealings of Charles McGonigal, retired special agent in charge of counterintelligence, at the FBI’s New York Field Office, who is currently under indictment for his transactions with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and EN+ the sanctioned firm of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. This interview exposed the former FBI counterintelligence executive’s alleged role in bringing Russia’s energy giant Gazprom into the Albanian market and pushing out US interests already operating in the country. The whole episode and the corresponding Narativ feature article are directly below.

When a Liberian-flagged chemical tanker sailed into the Albanian port of Durres in late February, it was greeted by local police who suspected it was carrying sanctioned-Russian fuel on board. The vessel’s journey began in Azerbaijan and involved a single stop in Greece, where a shipment of 22.500 tonnes of diesel fuel was transferred onto the tanker. The vessel was seized, and All 22 crew members were arrested pending an investigation.

The sudden arrival of laundered Russian oil on its shores has led some Albanian analysts to connect the incident to the McGonigal Affair. Charlie McGonigal is a retired FBI counterintelligence executive who is facing separate charges for his ties with the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and the sanctioned firm of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

The indictments allege that McGonigal’s employment by Deripaska’s firm represents a severe violation of US sanctions, but that may only be a part of the story. As Narativ exclusively reported last month, McGonigal had ties to a scheme to replace the American owners of three Albanian oil fields with affiliates of Russian energy giant Gazprom.

The Albanian government nationalized the fields in Jan 2017 in response to a bid from an Austrian firm Jurimex Commerz Tranzit Ges, a phantom company acting as a proxy for Gazprom’s Serbian affiliate, Naftna Industrja Srbje.

The Austrian bid prompted a blistering letter from an Albanian businessman, Shefteq Dizdari, the operator of a Swiss-Albanian firm, TransOil, which is also n affiliate of Gazprom. In the letter, Dizdari accuses Gazprom of violating its deal with TransOil by joining the Austrian-Serbian bid.

DARK DEALS

Dizdari addressed the letter to Gazprom’s deputy director general of business development Vladislav Baryshnikov. In it, Dizdari lambasts the “ethically, professionally and legally senseless individuals” he said were involved in “illegal activities” which “casts a strong shadows [SIC] of doubt on the purposes and strategies of a clean and true international business [such as Gazprom].”

Dizdari also says in the letter that he made his position clear to Baryshnikov in a meeting in St. Petersberg and to the “highest levels” of the Russian embassy in Albania’s capital, Tirane. 

Dizdari’s letter appears to have produced the desired effect as Gazprom eventually partnered with TransOil in a separate bid for the oil fields, which they eventually won but is still being contested in litigation.

DUELING RUSSIAN BIDS

The decision to award TransOil the fields also came after an u orthodox visit from Charlie McGonigal to Albania in September 2017 – while still employed by the FBI – including a meeting with prime minister Edi Rama. According to the indictment, McGonigal asked Rama not to grant the oil fields to the Russians during the meeting.

Soon after the apparent intervention by the now-retired FBI agent, McGonigal received the first installment of a $225,000 potential bribe in the parking lot of a New Jersey restaurant.

In 2019, after deepening his connections with the TransOil executives through multiple visits in Albania and the US, McGonigal and another retired FBI agent Mark Rossini formed an LLC with Dizdari in Albania – an LLC for a legal firm called “Law and investigations” registered in Tirane. 

A SANCTIONS BUSTING EFFORT

Why the FBI agents set up shop in Albania wasn’t immediately clear, but the association with Dizdari suggests a connection to the three oil fields previously awarded to Transoil.

Now that Narativ has exposed the association between Transoil and Gazprom, the implications for McGonigal are steep as it places the former special agent in charge of counterintelligence at the FBI’s New York Office directly n the Kremlin’s orbit and implicates him in a scheme that benefits Russia and hurts US interest in the region. 

Gazprom is subject to US sanctions partly because the Kremlin often uses it as a weapon of state influence to exert pressure on neighboring countries. Any involvement with Gazprom also inevitably raises serious questions about the work McGonigal did at the FBI, where Gazprom and Deripaska would surely have fallen into McGonigal’s investigatory purview.

McGonigal and Rossini stood to make a fortune off their legal firm if it came to fruition by facilitating the paperwork and potential reflagging of Russian oil sanctioned during the Ukraine war. Adding credence to this theory is the type of oil the three fields typically yielded is used as a diluent – a technical term that refers to a thinning agent which could be mixed with heavy crude petroleum to reduce its viscosity and make it easier to transport—exactly the type of Russian crude oil discovered aboard that Liberian-flagged tanker.

The post BOMBSHELL: RETIRED FBI COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE EXEC LINKED TO GAZPROM SCHEME appeared first on Narativ.

EXCLUSIVE: Former FBI agent and current subject of two federal indictments Charles McGonigal is the target of new bombshell allegations.

Charles McGonigal was indicted for violating sanctions and money laundering in New York for his work for Oleg Deripaska after his FBI retirement in 2018.

A second indictment was filed in Washington D.C. alleging Charles McGonigal received $225,000 while still working at the FBI from an Albanian businessman, believed to be Agron Neza. Neza is an ex-employee of Albania’s intelligence services.

The second indictment reveals McGonigal was granted an audience with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on September 9, 2017, which he did not disclose to FBI officials. According to the indictment, McGonigal and Rama established a friendship that included several trips to Albania.

McGonigal and Neza are listed as the owners of an Albanian legal firm, “Law Office and Investigations.” The other two shareholders are another former FBI agent Mark Thomas Rossini and a well-known Albanian lawyer Shefqet Dizdari.

Dizdari is also the chief executive of Transoil – an Albanian company with ties to Russia’s Gazprom that was awarded three highly lucrative oil fields south of Albania by the Rami government in 2018.

Albanian opposition MP Ervin Salianji claims $225,000 is just the tip of the iceberg, suggesting the actual figure is in the $100s of millions.

“$225,000 was captured, but we are talking about millions of euros,” Salianji says. “The actual figure is at least $300M in one company alone.”

Salianji says the oil fields were awarded to Transoil due to McGonigal’s meeting with Rama in September 2017. An allegation that McGonigal is involved in a Kremlin scheme to win ownership of Albania’s oil fields illegally.

If such a scheme exists, it could place the former FBI counterintelligence director in the middle of a massive Russian espionage scheme of the very type he was supposed to investigate.

McGonigal was appointed head of counterintelligence by James Comey in Sept 2016.

The post NEW CLAIM: McGonigal tied to $300M Kremlin Oil Scheme appeared first on Narativ.

Part 5 of the Dragon’s Tail picks up on the Untold Story of China’s War on US Democracy, with Guo Wengui and Steve Bannon laying digital siege to the Trump White House.

You can watch Parts 1-4 of the Dragon’s Tail here:

5. White House Capture

In Part 5 (above), we explain how Guo Wengui and Steve Bannon’s propaganda network captured the White House during COVID and helped spread lies about vaccines and treatments. They were also involved in the Jan 6 attempted coup.

Narativ is made possible by viewers like you. Support our independent journalism. Patreon.com/Narativ

6. Colluding With The Enemy

Part 6 of The Dragon’s Tail is the story of how two Republican National Party executives were embroiled in a Chinese spy operation to extradite Guo Wengui from the USA to China.

Watch all of The Dragon’s Tail exclusively on Apple podcasts (below)or listen to all our other podcasts on any other podcast player.

Narativ is made possible by viewers like you. Support our independent journalism. Patreon.com/Narativ

The post THE DRAGON’S TAIL Part 5- appeared first on Narativ.

Zev Shalev’s brand new serial “The Dragon’s Tail” reveals the untold story of China’s war on US democracy.

“The Dragon’s Tail” is a multi-part serial written by Zev Shalev for @NarativTV. Shalev and Eric Garland host the series on Narativ TV.

“We didn’t just arrive at this conclusion today or this summer,” Shalev says of the investigation. “This has been flashing in the background of our investigation for six years, but until now, there has been insufficient evidence to reach the conclusion we can make today.”

“China and its operatives have played a significant role In every aspect of what we now term the attack on democracy,” Shalev says.  

Preamble

In the preamble to “The Dragon’s Tail,” Shalev reported:

Throughout the rise of MAGA, Donald Trump’s election and presidency, the pandemic, the big lie, and the attempted coup of Jan 6, we reveal the very detailed and deliberate hand of Beijing either funding, coercing, bribing, or influencing US events that further extremism in the US, the attempted destruction of many American institutions and a weakening position of the U.S. around the world.

To be sure, they have not done this on their own. As we discovered, the Chinese are adept at playing a shadow role in executing their operations – often using other countries, networks, or individuals to execute operations they would not or could not do themselves. 

This has been true for Russia, China’s closest ally and ideological paramour, as it has for other countries like Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates, and perhaps most troublingly, our closest Middle East ally Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu.

It has also been true of many American citizens who have profited from China through business dealings, some of whom have been witting Beijing operatives. The likes of Rupert Murdoch – the owner of FOX NEWS – which has become a propaganda weapon for the Chinese, recently sank another 100 Million dollars into his operation.

Some have been unwitting assets, perhaps succumbing to the influence of Chinese American spies or the vast propaganda network owned or heavily influenced by the Chinese government – from Epoch Times, NTD, and Fox News – or even the evangelical churches.

In the coming weeks, we’ll explore China’s role in the big lie and the Jan 6 attempted coup. We’ll look at the many levers of influence Beijing had in the White House, and yes, we’ll expose the financial tentacles had into Donald Trump and his immediate family, which is where we begin today.

1. Femme Fatale

In Part 1, we explore Chinese spy Wendi Deng Murdoch’s grooming of Ivanka Trump and the mole she placed inside the Trump-Kushner household during the Trump White House.

This episode is posted at the top of this page.

2. Rupert and Me

In Part 2, we reveal the secret pact between Jared Kushner and Rupert Murdoch to elect Donald Trump as president and how all three men received cash windfalls from China.

3. Christian Nationalism

In Part 3 of Dragon’s Tail, Zev Shalev and Eric Garland investigate the forces behind Christian nationalism – the new political force that’s emerged from Q-Anon and is openly embraced by Donald Trump. Their report will shock you.

4. The Strange Case of Guo Wengui

In Part 4 of Dragon’s Tail: Guo Wengui, a Chinese spy who has spent the last few years building a propaganda network with Steve Bannon, targeting the US with propaganda designed to polarize the US.

The post appeared first on Narativ.

How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts

by Andrew Perez, The Lever, and Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott, ProPublica

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

WATCH OUR PODCAST: THE UNITED STATES OF LEONARD LEO PART 1 (ABOVE)

Barre Seid

An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.

Through a series of opaque transactions over the past two years, Barre Seid, a 90-year-old manufacturing magnate, gave the massive sum to a nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the conservative legal group the Federalist Society.

The donation was first reported by The New York Times on Monday. The Lever and ProPublica confirmed the information from documents received independently by the news organizations.

Our reporting sheds additional light on how the two men, one a judicial kingmaker and the other a mysterious but prolific donor to conservative causes, came together to create a political war chest that will likely supercharge efforts to further shift American politics to the right.

As President Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, Leo helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, which recently eliminated Constitutional protections for abortion rights and has made a series of sweeping pro-business decisions. Leo, a conservative Catholic, has both helped select judges to nominate to the Supreme Court and directed multimillion dollar media campaigns to confirm them.

Leo derives immense political power through his ability to raise huge sums of money and distribute those funds throughout the conservative movement to influence elections, judicial appointments and policy battles. Yet the biggest funders of Leo’s operation have long been a mystery.

Seid, who led the surge protector and data-center equipment maker Tripp Lite for more than half a century, has been almost unknown outside a small circle of political and cultural recipients. The gift immediately vaults him into the ranks of major funders like the Koch brothers and George Soros.

In practical terms, there are few limitations on how Leo’s new group, the Marble Freedom Trust, can spend the enormous donation. The structure of the donation allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 million in taxes. Thus, he maximized the amount of money at Leo’s disposal.

Now, Leo, 56, is positioned to finance his already sprawling network with one of the largest pools of political capital in American history. Seid has left his legacy to Leo.

“To my knowledge, it is entirely without precedent for a political operative to be given control of such an astonishing amount of money,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer at the nonpartisan watchdog group Documented. “Leonard Leo is already incredibly powerful, and now he is going to have over a billion dollars at his disposal to continue upending our country’s institutions.”

In a statement to the Times, Leo said it was “high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals.” Leo and representatives for Seid did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Marble Freedom Trust is a so-called dark money group that is not required to publicly disclose its donors. It has wide latitude to spend directly on elections as well as on ideological projects such as funding issue-advocacy groups, think tanks, universities, religious institutions and organizing efforts.

The creators of the Marble Freedom Trust shrouded their project in secrecy for more than two years.

The group’s name does not appear in any public database of business, tax or securities records. The Marble Freedom Trust is organized for legal purposes as a trust, rather than as a corporation. That means it did not have to publicly disclose basic details like its name, directors and address.

The trust was formed in Utah. Its address is a house in North Salt Lake owned by Tyler Green, a lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Green is listed in the trust’s tax return as an administrative trustee. The donation does not appear to violate any laws.

Seid’s $1.6 billion donation is a landmark in the era of deregulated political spending ushered in by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. That case, along with subsequent changes and weak federal oversight, empowered a tiny group of the super rich in both parties to fund groups that can spend unlimited sums to support candidates and political causes. In the last decade, donations in the millions and sometimes tens of millions of dollars have become common.

Individuals could give unlimited amounts of money to nonprofit groups prior to Citizens United, but the decision allowed those nonprofits to more directly influence elections. A handful of billionaires such as the Koch family and Soros have spent billions to achieve epochal political influence by bankrolling networks of nonprofits.

Even in this money-drenched world, Seid’s $1.6 billion gift exceeds all publicly known one-time donations to a politically oriented group.

WATCH OUR PODCAST: THE UNITED STATES OF LEONARD LEO PART 2 (ABOVE)

The Silent Donor

One day in November 2015, the employees of Tripp Lite, a manufacturer of power strips and other electrical equipment, gathered for a celebration at the company’s headquarters on the South Side of Chicago. Cupcakes frosted in blue and white spelled out the numbers “56.” An easel held up a sign hailing Tripp Lite’s longtime leader: “Congratulations Barre!”

A small, balding man with a white goatee and a ruddy complexion took the microphone. Barre Seid was known as someone who preferred to keep a low profile, but on the 56th anniversary of his leadership of Tripp Lite, he couldn’t resist the chance to address his employees. Later, as he bit into a cupcake, Seid posed for a company photographer, who later uploaded the photo to the company’s Facebook page.

Even this semipublic glimpse of Seid was rare.

For several decades, a select group of political activists, academics and fundraisers was ushered to Tripp Lite headquarters to pitch Seid at his office. Despite his status as one of the country’s most prolific funders of conservative causes, and despite his decades as the president and sole owner of one of the country’s most successful electronics makers, Seid has spent most of his 90 years painstakingly guarding his privacy.

There are no art galleries, opera companies, or theaters or university buildings emblazoned with his name in his hometown of Chicago. There’s even some confusion over how to pronounce his last name. (People who’ve dealt with him say it’s “side.”)

The Lever and ProPublica pieced together the details of his life and his motivations for his extensive donations through interviews, court records and other documents obtained through public-records requests.

One of the only photos of Seid that The Lever and ProPublica could find shows him as a 14-year-old walking in a small group across a college campus. Born in 1932 to Russian Jewish immigrants, Seid grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the oldest of two brothers, according to Census records. A precocious child, he was chosen for a special bachelor’s degree program at the University of Chicago, not far from his childhood home.

Seid attended the University of Chicago in the early years of the “Chicago school,” a group of professors and researchers who would reimagine the field of economics, assailing massive government interventions in the economy and emphasizing the importance of human liberty and free markets. After college, Seid served two years in the Army and eventually returned home to Chicago, according to testimony given decades later in a court case. He took a job as an assistant to an investor and businessman named Graham Trippe, whose company made headlights and would produce the rotating warning lights used by police cars, tow trucks and other emergency response vehicles.

By the mid-1960s, Seid had taken over as Trippe Manufacturing’s president. In the decades to come, the company, now called Tripp Lite, became a pick-and-shovel business of the digital gold rush. The company sells the power strips that supply electricity to computers and the server racks, cooling equipment and network switches that make data centers run. Business surged with the shift to cloud computing and the proliferation of vast data centers.

That boom vaulted him from the ranks of merely rich to the superrich. Seid was making around $30 million per year by the mid-1990s, tax records obtained by ProPublica show. His annual income, the vast majority of which came from Tripp Lite’s profits, took off in the mid-2000s and steadily rose, hitting around $157 million in 2018. Tripp Lite, which was 100% owned by Seid, contributed $136 million to his total income that year.

Even as Seid built a billion-plus dollar business, he drew scant public attention; Forbes never put him on its list of the wealthiest Americans, and business and political press rarely mentioned him.

Yet he was becoming a major donor. He gave at least $775 million in charitable donations between 1996 and 2018, a period in which he reported $1.7 billion in income, according to his tax records. Seid parceled out a small portion of those donations to Chicago-area universities, religious organizations, medical research and dozens of civic-focused groups.

While Seid has never spoken to the press about his ideology, evidence of his worldview has emerged here and there. His family foundation has supported the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, named after two of the Chicago school’s intellectual leaders, Gary Becker and Milton Friedman. He has also donated to the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has a history of using inflammatory rhetoric and misleading tactics to undermine climate science.

Seid appeared to be the donor (listed as “Barry Seid”) who gave $17 million to fund the distribution during the 2008 presidential campaign of millions of copies of a DVD of the film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War With the West.” The DVDs, which were sent specifically to households in presidential election battleground states, were criticized as virulently anti-Muslim.

Seid’s personality can be glimpsed in exchanges with George Mason University officials from the late 2000s to mid-2010s that came out in response to a public-records request by the activist group UnKoch My Campus. In the emails, Seid comes across as an intellectually probing figure, asking the dean of the law school to respond to news stories about the value of a law-school degree or the workings of higher education’s accreditation system. Seid drily addressed several administrators for the university, whose law school and economics department are known for their alignment with conservative, free-market principles, as “Fellow Members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.”

Seid appears to have continually sought new vehicles for dispensing his money and maintaining as much anonymity as possible. The GMU emails also show a redacted donor — who activists believed to be Seid based on other unredacted materials — routing donations to the school through DonorsTrust or the Donors Capital Fund, two donor-advised funds that provide an additional level of anonymity.

While the roots of Seid and Leo’s professional relationship aren’t clear, the two worked together at a small foundation Seid formed in 2009 called the Chicago Freedom Trust, a charity that gave out small grants to nonpolitical groups. Leo later joined the foundation’s board.

The GMU emails provide an inkling of the relationship between the two men. In early 2016, Seid emailed the dean of GMU’s law school and the head of a prominent American Jewish organization to urge them to work together. The dean, Henry Butler, forwarded Seid’s message to Leo seeking to better understand Seid’s intentions.

“Do you have any insight?” Butler wrote.

“I do not, but will find out,” Leo replied.

The Money

Billionaires tend to craft intricate estate plans to pass the family business to the next generation, fortified from taxation and protective of their vision. The apparently childless Seid didn’t have that option, but starting in April 2020, he set in motion a plan to make sure his fortune would go toward his favored causes.

That month, the Marble Freedom Trust was created, and Seid subsequently transferred his 100% ownership stake in Tripp Lite to the trust, according to the documents reviewed by The Lever and ProPublica.

In February 2021, Tripp Lite filed its annualreports with the state of Illinois as it had done for decades. But this time, Seid’s typewritten name had been crossed out as an officer of the company. Added as an officer, written in by hand, was Leonard Leo.

A Tripp Lite subsidiary in Nova Scotia, Canada, similarly removed Seid as a director and added Leo as a director in March 2021, according to disclosure filings.

Then, later that same month, Eaton Corporation, a large publicly traded company, acquired Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion.

The transactions appear to have been carefully sequenced to reap massive tax savings. Selling a company that has grown in value after decades of ownership is treated the same way for tax purposes as a person selling a share of stock. If the property has grown in value, capital gains taxes are due when it is sold.

But Seid transferred Tripp Lite to the Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit that is exempt from income tax, before the electronics company was sold. As a result, lawyers say, Seid avoided up to $400 million in state and federal income tax, preserving those funds for Leo’s operation.

“If the person who had owned the stock had sold the stock himself, he would’ve been taxed on the appreciation in the stock,” said Ellen Aprill, a tax law professor at Loyola Marymount University. “Whereas if you give it to the 501(c)(4), there’s no charitable deduction for giving the money, but you avoid the tax on all of that appreciation.”

Political advocacy nonprofits like the Marble Freedom Trust are formally called 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations, after the section of the tax code. Informally, they are known as dark-money groups because donors can remain secret, in contrast to the public disclosures required of gifts to political campaigns or super PACs. While they can spend money directly advocating for or against candidates in political campaigns, such spending cannot be their primary purpose.

In giving to such a dark money group, Seid also avoided another federal levy, the gift tax, thanks to a change signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015.

There’s a reason why giving money specifically to a trust might have been attractive for an older and ideological donor such as Seid. The founding documents that lay out how the trust will spend money can be harder to change than the governing documents of a corporation, according to Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a professor at Notre Dame Law School.

Mayer added that while corporations usually have at least three directors, trusts can have just a single trustee in charge of the organization’s activities.

Leo is the trustee and chairman of the Marble Freedom Trust. In other words, Leo is now in charge of the massive sum of money.

The Rainmaker

For decades, Leo had served as a top executive at the Federalist Society, helping lead the influential Washington-based conservative lawyers group that serves as a launching pad for careers on the right.

But in early 2020, Leo made an announcement that suggested he was taking his successful model for reshaping the courts to remake American politics at every level: local, state and federal. In an interview with Axios, Leo said he was stepping away from his day-to-day role with the Federalist Society to take a more active role steering a network of conservative dark money groups.

The plan was to expand the network’s scope to “funnel tens of millions of dollars into conservative fights around the country,” according to Axios. What Leo did not mention in the interview was the imminent creation of the Marble Freedom Trust, his biggest-ever war chest.

Leo’s long career as both a legal activist and a prodigious fundraiser for conservative causes shows a steady march toward becoming a central figure in the Republican Party’s successful strategy to fill as many judicial vacancies as possible with young, conservative judges skeptical of the federal government’s power. He served as an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, helping the candidate take a step no other major presidential candidate had ever taken: releasing a list of names he would draw on to nominate to the Supreme Court.

Coming at a moment when conservatives were wary of Trump’s past leanings, the move bolstered his support among social conservatives. Leo stayed on as a judicial adviser during Trump’s four years in office. During that time, Leo helped the president appoint and confirm more than 200 nominees to the federal bench, most famously Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Leo’s efforts to reshape the country’s judicial system began long before Trump’s political ascent. In 1991, he joined the Federalist Society, which was then in its early years and only beginning to build a pipeline for conservative jurists.

In the view of Leo and his allies, the U.S. legal system had drifted dangerously far from its roots, establishing privileged classes and doctrines that were not enumerated in the Constitution and would be unrecognizable to the Founders. Those same courts had also empowered a class of unelected bureaucrats dubbed the “administrative state” to impose needless regulations and to endow the federal government with too much power. Like his close friend Justice Antonin Scalia, Leo argued for an originalist view of the Constitution — namely, that the country’s founding document should be interpreted strictly based on how its 18th century authors understood its words at the time.

In 2005, Leo and his allies formed a dark money network to rally support for George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But if Leo wanted to turn back the tide of what he saw as unchecked judicial activism, he needed to build something bigger, more lasting.

Leo set out to create a network of interlocking groups that could each play a part in returning the country to what he saw as its roots, whether by training future generations of Scalias, funding scholarship that made the case for originalism or bankrolling efforts to install conservative judges on the bench.

Between 2005 and mid-2021, Leo and his associates raised at least $460 million (not including the Marble Freedom Trust’s funds).

According to tax records, Leo’s network has funneled those hundreds of millions into ad campaigns and right-leaning groups. The Judicial Crisis Network — which is now called the Concord Fund and is headed by a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and Leo associate named Carrie Severino — has spent tens of millions airing ads during Supreme Court confirmation fights.

The group’s fundraising took off in 2016, when it led a campaign to block Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland’s confirmation. That year, Leo’s network received a $28 million infusion from a single anonymous donor. Leo and his network long refused to say who is paying for their advocacy campaigns.

Leo’s network has worked closely with Senate Republicans and has showered them with cash as well, recently donating $9 million to a dark money group affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

While Leo is best known for his influence on the Supreme Court, he and his network have also worked to shift the balance of power throughout the judiciary — in federal district and appellate courts, and state supreme courts, too.

At the state level, the network funds groups supporting conservative gubernatorial and legislative candidates. Leo’s nonprofits and their subsidiaries have recently pushed states to tighten voting laws, opposed the teaching of critical race theory in schools and financed organizations pressing states to remove millions of Americans from the Medicaid rolls.

But now, with Seid’s largesse, Leo has nearly four times the amount he raised over 16 years at his disposal and ambitions to match.

“I have a very simple rule, which is, I’m engaged in the battle of ideas, and I care very deeply about our Constitution and the role of courts in our society,” Leo told The Washington Post in 2019 when asked about his donors. “And I don’t waste my time on stories that involve money and politics because what I care about is ideas.”

Published in association with ProPublica.

The post Billionaire Donates Fortune To Fund Christian Nationalism appeared first on Narativ.

Zev Shalev’s interview with Ukrainian parliamentarian Kira Rudyk after the senate approves a $40 Bn aid package to Ukraine.

President Joe Biden welcomed the president of Finland and the prime minister of Sweden to the White House on Thursday to kickstart a campaign for the two countries joining NATO. The two new members will be a big boost to Biden’s international cachet, as will the $40 Billion aid package to Ukraine approved on the same day in Congress.

I spoke to Ukrainian parliamentarian Kira Rudyk on NarativTV about the prospects for an end to the war, how rising oil prices are making peace more complicated by the day, the psychological impact of the war on children and America’s unyielding support of Ukraine.

My full interview with KIra Rudyk is above and the transcript is below.

Watch or listen to narativ’s podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.

The post Biden’s V-Day For Democracy appeared first on Narativ.

The Battle For Democracy Enters Kinetic Phase

The smart money is betting that Elon Musk will not succeed in his bid to buy Twitter, but that’s not stopping Tesla’s chief from trying, as he announces a new round of $7 Billion in debt financing,

Over at the Supreme Court, another titanic battle over rights has spilled over into the public. According to a leaked draft opinion scrapping Roe V Wade, a half-century-long plan by conservative forces to stack the court to end abortion rights appears to have succeeded.

These things (Twitter and Roe v Wade) appear to be disconnected, but when you consider their intention is – it’s easy to see why they connect. The attempted purchase of Twitter is a death knell for free speech in America and the world. Should it become an actual judgment, the SCOTUS draft decision will end abortion in half the country and establish a predicate to dissolve all such privacy rights in America.

The right to free speech and privacy is what America is all about. The land of the free could not be without these fundamental rights.

And of course, these are not the first signs of an assault on democratic norms we’ve seen in the last few years but what’s different now is that the battle for democracy has gone from a build-up or planning phase into a kinetic one.

The word kinetic is from physics. It’s the energy that an object has by virtue of its mass and speed of motion. Think of an assassin shooting a gun – The act of pulling the trigger transfers energy into the bullet. This energy becomes the kinetic energy that propels the bullet out of the chamber and en route to its target.

In the initial phase of the Battle for Democracy, the Enemies of Democracy (EOD) created a series of news events, organizations, and structures designed to set up several political and social movements. The 2016 election, Charlottesville, Kenosha, the pandemic, Stop The Steal, and Jan 6 attempted to create enough energy around different social movements that would propel it into the end of democracy as we know it. Let’s call this the “planning phase.” While this felt chaotic, the Enemies of Democracy (EOD) didn’t directly challenge our system’s structures and democratic norms, with the possible exception of Jan 6 (but many believe that was a rehearsal).

With Twitter and Roe v Wade, we are witnessing a very different series of events where the Enemies of Democracy (EOD) are directly assaulting or attempting to alter our democratic norms and institutions fundamentally. These new direct assaults are a part of what I’d describe as the ‘kinetic phase.’

Add to this, a world war like the one the Enemies of Democracy (EOD) expected would follow Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and one can see how we’ve moved from an initial ‘set-up’ or ‘planning phase’ into a ‘kinetic phase.’ Things are no longer theoretical. The threats to our system and norms are direct, in-motion, and self-propelling.

We are all riding slingshot on a bullet heading towards a potentially catastrophic event where the US and democracy may be casualties.

The good news is that it appears like the enemies of democracy (EOD) are off to a poor start in this kinetic phase. And while it’s too soon to tell, the laws of politics and physics favor the side of democracies. In terms of physics – kinetic energy can be diffused, redirected, or disrupted – i.e.; the right actions can stop our assassin’s bullet from hitting the target (democracy).

In political terms, it means staying focused on the actual events attempting to destroy democracies and electing leaders who can react in real-time.

This first step is identifying where the assaults are originating. You can’t disrupt a moving bullet if you don’t know it’s there, and it’s the responsibility of every citizen to be on the lookout and be well-versed in our global dynamics to protect it better.

The second step is electing leaders who have the proven knowledge and means to react in real-time – like Joe Biden, whose experience informs him of the right levers to pull at just the right time.

And the third step is to have an engaged electorate smart enough to understand that a leader without a legislature is a leader operating with his hands tied behind his back. Biden and the democrats need to remain in power until the task of defeating the enemies of democracy (EOD) is complete.

In the battle between democracies and autocracies, the US is winning, but this war is far from over.

The post Democracy’s Assassin appeared first on Narativ.

Sooner or later – at dinner, the gym, or a PTA meeting – someone will ask you: “What do you think of Elon Musk wanting to buy Twitter?” Here’s what to tell them.

Like most people, you probably haven’t given it much thought, or your thought pattern may go something like this: if the man who made affordable space exploration possible and made the electric vehicle a reality – all while finding time to host SNL, fathering eight kids, and sleeping with the hottest women alive still has the energy and the money to buy Twitter, why shouldn’t he?

As for the truth about Elon Musk, the answer to that question is far more complicated than it seems – as Keri Kukral and I recently began to expose in part one of the “Secret Life of Elon Musk” series on NarativTV. 

Firstly, you should know that the Elon Musk story is a well-constructed fabrication. Of course, he’s an actual human, but the narrative he tells the world is inconsistent, suggesting it is part obfuscation, if not complete fiction.

Chief among the obfuscations is his wealth. Musk may be the world’s richest man (worth, on paper, $264 Billion), but in reality, he’s cash-poor. He’s only worth the amount of money a bank will loan him against a portion of his current stock in Tesla. We found out last week a bank would loan him $25 Billion to fund the purchase of Twitter, but we don’t know much more about the origins of those funds.

Musk is a creation of a large conglomerate of wealth made up of foreign and domestic interests. That’s not to say Musk is not intelligent or capable. Of course, he is, but he hasn’t ever really created anything himself – except for maybe a program called “zip2it”. Musk acquired everything else from PayPal to Tesla. And he’s failed more times than he cares to admit. 

Musk’s unorthodox approach to management is viewed as inherently risky and could present risks to his future holdings. TESLA and SpaceX are financially intertwined, which is unusual for two publicly traded companies – each borrowing from the other to avoid public collapse. If the stock falters or the technology fails in one company, both companies could come crashing down. If Musk succeeds in buying Twitter, the social network’s fate will also lie with Tesla and SpaceX.

We’ll have astronauts stranded in orbit, cars careening off the roads, and the virtual town square inexplicably grinding to a halt. Musk’s track record on democratic values is dodgy at best, and the SEC is investigating his businesses. Twitter is too essential to democracy to entrust it to him. Someone as cavalier and reckless as Musk is pursuing profit should not be in charge of regulating free speech in the town square.

Musk says he wants to buy Twitter to “save civilization”.

I agree with his underlying premise that Twitter is essential for civil discourse. Twitter is the virtual town square in an epic battle between autocracy and democracy.

If you have something to say and a box to stand on and are willing to endure the hecklers and trolls, you can say it on Twitter.  Viewed this way, Twitter has become the last remaining vestige of unfettered free speech.

Musk may be right that Twitter is essential for saving civilization, but what does he mean? People who use the word “civilization” — people like Putin, Xi, Trump, monarchists, and actual monarchs like soon-to-be King Charles use it in a particular way. 

They have a hankering for the good old days – where the elite held sway and lorded over their subjects, governed by a sense of entitlement by birthright that they alone should chart the course of human development. They bestow favor and wealth on the loyal and dispatch zealots, disease, war, and famine on those who are not. Anything and everything to strike fear into our hearts. A modern-day equivalent of the plagues of Passover at the end of another civilization from a long-forgotten time. 

These so-called kings and dictators sell us religion as an opiate and deal opiates as religion – anything to tame the unruly masses – in the name of wealth and power.

Zev Shalev and Keri Kukral recently exposed Elon Musk in part one of the “Secret Life of Elon Musk” series on NarativTV. 

A few years ago, it became apparent to these masters of the universe that we were approaching a tipping point. The disparity between rich and poor had crossed over a significant milestone and suggested the conditions were ripe for a global revolution against the wealthy. 

When a black man named Barrack Obama walked into the White House in January 2009 and became one of the greatest American presidents in history, as he ushered in the Arab spring, you could sense the enemies of democracy recoil. 

The enemies of democracy responded with a hybrid offensive which included installing Donald Trump as president and a psy-op called Q-Anon. On MSNBC last week, a pundit described Q as an assault on the media. A conspiracy theory so pervasive and filled with inaccuracies it raised doubt over the source of truth – the media.

The same people who created Q spawned amplification networks like OAN and Newsmax and turned Fox News into a parade of idiocy – and gave us Facebook, a social network capable of burrowing under our skins and mainlining designer fear into every citizen. The perfect accompaniment to a president who decried everything as fake news.

Truth is an effective weapon against tyranny.

Challenge even the most potent liars with a fundamental truth, and they shrink in size. The battle over democracy is not about weapons and land – it’s about the hearts and minds of men and women who inhabit that land.

You see it in the courage of the Ukrainian armed forces. They know firsthand what authoritarianism looks like and refuse to go back. They are not just fighting for their survival – they are fighting for generations of people oppressed by mad kings and cold-blooded dictators.  

Elon musk may present himself as a modern-day liberal, but he is not that. He, like me, is a product of Apartheid South Africa – he comes from the capital Pretoria – an oppressive place where only the most ardent white nationalists resided. I grew up in the white liberal suburbs surrounding the metropolis of Johannesburg, or what is today Jo’burg. I had a healthy distaste for the apartheid regime – notoriously racist and homophobic. My first job as a rookie journalist was at a radio station that helped eradicate apartheid. Radio 702 was the equivalent of Twitter in South Africa – a town square where listeners could discuss all topics out of the reach of government censors. 

Musk is a libertarian with autocratic tendencies and a supporter – at least in the 2016 election – of Donald Trump. His recent transformation into a free speech activist isn’t about giving the oppressed unfettered access to the public airwaves. Instead, it appears centered around returning Donald Trump to a platform that banned him after leading an insurrection.

And there seems to be an uncanny coincidence between Musk’s Twitter crusade and the collapse of Trump’s Truth Social (despite what the Musk media machine says).

Musk is a free speech “absolutist” when it comes to allowing Vladimir Putin’s propagandists access to Ukrainian minds, but not when it comes to media criticism of him or even his interactions with “those bastards” at the SEC. You never hear him decry the censorship inside Russia or economic “discrepancies” of South Africa, but you will see him tweet about woke culture.

This website and podcast are an excellent example of the type of content Musk, and his backers may find problematic about Twitter. Narativ was all about truth before it was fashionable – and well before Donald Trump launched Truth Social.

Narativ began live streaming over Twitter in 2019, taking advantage of a tech advancement that allowed for live independent broadcasting – television out of the proverbial reach of the masters who run American television.

We do the same show over on YouTube and Facebook, but algorithms being what they are, only a fraction of our Twitter audience shows up on YouTube, and barely anyone shows up on Facebook. 

We’re not alone, but we are among the genuine few who do it for the reasons we say. 

If Truth is an effective weapon against the forces of tyranny, and Twitter is the one place people can express that truth, wouldn’t that explain why Elon Musk wants to own the social network? 

Say you were cash poor, and the only money you could access was to borrow against your stock – would a barely profitable third-tier social network be what you buy? Wouldn’t you buy Facebook or Instagram – not Twitter?

Elon Musk isn’t just interested in a social media network. He wants to buy the only social network that hasn’t bolstered Donald Trump, and Q. Musk says he wants to save civilization, but what he’s doing is removing a significant roadblock to imposing authoritarian rule.  

Musk’s plan involves taking Twitter private – away from the scrutinizing eyes of the stock market and the SEC. 

He openly admits he wants to change Twitter’s algorithm so that GOP views would carry equal weight to Democrats (or vice versa) regardless of the accuracy of a position. By doing that, Musk would permanently entrench our current state of national polarization and elevate opinion over fact.

Like the Reagan Doctrine decreed that all news should cover both sides of an issue regardless of accuracy, Musk’s plan turns political discourse into popular sports and further away from fact and truth.

You might call it progress, but it’s retrograde. As Joni Mitchell lamented in Big Yellow Taxi (and later covered by the Counting Crows):

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot 
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot 
Don’t it always seem to go 
That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone”

Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

Twitter is not perfect by any stretch, but it is the one place you can still find truth and reason if you seek it.

If Elon Musk buys Twitter, he won’t improve it. He’ll kill it.

The post Elon Musk: The Twitter Killer appeared first on Narativ.

EXCLUSIVE: An investigation into the missing seven-and-a-half hours of presidential call logs from Jan 6 reveals a possible cover-up.

Democratic strategist Rachel Bitecofer, Intelligence analyst Eric Garland and Zev Shalev discuss Trump’s missing seven-and-a-half hours of call logs on the After Show.

CLUE

There’s a good chance at some point in your life you’ve played Clue, the board game where players compete to solve a murder mystery in a mansion. Players take turns saying things like “Col. Mustard in the drawing-room with the candelabra” or “Miss Scarlet in the kitchen with the rope” until one of the players accurately identifies the fictional killer and the weapon and room used in the murder (all three are randomly selected prior to the start of the game).

Unlike most real-life crimes, players can always solve clue murders through a process of elimination. The game works because of the finite number of possibilities present in the closed world that is the mansion.

That kind of limited world rarely exists in real life unless ironically you’re one of the most powerful people in the world, in which case the combination of high recognizability and personal security would make it nearly impossible to commit a crime undetected. But that won’t stop some people from trying.

Seven-and-a-half hours:  That’s the length of time the committee investigating the events of Jan 6 says is missing from the presidential telephone logs handed over to them.

Last week, Donald Trump told the Washington Post that he “didn’t remember getting very many phone calls that day. And he denied removing call logs or using burner phones.” Trump didn’t offer any other explanation for the missing seven-and-a-half hours.

The Skimm put together this chart of Trump’s presidential call log. The gray section of the bar reflects the gap in missing data.

We know from news reports that Trump made several telephone calls within those hours. Mike Pence, Senator Tommy Tuberville and house minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and another person talked to Trump, but which phone did the former president use for those calls?

Burner phone. Did Trump use a burner phone like some of the rally organizers? A scenario most people dismiss because it would prove consciousness of guilt.

Other people’s phones. Trump often uses associates’ phones to take calls, but loaning your colleagues’ phones for seven-and-a-half hours when you have several of your own at your disposal, would look suspicious to anyone.  

An untracked phone in the Oval. The former president could have used an untracked phone inside his office, but it’s unclear why he would. If he was watching TV, there’s nothing he’d need to hide.

He was outside the White House. He wasn’t.

And the final possibility is a cover-up. Did someone delete seven-and-a-half hours of data from the logs? There’s no evidence to suggest anyone deleted anything from the logs and if they did for the purposes of a cover-up, it would be so obvious to be a failure from the outset.

The president is a highly surveilled person, he has very few places he can go unnoticed. All eyewitnesses say he was in the dining room off from the Oval Office watching TV but the phone calls are logged there, so the seven-and-a-half hours of missing logs suggest he was somewhere using a phone not normally tracked by the presidential call logs.

We know Trump used a phone located inside the White House. Senator Mike Lee told The Salt Lake Tribune he received calls from Trump and Rudy Giuliani, both intended for newly-elected Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, whom Trump called on the Senate floor.

Lee recounted in text messages to Bryan Schott, a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune:

Moments after the proceedings in the Senate were halted by the Capitol Police, my phone rang. The caller ID indicated that the call was coming from the White House. I thought it was Robert O’Brien, the president’s national security advisor, calling to update me on a question I had asked him about a security threat from Iran.

To my great surprise, it was not Robert O’Brien, but President Trump on the other end of the line. My heart started to beat a little faster as I was convinced he could only be calling to argue with me about my reading of the Twelfth Amendment and Article II, Section 1.

There was a lot of noise and commotion in the room, but I thought I heard him say, “How’s it going, Tommy?”

I said, “Mr. President, this is Mike Lee.”

“No,” he insisted, “I dialled Tommy’s number.”

“Mr. President, are you calling for Tommy Tuberville (my new colleague from Alabama)?”

“Yes.”

Anxious to hand the phone to someone else (and not have to argue with the president about matters at hand), I asked if he’d like me to find Senator Tuberville.

He said, “Yeah, sure, that’d be great.”

I went and found Senator Tuberville, handed him my phone, and explained that the president would like to speak to him. I stood nearby for the next five or ten minutes as they spoke, not wanting to lose my phone in the middle of a crisis.

Then the Capitol Police became very nervous and ordered us to evacuate the chamber immediately. As they were forcing everyone out of the chamber, I awkwardly found myself interrupting the same telephone conversation I had just facilitated.

“Excuse me, Tommy, we have to evacuate. Can I have my phone?”

Senator Tuberville promptly ended the call and returned my phone to its rightful owner.

and returned my phone to its rightful owner.”

Thanks to Senator Lee we actually know we know Trump’s calls originated from Inside the White House.

“The former president called the phone of Republican Senator Mike Lee with a number recorded as 2 0 2 3 9 5 0 0 0 0.” According to a source quoted in the Washington Post: That number is displayed when a call originates from several White House departments. 

That tells us Trump likely used a phone in the White House but not in the Oval Office to reach Senator Tuberville by dialling Senator Lee’s phone. So where was he?

The PEOC

Even if the official record says Trump was in the Oval, he could have moved around the White House complex unnoticed. 

According to a 1996 article in US News and World Report, there’s a secret passageway that links the Oval Office to the basement of the First Family’s residence in the East Wing of the White House.

“The clandestine passage, built during Ronald Reagan’s presidency to guard the president in a terrorist attack, is certainly handy. Pressing a panel on a wall adjacent to the president’s restroom next to the Oval Office causes a secret door to slide open, leading to a staircase down to the well-lighted passageway, sources said. The tunnel comes out in a storage closet across from the president’s private elevator in the basement of the residence; there is a second exit near an office that was once the White House barbershop in the West Wing basement. The tunnel, dug in 1987 while Reagan was at Camp David or vacationing in California, was called Project ZP. Removal of the earth and concrete caused a large depression south of the Rose Garden, but reporters and staffers thought it was just a natural sinkhole. Reagan once used the tunnel to sneak Richard Nixon into a private meeting on foreign policy. Any President, sources say, could use the tunnel to move between the residence and the Oval Office,” reported the Daily News 

So if the president wants to sneak out of the Oval Office, he could press a panel on the wall which opens to a passageway that takes you downstairs to the basement; a few steps away, you’re in the residence.

The White House website has since revealed the real purpose of the tunnel was to link the Oval Office to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center which is underground between the White House East Wing and the Treasury Building. The PEOC is a World War 2 area facility built as a protective measure for President Franklin D Roosevelt. Vice President Richard B. Cheney utilized it during 911.

Beginning in 2010 President Obama oversaw the construction of a new five-story underground facility designed to be a command center for POTUS and living chambers for the first family under the North lawn adjacent to the West Wing.

The new command center is designed to replace the old PEOC that had fallen into disrepair. Former First Lady Laura Bush recounted being evacuated from the WH on 911 through it, “We walked along old tile floors with pipes hanging from the ceiling and mechanical equipment. The PEOC is designed to be a command center during emergencies, with televisions, phones, and communications facilities.”

Donald Trump was evacuated to the old PEOC during the unrest outside the White House following the George Floyd murder. (Secret Service did not take him to the new secure facility Obama built as it was not complete.)

The old PEOC location just off the East Wing is physically very close to the Willard Hotel, the hotel of choice for insurrectionists like Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani on Jan 6. “We’re looking at about not quite 80 yards from the East Wing of the White House, to the Willard Hotel where Rudy Giuliani [was] that day,” says Eric Garland.q

Hundred of Trump-connected people stayed at the Willard Hotel that weekend. Giuliani held his own post-Jan 6 meeting in one of the hotel suites. Roger Stone and other high-level guests, including dozens of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, stayed at the Willard, yet journalists spotted none of them at the actual Jan 6 event.

It’s possible to access the old Presidential Emergency Operation Center via a secure underground tunnel from the basement of the Treasury building which is just across the street from the Willard albeit underground. The Willard itself has a tunnel underneath it that covers the entire block. There is a third tunnel that links the White House to an unmarked exit on H street. Is it possible the Willard tunnel also connects to the treasury tunnel system? We don’t know, but considering the PEOC was built as a war-time facility, a secure tunnel to a hotel where White House and treasury staffers could stay makes sense.

Regardless of whether it’s above ground or via a tunnel, an approved person could access the White House PEOC largely unnoticed. You could meet with the president, who could also move unnoticed between the Oval Office and the PEOC.

Mr. Stone was captured in this video posted by his companion Kristen Davis on Instagram on Jan 6. Davis is also known as the Manhattan Madam. She told the Daily News: “There were literally 50 of us staying at The Willard hotel. I think all the guys when things were done, just kind of hung out a bit,” Davis said.

“You can winnow down the number of people there and monitor what was happening on television that day and being, and let’s say you had some reason to be in contact with the Pentagon to make sure they didn’t launch a quick reaction force out of that building. That’s a place you can do that,” says intelligence analyst Eric Garland who took part in this investigation.

This could explain why the Pentagon held back the National Guard’s response to the insurrection until after Trump’s video announcement to protestors to go home.

If Trump were in physical contact with his main coup plotters throughout those seven-and-a-half hours, it would place him in command and control of the entire conspiracy to overthrow the election in a violent coup.

We know he was in the White House because he called Senator Mike Lee’s phone. a number in the White House, but not in the Oval Office. He may have been in the residence but we’ve had no reports he was there. That leaves two possible places: the new command center under the Oval Office but it’s unclear if it was operational on Jan 6 2020 and we somehow doubt it would have had its staffed debut for the insurrection, so the old PEOC seems the most likely location bc of its proximity and accessibility to the Willard and the Oval Office and because Trump was familiar with it.

In addition to raising the prospect of Trump being in direct contact with his coup plotters throughout the insurrection in an actual “war room”, it also raises the prospect that the former president had direct comms with the Pentagon which raises a significant national security concern.

“The real action here is not Roger Stone ginning up his buddies from the Oath Keepers,” says Garland. “The real action is that the department of defense under Trump appears to have engaged in a conspiracy to overturn elections and possibly allow the murder of elected officials.”

Garland adds: “The real problem was that we had the department of defense stand down, our nation’s actual strongest-in-the-world defense, during a crisis.”

And that could only occur under the orders of the commander-in-chief.

This episode of Narativ Live revolved around a briefing given by conservative strategist Justin Sullivan a week before the insurrection.

The post The Bunker appeared first on Narativ.

Knowing who to trust and where information is coming from is more important than ever. With so many different sources at our fingertips, it can be hard to tell which ones are legitimate, who’s paying for them and why they exist.

Things get even more complicated when even friendly voices can turn out to be controlled opposition.

It’s hard to know who to trust, but the best way is to assess an outlet’s credibility is through their track record.  Narativ’s has stood the test of time. Become our Patron today. 

• It’s been six years since I wrote about the Kremlin’s influence over the incoming Trump  White House administration. 
• Five years since I described Putin as a monster.
• Five years since I wrote why Putin was at war with the US.
• Five years since I detailed Vladimir Putin’s warm water port strategy in attacking Ukraine. 
• Five years since I described how Vladimir Putin and the Russian mob anointed Donald Trump.  
• Four years since I exposed Facebook’s secret political ties and Russian oligarch investors.  
• Four years since we revealed how Russia was funding the GOP through the NRA.
• Three years since I told you about a multinational coalition targeting democracy in a story about the Salvator Mundi.
• Three years since we told you the true story of Rudy Giuliani’s ties to the Russian mob.
• Three years since I identified Oleg Deripaska as the central figure in Trump-Russia. 
• Three years since we revealed Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Israeli military intelligence.
• Two years since I asked if the Xi and Putin were deliberately sickening the world. 
• Two years since I revealed Erik Prince was bankrolled by China. 
• A year since we confirmed from a former KGB agent that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. 
• A year since we revealed Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Mike Flynn role in Jan 6.
• A year since I revealed Erik Prince had built a weapon of mass disinformation targeting the US. 
• A year since we I described how the Xi and Putin alliance are at war with the West . 
• Five months since we exposed Russia’s spy role in the Jan 6 insurrection.

There is much more at narativ.org 

Contrast this with any other news sources, and it’s easy to see Narativ is not only an accurate interlocutor of events but consistently ahead of other news media outlets.

From the start Narativ’s content has been available for free because I believe this content needs to be available to everyone.

But that means we need you – our Patrons –  to keep the light on at Narativ.   

It’s why were asking you to join our Patreon program at Patreon.com/narativ 

None of this reporting would have bee possible without our patrons. Thank you for your support.  We need you now more than ever.

Join us today!

The post The truth About Putin And XI appeared first on Narativ.

Watch our coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine plus Narativ’s latest pods.

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The truth will out and the reckoning of the Republican Party has begun.

Part one of our podcast Verdict Watch with guest Prof. Jennifer Taub – author of “Big, Dirty Money/” (above)

Arizona congressman Paul Gosar (R) was censured for tweeting an anime cartoon depicting him murdering fellow congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D), and the president of the United States.

Gosar was lucky to escape expulsion for his deed but it was Kevin McCarthy’s shameless, soulless, heartless, spineless, everything-less inaction that truly deserves our scorn.  The House GOP Leader’s refusal to condemn the threat of violence against his congressional colleagues and the president, is a total failure of leadership – laid bare for the world to see.

McCarthy failed the leadership test

It was just 10 months ago on January 6, when McCarthy was trapped inside the House as thousands of GOP supporters attempted a coup. On that day, McCarthy called the then president of the United States pleading with Donald Trump to call off the rioters who had breached he Capitol.

Trump ultimately acquiesced to a watered down call for the rioters to go home but when faced with a similar moral dilemma last week, McCarthy refused to condemn the assassination ideation of one of his own. He stood on the side of violence.

Why did Kevin McCarthy fail to condemn the violent threat?

I believe McCarthy and the House GOP have entered a pact. It goes something like this. They’ll put up a united front to protect their precious political careers, no matter what they do individually or collectively. No matter how terrible or egregious or serious the crimes they may have committed.

They don’t care. There is no low bar. There is no bar at all for the GOP. Everything is acceptable as long as it stays in the club. And if it’s in the club, they will stand together and protect each other, and everything they hope, will be okay.

We know what you did last SummeR

But it’s not ok. America is not ok. As I write this, we’re awaiting a verdict in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Rittenhouse is the 18-year-old who crossed state lines to confront Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last summer. He was armed with an AR-15 while pretending to be a medic. Rittenhouse is clearly guilty, despite his claims of self-defense.

That may be the excuse that keeps Rittenhouse out of jail, and it will also keep his unnamed co-conspirators from scrutiny. I’m referring to the GOP leadership who helped foment the race crisis of last summer.

You remember that?

The violence that erupted last summer around Jacob Blake and George Floyd was designed to inflame racial tensions as an election tactic amplified by the GOP.

Why? To terrify suburban women into voting for the GOP. (The same thing is happening this year with all the school boards activity.)

I’m not excusing the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse. He should be found guilty and given the maximum sentence possible, but I am also not excusing Kevin McCarthy and Donald Trump for what they did last summer. Their shadows loom large over last summer’s race clashes.

Flynn ordered a Pentagon official to begin a coup.

McCarthy is also confronting his role in setting the big lie. ABC news correspondent Jonathan Karl’s new book “Betrayal” describes how Mike Flynn, a retired Lieutenant General and Putin dinner guest, ordered Pentagon official Ezra Cohen Watnick to return home from the Middle East to “seize ballot” papers and implement “extraordinary measures” to stop Democrats from stealing the election they actually won.

Flynn’s actions add solid evidence that Jan 6 was an organized coup attempt. These actions are crimes of the highest order committed against every citizen of the United States who voted last November, and crimes against the constitution of the United States.

The US constitution has been given very little respect of late – some have predicted its demise but today we saw and felt the beating heart of the constitution of the United States of America.

Paul Gosar’s censure in the house was a reminder that every representative in that elected body swears to uphold the constitution of the United States.

There is no plan B or option B. That’s it. You uphold the constitution or you don’t have a job. That includes you Madison Cawthorn, Andy Biggs, Louie Goehmert, Lauren Boebert and of course, Marjorie Taylor Green.

Part two of our podcast Verdict Watch with guest Prof. Jennifer Taub – author of “Big, Dirty Money/” (above)

A caucus of seditionists

Tonight, I think we saw what truly ails Kevin McCarthy: a consciousness of guilt.

McCarthy knows what he did in the days and weeks leading up to January 6. He knows what he did to foment racial tensions last Summer. He knows what he’s done to cover-up the crimes of Donald Trump. McCarthy is wagering the truth will vanish if he and his pals deny everything. Like a group of naughty school boys covering up a prank gone bad.

McCarthy should rest assured things are about to get far worse for him and his den of thieves and liars.

Their pact will not hold up to scrutiny in the coming weeks and months, as every excruciating detail of how the once great Republican Party sold itself out and almost killed democracy will be revealed. It is a reckoning whose time has come.

Blood money

Two Americans will not be witness to that reckoning. Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum. Those are the two people that Kyle Rittenhouse shot dead last summer in Kenosha. They could have been alive today if it weren’t for the GOP and the Trump campaign.

The GOP has more than blood on its hands. It has blood money stuffed in its pockets, but no amount of money will wash their guilt away, nor will it erase the truth. The truth will out, and the GOP’s reckoning has begun.

Note: An earlier AI transcribed draft of this story was posted without editing.

The post The Reckoning appeared first on Narativ.

We’ve been working on other projects and haven’t kept the site up to speed with our latest podcasts which have broken viewer records and more than a story or two.

You can watch the latest pods below or you can listen to them on any podcast player. Don’t forget to subscribe and download wherever you watch or listen.

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“Who Owns Kavanaugh?” An unfiltered look at the cover-up of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process.

My friends, @GregOlear and @LincolnsBible were among the first to raise very serious questions about the confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the hit 5-part Prevail series Who Owns Kavanaugh? Now there are new revelations about the FBI’s involvement in a White House scheme which appears to be a cover-up designed to shield Kavanaugh from a history of sexual and financial impropriety.

CATCH AND KILL

In Part 1, Greg, LB and I break down the claims.

THOMAS BARRACK

And in Part 2, @Heidi_Cuda joins to break down Thomas Barrack’s six degrees of separation.

READ THE PREVAIL SERIES

Click the link below the image to go to Greg’s substack.

Our video podcasts are only available at the Apple podcast player.

LISTEN

Prefer to listen? You can do that on any podcast player like Spotify. No matter the player, please consider subscribing to the show.

PATRONAGE

@NarativTv Made possible by viewers like you who join at Patreon. Click the button to join.

MERCH

Now you can shop and save democracy! Visit the Narativ store for tees and totes inspired by the Texas Democrats and their catchphrase: “Fight Of Our Lives”. And just released the After Show mug and tee.

The post Who Owns Kavanaugh? appeared first on Narativ.

NEW NARATIV VIDEO PODS. One of the biggest peddlers of Q and anti-vax disinformation isn’t from the US at all.

Is the Epoch Times a psy-op targeting US? @jimstewartson @DempseyTwo @NarativTv

In Part 2, We look at the complicated relationship between Falun Gong and the Chinese communist party and explore Donald Trump’s China ties.

If you prefer to listen to the podcasts, find them on your favorite podcast player like Spotify.

Narativ is made possible by viewers like you who join at

http://Patreon.com/narativ

You can now shop and save democracy at the Narativ store. This product is new at the store today.

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The After Show breaks down newly-leaked documents that appear to prove Vladimir Putin ordered the 2016 interference in the US elections.

The documents were first published in The Guardian and quickly became the topic of speculation, with some suggesting the documents were a carefully crafted hoax designed to entrap gullible journalists. On Narativ, we looked at the totality of information available about the documents. @LincolnsBible, @GregOlear and @ZevShalev had plenty to say on the topic on @NarativTV‘s After Show.

Part 1 is here:

And Part 2 is here.

Narativ’s video podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts. If you prefer to listen, the audio files are available on most podcast players like Spotify.

Narativ is funded by viewers like you who join at http://Patreon.com/narativ.

There’s a new way to support Narativ’s independent journalism. The Narativ Shop. Our first products are inspired by Texas Democrats who fled to DC to stop new voter suppression laws in their home state. Now you can shop and save democracy.

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Analysis of Joe Biden’s five alarm speech with @NinaBurleigh; Joe Dempsey (@DempseyTwo) brings Narativ an exclusive about the Oath Keeper’s black team leader; And the radicalization of the Hartland.

PEDDLERS OF LIES

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HARTLAND RADICALIZATION

The post Fight of our Lives appeared first on Narativ.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a scathing report about Twitter, alleging the social media platform favors far right-wing extremist groups and propaganda.

The report also criticizes CEO Jack Dorsey’s continued support of the far right’s most extreme characters like Ali Alexander, Nicke Fuentes and Tim Poole. The report’s author Michael Edison Hayden joins Greg Olear and Zev Shalev on Narativ TV.

PART 1: The Company Jack Keeps

Jack Dorsey is connected to a large list of far right wing extremists.

PART 2: PUNK’D

In Part 2, Jack Dorsey says his affinity for far right extremists stems from his punk music roots but our panelists strongly disagree.

Narativ is made possible by viewers like you. Support our independent journalism. Patreon.com/Narativ

WHERE TO WATCH AND LISTEN

If you prefer to listen rather than watch. Look for Narativ’s audio podcasts on most podcast players like Apple podcasts. Please remember to subscribe or follow.

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As prosecutors close in on Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and Alex Jones, Narativ’s investigation into the three men, and others, continues.

1. Free SPeech At War Time

2. NBC4’s Scott MacFarlane

Partial Transcript:

Last week on the show, we did the case against Roger Stone was really popular episode. As we started unpacking what Roger Stone was doing on the fifth and the sixth. You remember he was hanging out with the Manhattan, Madam, amongst many other things at the Willard hotel. We got to pick that up today and look a little further into what, what he did now.

Picking up from where we were earlier in the show. Look at these three gentlemen, you’ve got Roger Stone and Alex Jones and Mike Flynn, all these guys publicly conspired about having an insurrection on January the sixth. Two of them. I can find Alex Jones – although I’m pretty sure he did speak about it – spoke about instituting martial law. Each of them had a role in organizing the events of January the sixth in terms of bringing people together on planning it and all or whatever it was. Each of them had a role in leading it and elements of that, whether it was Roger Stone in terms of the proud boys and the oath keepers.

And now also the three percenters Alex Jones in terms of his info wars crowd that were there everywhere when we’re paying to even speak to the crowd. And Mike Flynn, we know was part of the Q Anon buildup. Q Anon was created and each of them had a role in terms of funding stop the steal day, they had a ton of events and a ton of video.

They had a ton of calls for people to, to support what was going on on January the sixth. And yet each of them is not being indicted because. Because it was a speech free speech. I don’t know that doesn’t seem to be, to cut it for me because it’s not just free speech, there’s money, there’s organization, there’s planning, there’s leadership, there’s contact with all these people.

It can’t just be free speech. It’s got to be much more than that. And we spoke a little last time about how conflicted Roger Stone really is in terms of the fact that he is connected to every single one of these organizations in some way or another. Women for Trump info wars. The 3% is Q Anon. The proud boys and the oath keepers all have connections to Roger Stone.

And yet he seems to be thinking that he’s going to get away with it right now. At least there is no indication that he’s even being questioned or indicted or will be for anything. During that period of time. And just one last thing before I let you jump in here, role, you know, we spoke last time about the Willard Intercontinental hotel and how close it is to the white house.

And I got the satellite image to everyone can really appreciate how close it is if you that, that big building in between the white house and Intercontinental is the treasury building. It’s basically inside the white house complex. So the Willard hotel is the white house. Basically, if you want, if you want a place to stay, that’s where you stay.

Many people are now saying, as we said for the first time last week pointed out that there were 50 people, according to the Manhattan, Madam, who was staying at the Intercontinental Willard, 50 people that perhaps people should be considering that as a war room set their brain as is out there saying that was a war room, according to some warring indictments that he’s seen.

We’ll ask Scotty about that. Uh, we don’t know that for sure. All I can say for sure is that it does seem like 50 people, including Roger Stone and many proud boys, many Oathkeepers will all staying at the Intercontinental Willard hotel and look how close it is to the white house. There’s a feeling.

NOEL: and I was a bike messenger, you know, I worked on Capitol hill and my main account was the congressional budget office.

So I was assigned there every day. And back then you used to deliver to the east wing of the white house. You literally used to bring packages up to the garden, like 10 feet from the building, this little sort of guard house, where they check IDs and I would drop off packages. I would also drop off docks.

Then house resolutions at the Willard all the time. Right? It was one of mine. If you were bringing something to somebody who was doing business at the white house, it was either at the Willard hotel, it was at the white house, or it was at the old executive office building those, which is on the other side of the white house, the Western side, like you mentioned, There’s big money behind 50 people staying at the Willard hotel.

And there’s a sort of a presence of officialdom in staying there as your command operation. And you mentioned Roger Stone and all the ties that he had. He was also just pardoned in December. And when he was on trial for a year, he tweeted out a picture of the judge in his case with a bullseye over her face.

So you couldn’t have a more dangerous man. Who’s basically given the middle finger. That’s this and saying I’m above the law the entire time. And then he gets pardoned. What does he do? He starts an insurrection. He is a Batman villain, you know, it’s like, it’s all right, it’s right in front of your eyes.

You see what they were doing? Basically, the whole thing is like, how are you going to stop? I that’s. I think that’s exactly what’s going on. It’s a very dangerous game of cat and mouse, but because they’ve got, I assume they’re all part of it. I assume the reason we’ve not seen a more action around them is that they’re pardoned.

This is Roger Stone before the insurrection, he was using the stop, the steal.org account as way of fundraising and what I find so amazingly interesting in this particular video is how focused he is on raising money for the security. Of the marches now who were the security of the marches. There were the proud boys and there were the oath keepers that were his security that’s who they were raising money for.

So let’s listen to a little bit over here. “This is a pop-up grassroots event for which we need professional security.” We don’t have a wealthy donor like George Soros waiting in the wings to write a check to subsidize our political activists.

We can only count on people like you. So to help us have a safe, peaceful event to help us have the impact we want to change history and to stand up for the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln, please go to stop the steel.org. That’s stopped the steel.org and help us pay. For the staging, the transportation, and most importantly, the security of our peaceful protestors.

Thank you. And God bless. There’s lots of talk about it in that video in general, but he clearly is raising money for an insurrection and people are, he doesn’t say he’s raising money for the proud boys and the oath keepers and the three percenters to be showing up in their military gear to storm the Capitol heat.

But that’s what he’s raising money for. And I used to calling it security, but that’s really what it is.

NOEL: And he’s also throwing in an anti-Semitic dog whistle. We don’t have a George Soros to cut us a big check he’s subliminally, like giving them their, their marching orders. He’s invoking the hate speech that they’re already trafficking and to ask them for them.

NOEL SETS SAIL

**This was Noel Casler’s last Narativ Tuesday for a while. Noel is preparing for his comedy tour and is hard at work on his own podcast “The Noel Casler Podcast“. Noel promised he’ll be back on the show as a regular guest. Noel, It’s been an honor to work with you – you’re such pro. Thank you for being a friend.

Follow Noel on Twitter: @caslernoel

Follow this link to find “The Noel Casler Podcast”: https://link.chtbl.com/WTHUTm0Y

The post Closing In appeared first on Narativ.

The true story of Bibi Netanyahu’s role in Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election. How political revenge and a corruption trial endangered an alliance.

The unbelievably warm temperatures that signaled an early start to summer may have been to blame, but President Barack Obama’s famously relaxed demeanor was not on display on this June morning in 2009.

The world’s eyes were on Number 44, and his mood showed it. The newly inaugurated president took plenty of flack from Republicans as Iranians took to the streets.

I wasn’t having my best morning either. As the newly appointed executive producer of the CBS News Early Show, I was about to be late for an interview with the president of the United States.

A perfect storm roiled that morning, raining out a special broadcast live from the USS Intrepid and delaying my flight from New York to DC. Then, I was dropped off at the wrong White House gate—my DC colleagues’ idea of a hazing ritual, I thought.

With my hopes and dreams flashing before my eyes, and the temperature soaring, I ran the perimeter of the White House to find the correct entrance.

Robert Gibbs, Obama’s spokesperson, grabbed me on the way inside.

“We’ve changed things around on you,” Gibbs said, maintaining his cheerfulness, as he improvised reactions to real-time events.

“Harry is doing the Iran interview,” Gibbs said, referring to Harry Smith, the unflappable anchor of the CBS Early Show.

With those words, the interview went from casual to historically consequential in a matter of seconds.

Thankfully, Harry could handle anything, especially with this president. Harry was an early and regular reporter on Obama’s campaign.

I was drenched from the sweat or rain, or both, so much so that the White House butler offered me a napkin. I wiped my brow and made a mental note to take on less responsibility in the future. I pocketed the napkin embossed with the White House logo. I still have it today.

DEMOCRACY’S MOONSHOT

Three weeks earlier, Obama embarked on his first Middle east trip in pursuit of two critical and interconnected foreign policy initiatives: a Middle east peace deal and an Iranian nuclear solution.

Obama delivered a watershed address at Cairo University, lamenting the decades of blood spilled from proxy wars in the region, and offered the Arab world a new beginning. It was American-style democracy beginning a Middle East tour.

Democracy activists viewed the Cairo Address as a green light to confront the region’s dictatorial regimes. The series of protests, uprisings, and attempted revolutions that followed in the next few years became known as the ‘Arab Spring.’

In the end, democracy failed to usher a new era of openness into the region. While the Arab spring underlined the need for reform in the Middle East, the movement also exposed the limitations of democracy as an alternative to autocracy. 

Obama gave democracy a moonshot chance at success in the Middle East, but it didn’t work. World leaders were left wondering, “Now what?”

THE WORLD IS WATCHING

At the White House, a crew member placed a microphone on the lapel of Obama’s jacket. The president was in the zone.

A week earlier, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed victory in the Iranian election despite allegations that the vote had been rigged. Supporters of second-placed Mir-Hoessein Mousavi demanded a recount, taking to the streets in what became known as the Green Movement.

There was no question: this was an opportunity for Obama to advance the Iran issue, but if he supported the protesters, he risked losing a major nuclear deal with the Iranian regime that was already in the works.

Harry began with Iran. Obama constructed a powerful message that pressured the regime but fell short of declaring the elections stolen.

“The world is watching and is inspired by their participation, regardless of what the outcome of the election was.”

The protesters awaited additional support from Obama, but it never materialized. In New York the next morning, I felt a momentary flash of satisfaction when I saw other news networks running our interview. The banner on CNN read, “The World is Watching.”

That satisfaction subsided as it became clear that the dramatic media moment would yield very little for the Iranian protesters. It also foreshadowed an Iranian nuclear deal which would imperil a vital relationship.

BIBI AND BARACK

Perhaps not so coincidentally, something else had shifted the Middle East dynamic that week.

Benjamin Netanyahu was not Obama’s pick as a Middle East dance partner, but Netanyahu emerged victorious from the 2009 election in a coalition with religious and right-wing parties.

Obama welcomed Netanyahu to the White House in May 2009. He told the new Israeli PM he needed to stop building Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Netanyahu bristled at the notion.

Their relationship went from bad to much worse. What began as mild irritation between the two leaders developed into animosity by the time Obama signed the Iranian deal eight years later.

In 2012, as Obama approached a second term, his advisors had all but given up on Netanyahu’s participation in a peace process. “They were never sincere in their commitment to peace,” Ben Rhodes would tell The New Yorker.

“They used us as cover,” Rhodes complained. “They were running a play, killing time, waiting out the Administration.”

Obama claimed their squabbles were like those of a married couple, but Netanyahu felt Obama’s policies threatened Israel’s national security and harmed his political prospects.

In a heated exchange, Obama reportedly said, “Bibi, you have to understand something. I’m the African American son of a single mother, and I live here in the White House. I managed to get elected president of the United States. You think I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but I do.”

A COALITION OF THE DISLOYAL

White House officials suspected Netanyahu secretly supported Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. A departure from the traditional neutrality with which Jerusalem approached US elections.

Romney would go on to lose the Israeli Prime Minister knew this spelled danger for his policies. 

At home, Netanyahu faced a criminal investigation into government corruption.  Sensing the power shift around him, Bibi shopped around for a political lifeline and found a willing ally in Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Putin and Netanyahu had become closer soon after Russia’s invasion of Crimea, which Jerusalem refused to criticize, despite pressure from Washington.

Soon after, Netanyahu and Putin agreed to establish a direct encrypted hotline between the Russian president’s office and Netanyahu’s home. “The Russians want to speak to Israel without anyone eavesdropping — in particular the US,” Russia expert Alex Tentzer told the news site Y-net. 

Netanyahu and Putin tested Obama’s willingness to intervene in Syria over chemical weapons. Obama was reluctant to sink the US into another war despite Syria’s crossing of the so-called red line. This, emboldened Netanyahu and Putin to step up Russia’s attack on anti-Assad forces in Syria.

Netanyahu found another willing accomplice in Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who felt Obama had abandoned Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak during a time of need.

As the second half of Obama’s term neared, it became clear that Hillary Clinton was to be his heir apparent.

The prospect of four more years of Obama-like policies under Hillary Clinton was a political death knell for Netanyahu’s policies.

Putin shared Netanyahu’s trepidation over a Clinton presidency, and recognized an opportunity to press for an unlikely and unprecedented alliance of like-minded nations with a strong preference for a US presidential candidate in a US election.

Expressing an affinity with a candidate is one thing, but coordinating an influence campaign in coordination with the candidate’s staff was tantamount to an act of war, but that is exactly what Netanyahu did. 

In 2015, Netanyahu dispatched George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who had been a close advisor of Netanyahu since 1996, to meet with Arab leaders assembled on a yacht in the Red Sea. 

The yacht summit included Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, UAE Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Bahrain Crown Prince Salman, and Jordan’s King Abdullah.

Nader, who is currently serving a ten-year sentence in the US for trafficking a teenager and possessing child porn, unveiled a controversial proposal to remake the middle East.

It’s unclear if Nader was speaking on behalf of the Israelis or Emiratis but the proposal bore the presumed approval of both leaders. The plan involved establishing a new middle east alliance that would replace the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League and support US policy in the Middle East that countered Turkey and Iran, according to two unnamed sources quoted in the Middle East Eye.

Such a radical plan would need a US president who wasn’t as attached to traditional American policies like democracy. This ruled out Obama and Clinton. The group agreed to support the election of a unique political animal — an anti-democratic American president Donald Trump.

THE OPERATION TO ELECT

Nader promised to lobby US leaders to support the new alliance, but he did much more than that when he later became a fixture on the Trump campaign.

By February 25, 2016, key players connected to the countries represented at the yacht summit began to maneuver around the Trump campaign. Paul Manafort (connected to Russia) wrote to Thomas Barrack (connected to Saudi Arabia) for help in getting hired by the Trump campaign on a volunteer basis.

But arguably the most significant contribution to the Trump campaign came from Israel’s Psy- Group.   One of a handful of companies born out of Israel’s famed 8200 division of the Israeli Defense Force.  Netanyahu’s former national security advisor served on the advisory board of the company. 

What followed was a sequence of contacts and contracts between the Trump Campaign and Psy Group’s CEO Joel Zamel. By March, Manafort’s deputy Robert Gates had met and hired Zamel for an initial campaign.

Erik Prince met with Zamel about a mysterious project codenamed Black Jack or Jack Black, which both Zamel and Prince refused to explain to Senate Intelligence Committee staffers.

Prince and Zamel would meet again in August 2016, this time at Trump Tower with Donald Trump, Jr., Stephen Miller, and George Nader. 

Zamel outlined a plan to use Psy-Group’s algorithms to bend American sentiment ahead of the elections. The Saudis, Nader said, would foot the bill.

All told, Israel’s Psy-Group worked on the Trump campaign for almost a full year in varying capacities. Most notably, Psy-Group helped run a surveillance campaign on delegates at the Republican National Convention.

Psy-Group also worked for Oleg Deripaska in 2015 and Dmitry Rybolovlev in 2016, both oligarchs are close to Putin.

MICRO-DONATIONS

Winning a US election was an expensive endeavor with strict laws forbidding foreign funding but the alliance figured out a way to fund Trump while evading detection by the Federal Election Committee (FEC).

 Given Trump’s poor financial situation, the claim that his campaign was self-funded was hard to believe. Nevertheless, the campaign survived on a steady stream of micro-donations under the $200-per-donor limit the FEC allowed without tracking.

As much as $90 million flowed through the accounts of Trump’s digital chief, Brad Parscale, and into Facebook’s coffers for targeted social media advertising. Most of this money came from micro-donations 

The origins of this micro donations—and an equally significant amount that funded Bernie Sanders campaign—had not been scrutinized until a February 2021 article by BBC reporter Paul Woods about a Los Angeles–based smart payment entrepreneur Andy Khawaja.

According to Khawaja, the Saudis and the Emiratis illegally paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to the Trump campaign in 2016, disguising the money by using stolen identities and ‘virtual credit cards’ or gift cards to process donations of under $200.

Nader and Khawaja were partners in another foreign funding scheme that led to Khawaja and Nader’s arrest in a $3.5 million scheme to illegally conceal donations to political campaigns.   Although Khawaja’s claims were never proven, his cooperation with Nader on this scheme lends credence to his involvement in the overall scheme to support Trump’s electoral win.

ISRAEL FIRST 

Soon after the election, the incoming administration began to signal a new posture toward Russia, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps in an attempt to smoke out Netanyahu, the US supported an Egyptian UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. 

Netanyahu viewed the vote as a jab by Obama and sensed an opportunity to test the loyalty of his new friends in the incoming administration. Even though Obama was still in office, Trump and his transition team led by son-in-law Jared Kushner prioritized scuttling or delaying the vote.

Kushner acted on Netanyahu’s request and with Michael Flynn worked with their Russian allies to influence the vote. In the end, Obama abstained, and the vote failed.

The UN vote highlighted that for all the consternation about Putin’s ties to Trump, Bibi Netanyahu carried significant sway in the Trump White House, as evidenced by increasingly radical pro-Israeli policies, such as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

We may never know the full extent of Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE’s involvement in supporting Trump’s election campaign, but prima facie, the Trump administration was decidedly pro-Saudi Arabia and pro-Israel at the exclusion of former Palestinian partners and in opposition to fundamental human rights.

Netanyahu, like Putin and Mohamed bin Salman,  got much of what he wanted during the Trump years. 

Netanyahu’s involvement in electing Trump would eventually drive a wedge between America’s left-leaning Jewish population and Israel’s government. That rift grew even deeper with the election of Joe Biden. It soon became apparent to Israeli politicians that the US-Israel alliance would be at risk, if Netanyahu stayed in charge.

As Netanyahu successor Naftali Bennett was being sworn in, defense secretary Benny Gantz said of Netanyahu:  “No political move justifies the conflict you create[d] with the US.” 

The post Bibi’s Revenge appeared first on Narativ.

LB, Greg Olear and Zev talk about the inherent risks in covering up a coup while the former president appears to be talking up his next one. 

LB invokes Nixon/Ford, Greg worries about Merrick Garland and Zev details ties between Rand Paul, the Kremlin and the Oath Keepers.

The post Covered-Up Coup appeared first on Narativ.

What did Roger Stone do on January 6?

Zev Shalev and Noel Casler are joined by researcher Joe Dempsey as they unpack Roger Stone’s wild weekend on January 5/6, complete with a Manhattan Madam, a NYPD cop and as many as 50 others including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

The post The Case Against Roger Stone appeared first on Narativ.

The GOP abandons all pretense and goes all in on autocracy.

The After Show’s Zev Shalev is joined by Lincoln’s Bible, Greg Olear and Claude Taylor of Mad Dog Pac.

1. moment Of Clarity

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2. ABOUT PUTIN

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Is the United States ready for a foreign cyber attack and what can be done about it? An interview with Tarah Wheeler.

Lately, it seems a week doesn’t go by without a significant cyberattack on US federal infrastructure. The threat of a paralyzing assault remains stubbornly high and threatens our future national security and ability to operate worldwide.

Tarah Wheeler is not your typical cyberwarfare expert, and her advice is unique in an industry obsessed with capabilities and retaliation. Wheeler says the key to our cybersecurity is better “pothole” management, saying that many software companies need to step up and patch existing vulnerabilities in their software.

Wheeler is a Cyber Project Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of “Women In Tech.”

Zev Shalev and Noel Casler asked Wheeler to break down the severity of the recent attacks on the US and what you can do to keep yourself secure at home. And Andrew Laufer stoops by to talk about a grand jury being empaneled in the case against Trump Org.

PaRT 1: KEEPING AMERICA SAFE

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PART 2: KEePING YOURSELF SAFE

The post Is America Cyber Secure? appeared first on Narativ.

President Biden finds some room to maneuver in a challenging world.

 “All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players”

Much has changed since William Shakespeare wrote ‘As You Like It’, but those words are as true today as they always were.

As Joe Biden enters the world stage as president, he inherits a world far different than the one he knew as Vice President.

The After Show takes you around the world with L.B., Greg Olear, and Zev Shalev.

Nord Stream And Middle East

CHARLES AND ALASKA

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The post Brave New World appeared first on Narativ.

New video analysis of Jan 6 reveals a coup attempt planned with military precision.

Independent journalist Sandi Bachom joins Noel Casler and me on Tuesday’s Narativ with her meticulous minute-by-minute log of Jan 6 footage.

Five takeaways

1. The Capitol building was surrounded and breached from all sides in a matter of minutes. A type of assault that would have required training and coordination.
2. The GOP and the military were involved in the planning.
3. The protesters were fodder for Trump’s ultimate goal: martial law.
4. Trump set the mob on Mike Pence by sending a tweet within minutes of the building’s breach.
5. We do not know but need to find out who ran the operation and from where?

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Bill Gates’ cover story about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is quickly unraveling.

There is more to the Gates’ divorce than meets the headlines. Noel Casler of the Noel Casler Podcast joins Zev Shalev.

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The post Bill and Jeffrey appeared first on Narativ.

The After Show tries to keep track of the many criminal enterprises of the GOP featuring Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, Allan Weisselberg, Joel Greenberg and Roger Stone.

PArt 1: RIP GOP?

Lincoln’s Bible and Prevail’s Greg Olear join Zev Shalev and discuss the new bride of the GOP and why things are heating up in the criminal investigation of Donald Trump.

Lincoln’s Bible also reveals news about her 5 season-deal for a new audio serial about the intersection of organized crime and intelligence called The World Beneath. It begins this Summer. Click on the link to subscribe and listen to the trailer.

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PART 2: Denial is a party CALLED THE GOP

The GOP is suffering from an acute case of denial about Jan 6.

CORRECTION. I erroneously reported that Richard Barnett had been sentenced to seven years. He has not been sentenced.

WATCH LIVE: Narativ’s shows air live on @NarativTV on Twitter and NarativTV on YouTube

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Narativ’s new investigation into the British monarchy and the man who may be its next King.

It’s been almost 70 years since Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the British throne in 1952. After the passing of her husband, Prince Philip, Narativ opens a new investigation into the power of the British monarchy and the man who may be its next King, Prince Charles. Zev Shalev is joined by Noel Casler and violinist David Klinkenberg.

PART 1: ROOTS

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PART 2: TRUMP

STAY TUNED FOR EXCITING NEW NARATIV ROYAL NEWS

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Liz Cheney’s actions are both a profile in courage and terrifying for those of us who care about democracy.

Cheney’s bold stand against the GOP was one of the topics when Prevail’s Greg Olear and Lincoln’s Bible joined me on the latest After Show. There’s also news about Bill Barr and Rudy Giuliani.

The other big topic this week was my investigation into OANN, the smallest, but most extreme of the far-right news channels. Scroll down for that story.

Let’s begin with Cheney.

New Details: Liz Cheney’s Profile in Courage

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Disrupt the Disinformation

Now to Narativ’s exclusive investigation into the backers of One America Network. OANN began operating in 2013 and has been at the center of every major disinformation conspiracy since then. I went searching for the real source of OANN financing and the trail led me to a Korean cult.

The post Fear Right appeared first on Narativ.

Why are the Proud Boys receiving massive donations from Chinese nationals? Plus revealing Rudy Giuliani’s crimes

Every Tuesday night, former Celebrity Apprentice talent executive Noel Casler joins me for the Narativ broadcast. We tried out a new format this week counting down to the top news story of the day. The news gods were smiling on us this week because all the stories led us to fascinating connections.

Part 1: Made in China

We began the countdown with a USA Today report about Chinese nationals funding the Proud Boys.  

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Part 2: The Rudy Files

If you’ve been following Narativ for the last few years, Rudy’s FARA violations were no surprise. Here’s why

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The scope of the investigation into Rudy Giuliani has expanded beyond a typical FARA probe to one about the national security interests of the US.

The Giuliani probe is expanding as federal investigators are looking into Roger Stone’s efforts to gain a pardon for Matt Gaetz’s friend Joel Greenberg. On the last After Show, we laid out the challenges facing Stone and Matt Gaetz’s investigation, as well as the investigation into Rudy Giuliani. Prevail publisher Greg Olear and LB were on the panel.

We began with Roger.

There’s something about Rudy….

Suddenly Rudy Giuliani’s world seems to be getting smaller. Last week, he was the subject of a federal search warrant at his home and office, which included the seizure of his electronic equipment. Now we’re discovering the charges under investigation are related to national security. 

Daniel Goldman, counsel for the Democrats in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, says he believed this investigation represents the financial side of the impeachment trial. Towards the end of 2019, I detailed this corruption scheme in a three part-serial called Ukraine Scheme. 

The impeachment trial centred around the actions of Rudy Giuliani and his two clients Lev Parnas and Igor Furman, to get the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, removed from office. Furman and Parnas have ties to Ukrainian organized crime figure Dmitry Firtash. 

Furman and Parnas were the tip of the spear in an operation to remove Yovanovitch, a career diplomat with a track record in fighting corruption.  

That campaign began in April 2018, when Lev Parnas attended a private dinner with former US president Donald Trump. Parnas pressured Trump to fire Yovanovitch because she was not supportive of then-president Poroshenko and his chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko.  

In May, Parnas and Furman posted an Instagram photo after a meeting with Pete Sessions, the former Congressman from Texas and one-time member of the powerful rules committee. After his meeting with Parnas and Furman, Sessions sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laying out his concerns about the ambassador.

Sessions and Giuliani did not act out altruistic reasons. They were likely heavily influenced by money paid to them by people within the Ukrainian government through Parnas and Furman, often using arms-length organizations or private companies. 

Pete Sessions was the beneficiary of $3 million in donations from Furman and Parnas’ gas company to the National Republican Conference. Rudy Giuliani received half a million dollars from Furman paid through that fraud guarantee company or a similar kind of company.

Giuliani’s private consulting proposal struck directly with Lutsensko’s office, and husband-and-wife legal team Joseph E. diGenova and Victoria Toensing never materialized. 

Here’s our conversation about Rudy.

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It is likely the most ambitious rebuilding plan ever announced by any American president. The fact it was announced on the very day Rudy Giuliani’s home and office were searched was a signal the ground was fundamentally shifting in the U.S., in ways seen and unseen.

Narativ carried the speech live with special guest Allison Gill of the Daily Beans podcast providing pre and post analysis. We also took a deep dive into Rudy’s search warrant which foreshadows a much larger investigation. Lincoln’s Bible, who played a critical role in alerting the world Giuliani and Trump were mobbed up, joined us live.

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The After Show tackles the curious case of Tucker Carlson and Amy Coney Barrett’s complicated book deal. 

The After Show with Zev Shalev, LB and Greg Olear airs live on Twitter on Fridays at 4 p PT / 7 p ET @NarativTV.  Scroll down for Tucker Carlson segment or start here with Amy Coney Barrett.

Support Narativ’s truly independent journalism. Become a member at Patreon for as little as $5 a month or at the recommended $10 a month tier.

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Narativ was live in the hours after the historic verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.  

In this podcast, Zev Shalev was joined by attorney Andrew Laufer, former Federal Prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, Journalist and author Nina Burleigh and guest co-host comedian and activist Noel Casler. Parts 1 & 2 below.

Narativ is made possible by viewers like you. Support our independent journalism at Patreon.com/Narativ

WHERE TO WATCH:Live @NarativTV on Twitter and YouTube or on-demand at Apple podcasts.

WHERE TO LISTEN: Narativ’s audio files are available on all podcast players including Spotify.

Don’t miss another show subscribe today.

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Erik Prince is sacked by his Chinese bosses from the company he founded, ‘Frontier Services Group’. We have the exclusive details:

This week’s After Show felt like Christmas for many of us seeking confirmation of years and years of research. And yet, it’s hard to feel very festive when you’re proven correct on your treason story. The treason is still treason.

EXHIBIT A: MANAFORT and Kiliminik

We’ve all known he was a treasonous campaign chair for Donald Trump since 2016. We even knew he was working with a Kremlin spy Konstantin Kilimnik, but that wasn’t quite good enough for Bob Mueller who couldn’t see the collusion so apparent before our eyes.

Then out of the blue, last Thursday, the Biden Treasury Department blasts out a statement which confirms what we knew all long – it was collusion after all.

Thanks for the A+ on the scorecard teach, but if you knew for so long, why did you still sell out America?

Lincolns Bible, Greg Olear and Zev Shalev on The After Show. (Keep scrolling for Erik Prince)

Exhibit B: Erik Prince

Erik Prince has been at the center of everything Trump-Russia and finally the the man known for the Blackwater fiasco may have met some consequence. He resigned as Deputy Chairman of the company he founded, the Beijing-backed Frontier Services Group, after a failed coup attempt in Libya.

It’s worth noting that a previous show we did about Erik Prince made it in to the UN report which concluded that Prince and others had violated the Libyan arms embargo.

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What if the US was subject to a financial attack and bitcoin was its trojan horse? Our two-part series: Bitcoin or Bust

China and Russia recently jointly announced a new goal – to dethrone the American dollar as the dominant currency on the planet, and replace it with their own national digital currencies. The move comes shortly after Beijing unveiled the new digital Yuan which is intended to unite traditional currencies and crypto in a single digital wallet.

And then there’s the IPO of Bitcoin exchange, Coinbase, anticipated to reach $100 million for a totally unregulated financial services sector with products that could tank the stock market.

For Narativ’s two-part series Bitcoin or Bust, Zev Shalev and Noel Casler are joined by extremism researcher and systems analyst Dave Troy, and early Bitcoin Investor Troy Esquivel.

1. White Coin

In Part 1, how bitcoin has become a magnet for white nationalists who could use it to threaten democracy. Dave has been tracking protagonists using similar disinformation patterns to pushing Bitcoin as he found while researching the Jan 6 insurrection. He also discovered a shell game where a lot of bitcoin was being purchased on credit.

Narativ is made possible by viewers like you. Support our independent journalism at Patreon.com/Narativ

2. DETHRONING THE DOLLAR

The panel sounds the alarm on too little regulation and very few criminal statutes which apply to Bitcoin. Is crypto part of Russia and China’s new aggressive strategy to hurt the US economy?

Watch or listen to Narativ pods on Apple Podcasts for free. All we ask of you in return is to follow or subscribe to our podcasts wherever you get them.

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An embattled Matt Gaetz has vowed to keep his job as he faces possible human trafficking charges, but the legal connection to Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump caught us all by surprise. 

That was one of the big topics on Friday’s After Show.   The other was the death of the Queen’s husband Prince Philip just shy of his 100th birthday. Watch for Greg Olear’s unbridled take on the Royals in Part 1.

Annus Horribilis

Legal Ties

In part 2, Zev Shalev ties Gaetz to Epstein and, Lincoln’s Bible talks about Putin’s crackdown on democracy.

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Donald Trump’s favorite Florida congressman just found out his party buddy, Seminole County’s former tax collector Joel Greenberg, has flipped on him and intends to plead guilty on reduced charges on May 15. The question is: in which of Greenberg’s many crimes is Matt Gaetz allegedly involved?

Zev Shalev is joined by Noel Casler, Andrew Laufer and for the first time on Narativ, filmmaker Melissa Jo Peltier.

PART 1 – Panhandle to Palm Beach

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PART 2 – Palmer to Pardons

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Scientists and Western governments have raised serious doubts about the WHO coronavirus investigation. The report is not only misleading, it suggests Beijing is involved in a cover up.

It didn’t take long for researchers and the Biden administration to sharply challenge the WHO investigation – the first undertaken by the organization, and the only international team allowed into China since the pandemic began in 2019.

The study was publicly billed as a World Health Organization investigation but was renamed recently as a “joint WHO/China investigation” and was accompanied on its release by a statement from the organization’s director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, which read in part: “WHO calls for further studies, data on origin of SARS-CoV-2 virus, reiterates that all hypotheses remain open”.

The United States alleges Beijing not only wrote a significant portion of the report, but also limited what international investigators were allowed to investigate.

My own review of the 300-page report revealed misleading conclusions which strongly suggest China’s regime is covering up the real cause of the Wuhan outbreak.

WATCH: Part one of the interview with Prof. Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University (above).

Lab Leak Theory

The WHO report lists four possible causes of the outbreak in order of their likelihood. The panel concluded the most likely origin of the outbreak was a zoonotic transmission from animal (potentially a bat) to a human.

The second most likely possibility was that the virus evolved through an intermediate animal like a pangolin to a human.

Transmission through frozen foods was third on the list of likely culprits.

The least likely cause according to the panel, was an accidental lab leak.

In reality, there’s little available evidence to support the three initial scenarios and a significant amount of evidence to support the lab leak, as I first reported last May.

Scientists cannot explain how quickly the virus adapted from bats to humans. A typical zoonotic process would require a longer evolutionary timeline and many more contacts between infected animals and humans but this never happened.

Chinese scientists have also tested thousands of species and food sources for signs of contamination but could not find a single match to the coronavirus.

That leaves scientists with only one remaining possibility – a leak from one of the labs at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which housed the largest bat coronavirus database in the world.

Researchers at the institute had been experimenting on bat coronaviruses including gain of function experiments which augment an existing genome by splicing it together with another genome, making it more amenable to human cells.

Prof Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University in Adelaide joined Zev Shalev and Noel Casler on the podcast to explain his research, which he says proves a lab leak is the only possible cause.

“What came out of the study was that [the coronavirus] was optimally designed to infect and transmit between humans, and every other animal species was below human. There is no evidence [that] virus was in humans prior to, October, November, December 2019. The only plausible answer is it saw human cells in the laboratory.”

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, Flinders University on Narativ

WATCH: Nina Burleigh joins Petrovsky for Part 2 of the podcast. Burleigh’s upcoming book is called ‘Virus’ and is available as a pre-order today at most booksellers like Amazon.

Study BLOCKED

Petrovsky initially struggled to gain public attention for his study because he says the virology community is concerned that disclosure would hurt their reputation and future funding.

“It was just being blocked, and it still hasn’t officially been published to this day. We think we might be on the cusp of getting it accepted nine months after we submitted it. It’s quite extraordinary. And it’s a very innocent paper.”

Author and journalist Nina Burleigh will soon publish ‘Virus’, out May 18. Burleigh says the scientific community must take a stand. “I think people like David Relman at Stanford, if more people would come out and say, it’s quite possible that this is an accident, then they have to come back and make some changes,” Burleigh said.

One question does remain unanswered: Was the virus accidentally or deliberately released? That’s a question few people want to answer or even entertain.

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Every Friday, Lincoln’s Bible, Greg Olear and Zev Shalev recap the week’s news.

This week they tackle Georgia’s voter suppression laws and another of the State’s race flashpoints, the Asian massage parlor killings with guest Tracy Quan, author of ‘Diary of A Manhattan Callgirl.’ Also discussed: Erik Prince’s weapon of mass disinformation and Vladimir Putin’s glamor shots.

Part One: Park Cannon and Erik Prince

Part Two: Massage Parlors and Vladimir Putin

The post Week In Review appeared first on Narativ.

US attorney Michael Sherwin appears to have broken protocol by appearing on 60 Minutes. What does it mean for the investigation?

Sherwin revealed to 60 Minutes important details only a prosecutor would know about the January 6 insurrection. Sherwin is a Trump appointee and is transitioning to a different position at the DOJ. Was he attempting to “blow up the case” for his former boss?

That’s one of the stunning claims made on Narativ’s Special Report: Waiting on Justice: An inside look at how the case against the Jan 6 insurrectionists is developing with former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner and independent journalist Sandi Bachom. Watch the full report below:

Glenn Kirschner‘s podcast and YouTube Channel is “Justice Matters” and support #TheDemocracyPledge by going to www.TheDPledge.com

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The War We’re In. Part Two.

Exclusive. Erik Prince was building a weapon of mass disinformation intended to attack Iran over social media in 2015. His former business partner believes he deployed the WMD targeting the U.S. instead. Zev Shalev searches for the invisible weapon and wonders if it’s still operational today.

Every day for the last four years, I’ve woken up, poured a cup of coffee, typed several keystrokes on my laptop, hit enter, and headed into combat in the most surreal of battlegrounds: Twitter.

There is no comparison between Twitter and actual physical war, but that doesn’t mean the stakes are not the same. In fact, as we’ve been discovering, the consequences of an information war may be far greater than conventional warfare.

For decades, global anti-Democratic forces have been waging war against the US: A battle for the hearts and minds, a clash of ideologies and narratives, fought by hacks and lies, fueled by data, and existential consequences.

I began writing this blog a month after Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016. I’d been on Twitter since 2009 but only casually. People began appearing in ever-growing numbers after the election searching for answers, and they found each other.

Suburban moms by day transformed into narrative warriors by night. Activists, screenwriters, lawyers, and academics researched until their eyes hurt. They shared data nodes within groups and organized them in threads until complex factual narratives came into focus. It was by far the most significant crowdsourced investigation ever conducted. And it was spontaneous.

That’s how we learned how Russia helped win the election for Trump: with cash laundered through the NRA, and a Facebook manipulation tool called Cambridge Analytica. It’s also how we discovered Russia’s alliance with a group of Middle East nations, domestic white supremacists, and Christian fundamentalists.

Something else had slipped unnoticed into Twitter at around the same time. A formidable stealth weapon of mass disinformation. 

No one knows what this WMD looks like, what makes it so powerful, and where it’s based. But the weapon’s ability to project messages and ideology across social media with such volume and presence is inexplicable. No matter how definitively the volunteer squadron of social media researchers and journalists proved something, the other side could swamp it with a counter-narrative. It’s almost like they had a perception-shifting machine pointed directly at us, which turned whatever we proved into a dull, far-away voice.

In The Wizard of OZ, it’s hard to see the wizard hiding behind the curtain, but if you look carefully enough, you can make out his outline. That’s what this story is about, so let’s go see The Wizard.

A WAR BY ANY OTHER NAME…

Once Trump was elected, many of us assumed the volume and ferocity of the social media attacks would die down, but the exact opposite happened,

While the media covered him like any other president, Trump plundered our democratic institutions. The intelligence community was insulted, the state department gutted, the FBI questioned, and the media decried as fake. His tweets about former president Barrack Obama seethed with contempt. 

Trump’s assault on democracy accompanied a Wagnerian-like flood of pro-Kremlin and anti-American propaganda. 

It was all designed to stoke our primal instincts and drown out reason.

A few may have felt a stirring they hadn’t felt before, of belonging to something bigger than themselves, but for most, it was fear—each tweet triggering a binary emotion.

Every morning, Trump launched an incendiary tweet about an already red-hot situation, then retreated to his private office in the Oval to watch the ensuing hysteria engulf the nation. Cable anchors were happy to comply, secretly flattered the most powerful man in the world was watching them. The bot networks amplified all of it.

No one had ever witnessed the weaponization of social media on this scale, and as far as I could tell, American agencies were not responding. 

It was an impossible fight of David and Goliath’s proportions. The Twitter crowd of investigators was small. We’d duke it out with the other side’s formidable machine and their army of real-life digital soldiers in what I can only describe as a whack-a-mole of narratives.

Nothing in my twenty-five years as a journalist (which included a baptism by fire in the dying days of Apartheid) had prepared me for the onslaught of propaganda, agents provocateur, intelligence assets, double-agents, swarms of digital bots, and the complexity of organization that we confronted.

I wrote my stories in long-form posts on this blog. 100+ chapters are all told, like a novel unraveling in real time. Russia House, Confirming the Kompromat, Dial C for Collusion, Facebook the Nation, Meet Me at The Mayflower, Facebook’s Dirty Little Secret, and For Guns and Country, to name a few.

There were no guides or rules. I thought about walking away but just couldn’t.

STATE DEPARTMENT WARNING

When Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine in April 2014, a forward-thinking diplomat typed a memo to his superiors at the State Department: 

[The Russians] unleashed an unprecedented social media propaganda campaign to shore up domestic support for President Vladimir Putin’s policy and to support anti-Kyiv protest activity on the streets of Southern and Eastern Ukraine. Official and allegedly unofficial social media accounts have spewed forth an unceasing stream of disinformation and gained more and more online followers. Russia may be swaying people through sheer volume or at least discouraging people from participating.

Unknown diplomat in State Department memo, Dec 2014

The diplomatic cable mentioned two social media accounts, Artem Klyushin and Konstantin Rykov – two Billionaire loyalists of Vladimir Putin. Considering their outsized role in the social media campaign of Ukraine in 2014 and their proximity to Putin, they should have been on the radar of US officials investigating 2016, yet we’ve heard very little about them.

Rykov is a Kremlin propagandist. 

Klyushin and his now ex-wife owned a bot development company, The Agency for Development of Innovative Technologies (APRIT), which was under contract for the Russian government in 2015 when many Kremlin-sanctioned campaigns to support Trump began.

Both men have ties to the Internet Research Agency – a social media content factory in St. Petersburg quixotically helmed by Putin’s former chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin, which carried out disinformation assaults on the Us in late 2016.

Another close connection to Vladimir Putin is another oligarch who shares the lasts name of Prigozhin. Iossif Prigozhin is a well-known Russian music producer. He is regularly on Klyushin’s Instagram feed, as is Emin Agalarov. That’s how the 50-year-old bot-maker met Trump at the 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow. Agalarov introduced them, and reporters spotted them regularly that week.

Klyushin boasts of an ability to “alter emotional and logical perceptions of situations” and claims his company could produce and amplify content through 1,000 accounts and millions of subscribers.

He doesn’t claim an ability to see into the future, yet somehow Klyushin’s wife knew enough to tweet this in January 2015, months before the world learned Trump was running, and yes, while under contract to the Kremlin.

“I’m sure @realDonaldTrump will be a great president. We’ll support you from Russia! America needs an ambitious leader”.

Klyushin celebrated Trump’s victory at an election night party in Moscow for Trump supporters. He bragged on Instagram that Trump would not have won without his help. Still, it’s hard to know where the bravado ends and the hubris begins. 

Klyushin often tweets advice to Trump, which days later often became presidential policy while Trump was in office.

The Senate Intelligence Committee said it believes Klyushin and Rykov were involved in manipulating social media perceptions in the 2014 Ukraine and the 2016 US elections.

Of course, achieving mass dissonance in the US is on a very different scale than in Ukraine. 

This may explain why Klyushin spends so much time in Dubai. That location shows up most on his Twitter posts, perhaps intentionally, but more likely because he forgot to turn off his geolocation.

POWER BROKER

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, gets the bulk of attention regarding Trump’s sordid relationship with Middle East countries, but it was the UAE’s crown prince Mohamed bin Zayed who was the power broker between the Trump campaign and the Gulf countries.

MBZ flew to New York City in Dec 2016 without informing the State Department, which is standard protocol. Obama officials were even more surprised when MBZ arrived at Trump Tower to meet Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, and Michael Flynn.

A month later, MBZ hosted a meeting in Seychelles – this time with Erik Prince and Russian envoy Kiril Dmitriev. Also present was George Nader, a senior advisor to the crown prince and a regular fixture on the Trump campaign (and current convict for human trafficking).

Prince represented the Trump Administration in the Seychelles talks, although he’s been on MBZ’s payroll for over a decade. Prince’s company Reflex Response (R2) was headquartered in Abu Dhabi and 51% owned by the Emiratis. Abu Dhabi is Prince’s official place of residence.

In 2015, The CEO of another of Prince’s companies was in Abu Dhabi and said he heard Prince discussing a psy-op that would weaponize social media to effect regime change in Iran.

Gregg Smith was the CEO of Frontier Services Group between 2014-16 and has a long history with Prince. Smith says he overheard a conversation between Prince and two former CIA agents working for him.

“Prince had a couple of former CIA officers that he employed, and they would sit there and talk about that psy-op running against the Iranians to try to get them to overthrow the regime there,” Smith told me on a recent Narativ podcast, “He just took the same psy-op and brought it to America.”

How could they target the US with a psy-op and evade detection? The answer is both macro and micro. Let’s begin with the macro. The CIA does not physically spy on the UAE, meaning there’s no human intelligence, which, as one former official told Reuters, amounts to a “dereliction of duty”.

While MBZ has been close to American presidents (notably Republican ones), he’s also maintained a close working relationship with Vladimir Putin, and his head of intelligence services, Sheikh Tahnoun Bin Zayed, maintains close ties with both the Russians and Israelis. The UAE has expanded its regional ambitions greatly in recent years operating militarily in Yemen and Syria and running covert military ops in Libya, notably under Prince.

In a sign of how sour the US-UAE relationship has become, President Joe Biden is yet even to call the crown prince almost two months into his administration. A significant diplomatic slight for what was until recently a major Middle East ally.

The micro answer to the above question is even more surprising.

PROJECT RAVEN

The US used UAE as a base for covert operations since the 1970s. The relationship was so close the US helped the Emiratis launch their own version of the National Security Agency. Today it’s called the Signals Intelligence Agency (SIA).

Dubbed “Project Raven” by the Americans, the NSA contracted out former NSA staffers to the Emirati agency beginning in 2008. They spied on thousands of people on behalf of the Emiratis, including some enemies of the crown prince.

“Raven” was based in an Abu Dhabi villa. The ex-NSA contractors trained SIA officials on top-secret technology and used protocols very similar to those used by the NSA.

“The incentive was to help in the fight against al-Qaeda. The UAE is a very good counterterrorism partner. You need to remember the timing back then, post 9-11,” Richard A. Clarke, a former US counterterrorism czar who helped build SIA told al-Jazeera. “The NSA wanted it to happen.”

That may have been the intention, but in 2016, one former NSA contractor discovered SIA was hacking the smartphones of American journalists.

The Ex-NSA staffers built the Emiratis an extraordinarily valuable resource. A network of remote servers allowed the Emiratis untraceable internet access to the world.

“Using fake identities and Bitcoin, the Infrastructure department anonymously rented servers worldwide. Those remote servers allowed Raven to launch attacks from a network of machines that cannot be traced back to the project.”

This seems to me to be something of extraordinary consequence. The only way to sustain a continuing social media manipulation psy-op like the one Prince was overheard describing would be to use a distributed network that would be untraceable to Twitter or any other bot detectors. For clarity, there’s no evidence to suggest the UAE used this facility for this purpose, but it strikes me as something you would need to run an operation like that and warrants further analysis.

One final note. One of Artem Klyushin’s ‘advice’ tweets to Donald Trump was a fawning endorsement of Erik Prince’s plan to privatize the war in Afghanistan, suggesting the two men know each other well enough to discuss military strategy.

Facebook The Nation

by Zev Shalev and Tracie McElroy September 12, 2017

Psychological Warfare

by Zev Shalev and Tracie McElroy September 5, 2017

Dial ‘C’ For Collusion

by Zev Shalev April 8, 2017

Here’s a selection of three Narativ pieces about data and psychological warfare in the 2016 election, beginning with one I wrote in April 2017.

MINDF*CK MACHINE

In May 2018, Chris Wylie exposed Cambridge Analytica’s use of 50 million Facebook profiles to build what Wylie called Stephen Bannon’s “mindf*ck machine. Days later, Channel 4 revealed CA’s use of honey traps to interfere in elections. Cambridge Analytica and its parent company quickly disbanded. 

CA’s owners transferred the company’s data and technology to Emerdata, co-owned by CA’s original owners, the Mercers, a Chinese associate of Erik Prince and Ahmed al-Khatib, who has close ties to the Emirati Crown Prince. The existence of Emerdata was discovered by fellow Twitter investigator Wendy Siegelman. The name was Emerdata derives from the Emirates.

Siegelman also reported another SCL alum Nigel Oakes, calls UAE home 

It’s hard to imagine the Crown Prince, who was the first and only foreign leader to meet directly with the Trump transition team in December 2016, was collecting all these assets and gathering operatives like Klyushin, Prince, Nader, and Oakes, all while hacking the phones of US journalists, for any other reason other than some sort of political operation.

So let’s imagine you had the mind-fucking instincts of the Russians, A highly functional distributed server network purpose-built by the NSA. And access to the raw data of 50 million Facebook users. Would that be enough to launch a psy-op in the US?

Almost.

To manipulate the entire Twitter population individually, you would need Artificial Intelligence. Only A.I. could process such a vast amount of data accurately and quickly. The search for a firm able and willing to undertake such a task led me to Israel’s Fifth Dimension.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Fifth Dimension was another one of these private spyware companies that spawned from Israel’s famed 8200 division. The company’s chairman Benny Gantz was until recently considered the likely successor to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg – another Putin acolyte – was the principal investor in Fifth Dimension until he received US sanctions for meddling in the 2016 elections and other malign activity. The April 2018 sanctions effectively froze the oligarch’s assets in the Russian gas sector, but they also surprisingly caused Fifth Dimension to shut down.

It’s unusual for a company specializing in the very sought-after space of machine learning to shut down, especially one with the backing of the Israeli Defense Force – even if their biggest investor backed out. Any private equity firm would jump at the chance to invest in a tech start-up like that, but not Fifth Dimension.

Fifth Dimension’s closure coincided with the shuttering of another Israeli spy firm with ties to the Trump campaign and Erik Prince. PSY Group worked on social media manipulation for the campaign for over a year and was shut down in December 2018. Prince first approached PSY-Group for a project in 2015.

Fifth Dimension transferred its residual technology to yet another Israeli tech firm, NSO, that specialized in the hacking of smartphones – the same hacking firm involved in Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination.

Was Fifth Dimension playing a more significant role in the 2016 election, which has somehow evaded the law? Or was the company’s technology used by others after it shut down? Or might we never know because we don’t spy on our allies?

It appears that many Israeli private spy tech firms like PSY-Group, Black Cube, NSO, and more recently, Carbyne and Cellebrite are fronts for Israeli and Russian stakeholders to surveil citizens of other countries or interfere in their domestic affairs without damaging official Israeli-American relations. Whether Fifth Dimension was, too, is impossible to say but worth assessing.

That’s as far as I can take you on our journey to see the Wizard, but hopefully, I’ve provided you with enough to see his outline, so keep an eye out for him the next time you wade on to Twitter.

We battled that monstrous machine for four years, fighting a war for the heart and minds of Americans. A race against the clock to avoid a second Trump term. A war most Americans didn’t even know existed. And a war we won, for now.

You can read part one of ‘The War We’re In‘ here.

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Woody Allen’s op against Mia Farrow and we meet Josh Remillard who is running for a North Carolina seat held by a rising GOP star who is not what he seems.

Woody Allen survived a scandal which would normally crush an actor’s career.  How did he do it? Greg Olear’s new piece in Prevail breaks down Allen’s campaign against Mia Farrow.  Lincoln’s Bible and Don Lewis also talks about the reason behind the Atlanta gunman’s attack on massage parlors.

PART 2: JOSH REMILLARD

Madison Cawthorn is the poster-child for the GOP.  A wheelchair-bound country boy who is the youngest person to ever be elected to Congress. He also supported seditionists, lied about his military service and now it turns out was a predator at school,  Josh Remillard is the Democratic candidate who wants to challenge Madison.  Remillard He tells us his incredible story.    Greg Olear, LB and Don Lewis are with Zev Shalev on the panel. 

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The story of one man’s life-long struggle to expose a child abuse scandal on Jersey Island – a crown dependency ruled directly by the Queen.

It became known as the House of Horrors. The Children’s Home on the Island of Jersey where hundreds of children were sexually abused, including by entertainer Jimmy Savile.

The discovery of the child abuse at Haut De La Garenne would land up exposing the dark side of a global elite willing to look the other way in exchange for the tax shelter the island provides them.

Stuart Syvret was once a promising young Senator and Jersey’s Health Minister until he tried to expose the child abuse scandal and was fired on trumped up charges. He’s paid the price for the rest of his life.

Stuart joined LB and Zev Shalev on Narativ to tell his story.

PART 1: MONEY ISLAND: House of Horrors

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PART 2: MONEY ISLAND: A Royal Shame

The price you pay for saving children from child abuse and Jersey which is considered a crown dependency and is under the direct control of the Queen. It’s the place many foreign corporations and the world richest people hide their money to avoid taxes. Among them many members of the Russian mob that have in recent years strangled the British economy, corrupted its leaders and ultimately resulted in Brexit.

Stuart won a huge victory when the BBC dedicated a prime time documentary to his life-long work to expose the child abuse in Jersey. It’s because of Stuart that children are safe in Jersey today and hopefully the millionaires who call the island home can do something in return for Syvret to say thank you.

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The After Show has the latest on the FBI’s investigation into the Jan 6 insurrection, Piers Morgan, and breakthrough reporting on how Facebook uses Artificial Intelligence to radicalize users. 

And the big news of the week, President Joe Biden’s ‘miraculous’ Covid-19 vaccination effort, reaching 100 Million shots in 50 days. We’re calling it “Coviderance”.

This week’s After Show features stand up comedian Noel Casler on the panel with L.B. and Prevail’s Greg Olear.

PART 1: Coup and Piers

RICO is in the air and Roger Stone may be catching a whiff of it.

PART 2: FACEBOOK AI and Coviderance

Karen Hao, Sr AI reporter at MIT’s Technology Review, joins the After Show.  Hao discusses her exclusive reporting revealing how Facebook uses A.I. to radicalize its users.  

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Some people believe the Council for National Policy is the biggest domestic threat to American democracy. Narativ interviews Anne Nelson and Dave Troy on the CNP’s dystopian agenda.Anne Nelson wrote the book about the CNP. In “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” Nelson explores the evolution of the right wing’s umbrella council from its roots in social conservatism to the radical extremism it supports today.

Nelson’s recent article detailed how members of the CNP helped organize the Jan 6 ‘Stop The Steal’ event. She joins Zev Shalev along with disinformation researcher Dave Troy.

PART 1: DEEP BACKGROUND

Dave reveals the CNP’s roots in U.S. intelligence and Anne reveals how the CNP helped organize the Jan 6 attempted coup. 

PART 2: EXTREME MACHINE

Anne and Dave discuss ways democrats can respond to the CNP.

The post CNP EXPOSED appeared first on Narativ.

This week’s Narativ After Show took on Andrew Cuomo’s relations, the failed Trump coup, GOP whining and Brett Kavanaugh.

Authors Nina Burleigh and Greg Olear, and journalist Sandi Bachom joined Zev Shalev on the After Show.

PART 1: Cuomo and the Coup

Sandi began the show by revealing she had just had an unexpected Twitter spat with one of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s accusers.

PART 2: Pantheon and Kavanaugh

Followers of Greg Olear’s Prevail site will have read Greg and L.B.’s 5-part investigation into Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s questionable path to the SCOTUS bench, which sets you up perfectly for Greg’s Friday night rant.

You can watch a live taping of Narativ’s After Show every Friday at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET on @ZEVSHALEV‘S Twitter feed.

The post Cuomo and the Coup appeared first on Narativ.

(And How To Win It.)

Science confirms Donald Trump’s actions and inactions caused at least 40% of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. Amid the grief, are we missing the reason he did it? Part 1.

How do you measure the toll? You can count the bodies or cite the unemployment rate but neither adequately captures the human loss of the last four years. Half-a-million lives taken, thousands more with long-term injuries, so many shattered careers, and the vanished hopes of many Americans.

We glaze over the numbers, and we sigh at the hopelessness of it all. It’s often felt like the world of pain will continue until our apocalyptic destruction. This outcome is neither true nor inevitable, yet just the thought of it paralyzes us into inaction.

We need to dislodge from that narrative and see our current situation for what it is. Nobody wants to be at war, especially not right now. Still, we can’t find our battle footing, we can’t unite against a common enemy, we can’t fulfill our promise to future generations if we don’t acknowledge the cold hard truth: we’re at war.

This war isn’t fought with tanks and missiles, but rather with deception and manipulation. The goal remains the same as traditional conflict: one nation(s) inflicts maximum damage and casualties until another country submits to its rule or demands.

The first shot of deception in this war was fired when Donald Trump was elected as U.S. president.

Although he was legitimately elected, Trump was not an American president. He is a Russian intelligence asset. According to former KGB officer Yuri Shvets in Craig Unger’s American Kompromat, the Russians began grooming Trump at the height of the Cold War when the KGB still existed. He remains under the influence of Russia’s intelligence services until today.

But even if you doubt Trump’s ties to Russia, or you shrug at his $200 Million loan from China, the tale of his presidential tape speaks volumes:

Trump will go down in shame. The only president impeached twice, whose approval rating never crossed over 50%, and the only POTUS to attempt a violent coup. 

His overt and sycophantic appeasement of the autocrats who pulled his puppet or purse strings was an early public giveaway of his treacherous intentions. His policies made it clear he was acting on orders from the Kremlin, Beijing, or Riyadh. 

As Hong Kong democracy protesters appealed for our help against China’s clampdown on democratic rights on the island, the U.S. didn’t respond. Trump’s silence will remain an indelible act of democracy’s submission to tyranny. His abandonment of the Middle East to archaic patriarchies and kingdoms has extinguished the hope that equality and freedom could have ushered in for the region’s people. Generations worldwide will equate America’s intentional collapse in response to coronavirus as the loss of American hegemony. 

This is not how American presidents act. This is how a puppet president acts, who climbed to power in an unholy alliance of white supremacists, Christian fascists, catholic extremists and facilitated by a gang of foreign dictators and kleptocrats.

If it were up to me, Congress would strip Trump of his titles and rescind every action he took, including nullifying the appointments of three Supreme Court justices and hundreds of federal judges, and throw him in jail.

But it isn’t up to me. And while there are impressive efforts to reverse four years of destructive policies, and equally determined efforts to prosecute Trump, we cannot erase the last four years’ events, nor are we likely to see him gracefully exit the stage. 

Trump was installed as an act of war against us and our way of life, and as long as he can antagonize Americans or sow chaos, he’ll remain a dangerous force in U.S. politics. He’ll be here until he and his enablers are banished; until we win the war.  

A Wartime President, but not ours

We usually measure war by the physical destruction, by the number of deaths and injuries caused by combat or the miles ceded to the enemy. It’s hard to fathom we are the victims of war without seeing the actual destruction around us. But that does not mean the destruction is not happening. 

General Valery Gerasimov is the Chief of Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces, the Kremlin’s top soldier and the author of a war doctrine that bears his last name.

The Gerasimov Doctrine declares you can achieve significant destruction using what the Russians call hybrid warfare, which blends soft military tactics, intelligence operations, influence and information campaigns, active measures and cyber warfare.

A hot war without bullets.

The results are often more dramatic than conventional war and come with a deepening sense of mystery and a frustrating inability to reciprocate. As one former KGB officer said, “It’s not easy to find the black cat in a dark room, especially if the black cat isn’t there.” 

The alliances began well before 2015, but it entered a new phase that year when a gang of Middle-East leaders chastened by eight years of principled Obama rule and an Arab Spring joined an ill-conceived secret axis of powers behind America’s back.

Along with an already allied China and Russia, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, his Emirati counterpart Mohammed bin Zayed, Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu, and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi struck a new alliance.

The Middle East leaders wanted to realign the region’s balance of power by using brute force to solve previously intractable issues without much regard for human life or rights. This axis would later provide cover for Russia and Turkey to rampage across Syria to bolster Bashar al-Assad’s rule, driving out the Kurds, America’s loyal allies in the region.

But in 2015, the axis was missing one thing: an amenable U.S. politician who would not only back their plan but could be elected as U.S. president. They eventually found their candidate in Donald Trump.

Trump utilized an Israeli social media manipulation firm, PSY Group, to help engineer his victory. According to Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Report, the Saudis and Emiratis picked up the tab for part of that operation under Erik Prince’s direction. Prince is bankrolled by China.

They also found a domestic base of support in America’s wealthy, Christian, and often-racist white elite through Prince.

I call this partnership between these Axis powers and their domestic enablers the “enemies of democracy’; others use the terms ‘anti-democratic’ or ‘authoritarian’, but no matter what you call them, they represent an existential threat to America as we know it.

There are two mindset shifts we need now. The first is to behave as if we are at war because we are. The second is to allow ourselves a little imagination.  More on the first later, but for the second, we need to expand our world view.

A PERFECT CONFLUENCE

Vladimir Putin spent the afternoon of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in the Kremlin with his Chinese counterpart Premier Li Keqiang. The two leaders inked a new deal to cement their countries’ alliance, while Trump was declared the next president of the U.S.A

Across the world in New York City, Putin’s trusted delegate Kiril Dmitriev received a text from a business associate. “Putin has won,” it read.

The next day, Putin congratulated Trump warmly on his victory. Xi Jinping followed with his congratulations and an invitation for the newly elected president to visit.

There is a tendency in the American mindset to organize events into specific categories. A pandemic falls into the health category and cannot possibly also be an instrument of malign foreign power. Foes are foes ,and friends are friends, but other nations don’t always share such binary thinking.

It’s even more challenging to accept that an American president was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Still, it’s now a matter of scientific fact that Trump’s failed response to the pandemic contributed significantly to the 500,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19.

500,000 is more people than died in combat in all of America’s wars against foreign enemies, combined. The U.S. represents only 5% of the world’s population but accounts for 20% of global Covid-19 deaths. How could the world’s leading economy with the leading scientific minds account for one-fifth of the world’s deaths?

A growing body of scientific research proves Trump’s failure to respond to the pandemic directly resulted in mass death. Among the most conservative but well-regarded estimates is that Trump caused at least 40% of all Covid deaths. That’s 200,000 deaths based on the current death toll.

And the U.S. also leads the world in the number of Covid-19 cases. That total number indicates an unimaginable long-term health crisis is on our horizon. Some studies suggest as many as one-third of Covid-19 sufferers face long-term health issues related to coronavirus six months after contracting the disease.

I can’t shake the memory of Trump’s super-spreader campaign events last August. He knew he was spreading Covid-19, especially after contracting it himself. The only reason he would be so cavalier and destructive is if Big Pharma, China or Russia somehow incentivized him to spread the disease.

On the global stage, China has reaped the rewards of Trump’s mishandling of coronavirus in terms of trade and foreign influence. Russia too has expanded its influence through military conquest, which Trump didn’t challenge and, in some cases, even supported. Russia and China have also combined efforts to expand their military footing in the Arctic, leaving the U.S. and Canada at greater risk.

Today, more than a year after the Coronavirus pandemic first tore through Wuhan, China, Xi is all but declaring victory over the U.S. “The biggest source of chaos in the present-day world is the United States,” Xi Jinping is quoted as saying. “The East is rising and the West is declining.”

This statement would have seemed foolish four years ago, but is far less so after Trump’s term in office.

It’s no wonder Putin and Xi Jinping were so quick to congratulate Trump on his 2016 election victory, and the Chinese leader was so eager to host Trump on a state visit to China. During that state visit, Trump showed Xi a video of his granddaughter Arabella serenading her ‘Grandaddy Xi’ in perfect Mandarin.

By contrast, it took Xi and Putin weeks to acknowledge President Biden’s win in 2020.

If 500,000 dead, a long-term health crisis, the devastation of our economy and our plummeting global standing are not the result of war, what is? Is there another way to rationally explain this confluence of tragedy that somehow struck the United States with such wicked timing?

To put it in blunt terms, Trump is a Russian asset and his negligence in dealing with the coronavirus, which originated in China, appears to have been to the net benefit of China and its Russian ally, and to the extreme detriment of the United States.

You can read part two of ‘The War We’re In‘ here.

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If history rhymes, our current moment would find its rhyming pair in post-World War 1 Europe.

Both Mussolini and Hitler attempted coups – Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922 and Hitler’s Munich Putsch of 1923 – and both events have striking similarities to Trump attempted coup of January 6, 2021. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote the extraordinary book Strongmen and returns to Narativ to look at these two events in detail.

PART 1: MUSSOLINI’s MArch on ROme

PART 2: HITLER’S MUNICH PUTSCH

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Attorney Andrew Laufer believes Donald Trump is facing a “multi-jurisdictional world of hurt” as pending court cases against him and his allies begin to stack up.

Andrew Laufer (@LauferLaw) joins Zev Shalev, L.B. and Greg Olear on the After Show to break down the cases from tax fraud to manslaughter and sedition.

All of Narativ’s podcasts are available as free audio file on your favorite podcast app like Spotify and if you have Apple, you can also get the video podcasts exclusively on Apple podcasts. Please remember to subscribe. Thank you for your support.

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President Joe Biden’s decision to declassify a CIA report blaming Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for the operation which killed Jamal Khashoggi was Biden’s first act under his ‘diplomacy first’ foreign strategy.

Civil rights attorney Andrew Laufer joined the After Show this week, along with L.B. and Greg Olear to talk about Biden’s Saudi maneuvre which included a snub of the Crown Prince.

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The inside story of the making of Q-anon.

Lt-Gen Michael Flynn briefly served as Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor in 2017 before being fired for his suspected ties to Russia. Even though he left the administration and would later face charges in a related crime, Flynn never stopped working on Trump’s behalf.

Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr scuttled the case but not before Judge Emmet Sullivan could tell Flynn “arguably you sold your country out.”

Flynn re-emerged after being granted a pardon by Trump in Dec 2020 as one of the key organizers of the January 6 “Stop The Steal” event which led to to the storming of the Capitol.

One of the key constituents of the insurrectionists was a group of devout followers of Qanon – a social media radicalization machine that appears to have its roots in the intelligence community.

On the latest Narativ, systems analyst Dave Troy joined L.B. and Zev Shalev to unpack Dave’s research on the origins of Q.

1: Mike Flynn AND THE MAKING OF Q

Dave break down the intelligence roots of Q, how it works and meet some of the Q devotees.

PART 2: DINNER In ST LOUIS

A photo of Michael Flynn at a conservative conference shows him dining with some of Q’s key amplifiers.

If you like these, please remember to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast player like Spotify, Google or Apple.

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Was the Capitol insurrection of Jan 6 an attempted military coup?

For weeks, we’ve been breaking down all the events and timelines that led up to the January 6 attempted coup. Yesterday’s Senate hearing with the former chief of the Capitol Police and the former Sergeant at Arms confirmed much of our reporting, and raised even more questions.

Independent journalist Sandi Bachom and systems analyst Dave Troy joined L.B. and Zev Shalev to dissect the testimony.

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A UN report finds that Erik Prince violated a UN arms embargo by supporting Khalifa Hafter’s attempted overthrow the United Nations government in Tripoli.

The news broke in the New York Times on Friday just as the After Show was set to go live with special guest Gregg Smith – Prince’s former business partner and a man who helped bring Prince’s Libya escapade to the attention of the UN and the US Department of Justice which buried the investigation for the duration of the Trump administration.

We first exposed Prince’s Libya operation on Narativ in September when Smith first appeared on Narativ in “Prince of Proxy“.

These days, Smith is taking on a new challenge – as a Democratic Party candidate in Colorado’s 3 rd district which is currently represented by gun-toting GOP Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.

Smith joined Greg Olear and and L.B. on the After Show panel to talk Prince, Cancun Cruz, Boebert and the insurrection of Jan 6.

Part 1: THE UN COMES CALLING FOR PRINCE

PART 2: Prince was central to Trump’s election win

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Narativ follows the money behind the January 6 insurrection.

Ever since the words “follow the money” were spoken in “All The President’s Men”, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to track the often dark money that courses through the American body politic.

If Watergate made political crooks crafty, Citizens United brought them into the light.

The 2010 SCOTUS decision opened the floodgates to corporate money by allowing corporations and wealthy individuals to hide behind opaque LLCs to exert their political will.

That’s how we landed up with Donald Trump in 2016, and Trump’s attempted coup in 2021. On this week’s Narativ, we’re launching ‘Money Trails’ a new banner for our follow-the-money investigation.

National politics reporter and “Trump Women” author Nina Burleigh and Lincoln’s Bible join me on the panel.

Part 1: Women For Trump

Nina Burleigh’s recent reporting in The New Republic focused on the wealthy women who bankrolled the insurrection, which got us thinking who else is paying for the attempted coup?

Correction: The founders of Women for Trump were misidentified in the ‘Money Trails’ podcast. The founders are Amy Kremer and Ann Stone.

Part 2: OHIO RAINMAKER

In Part 2, we take a deeper look at James G. Ryan – an Ohio attorney who helps fund Carolyn Wren’s “Security Through Strength” PAC. Ryan has a decades long history of registering LLCs with unconventional purposes, including one that shares the name of Leslie Wexner’s Victoria’s Secret.

Can you help us identify connections between James G. Ryan’s LLC’s and related entities? Here’s the full list.

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Donald Trump’s acquittal in his impeachment trial turns the spotlight onto the GOP.

The final vote was 57-43 to acquit, but few observers felt the vote reflected the case which was clear and well-argued. The vote instead served as confirmation that the GOP was either complicit or so corrupt, it made a fair trial impossible.

Noel Casler, who spent six years working alongside Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice, was our special guest on last Friday’s After Show, along with independent journalist Sandi Bachom and our Friday regulars Greg Olear and L.B.  

TRUMP ON TRIAL: GOP

By the final days of argument, the defense had all but given up arguing a legitimate case. Two things had become crystal clear: There was neither a plausible defense for Trump’s high crimes nor any possibility he’d be convicted for them. The Fifth Avenue rule he claimed for himself in 2016 appeared truer than anyone cared to admit.

TRUMP ON TRIAL: NAtional guard

One of the most striking moments of the House managers presentation was that Trump willfully avoided sending in reinforcements to save his colleagues on Capitol Hill. In fact, my research reveals Trump’s Pentagon allies effectively stood down the National Guard days before the insurrection. Reporter Sandy Bachon was at the Capitol on insurrection day and shared some unique observations and video footage from the day.

STANDING DOWN THE GUARD

On January 4, 2021, two days before the insurrection. Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller issued new guidelines to the commander of the D.C. National Guard ordering any deployment had to be approved by the Pentagon and limited the type of gear the guardsmen could use and any action they could take.

On January 6, when the former Chief of the Capitol Police Steven Sund requested reinforcements from the Guard, he was referred to the Pentagon. Sund was included in the 4 PM call, where he requested the deployment and when it was first rejected.

It took 2-and-a-half-hours from the time the request was first made for the National Guard to arrive.

The post Trump’s Insurrection appeared first on Narativ.

As the impeachment trial of Donald Trump begins, new details and questions about the GOP’s involvement in the insurrection

I must have been among the first people to float the idea of Donald Trump’s second impeachment. It was January 6 at 3:25 PM and the protestors had already spent about two hours rampaging through the Capitol. From our recent shows that looked at the rise of fascism and Russia’s exploits in Ukraine and Angola, I was pretty sure what I was looking at was not a spontaneous event.

In the weeks leading up to the election certification, I suggested on the podcast that Trump could be setting up a post-presidency insurgency.

A week later, when Mitch McConnell opened the door to an impeachment trial and conviction, I was again pretty sure of what I was looking at.

Since then, we’ve learned even more about Trump’s seditious conspiracy, coordinated by his key advisors and supported by lawmakers and big funders of the GOP.

Trump On Trial 1:

The central question is how can the GOP Senators act as jurists if some among their ranks aided and abetted the plot?

I asked former Former federal prosecutor and host of the Justice Matters podcast, Glenn Kirschner that question and he didn’t mince his words in his reply. National political journalist and author Nina Burleigh and Harvard Law School alum and political activist Don Lewis also joined the panel.

TRUMP ON TRIAL 2:

In Part 2, Constitutional law expert Lisa Kerr joined the panel and says senators who don’t convict, imperil their political futures.

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With Donald Trump’s impeachment trial beginning in the U.S. Senate, the man some refer to as Trump’s Russian handler is facing a political endgame of his own, thousands of miles away.

Vladimir Putin’s near 20-year run as president of Russia may be nearing an end, but that doesn’t mean the recently jailed Alexei Navalny will be leading a popular revolution any time soon. In fact, someone far worse than Putin could be waiting in the wings.

We invited back Russian Kompromat author Craig Unger and former KGB officer Yuri Shvets for a second visit to the Narativ podcast, along with Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding to discuss the future of Russia, and for a definitive answer to the question – is Trump a Russian’s asset.

RUSSIA ON THE BRINK 1

RUSSIA ON THE BRINK 2

We ask the panel why they think Trump is a Russian asset?

Two books worthy of any well-informed reader’s bookshelf. Craig Unger’s American Kompromat and Shadow State by Luke Harding

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The insurrection of January 6 was not a spontaneous event. It was the result of a months-long effort by Donald Trump’s key political operatives.

“A vast right wing conspiracy,” is how Luke O’Brien of the Huffington Post describes a decades-long political operation which led to the insurrection on Jan 6. O’Brien joined Michael Edison Hayden of the Southern Poverty Law Center on the latest Narativ podcast. They revealed a hate network of provocateurs and organizations that not only reaches Donald Trump’s inner circle but the highest ranks of the GOP.

TRUMP ON TRIAL 1

In Part 1, like any mob boss, Donald Trump knew what his operatives were planning for January 6.

Trump on TRIAL 2

In Part 2, Trump’s key advisor Michael Flynn and Alex Jones of Infowars played key roles in the insurrection. We also ask if the military was involved?

Michael Edison Hayden is a senior investigative journalist and spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center and Luke O’Brien has been exposing the architecture of the hate group network for Huffington Post, including revealing the identity of a White nationalist troll which resulted in a recent indictment.

You can listen to all our Narativ podcasts in your favorite podcast player like Spotify. Our video pods are exclusively available on Apple podcasts.

The post A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy appeared first on Narativ.

Intelligence agencies have always been worried about a monster plot like a Manchurian candidate, but somehow a Russian asset was still elected president.

Hot on the heels of our bombshell interview confirming Donald Trump as a Russian asset, Former Assistant Director of Counterintelligence at the FBI Frank Figliuzzi visits the After Show to discuss how a Russian asset was allowed to be President? Lincolns Bible and “Dirty Rubles” author Greg Olear join Zev Shalev on the panel. 

PUTIN’S POTUS 1

From court cooperation agreements to intelligence secrecy and a flailing media all played a role in electing Trump

Putin’s Potus 2

Trump is gone, but the threat isn’t over.

Frank Figliuzzi’s new book is called “The FBI Way” is available here. 

Narativ’s audio files are available on most podcast players like Spotify.

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Donald Trump was first spotted as a potential KGB asset in 1980 by the owner of Joy Lud Electronics, Sam Kislin, and cultivated as a Russian intelligence asset over the next 40 years.

For the first time, a former KGB officer has gone on the record to confirm that Donald Trump was an asset for Russian intelligence. The detailed claim is laid bare in Craig Unger’s new book, American Kompromat. Unger and the former KGB officer Yuri Shvets join L.B. and Zev Shalev on the latest Narativ and described the cultivation process in breathtaking detail.  

The Cultivation Of Donald Trump 1

From Joy Lud Electronics to the White House, the grooming of a Russian asset.

THE CULTIVATION OF DONALD TRUMP 2

Trump’s puppet presidency was a money making operation, just like his business was a money laundering vehicle for Russian intelligence.

The post The Russian Asset appeared first on Narativ.

From hybrid warfare to a disinformation machine, Donald Trump’s insurrection did not happen overnight.

Early readers of Narativ from when it was a blog will recall terms like hybrid warfare and Gerasimov’s Doctrine. These are abstract military concepts unfamiliar to most of us for whom war is a far away thing.

When Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 they were the embodiment of a hybrid war transforming into kinetic action. A rare historic and political event that was also testament to the effectiveness of this mostly Russian-practised military art of hybrid warfare.

In a traditional war, two sides face off against each other on either side of a front line. When the shooting begins, it’s very obvious who is firing.

In a hybrid war, disinformation agents, cyber hackers, bribed officials and embedded foreign operatives all operate simultaneously on different fronts. When there is no front the firing can appear to be coming from your own side, or from everywhere or sometimes no place at all.

On the latest Narativ podcast, Twitter’s mob authority ‘Lincoln’s Bible’ and Dirty Rubles author Greg Olear joined me to explain how Donald Trump and his enablers caused an insurrection, and why they’re not finished yet. It’s worth your while to watch both parts of the podcast. Begin here:

In a well-structured hybrid campaign, significant portions of the population are manipulated by an extraordinary array of disinformation and propaganda tools. This is how Q-anon went from conspiracy theory to a radicalized domestic terror organization in just four years.

When a lie is repeated often enough, like Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen from him, significant population groups will not only believe the lie, they can be coaxed into acting on it.

We like to believe we are masters of our own domain in the US, and the radicalization of these characters is purely homegrown, but in all likelihood we are witnessing the result of tools created by foreign intelligence as part of a foreign operation. And we shouldn’t be surprised, Jan 6 is certainly not the first sign of a Russian hybrid assault on the US.

In part 2 of the podcast below, we explore who in the GOP appears to have conspired with the insurrection, and detail the foreign operatives and the enablers who built Trump’s disinformation machine.  

The post HOW DID WE GET HERE? appeared first on Narativ.

An insurrection directed by Donald Trump leaves four people dead and many open questions.  

Donald Trump urged protesters to march on Capitol Hill but did he also direct Capitol Police to allow his supporters to access the building? Just one of the many questions answered on last night’s podcast.

Twitter’s mob authority @LincolnsBible, podcaster @CheriJacobus and national political journalist @NinaBurleigh are on the panel.

In part 2, attention turns to Article 25 and the future of the GOP.

The post Acts Of Sedition appeared first on Narativ.

Russia is the chief suspect in a devastating cyber attack on the U.S. federal government, but who let the Russians in? 

Chris Vickery of Upguard and Alan W. Silberberg of DigiJaks join Zev Shalev and warn of America’s increasing vulnerability to such attacks. Part 1 is above.

Part 2 is below, where the attention turns to Facebook and Amazon, among others, who provide entry points to hackers with malign intent, and may even benefit from vulnerable networks.

The post Prelude To A Storm appeared first on Narativ.

The Supreme Court finally puts a definitive end to Trump’s hopes of a second term but not before exposing a massive corruption scheme in Texas. Eric Garland, Greg Olear, Nina Burleigh and Lincoln’s Bible. 

Part 2:

The post Sedition Edition appeared first on Narativ.

Can the people fire Brett Kavanaugh? Greg Olear thinks the answer is yes, and explains why on the latest Narativ Podcast.

Greg Olear wears many hats. He is the publisher of the great Prevail newsletter and a regular contributor to Friday night’s “After Show’ on Narativ. On the latest episode, Greg introduced us to one of the most thought-provoking pieces about taking back power I’ve read in years.

Written under the pseudonym of Moscow Never Sleeps, the author lays out a very specific case for ejecting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh from SCOTUS, without a single impeachment vote being cast in the house or senate.

Maybe, as the Republican talking points go, it is mere anecdotal supposition that Kavanaugh the man is a functional alcoholic, a compulsive gambler, and an abuser of women. Nevertheless, it is objective truth from the signed financial disclosures of Kavanaugh the public servant that he and his wife are a solidly middle-class suburban couple living significantly beyond their means. In 2006, when he was a federal judge, Brett and the Missus put an unexplained down payment on a jumbo-mortgaged $1,225,000 house; at the time, he was making $63k a year, and she was mostly a SAHM. The family went heavily into unsecured credit card debt every year thereafter.

MOSCOW NEVERS SLEEPS IN PREVAIL

I recommend the entire piece, along with the accompanying piece about Clarence Thomas. The posts are well-written and convincingly argued but what really strikes the reader is something we need to get used to: doing – striking preemptively and with precision.

Rules and order are great when everyone adheres to them, but what is happening now is one side is wantonly ignoring the rules while simultaneously using the rules to break the system. In nature, as in some case law, the rules don’t matter when you’re facing an imminent threat.

The Republic remains in grave danger. We have chased the invaders from our House but they have left their emissaries planted all across government, our institutions and in every court circuit of the land.

Democrats are entitled to take whatever precautionary measures they deem necessary to avert a complete breakdown of everything being attempted by the GOP.

And I don’t mean only House Representatives. House Dems have a slim majority and a long agenda. They should focus on policy. But there’s plenty of room for citizens to keep watch over our democracy on every level and strike with precision to save the Republic.

The post B Is For Brett appeared first on Narativ.

As the Trump administration heads for the exits at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Donald Trump is undertaking a pardon spree so corrupt, it has never been attempted by any president before him.

Trump signaled he intends to pardon up to 20 close family members and associates, most of whom are yet to be charged with any crimes

On this week’s Narativ podcast, civil rights attorney Andrew Laufer joins the panel to discuss the legality of Trump’s pardon spree, and whether the pardons will hold up in court. Eric Garland and Lincoln’s Bible also appear.

Among those rumored to be on Trump’s pardon shortlist are his three three adult children Eric, Don, Jr., and Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Also lining up for pardons are the president’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, former campaign manager Stephen Bannon and his disgraced former national security advisor Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. Flynn had his sentence commuted by Trump .

The post Pardon Palooza appeared first on Narativ.

Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981 coincided with the release of 52 American hostages from Iran. It was an artfully choreographed moment of diplomatic showmanship which elated a country and elevated a presidency, even as it exposed important questions about how Reagan pulled off such a deal. 

Watch: Civil Rights Attorney Andrew Laufer (@LauferLaw) joins @LincolnsBIble, @EricGarland and @ZevShalev on the show this week (above).  

Lincoln’s Bible recently uncovered a classified document which raises new questions about one of the most contentious chapters in American presidential history, and whom was behind that inauguration surprise.

The previously unseen classified document – a memo penned by Rudy Giuliani – not only places Giuliani inside the Reagan Administration in the weeks following the inauguration, but also reveals that the the newly minted associate attorney was making direct inquiries about foreign interference in the 1980 U.S. election.

LB first told us about the document on her can’t miss morning live “Flyerside Chat”

You can watch the video version of Narativ’s podcasts exclusively on Apple’s podcast player. The audio files are on most major podcast players, including Apple.

The post 1981 appeared first on Narativ.

17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse has become a lightning rod for right wing activism since he killed two protesters in Kenosha, WI, and injured a third. A new Narativ investigation reveals Rittenhouse is besieged by agents and lawyers associated with Donald Trump.

Watch Part 1 of Raising Kyle above.

Right wing media, extremist social networks, Trump’s own litigators and even former child star Ricky Schroeder have attached themselves to Rittenhouse, building him up as a poster-child of sorts for their extremist values and as a culture warrior they can fundraise against.

Last week when Rittenhouse’s $ 2 million bail was paid for by Schroeder and My Pillow CEO Michael Lindell, new questions arose about whether Trump right-wing machine was using Rittenhouse to further other interests.

Attorney Don Lewis used to work for Rittenhouse’s lawyer John Pierce. He says Pierce has a history of dodgy lawsuits and says what really stands out is Pierce is licensed as a civil litigator and has never handled a murder case. Lewis also points out that Rudy Giuliani was a former client at Pierce’s legal firm.

Lewis joined National Political journalist Nina Burleigh and Twitter’s mob authority Lincoln’s Bible on the latest Narativ podcast, Raising Kyle. In part 2, we analyze the influences that have shaped the Kyle Rittenhouse story and discuss what it means for his future.

Lewis also found several other points of contact between Trumpworld and Rittenhouse including.

• Rittenhouse’s front-row presence at Trump rally several months before the shooting.
• Defense fund donations to a right-wing group.
• Reported support from the Department of Homeland Security.
• Rittenhouse’s lawyer “presidential election” statements at yesterday’s hearing.

At Narativ, we believe the best way of fighting disinformation is by carefully exposing it for what it is.

You can watch all our Narativ podcasts by following the link below.

The post RAISING KYLE appeared first on Narativ.

Narativ’s newest podcast tackles China, Trump and Covid-19 with @LincolnsBible @EricGarland.

In Part 1, we tackle China’s role in enabling Donald Trump and as the originating point of the virus.

In Part 2, Trump is stonewalling the transition and that has severe implications.

You can listen to Hard Truths your favorite podcast player or here:

Narativ is funded by viewers like you. Support our independent journalism at Patreon.

Many of you were asking about the closing video. Here it is and definitely worth playing with the sound turned up. @narativ_live #StandUpForFreedom

Originally tweeted by Zev Shalev (@ZevShalev) on November 19, 2020.

The post appeared first on Narativ.

Donald Trump has a plan to steal the election. Can it succeed?

Lawyers for Donald Trump will be in court after the polls close tonight in a bold attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The legal offensive is just one part of Trump’s allies’ multi-front effort to ensure he remains in power.

Trump denied earlier reports that he intends to declare victory tonight based on only partial data, but he quickly added: “I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election… We’re going in the night of — as soon as the election is over — we’re going in with our lawyers.”

Public opinion polls have been offering Trump little comfort. His opponent Joe Biden has pulled ahead in most swing states, limiting the number of paths to victory. For courts to hear any claim from Trump, he needs to be within striking distance of Biden. For Trump or to get that close or declare victory, Trump would have to fake, manipulate or disqualify ballots. How would he do that?

• Russia has reportedly embedded malware in election servers with an extraordinary capability to alter votes.
• Trump’s Proud Boys and Boogaloo Movement were at polling stations and intimidating voters.
• Bill Barr could use the cover of Trump’s late-night court filings to seize ballot boxes.
• Trump’s postmaster general is already engaged in mass ballot manipulation.

FAKE DATA

Despite assurances, the president will approach his ouster with typical bluff and bluster. The first act of this final chapter could look something like this. After widespread disruption on election day, Trump will challenge some ballot’s validity and accuse Democrats of widespread fraud.

Lawyers may not be the only people “going in” on the night of the election. The Trump campaign has demanded details of where ballot boxes are stored and tabulated on election night.

The campaign demanded the security details in an email sent to local elections officials in North Carolina. The Sentinel obtained a copy of that e-mail; a portion is reprinted below

BALLOTS AND BARR

The campaign acknowledges they sent the e-mail and say it’s a standard operating procedure. Still, only people involved in the actual chain of custody would need this type of information. Local county officials describe the e-mail as “chilling” and say they’ve never seen anything like it before. 

Trump falsely accused Democrats of widespread voter fraud for months. Now he’s confirmed a major legal effort to contest the elections beginning tonight. It’s possible the campaign is gathering ballot box locations, should Bill Barr’s Justice Department need to seize them. 

Barr has recently deployed federal agents in mid- and large-sized cities as a part of Operation LeGend – targeting violent criminals. Barr extended the operation indefinitely. 

FAUX news

Over at Fox News, they are building a false narrative. It includes the only pollster in the country to predict a Trump victory. He did the same in 2016.

As with many of Fox’s narratives, there’s an element of accusing the other side of what you’re guilty of doing. Robert Cahaly’s predictions of widespread voter fraud by Democrats could be poisoning the well before the real news breaks. 

TRUMP’S PRIVATE ARMY

Notably, the Proud Boys – an organization of illegal militias beholden to Trump – intimidated voters at polling stations. The Proud Boys are Roger Stone’s project. 

Last weekend, Trump supporters in pick-up trucks swarmed Joe Biden’s campaign bus. The incident kept the Democratic nominee from reaching a rally in Austin. The type of aggressive and illegal act that has many worried about the Proud Boys tonight.

SNAIL MAIL 

Meanwhile, Trump’s postmaster general Louis DeJoy has received a taxpayer-funded salary while weaponizing the USPS against the American people. DeJoy has deliberately slowing mail deliveries in specific districts across swing states. 

The delays have mostly affected traditional Democratic areas but include some GOP strongholds.

Trump wants the winner declared on election night, but that never actually happens. TV networks usually project provisional winners when their decision desks have enough actual data to extrapolate the final results. Still, the real winner is only ever declared days or weeks later. By delaying ballots, DeJoy may be deliberately making some counties too close to call.

RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA

In 2016, an ABC News producer leaked exit poll results to David Bossie, a Trump campaign lawyer. The poll results were leaked while some polling stations were still open. This is precisely the type of influence attack that is most likely to upset results significantly.

Russia has spent the last four years perfecting its cyber-hacking tools. The raw exit numbers the ABC News producer provided the campaign are critical for any GRU hack. If Russian agents could obtain comparable exit poll data, Russia would have a roadmap to manipulate some voter totals.

We found out in Bob Woodward’s book which Florida counties Russia breached with its vote-rigging malware. In 2018 “[The] Russians had successfully installed malware in the election voting systems of two counties in Florida – St Lucie and Washington.” 

Woodward reports the malware was sophisticated and could manipulate results in counties with particular demographics. “For instance, in areas with a higher percentage of black residents, the malware could erase every tenth voter, almost certainly erasing the total vote count for Democrats.” 

The granular level of manipulation was alarming to FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel. She told Trump that Russia was duplicating and intensifying its 2016 effort in 2020.

In late October, the Justice Department launched a broadside warning targeted at the Russians. Six GRU hackers were indicted for sophisticated computer intrusions, the Skripal poisoning and an attempted hack of the French elections.

It’s unclear if this hacking group is still operational, but the intelligence community suspects Russia launched similar malware attacks on U.S. hospitals recently. As in 2016, Russia remains the single biggest threat to American democracy.

ELECTION STEAL

Trump and his allies appear to have a playbook to rig the elections but they face significant hurdles. Federal courts have repeatedly rebuked Trump’s lawyers for their frivolous cases, Republicans face a major defeat, and U.S. intelligence agencies are far more focused on Russia’s cyber capability in 2020 than they were in 2016.

These realities should make it prudent for Trump to step down gracefully, but grace is no more a Trump trait than these times are ordinary. Like many of Trump’s schemes, the one to steal a U.S. election may be self-defeating, but that doesn’t mean Trump won’t attempt it.

The post Bluff And Bluster appeared first on Narativ.

How Billionaire GOP donors are using dark money to rig the US justice system.

The very same dark money funding the selection of federal judges is also funding the draconian cases attempting to turn back legislation like gay marriage rights and Roe vs Wade and the recruitment of vulnerable churchgoers as GOP voters.

Watch part 1 and 2 of The Threat of Amy Coney Barrett. 

In part 1, we look at how US churches have become fertile ground for GOP data-miners to recruit future voters by targeting their algorithms to seek out vulnerable people based on their social media profiles and other available data.

This data-driven recruitment drive is the main premise of Dr. Charles Kriel’s new film “People You May know.”

Kriel was joined on the panel by national political journalist Nina Burleigh and author of “The Trump Women: Part of The Deal” and Greg Olear author of “Dirty Rubles” and publisher of “Prevail“.

Part 2 looks at how the GOP’s voter recruitment efforts connect to a much broader plan to influence every aspect of the United States Judicial system: from the selection of judges to the funding and mounting of specific cases designed to reverse rights. The plan has an even more pernicious goal.

The post The Threat of Amy Coney Barrett appeared first on Narativ.

Psychiatrists tried to warn us about Donald Trump. They were shut down.

Watch Part 3 of Covidgate. We learn of a coordinated effort to suppress warnings about Donald Trump’s mental health.

Lyndon B. Johnson was re-elected in a landslide in 1964 partially because American voters were increasingly concerned Johnson’s Republican challenger, Barry Goldwater, would lead the U.S. into nuclear war with Russia.

Over half of psychiatrists polled by Fact magazine that year responded that the Arizona Senator was mentally unfit to be president. Goldwater sued the magazine and won his case.

Despite clear evidence the poll itself was poorly structured and the results misrepresented, in 1973, chastened mental health practitioners adopted a new rule into their code of ethics named after Goldwater.

“[I]t is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion [on a public figure] unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization,” Rule 7a reads.

Duty To Warn

The rule, and psychiatry in general, has mostly stayed clear of presidential politics until Donald Trump was elected president, which is when a group of mental health professional gathered at Yale university for the ‘Duty to Warn’ conference.

The conference attendees concluded mental health professionals did have a responsibility to warn the public if they were concerned about a public person’s state of mind. And they were very worried about Donald Trump’s, whom many believed displayed the clear characteristics of someone with Anti Social Personality Disorder.

In other words, Trump is a sociopath.

The conference was organized by Dr. Bandy X. Lee who went on to curate a New York Times bestseller called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”.

The book became a runaway success and Dr. Lee began doing the TV rounds warning the public of the real dangers caused by a Donald Trump presidency. That’s when a scathing op-ed in the New York Times scolded Dr. Lee’s efforts. An an op-ed, she later discovered, which was backed by the America Psychiatric Association.

Goldwater’s Ghost

At the heart of the APA’s criticism was the Goldwater Rule.

Almost instantly, Dr. Lee noticed the mood shift. She claims she was booked and then cancelled by TV producers seventy times.

I can attest to one of those times. I was one of them.

In 2018, while doing a short tour of duty in Canada to launch a national Sunday morning show, one of the producers pitched Dr. Lee as a guest. I opted for another segment for a myriad of sound editorial reasons, but the New York Times editorial did factor into my thinking, such is the power of a vaunted institution like the Times.

In the ensuing weeks and months, Dr. Lee noticed something else. She claims her quotes were systematically deleted out of previously published New York Times articles.

The Goldwater Rule seems at best misguided. After all, In 1964, Americans heeded the warnings about Goldwater’s mental state and delivered Johnson one of the most decisive election victories since 1820.

But at its worst, the Goldwater Rule provides cover for literal madmen to assume the highest offices of power. Any reasonable person would agree that mental health practitioners should warn the country if there is clear evidence of danger.

Things Will Get Worse

The 1973 Goldwater Rule is relic, which decades after its adoption, looms over our current existential crisis. The APA ought to revisit it and Dr. Lee deserves the gratitude of a community and the indebtedness of her profession. We should also heed her warning. She published her book in 2017, and three years later she believes if Donald Trump stays in office, things will get far worse. Dr. Lee’s new book “Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul” will be out soon.

These days, we could do with Goldwater’s spirit from a later chapter of his political career, when he told Nixon he had to resign, and Nixon did. We don’t have Republican Senators like that anymore.

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be forced to confront many societal structures and long-held beliefs which have outlived their usefulness or their times. The Goldwater Rule serves as a timely reminder not to cling on to a past that no longer makes sense.

The post Warning Signs appeared first on Narativ.

By attempting to construct an elaborate narrative, Donald Trump has exposed his own cover-up.

Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection has spread to more than 100 people in and outside the administration.

Zev Shalev continues to make the case for an independent investigation into the Trump’s administration’s Covid-19 contagion. The White House has repeatedly refused to reveal when Trump last had a negative coronavirus test, citing HIPAA privacy laws.

In part 2, Zev and his guests explore Trump’s attempt to shape the narrative of this explosive scandal, which has unwittingly revealed a clumsy cover-up.

@Lincoln’sBible and Dr. Bandy X. Lee, author of the upcoming “Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul” join Zev.    

Watch Part 2 above; Listen to Part 2 below.

Watch Part 1 here.

The post Covidgate Cover-Up appeared first on Narativ.

The biggest scandal of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Watch: Part 1 of Narativ Live’s podcast on ‘Covidgate’ with Dr. Bandy X. Lee and @LincolnsBible (above).

Judging by the number of home videos Donald Trump has posted since checking himself out of the Walter Reed Medical Facility; the president seems more desperate than ever to dominate every news cycle – even while in quarantine.

Trump has used his positive diagnosis for coronavirus to distract us from the $430 Million boondoggle of a scheme he perpetrated on the American taxpayer. At this very moment he is likely plotting an inevitable comeback tour. And, he’s inserted himself into Covid relief negotiations which means his tour may well include a last-minute ‘incentive’ to his loyal subjects desperate after seven months of suffering from the pandemic he allowed to happen.

Not withstanding all of that, the White House Press Corps and their affiliated punditry is giving the President a free pass, just like they did in 2016 when they failed to expose Trump’s mob ties.

In our new three-part podcast, we lay out a devastating fact pattern that suggests Trump and his staff have lied repeatedly about when and how he contracted the disease.

Super Spreader

Trump has covered-up when he got sick, risked the life of a former vice-president and likely future president and misused government assets in a vast conspiracy to obscure reality and mislead his voters on a scale never before seen in the U.S. His blatant disregard the for truth has plunged America into a national security crisis, left us unprotected globally and exposed the White House to the ravages of a deadly virus.

New detail are emerging about Trump’s sham response to his COVID-19 diagnosis . It’s now looking more likely that Trump’s ‘super spreader’ event was not the nomination ceremony of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. It’s important to know when he contracted the disease to understand what Trump knew at the first Presidential debate.

That night, Tuesday, September 29, the president and his brood descended from Air Force One in Cleveland, Ohio. At the time, at least four members of the presidential party were positive for the coronavirus.

The entire party arrived suspiciously late, making it practically impossible to have them tested in time. As they walked into the pavilion, Trump family members and staffers were living, breathing dispensers of coronavirus droplets. They took their seats directly in front of Vice President Biden. Remarkably, most of Trump’s family members took off their masks, shedding coronavirus aerosolized droplets into the room.

Biden says he took note of the Trump family’s flagrant disregard for the rules.

 “It was a little disconcerting to look out and see that his whole section, no one had masks on when my wife was sitting further down had a mask on, the people with us had masks on,” Biden told NBC’s Lester Holt in a town hall. “I didn’t quite get that.”

“You were able to see that from where you were?,” Holt asked

“Yes. When they came in, yes, because I was standing backstage and you could see people coming in and a lot of people didn’t have masks on.”

Cover-UP

The days following the debate represent nothing short of a stunning attempt to hide the facts and cloud the narrative. Trump’s own body would give the lie to Trump’s fictitious story. As the President’s health took a turn for the worst that Friday, he was helicoptered to the Walter Reed Medical Facility. His doctors and staff reluctantly asserting he had just got sick.

Yet Trump was immediately treated with an experimental therapy which, according to available research, should only ever be administered in severe cases of Covid -19 and certainly at least a week into the disease’s progression.

White House onlookers believe the contagion began at the nominating ceremony of Judge Amy Coney Barrett on September 26, but many of the people who have since tested positive in the outbreak weren’t there. We may never find out where the contagion began as the White House has mysteriously blocked any contact tracing.

Why would it be risky to alert everyone Trump or Melania came into contact with? It wouldn’t, unless you desperately didn’t want it revealed how you contracted the virus.

CONSISTENT WITH HIS PSYCHOLOGY

Dr Bandy Lee edited the New York Times’ bestseller “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” which featured the diagnostic opinions about Trump’s mind of the world’s leading psychiatrists. The book avoided a direct diagnosis of Anti Social Personality Disorder but other writers like Dr. Daniel Winarick have come forward with the exact diagnosis. This puts Donald Trump in the same category as Jeffrey Dahmer and other psychopaths or sociopaths.

Dr. Bandy is a forensic psychiatrist who often assesses the state of minds of violent criminals. On our recent podcast, she shared three questions she utilizes in her practice to assess patients with disturbed minds. First:

“We think about whether there are medical inconsistencies, and we already know there are a lot in [Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis]”

Two.

“Is there a secondary gain? Is there something to gain out of feigning illness”

Three.

“And then we think about someone’s psychological structure. What’s their likelihood of doing it? Are they capable of doing it?”

“The answer to all these questions is in the affirmative,” Dr. Bandy concluded about Trump.

“He doesn’t fight the virus, he doesn’t deal with the problem at hand rationally but he deals with very consistently when you think about his psychology and what he does is: he denies, he alters and he lies about reality because reality contains very frightening things for him, including his own inadequacy.”

Dr. Bandy X. Lee

APPEASEMENT

The collective failure of the media to hold the President to account for his nefarious intentions and malignant actions has been a constant feature of the media’s appeasement of an outlaw presidency.

The truth of Trump’s Coronavirus diagnosis may indeed include an attempt to sicken his opponent during debate. Think about what that means for a presidency compromised by Vladimir Putin.

If we keep measuring Trump and his ilk against our own moral standards, we may never fully regain our democracy.

The 211,000 victims of Covid-19 deserve to know how the president got sick and to whom he spread it. All Americans deserve to know about Donald Trump’s actions. It may be the clearest window into his mind and soul we can actually trace. Congress and voters should insist on a full forensic medical investigation. And the media should stop aiding and abetting Trump by normalizing his criminal pathology.

About the podcast

In part 1, I lay out the inconsistencies in Trump’s story and ask psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee to explain why Trump may have set out to sicken Joe Biden. (above)

Part 2 of Narativ’s Covidgate investigation will post by tomorrow morning.

Part 3 will drop on Saturday morning.

The post COVIDGATE appeared first on Narativ.

Donald Trump and the First Lady now have Covid-19, or so we are led to believe.

Truth has become so disposable for the Trump administration, we no longer believe anything that comes from the White House. Special guests Jean Guerrero, author of “Hatemonger” and Greg Olear, Eric Garland and Lincoln’s Bible.

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The post Covid, Lies and Audiotape appeared first on Narativ.

The first presidential debate of the 2020 elections was an unwatchable, debasing affair that still delivered political blows. Our live special aired directly afterwards.

Immediate post-debate analysis from an all-star panel: Former Republican strategist and host of ‘Politics with Cheri Jacobus’ podcast, Cheri Jacobus,  Former ‘Apprentice’ talent executive and comedian Noel Casler and ‘Dirty Rubles’ and ‘Prevail’ founder author Greg Olear. 

Narativ’s content is provided free of charge to everyone thanks to the support of Narativ’s patrons. Video podcast are available on Apple IOS devices, Audio podcasts are available everywhere. and on player like Spotify.

The post Debate Debacle appeared first on Narativ.

This week: Jared Kushner’s coronavirus cash grab, Peter Thiel is selling everything about you for $22 Billion and should you watch the Comey Rule on Showtime?

Narativ Live has two podcasts: Our Tuesday shows delves more deeply into a single topic.  Fridays is really ‘anything goes’ night.  We call it the After Show but it’s regularly our best,  as was the case with this week’s episode with @LincolnsBible @GregOlear @ZevShalev. Watch it above or listen below.

The post After Show: New Hope appeared first on Narativ.

Zev Shalev talks to investigative journalist Jean Guerrero whose new book ‘Hatemonger’ profiles Donald Trump’s key advisor Stephen Miller, and traces his ‘radicalization’ from a young age. 

Two ways to support Narativ’s independent journalism.

1. Join our Patreon community for as little as $5/m (recommended tier is $10/m) click this link to join: Narativ’s Patreon page

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The post The Most Dangerous Man In America appeared first on Narativ.

The horror show that is Jared Kushner’s avarice knows no bounds.

Jared Kushner’s real estate firm Cadre is ready to pounce on low-income and minority neighborhoods devastated by coronavirus and its economic fall-out.

The president’s son-in-law personally oversaw the failed White House response to the coronavirus, which resulted in the death of more than 200,000 Americans so far, and contributed to the economic decay of large swaths of American cities.

Kushner’s Cadre is a real estate investment start-up he partly owns with his brother, Joshua. The company uses artificial intelligence to identify investment opportunities based on the very factors that Kushner’s failed coronavirus response amplified..

Kushner owns about $50 Million in shares in the company (which he has not divested). George Soros and Mark Cuban are also investors in Cadre.

‘Not The Role of Government’

In March, while the president was lying to Americans about Coronavirus, Cadre CEO Ryan Williams had the foresight to lay off 100 workers and braced for the worst.

At around the same time, Kushner’s coronavirus shadow task force met repeatedly at FEMA.

According to attendees, the president’s senior advisor appeared to assume his father-in-law’s mantle, reigning over the meeting with a decidedly dictatorial tone.”The federal government is not going to lead this response”.

“It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do,” he reportedly told those attending.

Vanity Fair reported last month that Kushner was specifically referring to blue states because at the time, democratic-leaning states were the epicenters of the virus.

The White House even canceled a national testing program that would have slowed down the disease dramatically.

“Free markets will solve this,” Kushner told his task force. “That is not the role of government.”

Max Kennedy, Jr. was one of a motley crew of volunteers from the finance world on Kushner’s task force. Kennedy told Jane Meyer in the New Yorker that he quickly discovered no-one else was coming to help with the coronavirus response.

“It was such a mismatch of personnel. It was one of the largest mobilization problems ever,” the young Kennedy said. “The fact that they didn’t want to get any more people was so upsetting.”

“It was the number of people who show up to an after-school event, not to run the greatest crisis in a hundred years,” he added.

Kennedy, who is the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, was compelled to write anonymously to congress.

ethnic cleansing

It’s against this setting that Cadre’s CEO Ryan Williams chose to announce that his company will resume investing, which basically means buying up large swaths of valuable property in neighborhoods in economic distress.

That distress has been made far worse by GOP Senators refusing to extend emergency coronavirus funding to the hardest hit Americans, depriving them of extended unemployment benefits. That, in turn, has resulted in large-scale evictions.

It’s into this soup of economic despair that a squadron of Cadre’s vulture opportunists will descend. When things are at their lowest, the start-up’s opportunity specialists will use whatever pressure is necessary to force residents out of their homes.

Bill Barr’s threat to withdraw federal funding from New York City, Seattle and Portland may also be used as leverage to compel state and city officials to go along with what appears to be some sort of for-profit ethnic cleansing scheme.

Barr won’t explicitly state he is targeting Black communities, instead he uses the phrase. ‘anarchic jurisdictions’.

Kushner’s reputation as a slumlord is well documented, and the city has a long track record of vulture developers preying on poor neighborhoods, including both Kushner’s father and father-in-law.

His father, Charles Kushner was a criminal who spent time in prison, but even he never engineered the genocide of hundreds of thousands for capital gains.

If anyone were capable of such a scheme, people who know the Kushners say, it would be Jared.

The post Vulture Capitalism appeared first on Narativ.

It’s been a great year for Abraham Lincoln. The 16th President of the United States is omnipresent in the zeitgeist of our 2020 crisis. Maybe that’s because he knew how to weather them?

Abraham Lincoln believed the Revolutionary principles of liberty and equal rights made the United States invincible against any invader. His words ring as true today as when Lincoln first spoke them at the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois in 1838.

The US has faced seemingly insurmountable challenges in the four years since Donald Trump assumed the presidency but despite even the most dire of predictions, the Republic stands.

It’s not the first time the Republic has hung on a knife’s edge. Back in 1838, Abraham Lincoln argued that the way out of the chaos of his day was to double down on the Republic’s ideals: liberty and equal rights.

“All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the Earth could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio,” the young state representative told the Young Men’s Lyceum.

The US, he predicted, could even prevail “against the gates of hell”.

It took a very painful civil war, but Lincoln, and the United States, ultimately prevailed.

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We were live on the air, when Greg Olear spotted the news: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died at 87.

The reactions in the pod below are as raw as they come and generated an outpouring from our viewers and listeners. Watch the full pod below and join in the conversation in the replies to this tweet.

Here’s the full Narativ podcast about RBG with @LincolnsBible @Ericgarland @GregOlear and @ZevShalev

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What role did China play in electing Donald Trump? That question has largely evaded Trump-Russia watchers, but Erik Prince helps us answer it.

Gregg Smith was the CEO of Chinese logistics firm, Frontier Services Group, where he worked alongside Erik Prince, a key advisor to Donald Trump. Smith had been at Prince’s side as a business associate through a number of joint ventures for the two decades prior to 2016.  

Now, Smith is coming forward with new information about Prince, about how the disgraced mercenary boss of Blackwater continues to involve himself in illegal private contracting. Smith believes Prince was likely involved in two recent aborted attempts to overthrow the US-backed UN government in Libya, a mission undertaken on behalf of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, who is backed by Russia.

Smith joined Zev Shalev and Eric Garland on the Narativ Live podcast to discuss the attempted coup and also Prince’s role as a private contractor for China.

“We had $110 Million in cash, an airstrip in Mombasa, Kenya and a Chinese partner, CITIC,” Smith recounted to Shalev about how he and Prince landed up being bankrolled by China’s powerful CITIC Group.

That’s in part 2 of our special “Prince of Proxy“, you’ll find it near the bottom of this page.

But first, the big news this week is that Prince is being investigated by the United Nations for his role in an attempt to overthrow the US-supported UN government in Libya.

LIBYAn COUP ATTEMPT

In Part 1, Smith revealed Prince is under investigation by the United Nations for his role in an attempted overthrow of Libya’s UN-backed-government. The twice-aborted mission was intended to install warlord Khalifa Haftar, and was helmed by Prince’s longtime associate, Christiaan “Serge” Durant, who owns the gun-for-hire company, Lancaster 6.  

Watch Part 1 on Libya above. Part 2 about China is below.

CHINA’S MAN

Former Frontier Services Group CEO Gregg Smith revealed in Part 2 of of the podcast that Erik Prince answers to Chang Zhenming, the chairman of FSG, and a powerful ally of President Xi in the Chinese Communist Party.

Watch Part 2 of “Prince of Proxy” below.

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What we can learn from the death of Aaron Danielson, aka Jay Bishop.

When two members of the extreme right-wing group Patriot Prayer were shot at in Portland on August 29, 2020, by a suspected member of Antifa, it seemed like the inevitable consequence of the now almost 100-days of protest in the city.

The shooting resulted in the death of Jay Bishop, whose real name is Aaron J. Danielson. On the latest podcast Zev Shalev analyzed the incident with Portland local Carl Sizelove, known on Twitter as @BaddCompani and intelligence analyst Eric Garland.

One Patriot Prayer member escaped unharmed, the other stumbled to his death down the street. The alleged shooter has since been identified as 48-year-old Michael Forest Reinhoel – an army veteran and Black Lives Matter supporter who provided security at some BLM events.

In a late-breaking development, The New York Times reports, police shot and killed Reinhoel while attempting to apprehend him in Lacey, Wash., southwest of Seattle. The newspaper does not report the exact circumstances around the death.

This podcast aired prior to the alleged killer’s identity being made publicly known but the context remains the same. Amplified tensions designed to secure the re-election of Donald Trump supported by the active measures of his foreign enablers. That’s where part 2 of the podcast picks up the story.

Follow @ZevShalev @EricGarland and @BaddCompani for more on this and other relevant news.

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For ten years, The Apprentice made Donald Trump a household name while creating a wholly fictional narrative that hid Trump’s criminal activity.

The Apprentice was much more than just a hit shows for Donald Trump, it was a calling card that gave him access to the world’s organized crime syndicates and helped him foster a cover story for a lifetime of crime.

As a talent handler on The Celebrity Apprentice, Noel Casler was an eyewitness to Donald Trump’s behind-the-scenes behavior. He joins Zev Shalev on the podcast to reveal secrets of the Apprentice: sex, drugs and Donald Trump. With panelists @LincolnsBible and @GregOlear.

In Part 2, The panel discusses how The Apprentice enabled Donald Trump’s organized crime activity around the world and exposes even more secrets of The Apprentice.

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Subversion of Democracy: Explaing Trump’s Charge

by Zev Shalev May 29, 2024

The Spy Games 2024

by Zev Shalev April 22, 2024

Exposing the enemies of democracy since 2016

by Zev Shalev December 11, 2023

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As Ghislaine Maxwell enters her third week in prison, there’s plenty of speculation but no confirmation that Maxwell is cooperating with prosecutors. Is Ghislaine preparing to name names or can she offer prosecutors something more valuable?

Updated: July 22, 2020

Things can often get complicated for the British House of Windsor and its former subjects in the far-flung reaches of a once-great empire. And nothing could be more complicated than the Queen’s favorite son’s alleged involvement in a human trafficking ring that systematically raped teenage girls.

For months, Ghislaine Maxwell has telegraphed that she would not be arrested because her powerful friends, including Prince Andrew, would use their influence to keep her out of jail. So it came as a shock when FBI investigators arrived at her $1 Million New Hampshire hideaway early on July 2 with an arrest warrant in hand.

Maxwell spotted the arresting officers through her kitchen window as they approached the property. She immediately attempted to hide in an interior room. Officers repeatedly knocked on the front door and then forced it open.

Even Maxwell’s personal regiment of former British marines was unable to keep her out of the law’s clutches. Maxwell spent a night in a New Hampshire jail before transferring to the Brooklyn Detention Center, where she is under suicide watch having been denied bail.

Watch part 1 of the Narativ podcast covering the Maxwell bail hearing, with guest Epstein witness Steven Hoffenberg.

State of Independence

Maxwell now faces 35 years in prison on six counts related to human trafficking and perjury which took place between 1994-1997. Even if she serves her sentence concurrently, it could be a full decade before she is free.

The lengthy potential sentence combined with Maxwell’s 58-years of age had everyone convinced she would begin cooperating immediately, but things didn’t turn out that way.

Prosecutors say Maxwell lied about her estate and about her late spouse John Robert Craigie, whom few people knew she had married. She also appears to have lied about her travels, claiming she hadn’t left the U.S. since Epstein’s death even though she was spotted at Buckingham Palace earlier this year.

Maxwell will quickly tire of the rudimentary accommodation in her Brooklyn prison. People who know her well tell me she could not handle spending months or years behind bars. Maxwell’s outlook could improve dramatically if she is able to offer prosecutors new information.

That information is likely related to the financial crimes of the Epstein network. Maxwell signed off on suspicious payments on Epstein’s behalf made via Deutsche Bank, as did Darren Indyke, Epstein’s attorney and current executor to the Estate.

The Duke

Prince Andrew remains under investigation for human trafficking but he too may have useful information about Epstein’s money laundering. After all, the two men were friends for the better part of two decades.

In 2008, when Jeffrey Epstein was given a reduced sentence on a much lesser prostitution charge. “We were told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to ‘leave it alone,” according to a quote attributed to then prosecutor Alex Acosta.

It’s true Epstein and Maxwell were agents for Israeli Military Intelligence but according to court testimony it wasn’t intelligence which tipped the scale for Epstein. It was Prince Andrew.

In Part 2, Steven Hoffenberg describes a billion-dollar financial crimes operation he says he witnessed.

Brothers In Arms

Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein were business associates well before Ghislaine Maxwell introduced Prince Andrew to 17-year-old Virginia Guiffre.

Even as a young Royal Navy seaman, Prince Andrew was an ardent supporter of the British arms sector. Along with his brother Prince Charles, Prince Andrew helped shepherd the $4 Billion al -Yamamah arms deals which traded Saudi oil for British-made weapons between 1987-2007.

The al-Yamamah deals were put together by Jeffrey Epstein and Adnan Khashoggi under the auspices of British arms trader Sir Douglas Leese.

It follows then that Epstein likely met Prince Andrew in the early 90s. Prince Andrew’s private secretary confirmed that the Duke met Epstein in the 1990s through Ghislaine Maxwell. The Duke disputes this account, saying he met Jeffrey Epstein in 1999.

Prince Andrew’s specific role in assembling the al-Yamamah deal is unclear but in a leaked Wikileaks diplomatic cable he assailed the media and anti-corruption investigators, “who had had the ‘idiocy’ of almost scuttling the the al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia.”

After retiring from the Royal Navy, Prince Andrew was appointed the U.K.’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment in 2001. It’s in that role that he raised more than a few eyebrows about contacts with Libyan and Tunisian warlords and a Kyrgyzstan arms deal worth $385 Million.

The presence of royal family members in any arms deals may sound suspect but as heads of state, Royals can deal more plainly with other Royal families. Some royal family members can also do things considered illegal if done by a commoner thanks to varying forms of immunity from prosecution.

Arms deals are often very lucrative for brokers and the sector is rife with self-enrichment and corruption. Al-Yamamah was no exception, a joint investigation discovered large scale and systematic corruption.

Did Prince Andrew make money off his arms deals? The answer is almost certainly yes but because Andrew is immune from civil prosecution, how much he pocketed is difficult to figure out.

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by Zev Shalev November 6, 2023

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Democracy’s Last Stand

by Zev Shalev August 1, 2023

Follow The Money

Sir Douglas Leese was also instrumental in orchestrating a generational handover of Robert Maxwell’s spy business to Jeffrey Epstein. While there is no physical proof of this transaction, two eyewitnesses, Steven Hoffenberg and Ari Ben Menashe confirmed this was Robert Maxwell’s intent.

After Robert Maxwell’s death, Jeffrey Epstein moved the business center of gravity from London to New York, including a lucrative arms partnerships with Adnan Khashoggi and Douglas Leese.

Underpinning Epstein’s human trafficking and arms trading operation was a financial network that laundered dirty profits into the U.S. economy and out into offshore holdings.

Some of the laundered millions were funneled into securities and other schemes, sometime resulting in controlled or uncontrolled company and market crashes.

As investigators follow the money in in the Epstein-Maxwell case, they will likely uncover crimes executed on a massive scale and worth billions of dollars. Prosecutors have a number of options at their disposal including seizing the estate’s assets, said to be worth about $ 663 M. That money is already frozen under a British Virgin Island court order but there is no doubt the involvement of the SDNY will turn up the heat on the estate’s trustees Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn.

All of this goes a long way to explain why Ghislaine’s lawyer specializes in money laundering and counts Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as a client.

Both Maxwell and Prince Andrew can almost certainly name names which may include possibly two U.S. presidents, but that only exposes Epstein’s cover-up scheme for the actual underlying crimes. What we really need to know is how much money Epstein got away with, how he pulled off such massive crimes, and most importantly, to whom he answered?

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Exclusive: Jeffrey Epstein was more than just the sometimes lover and best friend of Robert Maxwell’s daughter, Ghislaine. Epstein inherited the publishing baron’s entire spy business.

Robert Maxwell’s and Jeffrey Epstein’s life stories have extraordinary parallels, and now new evidence suggests those ‘coincidences’ were the result of operational design.

Last week on the Narativ podcast, Jeffrey Epstein’s former business partner Steven Hoffenberg claimed Epstein inherited Maxwell’s spy business. The business came along with sizeable funds looted from a CIA slush fund, an existing partnership with famed arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and access to the PROMIS surveillance software.

If Maxwell and Epstein were not standalone operatives, were they two-parts of a multi-generational intelligence operation?

Part 1: Epstein and Maxwell

Joining the panel for the first time this week the brilliant @GregOlear and returning strategic analyst @EricGarland and organized crime researcher @Lincolnsbible.

Maxwell was a legendary publisher with extraordinary access to world leaders, Epstein, a brilliant Wall Street financier who was able to open the door to any celebrity from Manhattan to Hollywood. Both men wielded Kompromat with the agility of experienced intelligence assets, which they both were.

Maxwell and Epstein were agents for Israeli military intelligence, but Maxwell’s first loyalty was to Russia’s KGB and its successors.

Their physical bond was through Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine who would later become Epstein’s “best friend,” but there was far more at play than just the wandering eye of a publishing icon’s daughter.

Hoffenberg tells me that Ghislaine and Epstein executed the takeover of Maxwell’s business according to a plan devised initially by arms dealer Sir Douglas Leese, for whom Epstein worked in the early ’80s in London. According to Hoffenberg, Robert Maxwell himself signed off on the inheritance pact.

PART 2: The Iran-Contra Nexus

Iran Contra was the nexus that allowed Maxwell and Epstein’s lives to intersect. Maxwell was running arms for Israeli Military Intelligence while Epstein was doing the same for Britain’s MI6 under Leese’s auspices.

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I interviewed Maxwell’s handler, Ari Ben Menashe, a year ago, and he confirmed he was introduced to Epstein in London in the ’80s by Maxwell. Ben Menashe says Maxwell wanted to give Epstein a leg up in the intelligence world as he expected Epstein would marry his daughter. 

PART 3: The Final Years

Considering both Epstein’s and Maxwell’s lives ended so tragically and mysteriously decades apart, whatever it was that connected them was not just sensitive; the details, if published, would have to be so damning as to justify their deaths.

In part three, we trace the last years of Robert Maxwell’s life that brought him closer to Queen Elizabeth. Privately he worked with Mikhail Gorbachev in what was eventually billed as the collapse of the Soviet Union.

For all its appearances, the end of the Soviet Union was not the end of a battle between the two great superpowers, nor was it the beginning of a new democratic age in Russia.

With America’s guard down, Russia’s covert operation entered a new phase recruiting U.S. public figures like Donald Trump into the KGB while covertly injecting their assets into the U.S. under the cover of the refusenik program.

Once in place, agents and organized criminals penetrated America’s organized crime families and rolled up bosses from La Cosa Nostra.

With so many confirming facts and the accounts of first-hand witnesses, we’re seeing what appears to be the outline of a Russian-Israeli intelligence operation that began after the Second World War and lasted at least 80 years.

We know a fair amount about what Epstein and Maxwell did, but we are yet to understand how this unlikely alliance of intelligence agencies, nations and powerful families came together, and why?

Thanks to @SHoffenberg, @GregOlear, @LincolnsBible and @EricGarland for their invaluable expertise on this story and the podcasts.

These podcasts are available on your favourite podcast player.

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EXCLUSIVE: Jeffrey Epstein was a key member of a global arms trading network that sold weapons of war to the world’s most ruthless leaders.

Of the many terms used to describe Jeffrey Epstein’s tradecraft, international arms dealer rarely comes up. Epstein became globally infamous for trafficking in teenage girls and blackmailing politicians with compromising evidence of encounters with those women.

The human trafficking and blackmailing operation was just a means to an end – an elaborate cover story to protect from Epstein’s biggest secrets from leaking.

In this exclusive report, I reveal how Epstein was a key part of a global arms trading network which trafficked in weapons of war sold to countries mostly in the Middle East for decades.

I’m joined by Steve Hoffenberg, Epstein’s former business partner, strategic analyst Eric Garland and organized crime researcher @LincolnsBible.

Part 1: EPSTEIN, TRuMP AND a guy named ADNAN

In part 1, we trace the ties between Epstein, U.S. President Donald J. Trump and the world’s most famous arms trader, the late Adnan Khashoggi.

PArt 2: WASH AND FOLD

In Part 2, we look at the complex money laundering operation Epstein may have set up at Towers Financial to launder his profits of war.

PARt 3: THE AGENCY

In Part 3, we reveal that Epstein inherited some of his personal fortune from Robert Maxwell, but where did Maxwell get his fortune from?

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EXCLUSIVE: The untold story of how Jeffrey Epstein brought down Towers Financial and the network of despots, arms dealers, royals and spies which enabled him.

Did he also get away with the money?

In 1987, well before he became known for human trafficking, Epstein worked as a consultant at Towers Financial, a Manhattan financial monolith which specialized in selling securities and collecting on loans.

At its height, the firm had $2.5 Billion in operations. Epstein masterminded Towers rapid expansion into riskier products and suspected securities fraud. Then in 1991, the company collapsed under the weight of Epstein’s wild bets.

The story of Towers would have been buried were it not for the personal crusade of Epstein’s mentor and the Chairman of Towers, Steven Hoffenberg. Hoffenberg served 18 years for the crimes, while Epstein walked away a free man.

Hoffenberg claims Epstein was able to get away with millions of dollars from Towers by deliberately driving the company into bankruptcy.

Steven Hoffenberg is our guest on Narativ Live this week along with strategic analyst and intelligence expert Eric Garland and organized crime researcher @LincolnsBible.

For the first time we are able to reveal the extraordinary intersection of dictators, arms dealers, royalty and spies which has become Towers Financial, but we need to start in 1974.

PART 1: Once upon a watergate…

Before you watch Part 2, we want to remind you Narativ is entirely funded by viewers like you. You can support our independent journalism by joining our Patreon community for as little as $5 a month. Just click on the button below.

PART 2: FAmily promis

PART 3: Crime of the Century

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Exposing Donald Trump and Bill Barr’s cynical plan to use a military clampdown against protesters to help them win the November election. Strategic Analyst @EricGarland joins Narativ’s @ZevShalev.

Liked the show? Support Narativ’s independent journalism by joining our Patreon community for as little as $5 a month by clicking the button below.

Many ways to watch and listen to Narativ’s podcast.

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Is Jared Kushner a White House mole for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

Not since Jonathan Pollard, has the United States had a public spy scandal involving our closest mid-east ally, Israel. Now within the space of a few years, we’ve learned about Jeffrey Epstein, George Nader, Psy Group, and George Papadopoulous, all off whom are, or were suspected of being assets for Israel.

Now there’s compelling evidence to suggest Kushner is heavily influenced by Netanyahu as part of a multinational conspiracy to destroy American democracy.

On the latest podcast, I’m joined by futurist and strategic analyst Eric Garland and Twitter’s authority on organized crime, Lincoln’s Bible. We break down the evidence from every angle: America’s interest, domestic politics, and intelligence operations

If you don’t already follow them, I highly recommend doing so @EricGarland and @LincolnsBible on #Twitter

Part 1 of Jared Kushner: Inside Man

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PART 2 OF JARED KUSHNER: INSIDE MAN

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The DOJ’s reversal on prosecuting Michael Flynn means reopening the case of Flynn’s alleged treasonous acts.

In my latest podcast, I was joined by strategic analyst Eric Garland. We discussed Flynn’s crimes and why Jared Kushner’s and Bibi Netanyahu’s actions need closer examination.

Before you watch Part 2, Narativ relies on donations from viewers like you to fund our investigations and podcasts. Go to Patreon.com/Narativ and support our independent journalism for as little as $5 a month.

Here’s part 2:

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Forget Obamagate, the real political scandal this season belongs to Donald Trump and the GOP for profiteering off of a failed response to the Coronavirus.

Zev Shalev follows the pandemic money trail and discovers signs of corruption leading all the way up to Donald Trump.

Trump is pitching Hydroxychloroquine and some GOP Senators are profiting from alleged insider trading. Watch the podcast below.

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As a court prepares to release some names and documents previously kept secret in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, Zev Shalev talks to a close family friend of the Maxwells, Laura Goldman.   

PART 1: Meet the Maxwells

Goldman takes us inside one of the world’s most famous spy families.

Part 2: Love is a Battlefield

Goldman says Ghislaine Maxwell was not Jeffrey Epstein’s madam, she was his victim.

Listen on Spotify:

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The post The Maxwell Mystery appeared first on Narativ.

Did the coronavirus leak from a Wuhan lab?

By the time you start reading this post or watch the latest podcast, your mind has probably been bombarded by an extraordinary amount of disinformation from the U.S. and China over whether the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese virology lab? China obviously denies this possibility but the US isn’t so sure.

The global dispute resulted in an extraordinarily rare statement from the director of national intelligence confirming the U.S. is exploring claims the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

My independent investigation reveals that while the virus appears to be naturally occurring, it likely originated from cultures in the high security P4 laboratory in Wuhan.

These are my findings.

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There is much more to the disinformation war than meets the eye. Trump’s claims are also a strategic attempt to paint Democrats and Joe Biden as soft on China.

“This is what happens in a disinformation war. Two sides that are involved in something together start pretending to fight with each other. We saw it in Syria when Russia accused Turkey of profiting off the sale of ISIS oil. The truth is that faux fight was a smokescreen to hide the fact that they were both profiting off the sale of ISIS oil in Syria. The same thing is happening here.”

“What Happened in Wuhan?”

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EXCLUSIVE: It’s official. Donald Trump fits the clinical profile of a psychopath or sociopath.

A couple of years ago, a book came out claiming Donald Trump had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Dr. Daniel Winarick says that diagnosis is not widely accepted by the medical community.

Dr. Winarick says Trump does fit the profile of the disorder associated with psychopaths and sociopaths known as Anti Social Personality Disorder.

Winarick joined Zev Shalev on Narativ Live to explain why Trump’s behavior is consistent with ASPD.

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The symmetry between Chinese President Xi and Donald Trump’s strategies is too hard to ignore. Are the two leaders intentionally sickening the world?

Over the last four years, many of us who write about the Trump administration have suspected that behind the Russian interference and the Saudi connection is a China rising story. Beijing’s involvement has been visible on the fringes, but there were limited apparent ties to the Trump Administration to arrive at a conclusive collusion story. 

As #COVID-19 has become an everyday reality for most of us, the symmetry between Trump and Xi’s strategy has become more apparent. In the latest podcast, I break down why I think Xi and Trump are deliberately sickening the world and why America remains completely divided by it. 

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Does SARS-CoV-2 slow down during Summer?

The National Academy of Sciences‘ Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats has weighed in on the question: Does the spread of the Coronavirus slow down in warmer conditions?

NAS claims studies have shown reduced transmission of the virus under warmer and humid conditions in the lab. One study found the virus does survive longer than other known pathogens like flu, monkeypox, tuberculosis or the 2002 SARS but still less than in colder conditions.

Out of the lab, the virus still spreads in countries with warmer weather but the countries with the biggest outbreaks all occurred during the northern Winter and early Spring and have subsided as the temperatures climbed.

More people are outside in the Summer which may help social distancing.

The unknown factor is the limited research into the two strains of SARS-CoV-2. One strain appears to have been more dominant in Europe and the East Coast of the USA and the other in Asia.

Here’s the National Academy of Sciences report on the Coronavirus survival in Summer.

Google has published a fully interactive map which allows local newsrooms (and anyone else frankly) access to a real-time visualization of COVID-19’s contagion in their local districts or anywhere in the U.S.

The post Coronavirus In Summer appeared first on Narativ.

As COVID-19 came to America, Donald Trump and Jared Kushner saw dollars not deaths.

For three critical weeks beginning in February, the White House could have stopped the spread of the coronavirus.

My investigation reveals Intelligence and National Security Council officials briefed Donald Trump about the scale and severity of the looming outbreak in January. Yet he officially failed to react and publicly denied the threat.

By February 24, as the stock market tumbled on the news the coronavirus had spread outside of China’s borders, to South Korea, Iran, and the U.S., Trump remained inexplicably in denial.

It took Trump until March 13 for Trump to declare the pandemic a national emergency, 19 days after the financial markets began their retreat.

Instead of putting America on a war footing, Trump kept talking down the severity of the coronavirus, calling it a hoax and downplaying the actual numbers and projections his advisers were giving him.

Those 19 days when Trump fiddled, could have saved America from this crisis.

TRUMP IN DENIAL AS COVID-19 SPREAD

On February 24, there were 15 confirmed cases of Americans with COVID-19. By March 13, the figure was 2163. There is no doubt that a more prompt and deliberate response to contain the virus would have suppressed its growth trajectory significantly.

South Korean officials acted decisively after their first COVID-19 case on January 20, diagnosed on the same day the U.S. had its first confirmed case.

The South Koreans began testing symptomatic cases, contact tracing anyone who was potentially infected and isolating suspected cases. As a result, the spread of the virus in South Korea was dramatically slowed.

The opposite was playing out in the United States. Trump declared the coronavirus “very much under control in the U.S.A.” when in reality it was spreading without any attempts to contain it on the ground. A ban on travel from China was instituted.

Yet even as he was downplaying the virus publicly, Trump was engaged behind the scenes as American pharmaceutical companies were bidding to acquire test manufacturers and vaccine makers. One of those companies doing the buying was Thermo Fisher Scientific.

On March 3, Thermo Fisher Scientific completed a $10 Bn acquisition of Qiagen, A Dutch company that developed a COVID-19 test.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Ten days later, On March 13, Trump’s opinion of the looming crisis suddenly shifted, and he declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency.

The declaration allows the FDA and other government agencies to circumvent usual regulations for drug and test approvals.

Trump mentioned Thermo Fisher by name when he announced the national emergency, adding that FDA approval would not be far behind. It wan’t. Thermo Fisher’s test kits were approved by the FDA within 24 hours.

There are troubling murmurs of a conflict of interest but nothing iron-clad.

Trump owned shares in Thermo Fisher before becoming president. He says he divested them in 2017, but Trump may still hold them via a trust.

The CEO of Thermo Fisher’s China division, Gianluca Pettiti, was also one of 20 U.S. business leaders who attended a banquet for Trump and Melania during their 2017 state visit. In a social media post, President Xi is visible just feet away from Pettiti and Trump.

It’s hard to account for Trump’s coronavirus about-face: from hoax to national emergency within days. Some argue Trump was just being overly reassuring to Americans in the early stages, but how does that account for his lack of attention to disaster prevention?

The coronavirus and other bio-agents represent a brand new multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical sector. Thermo Fisher for example, intends to make 5 million COVID-19 tests a month. They will charge medicare $51 for each test (up from the CDC’s $31). That’s $3 Billion per year based on the Medicare price alone, which is vastly lower than other providers. And the taxpayers will shoulder the difference in cost.

Interestingly, Thermo Fisher also has ties to the Koch Brothers. Tyler Jacks headed the late David Koch’s cancer foundation at MIT. Jacks sits on the board of directors and the advisory board of Thermo Fisher.

Beyond testing, vaccines, masks, protective equipment, and surveillance tech represent other potential growth markets in this new sector. It’s not hard to see how the war against viruses will become the new war against terror.

While Trump managed Thermo Fisher’s FDA approval, he was also actively pursuing potential suitors of vaccine makers from around the world.

The CEO of Germany’s CureVac visited the White House on March 2. A visit arranged with just 24 hours notice. He was publicly fired a week later amid allegations Trump tried to buy the company’s vaccine production for the exclusive use of Americans, a claim which has been widely disputed.

It’s unlikely that CureVac will sell its entire vaccine supply to any country, let alone America. Still, there are 51 other vaccine studies around the world, and the first to market stands to make its owners a fortune. This is the race to watch as the sector heats up.

We also found out this week, Jared Kushner’s much-vaunted Google website initiative was neither successful nor Google’s. Jared’s brother’s health care company, Oscar, developed the site. Jared was a shareholder in the company until he allegedly disinvested from it.

While Donald Trump’s response to COVID-19 has been an unmitigated disaster, an unmistakable pattern of Trump’s hyper-focus on dealmaking rather than disaster response has emerged.

Trump is so fixated on being America’s CEO; he’s failed at the most crucial role of being its president: saving American lives.

The post Virus, Inc. appeared first on Narativ.

The second Jeffrey Epstein scandal could be far worse than the first. Zev Shalev returns to the scandal which launched the Narativ podcast, and discovers another mystery involving Epstein’s estate.

part 7: corrupt intent

It’s been six months since Epstein died and the victims are no closer to justice and Americans no closer to the truth. Zev is joined by Steven Hoffenberg who spent 18 years behind bars for crimes he says Epstein committed.

PART 8: Last Days

Zev Shalev uncovers an attempt to cover-up Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. Is Donald Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr behind it? With special guest Steven Hoffenberg. 

PARt 9: FROZEN ASSETS

As a U.S. Virgin Isles judge temporarily freezes the assets of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, Steven Hoffenberg has an urgent message for the victims’ lawyers. 

part 10: on her majesty’s secret service

Narativ has exclusively reported about Epstein’s work for Aman, Israeli military intelligence. Now, Steven Hoffenberg reveals the work Epstein did for Mi6, Britain’s secret intelligence service.

The post Secret Life of Jeffrey Epstein Season 2 appeared first on Narativ.

NEW VIDEO: If there is one thing to take away from today’s testimony in the Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump it is this: Trump is the only president ever to be impeached for undermining U.S. national security.

The post IMPEACHING TRUMP appeared first on Narativ.

The Trial of Donald Trump could begin within days. Watch all of Narativ Live’s impeachment related podcasts here.

Apple users can watch, download and subscribe to the podcast on any iOS device by using the podcast app.

Special: AS THE WHISTLE BLOWS

Dr. Dena Grayson predicted on Narativ Live that John Bolton would emerge as a major figure in the Ukraine Scandal. Just one of her many predictions the day the Whistleblower Report became public.

Rudy: A MOB STORY

In part 1 of There’s Something About Rudy, Narativ’s Zev Shalev explodes the Rudy Myth and the role Donald Trump played in creating it.

RUDY: All ABoUT PUTIN

Nancy Pelosi put it this way to Donald Trump: “All roads with you lead to Putin”.

In part 2 of ‘There’s Something About Rudy, ‘ I look at how the Russian President was pulling the strings of Trump’s Ukraine Scheme.

SPECIAL: CASE TO CONVICT

Impeachment hearings had barely begun, and I was convinced Trump would be convicted. I invited historian Prof. Gary Darden on to the show to discuss.

UKRAINE SCHEME: PUTIN’s TIES

Zev Shalev breaks down how Vladimir Putin was pulling the strings of Trump’s Ukraine Scheme.

UKRAINE SCHEME: $1B Gas DEAl

There’s a billion dollar gas deal tied to Trump’s Ukraine Scheme.

UKRAINE SCHEME: $500,000 BRIBE

Narativ exposes a $500,000 bribe paid to Rudy Giuliani as a bribe to get the US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yavonavitch fired.

The post THE TRIAL OF DONALD TRUMP appeared first on Narativ.

Watch all six episodes of Narativ’s podcast series ‘The Secret Life of Jeffrey Epstein’.

Part 1: Ponzi King

The $450 million Ponzi scheme that allegedly funded Jeffrey Epstein’s life of excess and exploitation.

PART 2: Under Surveillance

We follow the money of a curious investment Jeffrey Epstein made in an Israeli start-up and we’re confronted by the question: Is Epstein a spy?

PART 3: A BALANCE OF POWER

Our investigation into Jeffrey Epstein leads us to Leon Black, the CEO of Apollo Global Management and we discover ties to Jared Kushner and the ’80s “Junk Bond King,” Michael Milken.

PART 4: GAME OF LEVERAGE

Our investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s secret life was interrupted by his mysterious death. The NY medical examiner ruled the death a suicide, but a leaked autopsy report suggests homicide. What happened? Is this another Bill Barr cover-up?

PART 5: BROKEN PROMISE

An exclusive interview with an intelligence source who sheds new light on a 50 year old mystery.

PART 6: Compromised

Exclusive: A former Israeli spy reveals how he met Jeffrey Epstein in the early ’80s and claims Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell worked for Israeli Military Intelligence but that’s only the beginning.

Support Narativ’s independent journalism from as little as $5 a month.

The post THE SECRET LIFE OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN appeared first on Narativ.

Exclusive: A mysterious $500,000 check, an unexplained sudden shift in U.S. policy towards Libya, and Donald Trump’s decade-long association with a reputed oil-smuggling oligarch.

The oil smuggler

In June 2016, even the somewhat jaded local media of Saint Jean Cap Ferrat was curious about the wedding du jour. The bride was a 21-year-old Ukrainian heiress who was led to the altar by her father, Pavel Fuchs.

Fuchs is a Ukrainian oligarch worth $270 Million. He’s an ally of Vladimir Putin, a purported Russian agent and a business associate of Donald Trump’s for over a decade.

Fuchs surprised everyone when he married off his daughter to Ma’sud Abdelhafid, the grandson of Muammar Gaddafi’s henchman who bore the same name. The wedding sealed a deal between Fuchs and and his new son-in-law to jointly smuggle oil from Libya to the West.

Only if we get the oil

Trump has coveted Libyan oil, which he describes as the finest in the world, for almost a decade.

“I’d only be interested in Libya if we get the oil,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal in 2011. “Without the oil, I have no interest and we shouldn’t be there.”

A year earlier, Trump struck a deal with Muammar Gaddafi to pitch a tent at Trump’s golf course while the then-Libyan leader visited the U.N., but Trump’s most bizarre intersection with Libya came in 2016.

Trump stunned observers during a campaign speech at the Mayflower Hotel when he declared ISIS was smuggling Libyan oil.

“ISIS is making millions and millions of dollars a week, selling Libya oil and you know what?” Trump asked. “We don’t blockade, we don’t bomb, we don’t do anything about it.”

“It’s almost as if our country doesn’t even know what’s happening, which could be a fact and could be true,” Trump said.

Trump was uncharacteristically accurate but at the time, no-one knew it. The next day, Factcheck.org quoted an expert saying “there’s no evidence the Islamic State is producing or selling oil out of [Libya].”

The world eventually learned in late 2017 what Trump claimed was true in April 2016. ISIS was making millions by selling smuggled Libyan oil.

Advance notice

How did Donald Trump know that Libyan oil was being smuggled by ISIS over a year-and-a-half before anyone else? Perhaps his friend Pavel Fuchs told him.

It seems that Fuchs was involved in smuggling Libyan oil in partnership with his son-in-law, Masud Abdelhafid, from June 2016, one month after Trump’s Mayflower Hotel speech.

Trump and Fuchs have been business associates since 2004 when they partnered on an early attempt to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and have stayed close ever since. It seems unlikely Trump was ratting out his business pal Fuchs during his Mayflower Hotel speech. What he likely meant is that he’s missing out on a business opportunity.

A $500,000 check

Meanwhile, It’s curious that in August 2017, Fuchs wrote Rudy Giuliani a check for $500,000.

Trump’s personal attorney officially pocketed the half-a-million dollars for “security consulting” for the city of Kharkiv but it was later revealed the check came from Fuchs’ personal bank account not the city coffers.

Subsequently, Fuchs said the money was paid to Giuliani for lobbying in the U.S. on behalf of Kharkiv but even that strains credulity. It certainly seems likely Giuliani was hired to ‘lobby’ by Fuchs but was it really about Kharkiv?

Battle for Libya

Of course everyone is entitled to have friends who may be involved in criminal schemes, even with people listed on the UN terror watch-list. Indeed, it’s legal for your lawyer to consult for cities, companies or individuals. What makes these two otherwise acceptable things suspicious is the very sudden policy shift Trump announced regarding Libya in April last year.

Out of the blue, Trump bucked U.S. Libyan policy and threw his support behind Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar instead of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, which the U.S. still officially backs. The change in position came after a phone call from Trump to Haftar on April 15 which caught everyone by surprise.

“State and defence were not aware of the Trump call, let alone supported it,” said Jonathan Winer, a former US envoy on Libya. “It has taken a wrecking ball to our Libya policy.”

The repositioning did not last last long and the U.S. remains officially supportive of the Tripoli government but like other sudden shifts in the Trump presidency, the uncertainty adds uneasiness and reminds onlookers of the on, off and on-again policy shifts towards the Kurds in Syria.

A sudden shift

What prompted Trump to make the sudden redirection towards Haftar? Could it be that Vladimir Putin backs Haftar? Is it because Haftar – who reigns over Libya’s ports – made it possible for Fuchs to get his son-in-law’s oil to market? Did Fuchs’ $500,000 ‘lobbying’ check have something to do with the change of heart? Or was there another inducement which shifted Trump’s allegiance?

Many questions but not enough proof to reach a definitive conclusion yet, but as the world’s attention turns to Libya, much more investigation is needed into this suspicious fact pattern.

In the coming days, Turkish troops will enter Libya to oppose Haftar’s forces. Although Russia and Turkey are working in concert, Turkey’s Erdogan supports the Tripoli government while Putin supports Haftar.

It may be up to the U.S. to weigh in on the winner. Will Trump follow Putin’s lead and support Haftar? or will traditional U.S. interests finally prevail keeping Libya on the U.S. side of the ledger? Or is it all a foregone conclusion already agreed upon by the strongman alliance?

Watch the video podcast

This story was first broadcast as a video podcast. You can watch it here.

Support Narativ’s independent journalism at Patreon

The post BLACK GOLD appeared first on Narativ.

A month ago, Ghislaine Maxwell was expected to emerge from hiding in order to cooperate with prosecutors in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Why has that changed?

Ghislaine Maxwell was last spotted at a Buckingham Palace event in November last year. She also reportedly met privately with Prince Andrew days before his awful-but-frank BBC interview. It was all an attempt to ‘normalize’ Ghislaine’s public image ahead of her anticipated cooperation with prosecutors from the SDNY investigating the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, in which she is likely to be named a co-conspirator.

This week, new signals emerged from Maxwell’s camp indicating a shift in strategy. Maxwell’s going to ride things out, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper reported. She’s confident the dirt she has on America’s politicians is enough to secure her a permanent get-out-of-jail-free-card, Laura Goldman, Ghislaine’s friend, told the paper.

It was one of the first times any major paper had reported on Maxwell’s and Epstein’s espionage blackmail ring, which I first exposed in July and September last year.

MEDIA COVER-UP

It’s been months since I reported that Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were agents for Israeli Military Intelligence for whom they were running a blackmail scheme targeting U.S. public figures.

When a source first revealed this story to me, I was skeptical and also concerned about putting out such a sensitive story under Narativ’s banner alone. While I looked for a second source, I offered the story to two major networks. At first they wanted the story and asked me hold it back from publication for over a month. Then they suddenly reversed course, dropping the story for “budget reasons”.

I couldn’t keep the story back from Narativ’s readers so I published it and discussed it on the Narativ Live podcast I host. The story circulated widely but for months no major media picked it up. By any measure this was a solid story with two first-hand witnesses on the record and multiple, unnamed but well-placed sources confirming the main details.

STUBBORN FACTS

After dodging the story for months, it’s become impossible for the media to look away any longer.

In December, my reporting was used as a basis for a book about the Maxwell-Epstein saga. “Dead Men Tell Know Tales” by Dylan Howard marketed itself almost exclusively on my story without attribution in any marketing material or preview press. Howard does cite me once inside the book itself.

I mention this because these events suggest this story and my reporting of it has been suppressed. It’s also made me the target of a social media attacks including from an associate of Rupert Murdoch’s. The strategy: discredit the writer so others can shape the narrative.

Instead of citing my named sources, the Daily Mail and Murdoch’s Page Six quote an “unnamed source” saying Maxwell and Epstein worked for many “foreign interests” and only had “powerful contacts” who were hiding her in Israel.

“Ghislaine is protected. She and Jeffrey were assets of sorts for multiple foreign governments. They would trade information about the powerful people caught in his net — caught at Epstein’s house,’ a unnamed source told Page Six.

“She is not in the US, she moves around. She is sometimes in the UK, but most often in other countries, such as Israel, where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses and protection,” Daily Mail quotes.

I wrote in September that other intelligence agencies were involved with Maxwell and Epstein. Epstein had a bond with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Maxwell’s father was a KGB asset long before he was one for Mossad. In fact there is a long history of collaboration between Israel’s secret services and Russia’s. Epstein also appears to have contracted out to Mi6 and the CIA at different times.

Sources tell me that while intelligence assets and information are often shared among allies, Maxwell and Epstein received their marching orders from Israeli Military Intelligence.

The story of why this story was covered up for months by New York’s media requires some serious soul-searching. The Maxwell-Epstein saga is much more than just a tawdry blackmail operation fit for the tabloids. In many ways, it’s the story of our America after the Second World War. It cannot and shouldn’t be ignored, white-washed or covered-up by anyone who claims to care about truth and America.

GHISLAINE’S CHANGE OF HEART

The question I’m wrestling with now is why the sudden change of heart by Maxwell?

Maxwell and Epstein ran a blackmail scheme targeting high profile public figures so there’s non doubt Maxwell had access to a lot of dirt but that’s been true for a long time. If the dirt was her insurance policy, why discuss cooperation at all?

Maxwell’s espionage connections is how Epstein escaped justice in 2005, according to former Trump Labor secretary and the state prosecutor Alex Acosta. Maxwell and all the other co-conspirators dodged prosecution as part of a reduced charge plea deal reached in 2008. That deal represents one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in US history as it allowed Epstein and Maxwell to continue their operation undeterred.

The mood has changed a lot since the aughts. When Epstein was again arrested last year, it was clear he wasn’t expecting any more favors.

He died in his jail cell weeks after his arrest.

AN OMINOUS ECHO

Jeffrey Epstein’s death reminds me of how Ghislaine’s father died. Robert Maxwell fell to his death in 1991 from his beloved yacht which he had named after his daughter. The murder is widely believed to have been the result of a Mossad hit, a means to protect the Israeli agency’s secrets.

Ever since the news of Epstein’s death broke, I’ve suspected that he too was killed on order from his Israeli handlers. It’s the most plausible scenario although there’s some credence to the speculation someone helped Epstein kill himself.

Ghislaine Maxwell knows the very real risk to her life if she is imprisoned which is likely what initiated discussions about cooperating with prosecutors. If she gets a deal she would need to admit what I publicly exposed, and what others were covering up. She and Epstein were Israeli agents. Cooperation agreements are predicated on truth after all, and she would have to reveal the very dirty things they duo did in the name of Israel.

Maxwell faces serious jail time if she’s indicted and convicted. If she is charged, she will also become one of the world’s most wanted women. Can Israel keep hiding her? I’m skeptical any amount of blackmail will derail justice now. If that were really her plan why would she blast it out to all the newspapers? It’s all untenable and does not augur well for Maxwell.

We may never find out everything Maxwell knew but if there is a silver lining to no cooperation deal it’s that her victims no longer need to fear Maxwell will continue to commit crimes with impunity.

There is one thing I have no doubts about, the Maxwell-Epstein saga is a multi-generational tragedy that strikes right at the heart of America. It is still playing out behind the news headlines today, as it has for decades. It’s an important focus for Narativ and I’m committed to continue exposing the details until all the truth is out.

My thanks to @lincolnsbible for her guidance on this and many other stories. Follow her for unparalleled insight into the mob and Trump.

The post The Maxwell Mystery appeared first on Narativ.

Narativ is premiering There’s Something About Rudy, a pop-up podcast about the man at the center of Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, Rudy Giuliani.

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT RUDY

Rudy Giuliani is fond of his nickname, America’s Mayor, which he earned after 9/11. It suits his reputation as a mob-busting federal prosecutor and a tough New York City Mayor.

These days Giuliani calls himself the president’s personal attorney and cybersecurity adviser, but the truth about Rudy is a far cry from the image he presents.

Here are all three episodes of Narativ’s pop-up series “There’s Something About Rudy”.

PART 1: MAFIA MYTHS

Part one is all about Rudy and the mob. Giuliani claims credit for the cracking down on La Cosa Nostra as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, but that’s only part of the story.

PART 2: RUSSIAN MISSION

My investigation into Rudy Giuliani leads me to a Ukrainian oligarch with direct ties to Vladimir Putin and a discovery of a series of ‘consulting’ agreements that appear to be bribes.

PART 3: LIBYA SCHEME

Rudy Giuliani has been linked to many world leaders of questionable repute and businessmen who play fast and loose with the law, but a connection to a Libyan oil smuggling ring involving ISIS is the last thing I expected.

MORE RUDY IN THESE PODCASTS

For the Rudy pods, my special thanks to colleagues @LincolnsBible and @PortlusGlam. They are required follows, in my opinion.

Subscribe and download the video podcast by searching “Narativ Live” wherever you get your podcasts. Follow me on twitter here, or leave your comments below or on email. Reach out if you have any new information or insights.

The post A Mob Story appeared first on Narativ.

Exclusive: An ex-Israeli intelligence agent reveals Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were not only Israeli intelligence assets, they were allegedly entrapping U.S. politicians with minors.

It has been six weeks since Jeffrey Epstein died in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Manhattan.

“Let me assure you this case will continue on against anyone who was complicit with Epstein. Any co-conspirators should not rest easy”. Despite assurances from Attorney General Bill Barr – who presides over prisons and justice in the U.S. – we are no closer to knowing the truth about Epstein, his money, or his crimes than we were the day he mysteriously died.

I’ve reported before that Epstein was an intelligence asset for Israel. This was confirmed by two independent sources. Now, one of those sources, a former senior member of the Israeli intelligence community, has gone on the record to confirm this about Epstein and is making significant claims about Epstein’s human trafficking operation.

Ari Ben-Menashe is an Iranian-born Israeli consultant and former arms dealer who also served as a senior executive for Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence (1977 to 1987). This puts Ben-Menashe in a unique position to know about Epstein and also Ghislaine Maxwell. He met them both 40 years ago, when Ben-Menashe when he worked for Israel alongside Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell.

Robert Maxwell was a British media baron turned KGB and Mossad spy. He fell to his death from his yacht “The Lady Ghislaine” under mysterious circumstances in 1991.

In the ’80s, Ben-Menashe and Robert Maxwell ran a covert Israeli operation transferring arms to Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. That’s how Ben-Menashe says he first met Jeffrey Epstein. According to Ben-Menashe, Maxwell wanted to include Epstein in his arms-dealing operation.

I have vetted the portions of the interview included below as best I can, but in a world which is all about subterfuge, there is no way of knowing if what he is saying is true. Nor can I determine if Ben-Menashe’s motives are to influence the narrative. He is a consultant for various countries including Russia and South Sudan and worked with Zimbabwe’s late Robert Mugabe. He claims he conducted this interview freely and not on behalf of any clients.

While some journalists have cautioned not to take his assertions at face value, Ben-Menashe has proven to be a fairly accurate source over the years. I’ve only shared portions of the interview that have secondary sourcing. Nevertheless, keep his history in mind as you read on. The interview first aired on the Narativ podcast.

Intelligence Assets

Ben-Menashe makes two significant claims. The first is that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were both intelligence assets of Israel Military Intelligence.

Interviewer: You spoke about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell as being a part of Israeli Military Intelligence. Do you know specifically which unit?

Ari Ben-Menashe: Because of Robert Maxwell, they worked directly with military intelligence. I don’t know who they answered to.

Interviewer: Would you say she was an agent as well?

Ari Ben-Menashe: Yes.

Interviewer: Military intelligence as well?

Ari Ben-Menashe: Yes, yes.

The second claim is that Epstein and Maxwell specifically sought out powerful politicians, scientists and public figures to entrap them in not only compromising but criminal situations.

Ari Ben-Menashe: [Epstein and Ghislaine] were blackmailing American and other political figures.

Interviewer: For the Israelis?

Ari Ben-Menashe: Yeah

Interviewer: For most people it’s hard for them to think of Israel as… blackmailing their leaders in the United States, it’s a very …

Ari Ben-Menashe: You’re kidding? [laughs]... It was quite their M.O.

Recruited Minors

Ben-Menashe claims Epstein and Maxwell specifically sought out underage girls for their famous friends.

Ari Ben-Menashe: Sleeping around is not a crime, it may be embarrassing, but it’s not a crime, but sleeping with underage girls is a crime.

Ben-Menashe also reveals a previously unknown connection between Epstein and Robert Maxwell. He says Maxwell wanted Epstein to join their Iranian arms trading operation.

Ari Ben-Menashe: What happened was Maxwell introduced him to us, and he wanted us to accept him as part of our group. [He said] ‘and your Israeli bosses have already approved.’

Maxwell had an extensive network in Israel at the time, which included the then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to Ben-Menashe. Despite Maxwell’s introduction and endorsements from his superiors, Ben-Menashe claims Epstein didn’t appear competent and “wasn’t accepted” by him or Nick Davies, the Daily Mirror’s Foreign Editor, who was also a part of the arms operation.

In November 1989, Ben-Menashe was arrested for violating the Arms Export Control Act for trying to sell three Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft to the Iranians. This became the basis for the Iran-Contra Affair. He spent almost a year in the same U.S. federal prison in which Epstein is said to have committed suicide.

Ben-Menashe was acquitted, and he says his experience at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan leads him to question the official version of how Epstein died.

Ari Ben-Menashe: I spent eleven months and three weeks in the same place as Epstein. It would have been impossible to commit suicide [in a cell].

Ari Ben-Menashe: I have theories about who wanted him dead. Probably there’s quite a number of people in the States wanted him dead, but I would think mainly the Israelis.

The official reason for Epstein’s death according to Bill Barr and the New York Medical Examiner is suicide.

“Potentially Blackmail”

Virginia Guiffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, gave her first television interview to Dateline NBC this weekend. She told NBC that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell directed her to sleep with Britain’s Prince Andrew and other public figures on several occasions.

What NBC didn’t reveal, but is made clear by Guiffre from an affidavit she filed in 2015, is that she believes Epstein and Maxwell put her in those situations to compromise public figures with blackmail.

In the 2015 affidavit, Guiffre claimed Epstein told her he set up his friends with minors so that they would “owe him,” they would “be in his pocket,” and he would “have something on them.”

She said Epstein required her to “describe sex” with politicians, bankers and celebrities “presumably so that he could potentially blackmail them.”

Guiffre writes explicitly about Epstein seeking details of Prince Andrew’s fetishes, claiming Epstein was collecting “private information about [Prince Andrew].”

There are additional claims in police documents and testimony that Epstein’s homes in New York City and Palm Beach were wired for video surveillance.

When authorities executed a search warrant on Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, they also found CDs labelled “Young [name] +[Name]” in a locked safe, according to the detention document.

Watch the Narativ Live episode on Epstein and Maxwell featuring the Ari Ben -Menashe interview.

No Physical Trail of Blackmail

Despite what appears to be the makings of a blackmail operation, and Ben-Menashe’s revelations, there is no publicly available evidence of any blackmail attempts. Part of the reason for this may be that the acts were not only compromising in nature, but also potentially criminal. Or maybe there was no blackmail at all.

Another explanation for a lack of clarity around the potential blackmail scheme, might be that Epstein and Maxwell were not just your run-of-the-mill criminals. They worked for one of the most respected and feared intelligence agencies in the world.

Remember how Epstein was able to get off so lightly for his crimes?

According to the Daily Beast, when former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta was being interviewed by Trump’s transition team, he was asked specifically about the Non-Prosecution Agreement he cut with Epstein’s lawyers in 2008 (as the US federal prosecutor in charge of that case). Acosta’s response to the transition team was that he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade: “I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.”

So, what were Epstein and Maxwell doing as assets or agents? Was their “project” for them to entrap powerful American men with underage girls, as Ben-Menashe asserts?

No public figures have come forward with any claims of this nature. Until one does, or a court makes their names public, the details of any alleged blackmail operation will remain secret.

Daddy’s Girl

According to Ben-Menashe, Epstein met Ghislaine Maxwell almost a decade earlier than previously reported, and that they were romantically linked. Again, Ben-Menashe says he was introduced to Epstein by Ghislaine’s father, Robert, in the early ’80s.

Ari Ben-Menashe: [Epstein] wasn’t very competent. He didn’t seem to be a competent guy, he doesn’t seem to be. But he was a good looking guy. And Miss Maxwell …

Interviewer: Ghislaine, yeah.

Ari Ben-Menashe: … fell for him.

Interviewer: That early, the 1980’s?

Ari Ben-Menashe: That early. How old was she?

Ghislaine was 20, Epstein was 26 in 1980.

Interviewer: She was young.

Ari Ben-Menashe: Yeah.

Interviewer: But most of the reporting about her and him only started in 1991 when they got to the United States.

Ari Ben-Menashe: Yeah, I realize that. But they were already …

Interviewer: They were already dating.

Ari Ben-Menashe: Call it dating or whatever.

Interviewer: So he was part of the family business?

Ari Ben-Menashe: Yeah, and Maxwell sort of started liking him. And my theory is that Maxwell felt that this guy is going for his daughter.

Another business associate of Epstein from the ’80s confirms Ben-Menashe’s account. Steven Hoffenberg is the former publisher of the New York Post and spent 18 years in jail for a Ponzi scheme which he claims was also Epstein’s work. Hoffenberg was introduced to Epstein by Douglas Leese, a British arms dealer.

Hoffenberg tells me that Epstein met Ghislaine Maxwell at a party and fell for him instantly. She saw in Epstein the same characteristics as her father, Hoffenberg says, and introduced the two men to each other.

Conflict Barr

While many people had good reason to want the details of this story to die with Epstein, the victims deserve better.

Ben-Menashe and Robert Maxwell’s involvement in Iran-Contra raises new questions about Attorney General Bill Barr’s continued oversight of the Epstein case. Why? Because Barr played a significant role in the Iran-Contra cover-up.

During his first stint as A.G. under President George HW Bush, Barr sided with the President and granted clemency to Reagan administration officials who participated in the scandal. As prosecutor James J. Brosnahan characterized him, “If you want a presidential cover-up, Barr is your guy.”

Despite what appears to be a blackmail scheme, there is no physical trail of the blackmail. One source tells me that’s because Epstein didn’t offer his bosses anything that useful. It may be that the blackmail was a means to accessing other things, like money, science or technology. Or it may have been traded with other countries’ intelligence agencies or on the black market.

Only one person knows for sure: Ghislaine Maxwell.

The post Blackmailing America appeared first on Narativ.

Exclusive: Former Israeli spy: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were agents for Israeli Military Intelligence and were running a blackmail operation designed to extort U.S. politicians and public figures.

Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli secret agent and Robert Maxwell’s spy handler, reveals Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell we’re both working for Israeli Military Intelligence. He also claims their human trafficking operation was designed to blackmail U.S. politicians and public figures.

The audio of Ben-Menashe’s interview with Narativ’s Zev Shalev aired exclusively on his podcast. Watch the podcast above.

Click here to read the transcript of Zev’s interview with Ari Ben-Menashe (Patreon members only).

This show would not have been possible without the contribution of @LincolnsBible

The post Blackmail Factory appeared first on Narativ.

My exclusive interview with Ari Ben-Menashe, a former agent for Israeli military intelligence, who was Robert Maxwell’s handler before he died. In Part 1, Ben-Menashe reveals secrets about the biggest spy scandal in the last half-century. A scandal that shook the world.

The post Spies, Lies and Big Data appeared first on Narativ.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to have ‘lost’ the world’s most expensive painting. The Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, Salvator Mundi, may hold the key to the Trump-Russia investigation. And, the artwork itself could be evidence of collusion.

Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘last’ masterpiece was to be unveiled on September 18 at the spellbinding new Louvre in Abu Dhabi, but the exhibit was put on a temporary hold, amid rumours the painting was lost.

The art world has become increasingly alarmed. After all, Salvator Mundi is the most expensive artwork ever sold. “Nobody outside the immediate Arab hierarchy knows where it is,” Da Vinci scholar Martin Kemp told The Times.

Questions are being raised. First, why did the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, an art novice, buy the masterpiece? Secondly, why did he overpay for it by $300 million? Even for the stupendously wealthy Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that’s not just a simple rounding error. How do you misplace a $450 million painting anyway?

We can also reveal Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating both the buyer and the seller of the Da Vinci masterpiece as part of the Trump-Russia investigation.

All the intrigue suits Salvator Mundi’s already storied past well, but as I write this, no-one has seen the rare masterpiece in over a year, and its exact whereabouts have been unknown for over 100 days.

Masterpiece or Fraud?

Leonardo da Vinci is said to have painted the Salvator Mundi, which literally translates to ‘Savior of the World’, as a male counterpart to his Mona Lisa, and an homage to his other Christ masterpiece, The Last Supper. The result of those intersecting ideas is an eerie portrait of Jesus Christ in a blue renaissance robe, offering benediction with his right hand raised and while holding a glass orb in his left.

Da Vinci was not prolific. He only pained 20 great works his entire life. That’s why the art world heralded Salvator Mundi’s rebirth over a decade ago with a messianic zeal only it could muster. “A painting of the most iconic figure in the world by the most important artist of all time,” gushed Loic Gouzer, co-chairman of post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s. “The opportunity to bring this masterpiece to the market is an honour that comes around once in a lifetime.”

Salvator Mundi has a pedigree, but also a bit of a sketchy past. The painting was first recorded in the collection of King Charles I in the early 1600s, but since then ‘Salvator’ was inauspiciously passed down from one lesser royal collection to the next, until it eventually sold for a mere £45 at a Sotheby’s auction in 1958, before disappearing for more than half a century.

In 2005, ‘Salvator Mundi” had its second coming when a consortium of businessmen acquired the damaged masterpiece from the estate at a small regional auction house. The Savior needed saving itself. Christ’s hair and face were painted over, and the canvas ripped on the side of his face.

It took six years of painstaking research and inquiry by the world’s ‘leading authorities on the works and career of Da Vinci’ to not only authenticate the lost masterpiece but to completely restore it, allowing Christie’s to present it to the world as it would have looked when Da Vinci painted it.

The reborn Salvator Mundi was unveiled at London’s National Gallery in 2011 to much fanfare, although you’d be hard-pressed to find mention of the masterpiece in the gallery’s official guide. You can read a back-pedaling attribution to Da Vinci in the Gallery’s statement: “an important opportunity to test this new attribution by direct comparison with works universally accepted as Leonardo’s.”

As if that weren’t enough, a quick reading of Jonathan Jones’ review in The Guardian would convince any ardent art follower something was afoot. “The transparent orb is far too brilliantly painted to be the work of one of his disciples,” Jones wrote, referring to a painting technique not yet invented in Leonardo’s time. Some doubted it was a genuine Da Vinci, others thought the reconstruction was heavy-handed. Despite the question marks over its authenticity, the world’s wealthiest art collectors scrambled to acquire it.

A Russian in the House

Dmitry Rybolovlev’s story is typical of many Russian oligarchs. He made his fortune as a potash miner until the Kremlin bought him out, sending him into a friendly “exile”. Rybolovlev chose the Grimaldi House of Monaco to set up shop. He bought the luxurious penthouse “La Belle Epoque” on Monaco’s famous seaside cliffs, the AC Monaco football team, 10% in the Bank of Cyprus and allegedly an extensive network of corruptable judges, ministers and other officials.

He also met Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, from whom he bought about $2 billion in art. Rybolovlev officially paid Bouvier a 2% commission per painting, but he later found out the Swiss art dealer was also acting for the seller, marking up prices and pocketing the margin along with both buyer’s and seller’s commissions.

That is how Rybolovlev came to own The Salvator Mundi for $127 million, instead of its valued $80 million. The two men have been squabbling in court ever since. Both have been arrested. And Rybolovlev is suing Sotheby’s for knowing and not telling, he was being ripped off. The case itself could be a scam: money launderers often sue each other to wash their money with a judge’s order.

Since March 2013, the now $127 million ‘Salvator Mundi’ has been hanging in Rybolovlev’s penthouse in New York City. Rybolovlev sees no shame in the $47 million he lost in the purchase of the masterpiece. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s accused him of overpaying.

In addition to several corruption investigations in Monaco and Europe, Rybolovlev is also under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the $95 million purchase of Donald Trump’s home in Palm Beach in 2006, which Trump had bought four years earlier for $41 million. There was no market reason for the $ 54 million mark-up, except to save Trump from another bankruptcy.

After struggling to sell it, Rybolovlev demolished the property to sell it for its seafront land. Experts point out all three of Rybolovlev’s investment interests – football, art and real estate – are prime vehicles for money laundering.

The corruption investigations into Rybolovlev may connect his finances directly to the Kremlin. Especially if they prove he manages the assets of Russian deputy premier Yuri Trutnev, as claimed in Der Spiegel in November.

Rybolovlev occupies the same proximity to Putin as Oleg Deripaska, making him extremely rich and powerful and a loyal ally of the Russian president. Rybolovlev regularly mixes affairs of state with his personal business. In 2016, he met Donald Trump twice in the final days of the campaign. Both men deny the meetings took place, but radar tracking reveals their planes coincided on airport tarmacs in both Charlotte, NC and Las Vegas, just days before the election.

The ‘Other’ Don Jr. Meeting

There has been a lot of ink spilled on the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower, involving Donald Trump, Jr., Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and a significant offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton, to which Don, Jr. famously responded, “I love it.”

But a far more significant meeting took place at Trump Tower three weeks later which has received far less coverage, and yet it may be the most important evidence of collusion Robert Mueller has uncovered. The August event may well become “the single most important event of Trump-Russia,” Seth Abramson, author of “Proof of Collusion” told me this week.

Erik Prince arranged the meeting. Prince is a mercenary who is notorious for his work with Blackwater. He is still a gun for hire working for the Chinese and Emiratis yet somehow, Prince still played a pivotal, yet unofficial role for the Trump Transition and coordinating this meeting was as significant as they come.

Prince planned to meet his guests at a nearby hotel to avoid the glare of the media assembled in Trump Tower’s gilded lobby.

You’re wondering who the guests were? George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who was acting as an emissary for both the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (MbS) and the de facto leader of the UAE, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ). Nader was accompanied by Joel Zamel, the Australian-born Israeli founder of Psy-Group, and an expert in social media manipulation.

As the three men made small talk, President Obama was on TV pleading with the Republican Party to reject Trump as their candidate, and calling him “unfit to serve.” Prince smiled and checked his watch. He knew Obama’s criticism would only strengthen Trump’s chances. “We have the green light to go up,” Prince told Nader and Zamel.

The three men made their way out of the hotel for the short walk to Trump Tower through rush-hour traffic, passed the media in the lobby and up to the 26th floor in one of those golden elevators. Donald Trump, Jr. was already in the conference room with Stephen Miller, when the three men walked in.

The Plot To Elect a President

Nader began his pitch. The Saudi and Emirati princes “were eager to help your father win election as president,” Nader said. He said Zamel’s Psy Group was particularly successful at social media manipulation and the two crown princes would bankroll a multi-million dollar plan drawn up by Zamel, to help elect his father president.

Psy-Group had figured out how to shift public sentiment by creating fake news, publishing it on fake news sites and then amplifying it through a network of some 5,000 fake social media accounts. The company’s side-hustle was providing services in the dark arts of honey-trapping, hacking and blackmail, for a fee.

Not surprisingly Don. Jr. “responded approvingly” to the pitch, according to the New York Times but he later claimed he turned down the offer. There are no contracts or invoices to prove the campaign was ever executed. Lawyers for both sides deny any campaign collaboration. Of course, if they had, it would have been illegal.

The Facts Don’t Concur

In reality, there is evidence Psy-Group carried out some work for the campaign. For one thing, the Trump Campaign’s main digital partner, Cambridge Analytica, didn’t have the tools to deliver the social media content the campaign constantly credits for its victory.

Cambridge Analytica’s raison d’etre was psychographic profiling using stolen Facebook data. Psy-Group brought to the table a fake news factory proven to sway minds.

CamAnalytica and Psy also appeared to let the cat out of the bag when, one month after Trump’s victory, they publicly announced they would partner on future campaigns together, including a joint pitch the U.S. State Department, but failed to explain how they were introduced to each other.

Sources also tell the Daily Beast contacts between Psy-Group and the Trump Campaign were far more extensive than first reported, involving at least two other members of Trump’s inner circle. Company founder Zamel also spoke to Trump officials about helping Saudi Arabia and regime change in Iran.

Psy-Group is based in Israel but it is registered in Cyprus and corporately aligns in off-shore holding databases with companies owned by Russian oligarchs and banks. Mueller has also taken a specific interest in Zamel, and his close relationship with two of Putin’s most powerful oligarchs, the aforementioned Oleg Deripaska and Dmitry Robolovlov.

In February, Mueller subpoenaed the Cypriot bank accounts of the Psy-Group and dispatched a team of investigators to Israel this Spring to interview Zamel. This clearly struck a nerve. Within a week, Psy-Group shuttered the entire operation.

And remember, George Nader is cooperating with the investigation and he was in on every conversation with Don, Jr., Zamel, Kushner and the two crown princes. Nader has already testified before a grand jury and acknowledged making a $2m payment to Zamel. Psy-Group almost certainly worked for the campaign, the question is how did they get paid?

Art of the Deal

$300 million. That’s the incredible profit Rybolovlev made on the sale of Salvator Mundi. $300 million is also the amount Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (acting through an intermediary) “accidentally” overpaid for the artwork.

At first, laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in full view of a global audience, may not seem like the smartest move, but the facts support this may have been what the two crown princes and Dmitry Rybolovlev tried to do.

Rybolovlev put the masterpiece up for auction through Christie’s in November 2017. The estimated price for Lot 9B was between $80 and $120 million. Christies’s auctioneers were stunned when bidding quickly surged past $80 million in just seconds and then, just as effortlessly over $130 million. Two anonymous bidders continuously outbid each other, not stopping until they had run up the price to $450.3 million, making it the single most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

In the ensuing days, The New York Times unmasked Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman as the masterpiece’s real buyer but the identity of the second bidder stayed hidden for months.

In March, The Daily Mail revealed the counter-bidder was Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ). The princes claimed they had no idea the other was bidding and dismissed the whole thing as a mistake.

To be clear, these are the very same crown princes George Nader represented at the August 3rd meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. and whom, Nader promised, would pay for the social media campaign.

On the seller’s side, Dmitry Rybolovlev was not only well-acquainted with Psy-Group’s founder but as an owner of the Bank of Cyprus, he could quietly carve out payments to Psy-Group, along with any kickbacks to Putin, without anyone noticing

It’s worth noting that four months after the Da Vinci auction Mueller sent investigators to Israel to ask about specific deposits to Psy-Group’s Cypriot bank accounts. The FBI travelled to Israel in February, a month before the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince was outed as Salvator Mundi’s second bidder.

Savior of the World

I started writing this piece after watching the giddy display of backslapping by Vladimir Putin and Mohammed at the recent G20 summit. The two looked like they had gotten away with something big, Is it possible the high fiving was over this transaction?

The whereabouts of Salvator Mundi remain unknown; there are no plans to exhibit the artwork; the mystery of what happened at auction is deepening and Mueller’s relentless investigation into Psy-Group continues. These are all things that suggest to me there is much more to discover about the August 3 meeting and the Saudi, UAE and Israeli involvement in Trump-Russia.

The entire affair supports the new prevailing theory about the direction of the Mueller investigation.

Up until now, Robert Mueller’s focus has been squarely on Russian collusion but as citizens from other countries are implicated, it seems the Special Counsel has widened his purview from just collusion with Russia, to a multinational conspiracy of at least four countries including Russia: Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and Israel.

Gregg Smith, the former CEO of Prince’s Frontier Services Group told me this week he believes “the Israelis, Emiratis and Saudis all had a role and [Erik] Prince was [Steve] Bannon’s conduit to them.”

There can be no certainty when the game is subterfuge, and we need to wait for Mueller’s final report before we reach any conclusions, but if Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi proves to be a key which helps unlock Trump-Russia, “Savior of the World” could prove to be nothing short of prophetic.

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Henry Kissinger played a significant role in getting Donald Trump elected with Russian help, and it’s not the first time he betrayed his country for a Presidential nominee.

Richard Nixon would have taken the circumstances surrounding the Chennault Affair to his grave if it weren’t for a moment in space and time which placed the archived memos of Nixon’s Chief of Staff in historian John Farrell’s hands.

It was 2016. Farrell hit the historical equivalent of winning the Powerball when the Nixon Library granted him access to some of the last documents released from Nixon’s Presidency.  He came across memos by Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, from the 1968 presidential campaign.

Farrell recognized the notes as confirmation of a rumour which had persisted for decades. The Nixon campaign had colluded with the South Vietnamese to scuttle President Lyndon Johnson’s peace talks to end the Vietnam War, just as those talks appeared to be nearing a successful outcome.

In the Summer of ’68, Nixon’s election support was cratering as a result of Johnson’s overtures to the South Vietnamese. Nixon knew he’d lose the election to Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice-president if a peace deal were struck before election day.

Henry Kissinger, who would later become Nixon’s National Security Adviser, started the whole thing. In ’68 Kissinger was a little-known, 45-year-old Republican strategist who manoeuvred his way into the peace talks as an advisor and, in an act of considerable betrayal, leaked news of the negotiations to Nixon.

Kissinger’s calculus was personal and not political, although it certainly could have been influenced by his connections in Russia and China. He knew he’d get a cabinet position if either campaign won, but as a practitioner of realpolitik, he also knew a diplomat with his skill-set would have far greater opportunity under Nixon and a much higher profile in a prolonged war. He was also covering his bases.

Faced with a choice between peace and power, Nixon made a predictable decision. Along with Haldeman, he hatched a plan which would be tantamount to treason but would land Nixon the White House. It became known as the Chennault Affair.

As Kissinger leaked details of Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks, Nixon hatched a plan that would become known as The Chennault Affair

Nixon and  Haldeman enlisted the help of a prominent Republican fundraiser with connections to China. Anna Chennault struck a glamorous figure as she wielded power, money and influence in the US-China lobby and within Republican circles.

The affair was named after her because Chennault was also Nixon’s back channel to the South Vietnamese government. She convinced them to stall the Johnson talks, promising a better deal, if Nixon were elected.

In four pages of notes attached to memos from his years as Chief of Staff, Haldeman had left behind clues for future investigators like John Farrell, to discover. They proved that the Chennault Affair, which Nixon often dismissed as a “canard,” was a true story.  In the memos, Haldeman hand-wrote that Nixon ordered him to “monkey wrench” the Vietnam peace negotiations and that Nixon wanted to “keep Anna Chennault working on SVN.”

As Farrell read Haldeman’s notes, the cruelty of Nixon’s plan struck him. There is no doubt the memos were held back for as long as they were because they revealed Nixon won the White House at the cost of American lives.

President Johnson was furious when he discovered Nixon’s betrayal, calling it treason, but he couldn’t prove it.  The spy agencies had obtained intercepts of calls between Chennault and the South Vietnamese ambassador, pleading with him to “hold on,” and assuring him “we are close to winning,” but there wasn’t conclusive evidence of  Nixon’s involvement.

Even as peace talks collapsed and the election lost, Johnson never spoke publicly about the affair, although he did confront Nixon in the Oval Office. “My God. I would never do anything to encourage [South Vietnam] not to come to the table,” Nixon is heard saying on White House recordings.

Nixon had good reason not to fess up.  The affair was likely a violation of the Logan Act. That would have meant far more severe consequences for Nixon than a break-in. Watergate meant impeachment; treason spelled death.

Watergate brought Nixon down, but as far as Presidential scandals go, the Chennault Affair was far more consequential, not only because it potentially extended the war for years but because it revealed the lengths to which Nixon would go to seize power.  The deaths of 1000’s of American soldiers in Vietnam was not too great of a price for the man who would become the 37th President.

Haldeman died in 1993 without ever revealing the affair. Chennault was buried in Arlington Cemetery. She always denied her role was consequential. Of the four main conspirators,  Kissinger is the only one still alive today.

Kissinger became a towering figure in global affairs by often favouring profit and practicality over principles, even if it meant skirting the law and cost lives.

Kissinger has had his foot on the scale of global power for over half a century. Over the years he’s been accused of committing genocide in Cambodia, encouraging death squads in Chile and Argentina and more recently, of looking passed Russia’s atrocities in Syria and the annexation of Crimea.  He believes the world would be a better place if strong US and Russia relations could co-exist with the Kremlin’s global misbehaviour.

“The long-term interests of both countries call for a world that transforms the contemporary turbulence and flux into a new equilibrium which is increasingly multi-polar and globalized,” he said. “Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.”

That thinking is music to Vladimir Putin’s ears. Kissinger has had a close relationship with Putin since they first met in the early 90’s. Next to actor Steven Seagal and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Kissinger is the closest connection Putin has to Washington, D.C. and the peculiar way it handles itself.   He is also friends with Donald Trump. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when it came to a political marriage between Putin and Trump, Kissinger was the inevitable matchmaker.

If Time Warner was the proposal, the Mayflower was the engagement party.

Henry Kissinger faced the prospect of a damp Manhattan reception as he made his way to the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle in March 2016. He was the star attraction at a swanky power lunch hosted by executives of the media company and was to speak about US-Russia relations.

The Center for National Interest co-hosted the lunch.  Nixon founded the Washington-based think tank in 1994 and Kissinger serves as its Honorary Chair. The Center is a remnant of a bygone era, a place where fossilizing former titans of business and politics can lay their hat when fate, age or circumstance counts them out of the game.

Dimitri Simes is the Center’s president and the publisher of its magazine, National Interest. The Center appears to operate like any other think-tank, but it has a reputation for an extremely pro-Russian ideology.

Jared Kushner sat quietly, absorbing the scene.  The soon-to-be son of the next President of the United States was invited by HBO president Richard Plepler and former Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes, who both sit on the Center’s governing board (a fact which deserves greater scrutiny). CNN president Jeff Zucker, who at the time reported to Bewkes, was also present at the event.

After lunch, Kushner met Kissinger and Simes. The encounter was a formal introduction, not a chance New York meet and greet. Kissinger, it would emerge, was trying to broker a relationship between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

In the ensuing weeks, Kushner would ask Simes and the National Center to put together one of the pivotal events of the Trump campaign timeline: a foreign policy speech scheduled for April 2016, entitled “America First.”  It was to be a public announcement of Trump’s pro-Russia foreign policy platform.  If Time Warner was the proposal, The Mayflower was the engagement party.

From that moment, Kushner took over the bulk of the campaign’s foreign policy, while Simes began organizing the Mayflower event.

Simes invited Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak and other foreign diplomats, he arranged for the venue to be moved from the National Press Club to the Mayflower Hotel and organized a pre-event meet and greet which would include guests like Kislyak, Michael Fynn, Jeff Sessions and Kushner (who met Kislyak for the first time at the event).

Simes is himself an intriguing figure.  He is directly connected to Putin and keeps in regular touch with Kremlin insiders.  In 2013, he sat alongside the Russian President on a panel and was effusive as one can be. “I fully welcome President Putin’s tough stance, not because I am not a patriot of the United States, but because I believe that with regard to the great powers, baby talk is not the way to agreement. You need to understand what you can expect from another country, and you need to understand where there is resistance.”

Simes also chairs the Center’s advisory board which includes Alexey Pushkov, the former head of the Duma’s international-affairs committee.

The Center has also repeatedly intersected with key Kremlin figures in Trump-Russia, Alexander Torshin is Deputy Governor of Russia’s Reserve Bank.  Torshin and suspected Russian spy Maria Butina played a significant role in influencing the NRA to become an intermediary of Russian money funnelled to Trump’s campaign. Torshin and Butina had several interactions and meetings with the Center, which remain unexplained.

After Trump was elected, Kissinger felt emboldened to come out of the shadows.   A report in the German tabloid Der Bild headlined ‘Kissinger to prevent new Cold War’, claimed the former envoy was working towards a new relationship with Russia which included the U.S. accepting Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Kissinger, now 95, had proved himself just as shrewd a diplomat as he was at 45. While it is clear Kissinger played a vital role in aligning Putin and Trump’s interests, it isn’t clear if he knew anything about Putin’s cyber plans to manipulate the electorate or hack DNC emails, not that it would have changed much. There’s a good reason the New Yorker trumpeted in a headline in 2016,  “Does Henry Kissinger have a conscience?”

The post Kissinger appeared first on Narativ.

Exclusive: Beyond Facebook, Russia colluded with U.S. anti-gay groups to stoke tensions over LGBTQ equality in the run-up to the 2016 election.

“God has decided,” Vladimir Putin told Oliver Stone in Showtime’s Putin Interviews. “I believe it’s my duty to uphold traditional values and family values. But why? Because same-sex marriages will not produce any children,” the Russian president said.

It’s not illegal to be gay in Russia but it’s a crime to wave a pride flag, show same-sex public displays of affection or demonstrate for gay rights. Gay Russians in Chechnya are routinely rounded up and tortured and vigilante gangs use social media to lure hundreds of gay men on fake dates where they are filmed being beaten or sexually humiliated. Everything from same-sex emoji bans to a total prohibition on coming out publicly has been considered by Russia’s legislature.

The anti-gay sentiment in Russia began to swell in the mid-1990’s after the fall of the Soviet Union but it wasn’t until Barack Obama’s election that Russian anti-gay activists began to build bridges with their soul mates in the fringe right of U.S. conservatism.

In the 90’s, two Russian sociologists and an American activist birthed the World Congress of Families, a global coalition of anti-gay groups with deep Russian interests. WCF is based in the U.S. and is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“The Russians might be the Christian saviors of the world,” says Larry Jacobs, WCF’s managing director. “At the UN, they are really the ones standing up for these traditional values of family and faith.”

The congress partners with U.S. conservative organizations including Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Alliance Defense Fund, Americans United For Life and Concerned Women For America.

Members of these organizations regularly meet at the WCF conventions around the world and in Russia. This gives them a direct line to anti-gay members of Russia’s parliament, the Duma, the Russian Orthodox Church and to two Russian oligarchs who “are footing many of the WCF’s bills, Vladimir Yakunin, the president of the Russian railways, and investor Konstantin Malofeev,” according to Mother Jones.

A Russian oligarch and Putin ally is a key funder of the anti-gay World Congress of Families. Its president is America’s leading anti-gay activist.

Yakunin is one of Putin’s closest oligarchs. The billionaire is adept at aligning Russian Orthodox Church policies with those of Vladimir Putin. The church has approval over any legislation tabled by the Duma and in turn the church is heavily influenced by Putin’s oligarchs.

Yakunin’s wife, Natalia Yakunina, runs Russia’s anti-gay Sanctity of Motherhood which first invited Jacobs to a conference in Moscow in 2010. The same year, Russia’s Orthodox Church dispatched one of WCF’s Russian co-founders to meet with the U.S. anti-gay group Focus on the Family.

Konstantin Malofeev is also a devout Orthodox christian and is often referred to as “Putin’s Soros”. He operates his own think tank and TV station. He believes in the restoration of the Russian empire and has fostered relations with many of Europe’s far right politicians including France’s Marine Le Pen.

Malofeev is a key financier of the Russian attack on Ukraine. He claims to only send food and water to rebel-held areas but Ukrainian officials believe the oligarch is an arm’s length way for Putin to control the war. In 2013, Malofeev used the church’s Ukrainian missions to subdue opposition to Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea

“I’m in the middle of patriotic circles.” says Malofeev. “People who have patriotic and Orthodox views know me, and sometimes I know them. You can find a link between me and almost any Orthodox activist. But that doesn’t mean I’m paying them a salary or that we’re in the same business,” Malofeev says.

In 2013, Malofeev’s St. Basil charity invited Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage to attend a round table discussion. NOM rose to prominence as the main advocate for California’s Proposition 8 which overturned gay marriage rights in the state.  Brown created a campaign which demeaned the LGBTQ community as predatory, diseased and disordered. Their claims were supported by faux-science, much of it created by the WCF.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian created and funded anti-LGBTQ ads and the organizations which shared them.

Wikileaks published the hacked DNC emails and an unprecedented sequence of Trump-Russia meetings took place in June last year. It’s perhaps not too coincidental that Brown was appointed president at last year’s WCF June convention. “I look forward to continuing to work to advance the pro-family movement in the US and around the world,” Brown said in a statement about his new role.

NOM regularly publishes anti-LGBTQ ads in its Facebook feed, some of it shared from the pages of other organizations like “Moms Like Me” and “Stand With Children”.  One ad showed a photo of Hillary Clinton and Obama under a headline which read: “when you demand everyone deny science so that girls can become boys, you have overplayed your hand.”

A handful of wealthy donors keeps NOM funded to the tune of about $7.4 million annually. Amway’s Doug DeVos (Betsy’s brother-in-law) donated $750,000 to the organization between 2009 and 2012.

NOM’s goal is to support the elections of anti-gay legislators. Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who believes homosexuality should be illegal, is a recent beneficiary of a NOM endorsement. The organization has repeatedly broken election law for not revealing its donors and is listed as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

All of the above could normally fall into the sphere of state-sponsored NGO activity (the U.S. does similar things in other countries to influence human rights) but now there’s an added element of an investigation of conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. This month, Special Counsel Robert Mueller executed a search warrant on Facebook after revelations that Russian-owned accounts bought $150,000 in ads on Facebook on issues from Black Lives Matter, immigration and LGBTQ issues between 2015 and 2016.

The ads were intended to inflame tensions on wedge issues like LGBTQ rights. Mueller’s team has not publicly released the ads but is analyzing their origin and which accounts and pages shared the posts, which in itself could constitute a crime.

“These targeted messages, along with others that have surfaced in recent days, highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another,” the Washington Post reported.

We’ve written before about Russia’s extraordinary efforts to engage the NRA between 2010 and 2016. Investigators are now probing if the Kremlin officials infiltrated social, evangelical and constitutional causes and created ads to divide and conquer an electorate. All under the pretense of shared values but with only one aim in mind: furthering Russia’s kleptocracy.

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Exclusive: With Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon out at the White House, a renewed focus on the Mercer family, who helped install Trump and its deep ties to Russia.

With reporting by Tracie McElroy

Donald J. Trump was still gushing about his capture of the Republican presidential nomination a month earlier when he met with uber political financier Rebekah Mercer at a swanky Hamptons house party on August 13th last year. For all the boasting, Trump and Mercer both knew his campaign for the White House was in deep trouble.

Weeks of sliding poll numbers had thrown the campaign into turmoil. Trump had reportedly erupted in private meetings, deriding his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as being “low energy” (a term he’d previously reserved for rivals like Jeb Bush). As Mercer and Trump engaged in political strategy in the Hamptons, Manafort’s campaign death was hanging in the air. The New York Times was about to publish a devastating story revealing Manafort had been paid $12.7 million from Vladimir Putin’s pro-Russian party in the Ukraine.

With the Manafort political writing on the wall, Rebekah Mercer recommended Stephen Bannon, a long-time confidante of Donald Trump. People who know Bekah caution not to confuse her congeniality for flexibility.  “She’s very nice and very unassuming … but she’s also no bullshit. Her style is, ‘If you want my money, you have to do things the way I want,'” a source told The Hill.

By the following Wednesday, Manafort was out at the Trump campaign, and Stephen Bannon became its CEO. Kellyanne Conway was upped from campaign adviser to manager. Both have long histories connecting them to the Mercers. Rebekah and her father, Robert, funded Bannon’s anti-Clinton film “Clinton Cash”, and his alt-right Breitbart Media. “Rebekah Mercer has been known to indicate to people in the public policy world that she can influence Breitbart coverage where needed,” says The Hill.

With her appointments in place, Mercer money came flowing into the Trump campaign, with $17 million dollars going to the Super PAC “Make America #1”. By September, Bekah assumed control of the PAC. For all intents and purposes, the Mercers owned the campaign – financially and operationally. The same month, the Trump campaign paid the Mercer-backed Cambridge Analytica $5 million for its work targeting social news feeds through psychographics. Stephen Bannon is also an advisor to Cambridge Analytica and much of the content being pushed by it came from Breitbart. The super PAC paid Kellyanne Conway’s company $247,000 and Bannon’s production company $950,000 for their work on the campaign, which may be a felony violating election conflicts of interest rules.

Once Trump was elected, Bekah was named to the transition team and is believed to have influenced the appointments of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The Mercer fortune is closely tied to Russia and Deutsche Bank.

43-year-old Rebekah Mercer is the political operative of the family’s fortune, but her father is the source of the funds. She is his middle daughter, and ten years ago bought a bakery in Manhattan’s “Hell’s Kitchen” neighborhood with her sisters. He is a 70-year-old reclusive billionaire who owns the hedge funds Renaissance Technologies and Medallion Fund. Over the years, the father and daughter duo have become the largest political donors in Republican circles. It’s worth noting that Renaissance’s other partners are equally generous to Democratic circles.

Mercer’s funds have always had close connections to Russia – both in staffing and business. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of Russia’s top scientists fled the country to find cushy jobs in the U.S., and some of them landed at Mercer’s funds. In 2003, two of them, Pavel Volfbeyn and Alexander Belopolsky, departed the company. Insiders at the fund were caught by surprise when another Russian, Alexey Kononenko, was elevated over them. “People with knowledge of the firm say Kononenko’s promotion was a significant event in Renaissance’s history and that the Russian had actually executed a power play,” according to Bloomberg.

Very little is known about how Renaissance makes so much money, but it has a Midas touch like no other, making money in good times and bad. It operates quantum trading computers programmed by some of the world’s most brilliant scientists, many of whom are Russian. That means machines do all the trading based on algorithms, executing millions  of trades in milliseconds.  They can drive the stock market up and down with very little, if any, human interference. The machines place bets on whether prices will go up or down and make profit when their bets are right.

Vladimir Putin and Russia’s energy sector is linked to Deutsche Bank.

Nine years ago, with Russia reeling from economic failure and rising foreign debt, Vladimir Putin authorized the State’s development bank, VEB, to start issuing bailouts to key Russian oligarchs, including Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Bank and Oleg Deripaska’s United Company RUSAL. The $50 billion dollars in loans came with strings. “The major question is the price [they] will have to pay for such generosity,” analyst Troika Dialog said. In Russia, that means one thing: loyalty to Vladimir Putin. 

The Russian firms who received the bailouts from VEB became organs of the state, allowing the Kremlin to cut off energy supplies to countries it wanted to annex, like the Ukraine, or for other foreign misadventures. Alfa, you’ll recall, is deeply tied to the Trump-Russia scandal through a server in Trump Tower. VEB’s CEO had a secret meeting with Jared Kushner last December, and Oleg Deripaska, who is tied to organized crime in the US and Russia’s richest man,  paid Paul Manafort 10 million dollars a year between 2006-2009 to support Vladimir Putin’s political interests in the Ukraine and the US.

The other main stakeholder in the bailout was Deutsche Bank. The Bank is deeply tied to Russia’s energy sector and is the also the prime broker for Mercer’s Renaissance Technologies. Mercer’s fund takes large bets on energy price and Deutsche facilitates them. “Energy is indeed the largest speculative market with billions made and lost daily”, says Bill Parish.”[Mercer’s] Renaissance simply speculates on stocks and commodities and does millions of transactions with Deutsche Bank each year.”

Facing financial ruin and $300 Million in debt, Donald Trump launched his Presidential campaign.

Donald Trump owes $300 million to Deutsche Bank with no obvious means to pay it off.  As Trump was fast approaching bankruptcy, as was his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump decided to launch his White House bid as a way to rescue his fortune.

Deutsche Bank is by any standard a bad corporate entity. The bank was recently fined $10 billion  for its role in a Russian money-laundering scheme. The bank was also heavily involved in financing the vastly over-budget 2014 Sochi Olympics (itself a Russian money laundering scheme). In 2014, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) launched a congressional investigation into Mercer and Deutsche Bank’s illegal tax evasion scheme.

Rebekah Mercer’s husband is directly linked to the Moscow Exchange, which rises and falls on world events.

Then there’s Rebekah Mercer’s husband, Sylvain Michel Mirochnikoff, who until recently shared an apartment with her in a Trump-branded building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They are now getting divorced.

Mirochnikoff is a Morgan Stanley broker. In 2012, he joined the board of the International Security Exchange, which buys and sell stocks electronically. The following year the ISE partnered with the Moscow exchange to “share information”. If you’re in the business of placing bets on the futures of stocks (especially energy stocks), which Mercer’s Renaissance Technologies is, a family member with an inside track to Russia’s exchange could be very profitable. When Russia invaded Crimea in 2013, for example, the Moscow Exchange rallied. As Putin cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine from Russia’s state-run oil and energy companies, Mercer, Mirochnikoff and Oleg Deripaska were all making money off the crisis.

The same thing happened late last year. The Moscow Exchange rallied after Trump’s  election in November and the sale of 19.5% of Russian oil giant Rosneft in December (see chart). As Trump’s presidency has faltered, so has the Moscow Exchange.

The Mercers have become accustomed to making money by making “knowledgeable” bets on the future of stock prices. Through Russia, Deutsche Bank and Mirochnikoff, they had an inside track on world events that would move the markets and could easily react to them, particularly in the energy sector. By funding and staffing the Trump campaign, and manipulating people’s fears through Cambridge Analytica and Breitbart, they were able to install a financially imperiled   president who was not only beholden to their chief financial partner, Deutsche Bank, but could also imitate Vladimir Putin’s strategy of manipulating world events to turn a profit.

Opinion: Is John Kelly our Alexander Haig?

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Exclusive: As an FBI agent is transferred out of the Trump-Russia probe, there are new questions about Rudy Giuliani’s role in the Clinton e-mail scandal.

Late on Thursday afternoon, a bombshell dropped inside the normally extremely tight-lipped investigation office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Peter Strzok, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, was suddenly transferred from the Trump-Russia probe. An official announcement said Strzok was transferred to human resources at the FBI.

“I’ve never heard of an agent being moved to the human resources department.” Asha Rangappa, a former FBI counterintelligence agent and associate dean at Yale Law School, told the Business Insider. “I have seen instances where if some issue comes up, the agent might be moved to another investigation or to the operations center, where you essentially field calls all day, but why he would be moved to HR is just bizarre,” Rangappa said.

Strzok was not just a superstar inside the FBI working on some of the Bureau’s biggest counterintelligence cases, he was also involved in last year’s botched FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.

On January 12th this year, the office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz opened a review of the FBI Investigation into the Clinton e-mails “in response to requests from numerous chairmen and ranking members of congressional oversight committees, various organizations and members of the public.”

Former FBI Director James Comey was fully supportive of the investigation saying he was “grateful” for the probe. Comey, you’ll recall, made a surprising statement 11 days before the election about a “new” set of Hillary Clinton e-mails that were discovered on the home computer Anthony Weiner shared with his wife, Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin.

In October, with Trump’s poll numbers plunging, Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani promised a “surprise”.

With Trump’s poll numbers declining, former New York City Mayor and Trump campaign surrogate Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox News on October 26.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe in polls. Every election I ever won, I outperformed the polls,” Giuliani said. “I think he’s [Trump] got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises. We’re not going to go down and certainly won’t stop fighting. We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this around,” Giuliani said.

Just as Giuliani predicted, two days later, on October 28, FBI director James Comey sent an unusual letter to the heads of various congressional committees about a new batch of e-mails discovered on the Weiner home computer.

“I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Comey added that the agency couldn’t yet determine “whether or not this material may be significant or not,” or “how long it will take us to complete this additional work.”

On November 4th, a week after Comey sent that letter, Peter Strzok, the FBI counterintelligence investigator who was transferred out of Mueller’s investigation this week, interviewed Hillary Clinton about the e-mails. Three days later, Comey cleared the Democratic Presidential candidate. By then, Clinton’s poll numbers had begun to take a dive and didn’t have much runway to recover before the November 8 election.

Trump loyalist says NYPD forced Comey to act on the Clinton E-mails.

Now it seems elements within the Trump campaign with connections to law enforcement had been ratcheting up the narrative of the Clinton e-mails. In addition to Giuliani’s tip of “something up our sleeve,” former Blackwater CEO, mercenary Erik Prince, told Breitbart Radio on November 4th (the same day Clinton was interviewed by Strzok) the NYPD had found explosive evidence on the Weiner hard drive and the FBI national office had refused to follow-up.

Citing a source at the NYPD, Prince claimed the NYPD forced Comey to act threatening to take revenge action if he didn’t. “The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing with timely indictments,’” Prince explained.

We know Prince’s account of what was on those e-mails is untrue but the notion that New York law enforcement was engaged in some sort of tug of war with the FBI may indeed be true. After all, even Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a public rebuke of the procedures followed by the normally by-the-book Comey in explaining his firing.

“The Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously. The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial. It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do,” Rosenstein said in a memo before Comey’s firing.

Christopher Steele blames “a cabal within the Bureau” with ties to Giuliani for FBI focus on Clinton e-mails.

Christopher Steele, the MI6 former Russian head of the Russia desk and the author of the explosive “Steele Dossier” of Trump kompromat also believed there was “a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.”

Steele had been trying to get the FBI’s attention on the Trump evidence but the bureau kept stalling instead focusing on Clinton. According to the Independent Newspaper which interviewed Steele:

“The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton. Some of its agents had a long working relationship with Rudy Giuliani, by then a member of the Trump campaign, since his days as public prosecutor and then Mayor of the city,” The Independent wrote.

Giuliani does indeed have close ties to the NYPD and the FBI in New York. He and Prince both actively worked on behalf of the Trump campaign while peddling the Clinton e-mail stories. Giuliani was a top surrogate and even considered for the Attorney General job and was involved in writing the Trump Administration’s “Muslim Ban”.

The day after Comey’s letter on the Weiner e-mails, he went on radio and admitted to discussing the case with active agents. “The other rumor that I get is that there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI about the original conclusion [not to charge Clinton] being completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI’s integrity,” said Giuliani. “I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.”

If Steele’s assertions are true, it could explain why the FBI took so long take act on the Trump information Steele had collected. Now that senior FBI investigator Peter Strzok who helmed the Clinton e-mail investigation has been relieved of any counter-intelligence duties, it’s worth asking if the Office of the Inspector General has indeed turned up evidence to suggest elements in the FBI and the NYPD had been working to interfere in the election campaign on behalf of Trump and against Clinton and did the former hero Mayor of New York have a role?

Opinion: Is John Kelly our Alexander Haig?

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President Trump’s plan to privatize the war in Afghanistan would enrich three of Trump’s key financial donors and plays into Russia’s military objectives.

With reporting by Tracie McElroy.

In September 2007, Blackwater armed military personnel, guarding State Department officials, drove into Baghdad’s Nisour Square and opened fire, killing 17 people and injuring 20 others. Blackwater worked for the US as a “contracted” private army (there were as many as 160,000 contracted personnel operating during the Iraq war). Blackwater guards worked outside the normal military command of the military and the House Oversight Committee would later reveal the firm was engaged in over 195 unprovoked attacks in a 9 month period in 2014.

As a result of the Nisour Square massacre, Iraq terminated Blackwater’s license to operate within its borders. Four Blackwater employees were tried and convicted in U.S. federal court; one for murder, and the other three of manslaughter and firearms charges.

Peter Singer, a former Brookings Analyst would later write, “When we evaluate the facts, the use of private military contractors appears to have harmed, rather than helped, the counterinsurgency efforts of the U.S. mission in Iraq, going against our best doctrine and undermining critical efforts of our troops.”

Mercenary Erik Prince wants to command a private army to fight the war in Afghanistan.

10 years after the Nisour Square Massacre, Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, the same man who helmed the company in 2007, is proposing that a private army should fight another U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy Devos, is a staunch supporter of the Trump administration with close ties to Vice President Mike Pence, Trump backers Robert and Rebekah Mercer and former White House strategist Stephen Bannon. Prince, as you may recall, was the Trump adviser who held secret talks with Russia in the Seychelles in December 2016. Now, he wants to privatize the 16- year-old war in Afghanistan.

“We aren’t winning,” President Trump recently chastised his Generals at a meeting on Afghanistan. “We are losing.” The Generals reminded the President that the U.S. isn’t winning the war because he’d delayed signing off on a strategy for months. It’s in that vacuum that Prince and the White House have floated an idea to pay Blackwater $10 billion to hire 5,500 private contractors to run the war in Afghanistan.

Prince is not the only private citizen to set to benefit from this deployment. Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel, who helped found PayPal and Facebook donated $1.25 million to Trump’s campaign and was even given an important prime-time speaking role at the Republican National Convention in July 2016. He is close to Erik Prince. Thiel showed New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, “a picture on his phone of him posing with Erik Prince, who founded the private military company Blackwater, and Mr. Trump but joke[d] that it was ’N.S.F.I.’ (Not Safe for the Internet).”

Thiel is the co-founder of Palantir, a controversial yet effective data mining software company which provides clients, including many branches of the U.S. military, a real-time view of what is going on in an operational theatre (weather conditions, cell-phone and social media tracking, and other real-time data). Palantir’s software is believed to have been used in the raid that killed Osama Bin-Laden and has been effectively deployed elsewhere.

Critics say Palantir doesn’t have the right security and privacy mechanisms and as a private company, the vast data set that it owns, often classified, is in the hands of a private company and can easily pass into the wrong hands. The system has has also been vulnerable to significant malware attacks.

Former National Security Adviser, Lt-Gen Michael Flynn, exposed as “compromised” by Russia, has ties to mercenary Erik Prince and Peter Thiel’s company Palantir.

Palantir has many supporters in the military ranks, including three of General Jim Mattis’ deputies who have lobbied on behalf of Thiel’s company. Condoleezza Rice and former CIA director George Tenet advise the company. Perhaps Palantir’s most ardent supporter is Lt-General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former National Security adviser, who was working for Turkey and who Justice officials say was compromised by the Russians. Back in 2010, when he was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn pushed the military to adopt Palantir software. “Intelligence analysts in theater currently do not have the tools required to fully analyze the tremendous amounts of information currently available,” Flynn wrote.

Flynn also played a behind the scenes role connecting Palantir to partners. Steven Brill speculates in Fortune magazine that with Trump in office, Thiel can get Palantir approval across U.S. agencies, something his key lobbyist (and compromised Russian operative) Michael Flynn would wholeheartedly endorse.

Flynn served under Mike Pence as the vice chairman of Trump’s transition team. In December, he met with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. The same month Flynn, Erik Prince, Jared Kushner and Stephen Bannon met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in a secret meeting in New York. Zayed had met with Putin twice in 2016. A few weeks after the New York meeting, Zayed arranged for Erik Prince to meet a representative of Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles in order to explore Russia’s willingness to isolate Iran in exchange for closer U.S. relations and dropping of sanctions.

Another top Trump supporter Stephen A. Feinberg is working with Prince to support the privatization of the war in Afghanistan. Feinberg is the billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International. Bannon and Kushner tapped Prince and Feinberg to come up with the plan to privatize the conflict in Afghanistan. Feinberg is also close to Thiel.

Russia supplies weapons to the Taliban while working with the Trump administration to co-operate in the fight against it.

Afghanistan has been a quagmire for the United States for 16 years, and part of the reason it is bogged down there is Russia. The head of U.S. forces there, Gen. John Nicholson confirmed Moscow is supplying weapons to the Taliban. “We continue to get reports of this assistance,” Nicholson said, speaking to reporters alongside Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “We support anyone who wants to help us advance the reconciliation process, but anyone who arms belligerents who perpetuate attacks like the one we saw two days ago in Mazar-e Sharif is not the best way forward to a peaceful reconciliation.”

It’s easy to see why Russia has a strategic goal in Afghanistan. Russia’s foreign policy is guided by a drive to access warm water ports. This is true in Syria, North Korea, Turkey, Iran and the “stan” countries – particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition to the efforts to prop up the Taliban, Russia has supported ISIS, Hezbollah through Iran and despots like Bashar al-Assad.

Putin likes to wage war between two forces he controls so any move by the Trump administration to “privatize” the war in Afghanistan should be viewed in this light. Without real U.S. military involvement, a private army run by Erik Prince and cooperation from Russia in taming the Taliban it supports, joint Russian and U.S. control over Afghanistan would bring a cold peace to the region, but it also gives Russia a strategic foothold at the expense of the U.S. It would certainly enrich three of Trump’s biggest supporters: Erik Prince, Peter Thiel and Stephen Feinberg.

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New details of how the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin forged a deal during the 2016 Campaign and the mysterious role of a pro-Russian mercenary who has close ties to Mike Pence.

With additional reporting by Tracie McElroy

By July 2016, former MI6 Russia Desk head, Christopher Steele, had become frustrated. Despite a growing dossier of compromising evidence against Donald J. Trump’s collusion with Russia, the media and law enforcement narrative was instead focused on what seemed like a much lesser investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.

Steele became convinced the Trump campaign had been intentionally amplifying the Clinton e-mail scandal because they knew Russia had been hacking the DNC emails and may have had possession of Clinton’s 30,000 missing e-mails. Publicly, a number of Trump campaign operatives had been championing this narrative – notably former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone and Erik Prince, America’s most famous mercenary.

Prince, the 48-year-old former CEO of Blackwater, was too radioactive to be officially named as a member of Trump’s campaign but all indications are that he played a crucial role. Prince personally donated $250,000 to the Trump coffers and to a pro-Trump super PAC led by Rebekah Mercer (a major christian conservative donor). Mercer owns Breitbart, then run by Stephen Bannon, and Prince made several appearances on Bannon’s Breitbart Radio to spin up conspiracy theories about the Clinton e-mails, according to the Washington Post.

By all accounts, Prince’s role was far larger than just your typical donor relationship with a politician. “A former senior U.S. official who has advised the Trump transition told The Intercept that Prince has been advising the team on matters related to intelligence and defense, including weighing in on candidates for the defense and state departments,” according to PJ Wilcox. He was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December.

Then, in January this year, Prince held a meeting with a representative of Putin’s government and the UAE in the Seychelles in order to open up a back-channel between Trump and Russia.

Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, serves as education secretary in the Trump administration and his brother-in-law, Dick DeVos, owns Spectrum Health.

Unusual spike in Spectrum Server activity as Trump Adviser visits Russia for secret meeting.

Spectrum Health is particularly important to investigators of the Trump-Russia conspiracy. A server registered to the company is very deeply intertwined in the caper that is the becoming the greatest political crime in history.  It’s Spectrum’s server which is believed to have been consolidating and washing private email addresses with voters information hacked by Russian-paid hackers via a server at Trump Tower and one run by Russia’s Alfa Bank. The illegally obtained information was used to create a database which Breitbart, Infowars, RT and Sputnik News used to bombard voters with fake and hyped news to help turn the electorate towards Trump.

Independent analysis of the server activity by David Schiminovich points to a significant spike in traffic between Spectrum’s servers and the one in Trump Tower on July 9 and 31. The first, on July 9, came on the same day Carter Page, another Trump adviser, held a secret meeting in Moscow with Putin’s handpicked CEO of Russia’s main oil company, Rosneft. It’s at that meeting that a quid-pro-quo was believed to have been negotiated, Trump would drop sanctions against Russia in exchange for help with the election. According to the Steele Dossier, a sizable portion of Rosneft would also trade hands for the effort.

While Christopher Steele is well-regarded in intelligence circles, his account of Page’s meeting with the Rosneft CEO is yet to be publicly confirmed. What is clear, is that on Page’s return from Moscow, the Trump campaign began an earnest campaign to put in place the lessening of sanctions against Russia.

After secret Russian meeting, Trump team makes public moves in support of dropping sanctions.

Back in the U.S., Page attended the GOP’s platform planning week in Cleveland which began on July 11, a week before the Republican National Convention. One of the first orders of business was a surprising plank proposal to water down support for Ukrainian troops fighting Russian-backed rebels. Instead of sending the Ukrainians “lethal weapons”, the GOP pledged “appropriate support”.

Page attended a follow-up meeting with Jeff Sessions, Trump advisor JD Gordon and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Global Partners in Diplomacy event staged by the Heritage Foundation on July 19. “Much of the discussion focused on Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and Georgia,” according to delegate Victor Ashe.

Trump was officially nominated to lead the Republican ticket at the Republican Convention in Cleveland.  The day after the convention ended, July 22, Wikileaks published the first hacked DNC emails which they obtained from Russian hackers.  It’s notable that the Trump/Alfa/Spectrum servers showed increased activity at the same time.

The next day, July 23, Christopher Steele penned a memo to the FBI stating that Trump’s campaign team had agreed to a Russian request to dilute attention on Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine.

Trump got a boost in the polls from the Wikileaks DNC e-mail dump. On July 27, he publicly asked Moscow for even more help. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing,” Trump said at a press conference. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens. That’ll be nice.”

At the same news conference, Trump made a less noticed but equally significant comment about Russian sanctions which lent credence to the details of what Steele alleged happened at the Page meeting on July 9 in Moscow. German reporter, Mareike Aden, asked Trump whether he would recognize Crimea, if elected. Trump replied: “Yes. We would be looking at that.”

On July 31, the Spectrum server had another unusual spike.

Behind the scenes, mercenary Erik Prince proposed dropping Russian sanctions and worked to build a back-channel with Russia.

Wherever you look behind the Trump campaign, the same names keep coming up: Robert and Rebekah Mercer, Stephen Bannon, Peter Thiel, Betsy and Dick DeVos and Erik Prince. These seven continue to pull the strings of the administration, Russia collusion and the mass disinformation campaign which supported it.

It’s Prince who is known to have worked behind the scenes to open a back-channel between the Trump Administration and Moscow. Prince’s world-view also closely aligns with Trump’s foreign policy of detente.

“Think about it: If FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, can deal with Stalin to defeat German fascism in World War II, certainly the United States of America could work with Putin to defeat Islamic fascism. We don’t have to agree with the Russians on everything, or even on a lot, but we can at least agree that crushing ISIS in the Middle East is a very good idea.,” Prince is quoted in The Intercept. It may be coincidental, but it’s unusual that Prince’s brother-in-law owns the company whose server had repeated unusual links with the Trump campaign and Alfa Bank. It should be noted Prince’s company “Frontiers Services Group” also worked for the Chinese Government.

Mike Pence has close ties to pro-russian mercenary Erik Prince.

Which brings us to Vice President Mike Pence, who seems to be operating as a President-in-waiting, pending a Trump impeachment. This should trouble Americans because behind the scenes Pence is powered by the very same people who put Trump in office and is closely aligned to Erik Prince.

The Prince and DeVos clans have a long history of supporting right-wing causes from  bankrolling Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” to supporting anti-gay, anti-abortion organizations and ballot initiatives. Erik, was very close to Charles “Chuck” Colson, Richard Nixon’s “Watergate hatchet man” who Pence calls “a dear friend and mentor.” Erik Prince donated to Pence’s PAC “Principles Exalt a Nation”. After Prince’s Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in 2007, Pence organized a welcoming reception for Prince in Washington D.C.  The Prince and Devos clans also support and believe in establishing a Christian government in the US, just like Pence. 

While Pence claims he is not aware of any collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign, it’s clear Prince not only acted in an advisory capacity for Pence when he headed the Trump transition team, he was actively involved in setting up a back-channel with Russia. Prince and Pence have been close friends and allies for at least a decade.

If President Trump is impeached and Mike Pence becomes President, the group of evangelical supporters who helped elect Trump may be closer to achieving their and Vladimir Putin’s goal. Jeremy Scahill puts it all in a far more Machiavellian way, “Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors,” says Jeremy Scahill.

Opinion: Is John Kelly our Alexander Haig?

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Exclusive: A newly launched Russian passenger ferry was detained for carrying suspected military cargo destined for North Korea. The new evidence Moscow is supplying Kim Jong-Un with missile technology to threaten the U.S.

On May 14, North Korea sent the first of three successive chilling messages to the U.S. It was the successful launch of an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) capable of hitting the U.S. territory of Guam. The launch surprised analysts because the IRBM had an estimated range of 4,500 KM (2,800 Miles).”This range is considerably longer than the estimated range of the Musudan missile (a previous type of North Korean missile), which showed a range of about 3,000 km in a test last year,” said David Wright in his blog allthingsnuclear.

Despite sanctions, Russian ferry service to North Korea begins on May 9.

So it’s notable that as Pyongyang began the latest battery tests of missiles, a Russian ferry service was launched from the Russian port city of Vladivostok to the North Korean port of Rajin. The ferry service is billed as a cargo and passenger venture and is operated by a Russian-owned company based in North Korea. Analysts consider the ferry service unusual considering the heightened tension surrounding the Pyongyang regime, not to mention the limited potential for trade from a heavily sanctioned country like North Korea.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry says there’s nothing unusual about launching North Korea’s only international ferry service under the cloud of growing international concern about Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Reuters she “didn’t see a connection” between the new ferry service and political issues. The ferry’s Russian operator, Investstroytrest, said it was purely a commercial venture that was developed with no subsidies or involvement from Moscow.

The Man Gyong Bong is believed to have set sail on her maiden voyage from Rajin to Vladivostok on May 9 to join the World War 2 victory memorial events in the city. It undertook the return 12 hour journey the next day, May 10. The ship can carry up to 1,500 tonnes of cargo in its three dry holds and boasts 50 cabins, slot machines, a shop, a sauna and a karaoke room for “merrymaking”.

Russian ferry detained by customs officials for suspicious cargo destined for North Korean military.

Rajin is just 12 hours drive away from the May 14 IRBM launch site of Kusong. It’s at least conceivable cargo arriving on May 10 or 11 could have been used in the May 14 launch. It is notable, the more voyages the Man Gyong Bong took, the greater the leaps in North Korea’s nuclear missile program.

Barely a month after the ferry began service, on July 4, North Korea launched the second of its unexpected missile launches. This time its first successful Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) with a strike range well into the U.S. mainland. The launch pleased Kim Jong-Un so much he was quoted as saying ” [Those] American bastards would be not very happy with this gift sent on the July 4 anniversary,” according to Korea’s state-run news agency, KCNA.

The Man Gyong Bong continued to shuttle cargo between Russia and North Korea on at least nine round-trips unfettered until July 14. On that Friday, Russian customs officials detained the ship for 16 hours for carrying cargo that could aid North Korea’s military.

“There is a possibility of violation of the rules of the Eurasian Union and violation of Russian legislation in terms of customs procedures regarding the export of goods that contribute to the development of the capabilities of the North Korean armed forces,” said Michael Khmel, the Deputy Director of the ferry operator, Investroytrest.

The ferry was allowed to continue on its journey the next day, July 15, but it’s unclear if the suspicious cargo was allowed to remain on board. A travel agent in Vladivostok says she regularly books passengers on the voyage. “Our company sends tourists on this route every week, typically groups of three to five people. More often than not, these are scientists or those who organize visits for children to North Korea,” she said.

13 days after the ferry was allowed to continue on its journey, North Korea surprised the world again. This time with a new longer range Inter-continental missile (Hwasong-14) launched at 11:11 Pm local time, on July 28. It flew 47 minutes and appeared to be capable of reaching almost all of the United States.

North Korea makes missile advances with Russian-made engines.

This launch caught analysts by surprise – particularly what looked like Soviet-made RD-250 rocket engines which powered the missiles. “It appears that they sourced that engine from a foreign entity and they have successfully incorporated that engine into their missiles,” says Michael Elleman, a former consultant at the Pentagon.

The New York Times published a story citing the source of North Korea’s newly received RD-250 engines as being of Ukrainian origin but this was strenuously denied by Kiev who pointed the finger at the Kremlin. “We believe that this anti-Ukrainian campaign was triggered by Russian secret services to cover their participation in the North Korean nuclear and missile programs”, said Oleksandr Turchynov, the secretary of the Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. It’s worth noting, Russia denied North Korea launched the ICBMs, contradicting U.S., Japanese and North Korean claims.

Even if they were of Ukrainian origin, The Times says the rocket engines could have been stockpiled in Russia and were obtained via Russia. Considering suspicious military cargo caused a 16-hour delay in the ferry’s departure on July 14, less than two weeks before the launch of North Korea’s second ICBM which used the RD-250 engines, there’s now growing evidence that North Korea’s recent missile success may be Russian-made or obtained and perhaps delivered on an suspiciously timed ferry service.

If you liked this story, you may want to read “Wag The Dog” about Russia’s history of involvement with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The post Ferry Service appeared first on Narativ.

This weekend’s death of 32-year-old protester, Heather Heyer, in Charlottesville, Va. plays into Vladimir Putin’s plan to sow chaos in the U.S. 

“Chaos, isn’t a pit” says Littlefinger in Game of Thrones. “Chaos is a ladder.”

“Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions”.

“Only the ladder is real,” Littlefinger says. “The climb is all there is.”

Game of Thrones is more than just a brilliant masterpiece of modern-day literature and television, it is an allegory for our times. In the same way winter came to the seven kingdoms, so we are facing the winter of our civilization.

For decades, the West has ignored the rise of despots cloaked in shields of traditional values, nationalism, guns and violence. We’ve welcomed their blood money, and allowed them to seep into our institutions. And now that they’ve gained a foothold, they are sowing chaos.

It’s no coincidence then, that our winter approaches from Russia, a country whose geographic fate has sentenced her people to the harshest season and to generations of monstrous leaders. The latest is Vladimir Putin, who views sowing chaos in enemy states as a viable tactic to gain power, to climb the ladder of global power.

This weekend, a white nationalist careened his car into a crowd of counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Va. killing 32-year-old para-legal, Heather Heyer, and injuring 19 others. As the tragedy unfolded on live TV, one man was seeing the fruits of his labor. That man is Vladimir Putin.

For Putin, chaos is a ladder.

The Russian President is not shy about his intentions to sow chaos, he openly declares it.

In the guiding strategic document of Putin’s regime, the Gerasimov Doctrine, Russia’s General Valery Gerasimov outlines a new type of war – a “hybrid war” where information and protests are weaponized to greater effect than tanks, guns and nuclear weapons. “Non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals … have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness,” Gerasimov concludes.

Russia’s Chief of the General Staff goes on to outline “the use of special-operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state, as well as informational actions, devices and means that are constantly being perfected.”  In other words, use propaganda and protests to polarize a population and sow chaos behind enemy lines.

This is how Russia was able to pulverize the Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, how they helped Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan come to power, how they stoked ISIS and helped Bashar al-Assad and how they support extremists on the right and left in Germany, France and the U.S.  The Kremlin bolsters the fringes to polarize an enemy’s population and weaken the middle. And while the enemy is in chaos, Russia climbs the ladder.

What do these ‘active measures’ look like in the U.S.?

1. Russia openly supported the National Rifle Association (NRA), the first major endorsement for the Donald J. Trump and a major donor to his campaign. The NRA used to be a fighter for second amendment rights but now creates ads inciting anarchy, a war against Muslims and calls on North Korea to bomb California with nuclear weapons.
2. The Kremlin fostered allies in the so-called alt-right and white supremacists like Richard Spencer, David Duke and Jared Taylor. The very same activists who found a home in Stephen Bannon’s Breitbart. 
3. Moscow fueled the flames of discord by gaming Google and Facebook’s algorithms to boost alt-right sites like Breitbart and Infowars and Russian propaganda outlets like Sputnik and RT using Russian bots and private data stolen from hacked voters rolls. Using micro-targeting, they preyed on the fears about gun confiscation, gay marriage and Sharia Law by delivering fake and hyped news to social media news feeds.
4. The Russians actively groomed Donald J. Trump, a candidate with deep ties to Russian money and money-laundering, surrounding him with Russian operatives like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.
5. Together with President Trump, the Kremlin is now sowing doubts in the institutions which have made America a shiny beacon on the hill like democracy, an independent judiciary, the FBI and the media.
6. Moscow supports the regime of Kim Jong-Un with trade and nuclear arms to raise fears in the U.S. and could even start a distracting war, conveniently on their border.

The end result is chaos and now the death of a 32-year-old protester in Charlottesville. Would we have an emboldened Nazi movement in the U.S. if it weren’t for Russia’s “active measures” and Donald Trump? It’s unlikely. Is Russia also fomenting the far left? Absolutely. From Jill Stein to California’s odd secessionist movement, the Kremlin’s pernicious puppetry is visible. Russia’s goal is not ideological (although the Kremlin is more successful with right-wing groups aligned to Russia’s own despotic policies). Putin’s goal is chaos.

Why chaos? It’s a ladder. It’s designed to distract the U.S., so Russia can continue its global misadventures and regain a global footing. Don’t take my word for it, take Putin’s Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, General Valery Gerasimov:

“A perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.”

It’s those last two words, civil war, which should worry sober-minded Americans of all political persuasions. Now is not the time to feed into the hysteria, it’s time to coalesce and fight the winter invaders. As Cersai Lannister says in another episode of Game of Thrones, “when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

The post Chaos Theory appeared first on Narativ.

Could Donald Trump drag the U.S. into war with North Korea to save his presidency? If Vladimir Putin has his way.

In the 1997 satire, Wag The Dog, Dustin Hoffman played a political spin doctor who manufactured a made-for-TV war to rescue the flagging political fortunes of an incumbent president accused of fondling a young girl scout. The fictional scheme worked to increase the public’s support of the film’s president and turned around his political fortunes.

Fast forward 20 years and Wag’s satirical device is finding its way into the real and bizarre presidency of Donald Trump. This time, the war is real and threatens the lives of millions of people caught in the crosshairs. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is cast as villain but you don’t have to look far to see the strings connecting Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The ‘pravda’ about North Korea’s nuclear missiles.

Michael Elleman, a former Pentagon consultant, had three words to describe video of North Korea’s July 28 inter-continental ballistic test. “It shocked me,” Elleman told the Washington Post. “It seemed to come out of nowhere”. Not only does the new missile put Pyongyang’s nuclear program further ahead than anyone expected, it gives the regime a missile capable of striking most of the U.S. and Canada.

Elleman noticed something else alarming about the new North Korean ICBM. The Hwasong-14’s liquid fuel engines are very similar to a 1960’s-era Soviet missile RD-250. How did the North Koreans make these advances so quickly? Elleman and other are concerned they may have done so with Russian help.

Moscow’s support for North Korea dates back decades to the Soviet Union, a strategic alliance enabled by a shared border and ideology. As recently as 2015, Moscow allowed several North Korean nuclear scientists to work at Russian nuclear sites and study at its scientific academies. It’s also known that former Soviet-era scientists have been employed by the Pyongyang regime. In their 2014 book, “North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival” Young Whan Kihl and Hong Nack Kim, are more definitive on Russia’s involvement:

“Some restricted arm and weapons material have reached North Korea from Russia. There is a danger that North Korea nationals working in the criminalized Russian Far East could become involved in smuggling nuclear material and technology. Russian companies have been among the suppliers of North Korea’s nuclear program”.

In 2017, Russia boosts trade and military ties to North Korea

This year, Russia has stepped up economic and military support for Pyongyang just as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea have escalated. In the first two months of this year, trade between Russia and North Korea jumped 73% vs the same period last year. The Kim regime has begun talks to acquire a long list of Russian-made arms and Russia has moved its forces to its border with North Korea.

By increasing trade to the beleaguered regime, Vladimir Putin increases leverage over the isolated regime, and by extension the United States. This makes Kim Jong Un beholden to Vladimir Putin in much the same way Syria’s Bashar-al Assad is. With Donald Trump in the White House, Vladimir Putin has the kind of war he likes to wage. One in which he can play both sides off against each other so he controls the outcome.

“When you consider all the different flashpoints the United States and Russia have, this is a perfect opportunity for the Russians to sort of stick it to the United States a little bit more,” Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, told CNBC.

Fanning the flames of war.

“President Trump is really going to stand up to Kim Jong Un,” General Jack Keane told Fox and Friends this week. “It’s very scary for all of us Americans, especially when you learn that they can reach America,” the Fox News anchor opined. “Next week, it might not be a test, it might be reality.”

To be factual, nothing ‘nuclear’ could happen to the U.S. next week as North Korea doesn’t have the capability yet but the Fox News alarm seems to be building a Wag The Dog narrative for Trump. If Trump confronts Kim, Putin can play peacemaker. Everyone can be “greater” together. Former Bush ethics lawyer, Richard W. Painter, agrees. “Kim Jong Un is asking for it and Trump needs a distraction,” Painter tweeted. “China should stop Kim or this could end badly.”

What would a Korean conflict actually achieve? It would not only embroil the U.S. military in another far away place, endanger the lives of millions of people and provide a distraction for Russia to advance its troops into the Baltic states and the South Caucasus. The end result would be a disaster for the U.S. and only serve the strategic interests of Russia but it could also save the Trump presidency.

Wag The Dog ends with footage of a real war rising from the ashes of a fabricated one. The implication of this plot line is chilling in our current circumstance. Now that Trump has been forced to sign a new Russia sanctions bill, he will try blame congress for any escalation.

With an angered Russia, and an emboldened and unstable Kim Jong Un, the best laid plans of a war designed to distract can set off the tinderbox that is the Korean peninsula.  This won’t be just because Pyongyang knows how to build a nuclear missile. It will be because Russia continues to play a destabilising role in the world. When it comes to North Korea, keep your eye on the ‘khobst’.

The post Wag the Dog appeared first on Narativ.

What does the FBI takedown of a Russian money-laundering organization mean to Vladimir Putin and the man he helped install as U.S. President?

President Vladimir Putin was angry. He kept a group of his key cabinet ministers up until nearly 1 am on a recent Russian morning to lecture them on the country’s crypto-currency sector.

“I can straight-up tell you the president is completely mad about this,” recalls Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov. “The most significant issues about growth revolve around the digital economy and technological leadership,” Shuvalov told a bitcoin conference in St. Petersburg.

Putin has reason to be worried. Oligarchs have syphoned $335 Bn out of Russia since 2005. Putin himself is believed to be worth $200 Bn. When you’re stealing that kind of money, you need a fast and effective way to launder it and bitcoin is perfect for that type of money-laundering. The crypto-currency’s anonymity and global reach also makes it ideal for Russia’s interference campaigns in foreign elections.

This week, the FBI took down one of Russia’s biggest bitcoin exchanges, BTC-e.

Alexander Vinnick, 38, was arrested in Greece for laundering $4 Bn in dirty money through his bitcoin exchange. $2.2 Bn stolen from the Japanese bitcoin exchange, MtGox, and $1.8 Bn from hackers, drug traffickers and embezzlers. The FBI claims Vinnick is one of the world’s biggest crime dons.

Investigators also seized the exchange’s servers. The data on those servers could provide important evidence linking Russia’s organized crime organizations and the hacking of last year’s U.S. election.

Vinnick’s arrest comes as the U.S. has begun to systematically dismantle Russian organized crime networks around the world. Last week, they shut down dark web AlphaBay and they’ve arrested spam lord Pyotr Levashov, who has been linked to the hacking of the DNC.

Deputy PM says Putin is completely “mad” about this.

As investigators close in on the font of his power, Putin faces a real liquidity crisis.

Soon after that late-night tirade about bitcoin with his ministers, Putin met with Vitalik Buterin, the 23-year-old Russian founder of the world’s second most popular crypto-currency, Etherium, perhaps with an eye to ‘nationalizing’ it.

At the same time, Putin’s state-run Sberbank announced it intends to launch its own national crypto-currency. Sberbank CEO Herman Gref let it be known the new Russian bitcoin will be “the only cryptocurrency freely buyable and sellable in Russia” and will likely operate on its own blockchain, evading international prosecutors.

Trump loves bitcoin, too. 

Herman Gref has close ties to President Donald J. Trump. They were introduced to each other at the 2013 Moscow Miss Universe by a Russian oligarch whose deputy offered Donald Trump Jr. dirt on Hillary Clinton in June 2016. Gref and Trump are also both linked to the money-laundering Bank of Cyprus. Perhaps not too coincidentally, the Trump administration has been enthusiastic about introducing bitcoin into the U.S. government bureaucracy.

Russia’s unprecedented cyber attack on the U.S. election in 2016 was a multi-layered campaign which included disinformation, an unexplained server link to Alfa Bank in Trump Tower, hacking DNC servers, voters rolls and voting machine vendors, along with Wikileaks disclosures. (Wikileaks itself was saved by millions of dollars in bitcoin deposits despite an international blockade).

An operation of the scale of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election is not cheap and requires the very kind of anonymity and global reach crypto-currencies provide. The FBI is now surely following the BTC-e blockchain (bitcoin’s ledger) for links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

In Watergate, investigators followed the money. In Trump-Russia, they follow the bitcoin.

The post Bitcoin & Consequence appeared first on Narativ.

President Trump needs to answer questions about the Trump Organization’s ties to terrorist organizations and his support for their state-funders.

On May 10, President Donald Trump invited Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-ambassador Sergey Kislyak into the Oval Office. During that meeting, he revealed to his guests key information which compromised an Israeli spy who had infiltrated ISIS.

“Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat,” Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe wrote in the Washington Post. “The identification of the location was seen as particularly problematic, officials said, because Russia could use that detail to help identify the US ally or intelligence capability involved.”

Russia has supported ISIS extensively both directly and indirectly for some time.

ISIS supplies oil to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Russian-made weapons from Assad’s arsenal regularly find their way into the hands of ISIS. A former FSB counter-terrorism specialist has revealed that Russian security forces helped recruit thousands of Russian-speaking Jihadis for ISIS, and that Russia deployed air defense capabilities to prevent U.S. air attacks on ISIS. To be clear, ISIS is secretly funded and armed by Russia even as Moscow declares the terror group an ‘enemy’ in public. It’s convenient for Putin to control both sides of the war. So much easier to win.

If all of this sounds outlandish, consider how Putin came to power and its historical echo of Hitler’s Reichstag fire. In September 1999, as the Yeltsin era was coming to an end in Russia, four apartment buildings were blown up in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk. Putin’s response was resolute: “We will pursue the terrorists everywhere. If they are in an airport, then in an airport, and, forgive me, if we catch them in the toilet, then we’ll rub them out (mochit) in the toilet…. The question is closed once and for all.”

That was then. What we know now, is that Russia’s FSB was behind blowing up those apartment buildings. According to Boris Berezovskiy, a Yeltsin-era businessman, the explosions were “intended to unite Russians in fear and in a desperate desire for a new, decisive, even aggressive leader who would spare no enemy.” Putin is quite adept at acting tough in the face of a threat he has created, even terrorism against his own people.

Trump hands Syria, Russia, Turkey and Iran a major victory.

Russia’s main mid-east ally in the war for Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria is Turkey, which has the world’s 6th largest military. On July 19th, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency leaked the positions of 10 U.S. military posts in northern Syria, drawing swift criticism from the Pentagon. “The release of sensitive military information exposes Coalition forces to unnecessary risk and has the potential to disrupt ongoing operations to defeat ISIS,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway said.

Why would Turkey, a NATO ally, compromise the U.S. and help ISIS? Under President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Turkey has been folded into the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. With Putin’s guidance, Erdo?an has quashed democracy in Turkey and openly supports the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad. Erdo?an also enjoys the support of President Trump who, In May, praised Erdogan’s efforts to bring stability to Syria.

Now, Trump has handed Turkey and Russia a significant victory by ending a CIA program to arm Syrian rebels fighting Assad and working alongside the U.S. to defeat ISIS. “Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests,” according to the Washington Post.

The U.S. is also conspiring with Russia in a cease-fire in parts of Syria which analysts believe protects and emboldens a re-emerging al-Qaeda. “Current US strategy empowers al-Qaeda, which has an army in Syria, is preparing to replace ISIS .?.?. [and] is more dangerous than ISIS,” says a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). It’s a play right out of Putin’s playbook and helps Russia more than any other nation state.

It’s worth recalling Trump’s former national Security Adviser Michael Flynn was on the Turkish payroll to the tune of $500,000, and also compromised by the Kremlin. Facts he failed to disclose before taking office.

Trump Organization linked to Iran, terror funding.

Azerbaijan is a former Soviet Republic which is a vital conduit between Russia and Iran. Along with Georgia and Armenia, the countries form the South Caucasus, and Vladimir Putin considers the area as a major goal for Russian expansionism.

Baku in Azerbaijan is not the type of place you’d find an ultra-luxury Trump Hotel, but there is one, although it never opened. A brilliant and exhaustive article by Adam Davidson in The New Yorker details the ties between the Trump organization and Zika Mammadov, a corrupt Azerbaijani with deep ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. While the Trumps don’t own the hotel, they did receive licensing and other fees for their role in building it. Ivanka Trump was involved in every design detail and even showed off her work on Instagram.

Davidson posits that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (which funds Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations) laundered drug and nuclear arms material trafficking money through the Trump Hotel.

“Investigators of financial fraud like to say that government corruption, money laundering, and other illicit behavior often form a “nexus” with even more troubling activity, such as financing terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction,” wrote Davidson. “This appears to be true in the Baku deal.”

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) believes the Trump Azerbaijan project needs to be investigated as a possible violation of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “The Trump Organization’s Baku project shows the lack of ‘extreme vetting’ Mr. Trump applied to his own business dealings in corruption-plagued regimes around the globe. . . . Congress—and the Trump Administration itself—has a duty to examine whether the President or his family is exposed to terrorist financing, sanctions, money laundering, and other imprudent associations through their business holdings and connections.”

Warm-water ports, by any means necessary.

This week, Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan will begin joint military exercises in the Caspian Sea. This should be viewed as a pivotal turning point in Kremlin’s expansion into the South Caucasus. If Putin continues his march into Georgia and consolidates power in Azerbaijan, the new “Russian Empire” will have direct access to the Mediterranean Sea through Turkey and Syria, and to Asia through Iran. Russia’s has long sought access to warm-water ports, in an attempt to gain dominance over liberal-leaning democracies like the U.S. and its allies.

The military exercises and geo-political realignment also underline a growing partnership between Russia and Iran – two countries actively supporting and funding terror organizations like ISIS and Hezbollah.

Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran’s involvement in terrorism and state funding of terrorism are also war crimes and warrant investigation by domestic prosecutors and the International Criminal Court in the Hague (although Russia, Iran the U.S. are not currently party to the ICC). It would be an astounding turn of events if a sitting U.S. President is openly aiding and abetting Russia and Iran and if his businesses have profited from dealings with these states.

The post Crimes Of War appeared first on Narativ.

There’s more to Donald Trump Jr.’s e-mails than meets the eye.

In the shadow of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, Donald Trump was feted by Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov and his pop-star son, Emin. “I’m in Moscow for Miss Universe tonight,” Trump tweeted on November 9. “Picking a winner is very hard, they are all winners. Total sellout of arena. Big night in Russia!”

Trump’s Russia visit in 2013 was far more than just an exercise in showmanship. Agalarov arranged at least one two-hour dinner for Trump at Moscow’s Nobu with high-powered Kremlin officials. Noteworthy among them, was Herman Gref, CEO of state-run Sberbank. “[Trump] is lively with a positive energy and a good attitude toward Russia,” Gref said in an interview. Trump was equally effusive. “I was with the top-level people, both oligarchs and generals, and top-of-the-government people,” Trump told Hugh Hewitt in 2015.

Post sanctions, an effort to launder Russian money.

A year after the Moscow Miss Universe, the U.S. and E.U. imposed sanctions on Sberbank after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Sberbank CEO Herman Gref began looking for a way to move roubles out of the country. He found it in 2015. Gref’s son and another oligarch bought the Bank of Cyprus as a go-between for illegal Russian funds. A Russian laundromat, if you will. The deal was overseen by the bank’s vice-chairman, Wilbur Ross.

“Cyprus has a reputation as a laundromat for the Russians who are trying to avoid sanctions,” Rep. Mike Quigley told The Daily Beast. Paul Manafort, Trump’s Campaign Manager, also used the Bank of Cyrus to launder some of his own dirty money, including $12.7m he illegally got from a pro-Kremlin party in the Ukraine. Wilbur Ross, the chief engineer of the Russian-Cyprus deal, is now Trump’s Commerce Secretary, linking a key presidential ally to the Cyprus-based ruble washing machine.

Russian oligarch offers dirt on Hillary Clinton.

A year after the Bank of Cyprus was acquired by the Russians, on June 3 last year, an e-mail popped into Donald Trump Jr.’s inbox from British Publicist Rob Goldstone. Goldstone represents Emin Agalarov, the pop-star whose father, Aras, partnered with Trump in Miss Universe. The same oligarch who introduced Trump to Sberbank CEO, Herman Gref, who indirectly owns the Bank of Cyprus. The e-mail offered the Trump campaign explosive “kompromat” on Hillary Clinton:

“The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with [Emin’s] father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” Goldstone wrote to Don Jr.

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin,” Goldstone said.

“If it’s what you say, I love it,” Don Jr. replied.

The eldest Trump son looped in then Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner has ties to another Russian bank and diplomats. A few days later, Manafort and Kushner attended the follow-up meeting with Russian state attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower on June 9, 2106.  Also present was Ike Kaveladze, Aras Agalarov’s US based deputy, who is suspected of laundering $1.4Bn in Russian dirty money through fake Citibank accounts in 2000.

Senate, House committees probe Trump’s role in Russian money laundering.

Donald Trump’s personal connection to Russian oligarchs, their money-laundering deputies and Wilbur Ross raises an important question. What role, if any, does the Trump Organization play in laundering dirty Russian money? Furthermore, did Trump’s Russia support come as part of a cash-fueled relationship?

Senate and House Intelligence Committees are now looking for specific ties to money laundering. This week, they finally began receiving data from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). FinCEN’s mission is to combat money laundering and protect national security from illicit use. If investigators find proof of Trump’s role in Russian money laundering, it seems like the probe could reach a very different level of criminality.

The post Trump’s Role In Russian Money Laundering Investigated appeared first on Narativ.

Five of Donald Trump’s key advisers are linked to an attempt to buy Hillary Clinton’s missing State Department e-mails from a hacking broker on the dark web. 

For more than 40 years, Peter W. Smith was a fixture among Chicago’s elite. He was at once a high-flying private equity banker and a trusted Republican operative. “When Peter W. Smith talks, Newt Gingrich listens,” a 1995 article from Crain’s said about him. As Gingrich climbed the ranks of the Republican Party in the 90’s, Smith became his “No. 1 financial backer … and one of the top 20 contributors nationwide.”