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.

by Zev Shalev and Heidi Cuda

A suspected Russian asset was involved in organizing the January 6 attempted coup, including supplying accommodation and a gathering place for protest leaders in the weeks and days leading up to the storming of the Capitol.

Charles Bausman’s father was the Moscow Bureau Chief for Associated Press between 1968 and 1972, just the type of role Soviet officials would have targeted for recruitment to their intelligence services. It’s unclear if the elder Bausman was ever recruited, but Charles who has spent most of his adult life in Moscow, bears all the hallmarks of a man working for the Kremlin.

Bausman lived in Russia for 30 years before moving to Lancaster, PA in 2018 with enough money to buy three properties. On his arrival, he immediately launched US versions of his three Russian web sites pushing disinformation and propaganda, most notably Russia Insider, which included rabidly anti-semitic sentiment and Holocaust denialism. One of Bausman’s common themes is that America is “fractured.”

His websites were pro-Russian but the content decidedly focused on divisive U.S. domestic issues. Bausman promoted “Stop the Steal”— including appearing in and organizing anti-lockdown election protests in December and January outside the office and home of the Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He was spotted at protests outside Speaker Brian Cutler’s home and office in December. 

On the season premiere of Narativ, we broke the story about Bausman’s barn being used as a venue to plan for the insurrection and also discussed Bausman’s relationship with Sean Moon. Our guests were “Cult of Trump” author Dr. Steven Hassan, a former “Moonies Rev” himself and Michael Edison Hayden of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who wrote the first expose of Bausman. Heidi Cuda co-produced the show. Scroll down for Part 2.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

In psychological warfare, there are no strange bedfellows, and the purported Russian sleeper agent Bausman and gun crazy Pastor Sean Moon, of the Rod Iron Ministries, also known as the World Peace Unification Sanctuary, have been linked together during the lead up to the January 6 insurrection.

Turns out the next-gen Moonies and the alleged Russian spy Bausman reportedly played a much bigger role in the January 6 Insurrection than previously known.

And on Jan. 3, Bausman allowed out of town groups to stay over at his Pennsylvania property, specifically Sean Moon’s Rod of Iron group from Warren County. In fiery speeches, Moon invoked God’s name and fear of a Chi Com planet to whip people into a Trump-defending frenzy. Moon’s brother owns a tommy gun warehouse, whose 2016 grand opening was attended by Eric and Lara Trump. Eric was the guest speaker at the event. Donald Trump is scheduled to spend the 20th anniversary of 9/11 with Moon’s mother, Hak Ja Han Moon, the widow of Moonies founder Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Trump is listed as the featured speaker at the billionaire widow’s conference.

MEET THE MOONIES

According to multiple media reports and its own website, Sean Moon’s “Moonies” splinter group, Rod of Iron Ministries, worships at the altar of the AR-15, and Moon recently purchased a Waco-style compound about 40 miles from Waco, Texas, to prep for a war with the “deep state,” he said. Political provocateur Steve Bannon has spoken at Rod of Iron events, and both Moon and Bausman were present at the Insurrection. Moon was seen at the Capitol leading members into scaffolding. Bausman advanced to the Capitol, according to news reports, and then fled the country for Moscow.  

The Moonies weren’t the only Russian friendly assets at the Insurrection. Putin’s favorite former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher was at the Capitol; Russian chants can be heard as windows are being smashed; a Russian expat now living in Florida, Stanislauv Doudnik, broadcast live to Russian news outlets blaming Antifa and BLM for the violence. Two Russian women–a mother and daughter, originally from Moldova–were arrested for illegal entry. The daughter, Kristina Malimon, is a GOP activist living in Portland, according to a McClatchy report. In addition, a Ukrainian infowars host who appears on a network with ties to oligarch Dmitry Firtash posed with the QAnon shaman, Jake Angeli, on January 6.

Bausman left Russia where he had been living for decades and arrived in the US in 2018, quickly establishing his pro-Russian pop-up blogs and acquiring three properties. He left the US on Jan 7 in such a hurry, he didn’t have time to take down the Christmas lights at his home. Neighbors a say a friend took down the decorations weeks later.

One of Bausman’s Lancaster properties is a barn not far from his family home in Lancaster, PA, which he acquired under an LLC. The barn has been used to host white nationalist events like the launch of the National Justice Party, which is virulently anti-Zionist.

The following year he and Bausman’s family traveled to Verona for the 2019 anti-LGBT World Congress of Families conference.

Handler? Leaked emails from Charles Bausman reveal he sought funding from Konstantin Malofeev through an intermediary Alesksei Komov.

RENDEZVOUZ IN VERONA

In Verona, Bausman would likely have met up with another delegate at the WCF that year – the organization’s Russian representative, Aleksei Komov. One of Komov’s many job titles was journalist for Bausman’s Russia Insider.

Bausman’s emails also revealed Komov often arranged financing for Bausman’s projects through the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation. Komov served as head of foreign charities at the Foundation.

The charitable foundation is a philanthropic effort Russian oligarch, Konstantin Malofeev. Malofeev also funds the WCF and is a staunch supporter of Russia’s Orthodox Church. He is also said to have been the architect of Putin’s invasion of Crimea. Komov is considered one of Malofeev’s right-hand men. Malofeev was sanctioned by the U.S., EU, and Canada for his alleged role in financing financing Russian military operatives in Ukraine.

After a couple of surprisingly successful financial years, Bausman encountered some financial trouble at his publications and shuttered them in late 2020, soon after the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Michael E. Hayden published an expose about him.

Part 2 of our podcast about Bausman and Moon: ‘A Bear in our House’

PLANNING PROTESTS

He may have quit his online news business, but Bausman kept engaged in politics, hosting Sean Moon and delegation from his “Rod Of Iron” Church overnight on Jan 2. The next day the heads of many insurrectionist groups were attending a secret closed-door meeting in an unknown location in the same PA town. It’s unclear if Bausman’s barn was used for the meeting or if he attended.

Bausman’s trail of strange associations with extremist groups, Russia’s Orthodox Church, and a continuing association with Konstantin Malofeev’s right hand-man, suggest Bausman’s pro-Russia agenda may have been operational in an espionage sense, or as we like to say on Narativ, he is likely a spy.

Bausman is now back in Moscow full-time and denies any link to the Russian state. His funder Aleksei Komov denies Malofeev funds Bausman or his publications.

If Bausman is an agent for the Kremlin, it would be standard operating procedure to wire up a meeting room like the barn for surveillance. Extremist leaders like Mike Peinovich of the National Justice Party and Sean Moon may have believed they were meeting in secret, when in reality they could have been meeting at a SVR-owned and monitored venue.

This is the first time we’ve been able to link a suspected Russian asset to the insurrection.

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

The post A Bear in Our House 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.

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.

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. 

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The post The Most Dangerous Man In America appeared first on Narativ.

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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The post Remembering Ruth appeared first on Narativ.

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.

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.”

Peter Smith’s connected life in business and Republican circles ended on May 14 when he died. Smith was 81 but the circumstances surrounding his death are shrouded in mystery. An obituary posted in the Chicago Tribune, lauded Smith’s work as a tycoon and Republican operative but it did not list a cause of death.

“I should say we do not know how he died,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Shane Harris.  “We made multiple attempts, both with family members and with associates of his, as well as government officials in the town where he lived, to try to determine his cause of death, and we were unsuccessful,” Harris told MSNBC.

The Wall Street Journal reporter had good reason to be inquiring about Peter W. Smith’s death. Just ten days before the 81-year-old private equity banker’s demise, he called up Shane at the Wall Street Journal and confirmed a story the reporter had been chasing.  Smith revealed he had mounted  an “independent” campaign to find the 30,000 missing e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s private server she used while Secretary of State. Smith was convinced the e-mails were out there, theorizing Russian hackers could have them.

Smith’s efforts to find the missing Clinton e-mails date back to last Summer, just a few weeks after the Washington Post revealed the hack of the Democratic Party servers was the act of a Kremlin-linked hacker. The operation launch also coincided with Donald Trump’s public request for Russian help in finding the documents. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing,” Trump said.  “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Peter W. Smith began assembling a team to work on the e-mail project.

As Matt Tait, a UK-based cyber security expert and former British spy, tells it, Smith contacted him “out of the blue”. He introduced himself as a Republican Party operative. “He mentioned that he had been contacted by someone on the “dark web” who claimed to have a copy of e-mails from Secretary Clinton’s private server, he wanted me to help validate whether or not the emails were genuine,” says Tait.

The U.K. based cyber security expert agreed to help verify the e-mails, theorizing the dark web contact was either a Russian cut-out (espionage speak for an arm’s-length agent of a nation-state), or a fraudster trying to “dupe Smith out of his money.”  Smith denied he intended to pay for the e-mails in his interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Tait stayed in contact with Smith in the following months but never did see the e-mails. He notes Smith regularly boasted of his links to the Trump campaign, particularly Lt-Gen Michael Flynn. Flynn briefly served as Trump’s National Security Adviser before a Justice department investigation found him to be compromised by the Kremlin. Before his death, Smith denied Flynn was involved in the operation but several e-mails obtained by the Wall Street Journal, suggest Smith was acting as a conduit for Flynn.

According to Tait, and others involved in the operation, Smith sent out a document on Labor Day last year, listing four groups involved in the e-mail scheme. Among them was a group labeled “Trump Campaign” which included a who’s who of Trump’s inner circle: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis, Lt. Gen. Flynn and Lisa Nelson.

The Trump administration says it wasn’t involved with Smith’s scheme but isn’t denying the operation existed.  “If Mr. Flynn coordinated with him in any way, it would have been in his capacity as a private individual,” a spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. Flynn is widely believed to be co-operating with the FBI investigation so pinning the entire thing on him comes at little cost to the administration. But what about the other four Trump advisers listed in Smith’s document? How deep was their involvement? That may be a secret Smith has taken to his grave.

The post A Dark Web appeared first on Narativ.

Vladimir Putin personally ordered an interference campaign to disrupt the 2016 U.S. elections. History will judge him harshly.

It wasn’t always like this. Not always. For a couple of years towards the end of the Second World War. The US and Russia were partners against the Third Reich. In the early 1940’s, as the world raged with war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin made a pact to defeat Adolf Hitler.

Roosevelt’s affection for Stalin was so heartfelt he dubbed the Russian leader, “Uncle Joe”. Roosevelt penned a letter to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in March, 1942. ‘I think I can personally handle Stalin better than your Foreign Office or my State Department,’ boasted FDR. “Stalin hates the guts of all your people. He thinks he likes me better,” Roosevelt wrote.

The partnership briefly flourished and Hitler was defeated after a post-war alliance was negotiated involving Britain, the U.S. and the Soviets at Yalta. Things quickly changed after the war. A month before Roosevelt’s death in 1945, the president expressed his growing weariness of “Uncle Joe”. “We can’t do business with Stalin,” Roosevelt said. “He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.” After Roosevelt’s death, Harry Truman quickly distanced himself from the Russian tyrant.

To hear director Oliver Stone tell it, the US, not Stalin, reneged on a plan to set up 5 nation post-war alliance to check the rise of another tyrant like Hitler. Keep in mind, Stone is now so thoroughly soaked in Kremlin Kool-aid, he could serve as Putin’s chief propagandist. On Charlie Rose recently, Stone gave us a window into Putin’s warped view of history.

“America should — was very grate — should have been even more grateful but because Mr. Roosevelt died. Mr. Truman didn’t have the same attitude toward the Soviets as Roosevelt did. Roosevelt saw a grand alliance between the Soviet Union, Britain, China, and the United States. That grand alliance never materialized,” says the Putin Interviews director.

Putin – through Stone – seems to be re-litigating history while at the same time, whitewashing Josef Stalin’s bloody regime, which oversaw the imprisonment and death of millions of opponents. Roosevelt and Stalin’s partnership was borne out of expediency and a shared interest in defeating Hitler even though the president wrongly believed that he could turn Stalin into a “Christian gentleman”. In reality,  US values and strategic interests could never really coalesce with the Soviet’s, considering Stalin’s iron grip.

Fast forward 77 years and another Russian tyrant, Vladimir Putin, has a grand vision of building a US-Russia alliance which could “make the world great again – together”, as billboards lining Russian highways want us to believe. What made the Roosevelt-Stalin bromance succeed, and will doom this one to failure, was their shared enemy: Hitler’s Third Reich.

Putin is well aware he needs the same type of motivating factor to build an alliance with the US.

Enter ISIS. I’ve written before that ISIS was, and likely still is, funded and armed by the Kremlin. It should surprise no-one that big countries fund insurgencies in other countries as proxies. The United States has done it, and so does Russia. For Russia, it’s Bashar al-Assad, ISIS and Hezbollah. Absent another foe, Putin now wants to help the United States defeat a monster of his own making. This isn’t just theory, it’s right out Putin’s playbook.

Gen. Valery Gerasimov is the architect of what’s dubbed “Gerasimov’s Doctrine” which is often cited as the underpinning of Russia’s asymmetrical war against the US. Put simply, it involves creating a pretext for military action, through cyber warfare, proxy insurgency and propaganda. By supporting ISIS, Putin believes he’s created the perfect nemesis for a US-Russia alliance to defeat. ‘The enemy of your enemy is your friend’, as it were.

Putin’s strategy to stoke ISIS failed with the Obama administration, so he decided to install a president with whom he could work. The Washington Post now reports, Putin personally ordered a cyber and influence attack to hack our democracy.  The effort may have elected a puppet president, but the strategy is doomed to failure. Putin is a good tactician to be sure, but like Stalin before him, he lacks a basic understanding of the most important factor of a successful partnership: shared values.

If Vladimir Putin wants Russia to be a part of the civilized world of nations, he needs to stop supporting tyrants like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and ISIS, pull out of the Ukraine and Crimea and stop inciting global tension and terrorism. If Russia is to be considered a trusted partner, she needs to look inward, modernize a struggling economy (per capita GDP has plummeted 41% from US$15,543 in 2013 to $9,057 a year in 2015) and return legitimate democracy to her people.

The world stands on the threshold of incredible promise, innovation which will cure humanity’s greatest ills, from cancer to climate change, global hunger to poverty, terrorism to warmongering. Vladimir Putin is a singular figure standing in the way of human progress at a time of vital need. He should step aside. If he doesn’t, he’ll go down as one of history’s most reviled leaders.

The post A Monster Of His Own Making appeared first on Narativ.

Over 12 weeks, beginning last Spring, the Trump campaign and Putin’s emissaries sealed a deal that could unravel his presidency.

In Washington scandals, all roads lead to The Mayflower Hotel. JFK stayed there in a permanent private suite, Bill Clinton taped his testimony in the Lewinsky scandal in the Presidential Suite, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was busted for cocaine possession there, and Eliot Spitzer hired high-end prostitutes in room 871. So it seems fitting that the biggest scandal in our nation’s history finds a setting in the hotel’s sumptuous Senate Room.

Jared Kushner was the first to approach National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn about hosting an event where Kushner’s father-in-law, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, could outline his vague foreign policy. Whether the meeting achieved its goal remains an open question, but it has become a significant point of interest for FBI investigators probing the Trump-Russia scandal.

As the National Interest editor explains, the magazine arranged everything about the meeting: “The menu, the venue, the seating,” to borrow a lyric from Hamilton. The Mayflower was chosen over the originally booked National Press Club, perhaps because the Press Club doesn’t offer hotel rooms on-site where personal or political business can take place in complete privacy behind closed doors.

The April 27 event was attended by a typical mix of Trump loyalists, interested observers, and a handful of ambassadors, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Kislyak’s attendance was symbolic, designed to underscore Trump’s main talking point: lessening Russian sanctions and building an alliance with Moscow.

After the speech, two dozen high-profile guests attended a small reception at the hotel. “Trump certainly knows how to put everyone at ease,” recalls Heilbrunn.

“He bounded into the room with a hearty ‘Hello, everybody!’ A kind of impromptu receiving line formed in deference to the man—as though he were already president. Trump doesn’t work the room. You come to him.” 

Senator Jeff Sessions was also present. While details of his activities at the Mayflower remain primarily undisclosed, the FBI has confirmed that it intercepted communications from Ambassador Kislyak, in which he informed his superiors in Moscow about a private meeting with Sessions at the hotel.

Despite numerous photos showing Kislyak close to Sessions at the Mayflower, the now-Attorney General denies any meeting took place. “I did not have any private meetings, nor do I recall any conversations with any Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel,” Sessions testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. When pressed by senators, he adjusted his language to say, “It’s conceivable.” A conversation occurred, but he had “no recollection.”

SENATOR ROY BLUNT (R-MO): You didn’t have a room at that event where you had private meetings, did you?

SESSIONS: No, I did not.

BLUNT: So when you said you possibly had a meeting with Mr. Kislyak, did you mean you possibly met him?

SESSIONS: I didn’t have any formal meeting with him. I’m confident of that, but I may have had an encounter during the reception.

BLUNT: Alright, so you were there. You’ve read since he was there, you may have seen him, but you had no room where you were having meetings with individuals to have discussions at the Mayflower Hotel that day.

SESSIONS: No, that is correct.

Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, and Senator Jeff Sessions simultaneously take their seats at the Mayflower.

All of this is inconsistent with Sessions’ role as chairman of the Trump Campaign’s national security advisory board. Why wouldn’t he talk to the Russian ambassador? Time will tell if Sessions’ Senate testimony and FBI scrutiny stand the test of time.

To Moscow, with love.

Sessions introduced Donald Trump to Carter Page in March 2016. At the time of their meeting, Page was a little-known energy consultant with deep ties to Russia’s oil and energy sector. He quickly became a trusted advisor for the campaign.

Six weeks after the Mayflower event and ten weeks into the campaign, Carter Page traveled to Moscow at the invitation of the New Economic School. During his visit, he delivered a scathing critique of what he called “hypocritical” US policies. Page arrived on Friday, July 9, and by Sunday, he reportedly held a clandestine meeting with Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russian oil and energy giant Rosneft.

The secret meeting between Page and Sechin has been publicly confirmed, though the details remain speculative, based mainly on former MI-6 spy Christopher Steele’s findings. Steele reported that a quid-pro-quo was arranged: if Trump lifts sanctions, he would receive 19.5% of Rosneft or a portion thereof.

Steele’s source is believed to have been Sechin’s former Chief of Staff, who was fatally shot in Moscow in December. It’s also speculated in Russiagate circles that there was another leg to the Trump-Russia deal. Page is believed to have asked Russian officials for help with hacking on behalf of the Trump campaign. This seems to line up with an FBI-sourced report by CNN: “The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Page was only in Moscow for three days. He returned in time to join fellow Republicans at the GOP’s platform planning week, 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.”

The following week, as the convention got underway in Cleveland, Page, Sessions, and Trump advisor JD Gordon met with 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. Russia’s crippling sanctions are primarily a result of their incursion into Ukraine. Under oath, Sessions initially denied that this meeting took place but later admitted to meeting Kislyak when confronted by media reports to the contrary.

So let’s thread this needle. Sessions has a meeting he can’t recall with the Russian ambassador at the Mayflower on April 27th. A member of his National Security Advisory Board, Carter Page, heads to Moscow in July and takes a top-level meeting with the CEO of Russia’s state-run oil company, Rosneft. A deal is allegedly struck: a piece of Rosneft in exchange for dropping sanctions and, to grease the wheels, some hacking help from Russia’s state-authorized team of cyber-criminals to help Trump get elected.

That hacking help came on July 22 – three days after Sessions met Kislyak in Cleveland. Wikileaks published the first hacked DNC emails obtained from Russian hackers. As Trump got a boost in the polls, 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.”

All of this happened under the watch of then-Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, who received $12.7 million in kickbacks from Ukraine’s former Russian-backed president and was paid $10 million a year on behalf of Putin’s ally, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, to further Russian interests around the world.

If the walls of the Mayflower could talk, they’d spill some of Washington’s seediest secrets.  That may not be necessary in today’s world of electronic surveillance. After all, any meeting involving Kislyak could well have been in earshot of the FBI, who had been surveilling him for quite some time.

The post Meet Me At The Mayflower appeared first on Narativ.

Opinion. There is something wrong with the Attorney General.  At best, he has selective amnesia. At worst, he helped a foreign government seize control over the executive branch of the US. In either case, he is unfit to serve. If the latter is true, not even the 10,000 lawyers at the DOJ can save Jeff Sessions from his great fall.

The Attorney General can’t recall with whom he met, when he met them, what they discussed, what he’s recused from and why he and his boss can’t agree on why they fired the FBI Director. And he can’t tell you why he can’t tell you what he can’t recall.

The AG feigns indignation about scurrilous rumors and innuendo he claims hurt his reputation. Mr. Sessions is far more concerned about himself than he is about the perilous state of the US democracy. The nation’s top law enforcement official says Russia meddled in the election and believes crimes were committed yet he can’t explain why he’s done absolutely nothing about it. This is a massive dereliction of duty.

Sessions says he recommended FBI Director James Comey be fired for his mishandling of the Clinton e-mail scandal. President Trump says it was for the “Russian thing.” The Attorney General would like us to believe Comey was a failure as FBI Director, but the real failure is Mr. Sessions. A failure to lead, a failure to uphold the constitution and a failure of conscience.

Sessions claims he met Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak on Sept 8 at a routine meeting in his then capacity as member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. At first, the Attorney General denied he met Kislyak. Then he denied talking about sanctions. Now he denies he was acting on behalf of the Trump campaign when he discussed sanctions at the meeting with the Russian ambassador. Mr. Attorney General, your pants are on fire.

Sessions can’t recall yet another meeting with Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel on April 27. Is he really expecting us to believe he was inches away from Kislyak, as pictured, but never discussed anything with the ambassador? It strains credulity that there was no conversation of substance at a speech in which then-candidate Trump proposed improving the US-Russia relationship.

The Attorney General’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee was so ludicrous, it makes a mockery of the very word justice. His reluctance to answer questions, without a legal basis for his refusal, is a clear indication he is complicit in an ill-conceived and treachorous plot to steal the election on behalf of Vladimir Putin. Mr. Sessions must resign and face the consequences.

The post Jeff Sessions Must Resign appeared first on Narativ.

As Russia attempts to pry Qatar out of America’s sphere of influence, there are new questions about Moscow’s role in global terrorism.

The world shuddered on Monday, as a major rift tore apart the seemingly stable US alliance in the Middle East, known as the Gulf Cooperation Council. Qatar, the small and extremely oil-rich Middle East, was cut off by the council’s ruling members. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and two other countries suspended diplomatic relations with the tiny Emirate, cut off air land and sea travel. All but Egypt ordered their citizens to leave within 14 days.

The stunning move was precipitated by what Qatari and US intelligence officials said was a fake news story planted by Russian hackers in Qatar’s official news agency. The fake article attributed quotes to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Aal Thani as supporting fundamental terrorist organizations and Iran and called relations with the Trump administration “strained”. The article may have been fake but it highlights very real, seemingly opposite goals of the tiny Emirate.

Qatari foreign policy is, to put it simply, a study in contradictions. While the Emirate supports revolutionary movements, it also plays host to the largest US military base in the region at al-Udeid, south-west of Doha. Doha is the home of Al-Jazeera, which for years has been outwardly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and often rebroadcasts audio messages from al-Qaida leaders but until Monday was still allied to Saudi Arabia. Doha also still maintains diplomatic ties with Tehran, much to Riyadh’s chagrin. In the Middle East, you’re either with the mostly-Sunni Saudis or with mostly Shiite Iranians. Qatar has tried to do both.

Russia, in its pursuit of warm water access to the Mediterranean and dominance in the region, has been trying to ply the Emirate away from US influence for years. So far,  Qatar has been quite amenable to Moscow’s advances. In January this year, Qatar’s Emir visited Russia and exalted Vladimir Putin for “playing a leading role in stability in the world”.

Moscow has been heavily investing in Qatari interests over the last few years and Qatar has been heavily investing in Russia. The relationship cemented itself last year when Moscow sold 19.5% of Rosneft, the giant Russian state-run oil company, to a Qatari-led partnership with Swiss oil firm, Glencore. Little else is known about the deal because it is shrouded by Bahamian registered shell corporations but it’s suspected of being the same deal mulled in the Steele Dossier, in which Russia offered a 19.5% in Rosneft to Trump campaign official Carter Page, in exchange for a lessening of Russian sanctions.

Was Russia’s hack of Qatar’s news agency a not-so-subtle attempt to provoke the Saudis to isolate Qatar and in so doing, move the Emirate even closer to Tehran and Moscow’s orbit? A trick played on the Saudis to drive a wedge between them and Qatar? Quite possibly. This scenario seems even more likely when viewed in the context of President Donald J. Trump’s tweet which applauded the Saudi move. “They said they would take a hard-line on fundamental extremism and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end of the horror of terrorism!” Even as the US Military and Diplomatic corps were trying to rebuild the Middle East coalition, President Trump was nudging the break-up along. Moscow’s sleight of hand would be at once evil and brilliant, if it weren’t so apparent.

The most troubling aspect of all this is that Moscow itself, has long been suspected of being backers of fundamental terrorist groups like ISIS. Russia “provided material support to ISIS to manipulate the war in Syria and Russian media has long alleged that Russian security forces helped recruit for ISIS, which now has thousands of Russian-speaking jihadis in its ranks,” said Molly McKew in Politico in 2015.

“The arrival of the first group of several hundred Russian-speaking fighters was a key turning point in the Syrian war — turning the war away from Assad and toward Iraq. The largest current source of ISIS revenue, according to US and European officials, is from selling oil to Assad — and Assad cannot act without Russian approval. ISIS requires Russian ammunition to fight, readily acquires it from stocks sent to Assad, and seems to find fortuitous resupply when necessary.”

Yes, the same ISIS which has claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Ariana Grande Concert in Manchester and ran over and stabbed citizens and tourists on London Bridge was, and likely still is, an arm’s-length instrument of Moscow’s foreign policy.  In December 6, 2015, Ukrainian TV aired an interview with a former FSB counter-terrorism specialist who alleged Russia was “directly and indirectly complicit” in global terror attacks.

When asked if Russian agents could be involved in the [November 2015] terrorist attacks in Paris, Yevgeniy said there was “complicity in acts of terrorism.” He continued, “And the complicity could be direct or indirect. By analyzing their connections, one, of course, will be able to see the ties leading to Russia. Primarily Russia could benefit from this, and the Russian security services had all the possibilities to organize this.”

The 2015 Paris attack claimed 130 lives and, as with the recent tragedies in Manchester and London, ISIS claimed responsibility for it. While ISIS gets some upside from these attacks, it’s really Russia which gains the global leverage. It forces democratic electorates to choose more conservative governments, fosters fear and intolerance, creates chasms in the existing alliances but also forces the world to view Moscow as part of a solution to a mess it covertly created. Viewed in this light, the Trump administration’s assertion that it will fight ISIS with Russian help just seems like another covert ploy by Moscow to play an international game of cat and mouse when in reality, it is both.

The post An Unholy Alliance appeared first on Narativ.

Opinion: Democrats could retake the White House in next year’s mid-term elections and Joe Biden could become the next President. 

In the heat of the 2012 Presidential election campaign, senior White House chief political strategist David Axelrod approached his boss, then President Barack Obama, with a sobering message.  Democratic enthusiasm for Obama had begun to wane. Axelrod offered a suggestion to turn the tide. The President needed to call in former President Bill Clinton to reinforce his re-election campaign effort.

To be clear, there is no love lost between the two former presidents. “Bill Clinton’s animosity toward Obama is legendary.” The New York Post reported in June 2013. Just a year earlier, Clinton was urging his wife to oppose Obama’s re-election. Hillary deferred, citing loyalty, but her husband was offended by what he perceived was Obama’s slight against him. According to sources quoted in Edward Klein’s book “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House”, Clinton fumed:

“I’ve heard more from Bush, asking for my advice, than I’ve heard from Obama. I have no relationship with the president — none whatsoever. Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s an amateur!”- Bill Clinton, as quoted in “The Amateur”

As the 2012 campaign took its toll on Obama’s approval ratings (mainly due to the IRS scandal and, ironically, Hillary’s Benghazi and e-mail scandal), Obama was left no choice but to reach out to Bill. Clinton proposed a deal.

Clinton agreed to give the nominating address at the Convention. In exchange, he demanded Obama endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor. Bill held up his side of the agreement stumping on Obama’s behalf on the campaign trail and giving a rousing speech at the convention. Obama was re-elected but once back at the White House, he began to have second thoughts, sending signals he preferred to stay neutral in the next election, as is tradition with sitting Presidents.

When word of this reached Bill Clinton, he insisted Obama go on 60 Minutes with Secretary Clinton, to publicly affirm his support for Hillary. The result was a hastily organized and somewhat uncomfortable interview with Hillary and Obama on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

What made Obama’s deal with Bill Clinton personally heartbreaking for the sitting President, was it meant his Vice President and good friend, Joseph Biden, would have to go it alone in the 2016 election, should he run. After all, Vice Presidents Gore, Bush and Mondale all secured their party’s nomination after serving as deputies to successful sitting presidents.

Biden briefly toyed with a 2016 run against Hillary, but the death of his son, Beau, wore heavily on him, emotionally and financially.  At one point, he told President Obama that he and Jill would have to sell their home, to care for Beau’s family. As Biden recalls it, “[Obama] said, ‘I’ll give you the money. Whatever you need, I’ll give you the money. Don’t, Joe — promise me. Promise me.’ I said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to have to anyway.’ He said, ‘promise me'”.

Biden enjoys a close relationship with Hillary and was acutely aware of the historic potential for a first female President. Since Clinton’s loss to Trump in November last year, Biden has been frank in his assessment of her Presidential campaign. “You didn’t hear a word about that husband and wife working, making 100,000 bucks a year, two kids, struggling and scared to death. They used to be our constituency,” Biden told the LA Times. “I don’t think she ever really figured it out, and by the way, I think it was really hard for her to decide to run,” the former VP says.

Instead of launching his own Presidential run, Biden campaigned tirelessly for his friend, Hillary Clinton, appearing at no less than 83 campaign events, all while mourning the loss of Beau.

Last week, Biden announced he’s launching a Political Action Committee as a way to ‘stay involved’ in politics, but many are speculating the move will lead to a Presidential run in 2020. There is a scenario, which could see Biden in the White House two years earlier. The following is my opinion and is based solely on what is publicly known about the investigation of the Trump-Russia affair.

As I’ve previously explained, in my post on the seriousness of the investigation into Donald Trump’s involvement with Russia, impeachment would be the likely course of events in more ordinary times. These, however, are not ordinary times. Far from it.

Even after FBI Director James Comey lays out the case for obstruction of justice against Trump before senate committee on Thursday this week, Republicans are unlikely to launch impeachment proceedings. This is based on political expediency but also because it’s now suspected House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) both accepted Russian money for the their part’s 2016 election season. (I wrote about it in my post “What America Needs Now”.) They are not only beholden to Trump, but they may be owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin and very possibly complicit in the entire affair.

This could mean voters have to wait until the 2018 mid-term elections to exercise their vote in opposition to Donald J. Trump. In so doing, they will also have a chance to elect the next President of the US. If Democrats win the house (which would mean flipping 22 Republican house seats) and launch impeachment proceedings, they could put a new President in the White House before 2020.

Should Joe Biden run for one of those House seats and win, he could become the House Speaker. The House could then impeach President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael Pence, paving the way for Biden to become the 46th President of the United States. Biden will be 74 on mid-term Election Day in November 2018 and 75 when the new Congress takes office in January 2019. The next presidential election will still happen in November 2020.

Obvioulsy, this scenario holds for whomever is House Speaker in the event of a Democratic win. Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama could run for the House (the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for a President to be elected for a third term, but it doesn’t prohibit a third term, through succession) but Clinton and Obama would both receive serious opposition from the Trump base, at a time of considerable division in the country. Biden’s blue collar appeal, hopeful vision, impeccable credentials and no ties to a corruptable money machine will appeal across the board as the man to lead America out of the gloom in which we find ourselves. “Joe always says, ‘If you’re not on your way up, you’re on your way down,” the New York Times quoted someone close to Biden as saying in 2013. Sometimes, you’re down so much, the only way to go is back up.

The post How Joe Biden Could Be President By January 2019 appeared first on Narativ.

Jared Kushner and his father-in-law, President Donald J. Trump, have more connecting them than Ivanka Trump. 

On April 19 last year, Donald J. Trump was taking a victory lap after winning the Republican Party nomination. In his speech, he mentioned by name a number of bold-named businessmen who were there to hear him crow. Carl Icahn, Howard Lorber and Steven Roth, the CEO of Vornado Trust.

“The great Steven Roth,” Trump extolled. “Steve’s building a big building on Central Park South, it’s a tremendous success.”

“I said, ‘Steve, congratulations on the building,'” The newly-minted Republican presidential nominee said.

“He said, ‘Donald, it’s nothing compared to what’s happening with you.’ Is that right? My man!”

Trump and Roth have been friends (and sometimes business foes) for over 30 years.  They jointly own the 1290 Sixth Avenue office tower. Trump and Roth became business partners after Trump threatened to sue his former partners for trying to sell it to another party without his permission. 1290 Sixth Avenue became the second largest in Vornado’s portfolio but by no means the only marquee property in Roth’s sprawling Manhattan empire.

One other is 666 Fifth Avenue, which Roth’s Vornado Trust co-owns with Jared Kushner’s family. Jared made news in Manhattan’s real estate circles when he purchased the trophy building for $1.8 billion, using mostly borrowed money. By all accounts, Kushner overpaid for the building by paying twice as much per-square-foot than any other Manhattan building sale before it, according to the New York Post. Tellingly, the deal closed on Jared’s 26th birthday, Jan. 10, 2007.

It was an expensive birthday gift by any measure but for the young real estate scion it represented a giant statement to Manhattan. Two years earlier, his father, Charles Kushner, was imprisoned for 14 months after pleading guilty for tax evasion charges and for making illegal campaign contributions. Before exiting prison, Charles turned over his holdings to his eldest son to manage a business free of an ex-convict CEO. Jared was just 25. If his father’s prison sentence wasn’t enough for the young heir to handle, the circumstances that led to it, tore the Kushner clan apart.

Before being charged in 2005, Charles Kushner heard his brother-in-law was talking to investigators about his misdeeds. To gain leverage over him, Kushner paid a “very attractive, high-end call girl $10,000 to lure his brother-in-law to a Bridgewater, NJ, motel after she pretended to need a ride when her car broke down,” according to the Post. Jared’s father had the whole motel encounter taped and sent it to his sister, Esther. She turned the tape into the feds. Classic kompromat.

Now it seems, Kushner family history could be repeating itself. Investigators want to know if Jared has kompromat all of his own. Only this time, the disparaging evidence is financial in nature and it’s the Russians who could be holding it over him.

666 Fifth Avenue, The trophy building Jared bought for $1.8 Bn in 2007 has proved to be a financial noose around him and the family. By 2008, the building was generating just 70 cents on every dollar it owed.  Under pressure, Jared was forced to sell the pricey store space for $525 million to a partnership in 2008 and a 49 percent stake in the office portion to Stephen Ross’ Vornado in 2011. Yes, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump share more than wife and daughter, they share a business partner. A $1.2 Bn mortgage on Jared’s trophy building is due in just two years which unpaid, could destroy the family fortune.

Congressional investigators and the FBI are now probing a secret meeting Jared had with Vladimir Putin’s banker at Trump Tower in New York in December last year. The White House and the Russian bank have offered conflicting explanations for the meeting between Kushner and Sergei Gorkov.

The post Ties That Bind appeared first on Narativ.

Russia hacked vital election infrastructure before the election. Did they rig the vote?

Some time within the week of November 3, 2016, the FBI held a hastily convened conference call with Florida’s 67 county election supervisors who operate a specific type of election voting system. They had sobering news for the officials: Russia had successfully hacked the vendor of Florida’s electronic voting machines. The FBI and Homeland Security were so concerned, a second call was organized with Florida state officials to share information on the cyber threat

The Russian hack of a voting machine manufacturer came amidst a frenzy of activity by Kremlin hackers who had successfully gained access to the State Voters Rolls in Arizona and Illinois. What gave investigators pause, however, was the fact that the Florida hack had a different target. It wasn’t just collecting voter identities; it was aimed at the manufacturers of the voting machines across the state.

Almost 20 percent of Americans vote on digital systems that don’t produce a paper trail. This includes several states such as New Jersey, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina as well as several jurisdictions in swing or battleground states like Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Indiana. Many of the machines are more than 10 years old and contain software no longer maintained by its manufacturers – we’re talking Microsoft XP or older – and are not updated with the latest security patches. James Scott, a senior fellow at the Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology,  posed a rhetorical question in an interview with NPR:

“With the kind of stealth and sophistication that’s already out there, why wouldn’t a nation-state, cyber-criminal gang or activist group go into election systems that are completely vulnerable?”

Tampering with an electronic voting booth is fairly simple. According to a study by the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in 2012, voting machines can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education. All you’d have to do is unlock or pick the lock, switch out the memory card, and reboot the machine. This was ably demonstrated by Andrew Appel, a Princeton professor in a 2014 YouTube video. Once in place, the hacked machine could count a completely different vote than the one intended by the voter. Most polling stations are in gyms or schools and machines are set up well before voting day so it’s not impossible to gain access to them. Also, every machine needs to be reset before every poll so they have to be opened by someone.

This kind of invasion would require a carefully coordinated attack on thousands, or at least hundreds, of voting machines. Of course you could reprogram the machines in each state at once, if you gained access to the source codes for the machines allowing you to reprogram all the memory cards at once.

According to Salon:

Voting machine companies and election officials have long sought to protect source code and the memory cards that store ballot programming and election results for each machine as a way to guard against potential outside manipulation of election results.

But a determined hacker could gain access to those source codes by hacking the manufacturer’s mainframe, as Russia is suspected of doing. They could theoretically access the codes, change them, and resave them without anyone actually knowing.

And that’s not the only weak spot. Experts warn that the entire ecosystem is vulnerable. For example, once votes are cast, the data is transferred into a database for immediate counting. The tabulation equipment is also dated and doesn’t have the basic security like encryption or strong passwords, so if you didn’t rig the vote in the actual machines, you could do it at the counting point.

To be clear, the FBI only knows there were hacks of Russian origin of the voting machine manufacturer server, and hacks of state voters rolls in at least two states but no actual manipulation of data voting machines. There are clues, however, that something went awry on voting day. Data analysts have been poring over the election results and they are finding some serious head-scratchers.

Take Wisconsin, for example. President Donald J. Trump won the state by a mere 3,000 votes, but statistical analysis of the result showed Hillary Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that voted on electronic-voting machines.

There are other discrepancies, too. Exit polls, normally reliable predictors of actual poll outcomes, seemed way off compared to actual results last year. Shortly after the election, the National Association of Voting Officials, a group of polling experts, sent a letter to election officials across the country:

“Our examination of the exit data collected by Edison Exit Polling shows a large number and unprecedented discrepancy between the exit polling and the final vote count at minimum in certain states – the so-called swing states of Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida. It strongly suggests inappropriate and external meddling of our nation’s most sacred act – the act of its citizens voting.” 

NAVO points to the following:

The hacking of the most recent software updates that are applied to the machines before the election.

Modifying the running code in the machine via wireless technology.

Physically hacking the machines while voting.

And…

Modifying the tallying software local to the precinct or the database at the election center.

The NAVO analysis of exit polls vs. actual results (the full letter can be read here: 2016-election-not-democratic) points to the same vulnerabilities I’ve detailed above. There’s also anecdotal evidence of votes being counted incorrectly on voting day. In Florida, for example, there were widespread examples of voting machine malfunctions, as Ruben Major points out in his blog:

On November 7, 2017 at 3:39PM, during early voting, a report came into the U.S. Department of Justice Voting Section stating that there was a “paper trail showing Donald Trump” when the voter selected Hillary Clinton.  

The election results have been widely accepted as fair since the election, except by the current administration (for different reasons… I’ll go into in another post). But now we’ve seen a pattern of an extraordinary efforts by Kremlin officials to meet with Trump’s key advisors, discussing top-secret information with them, attempts to set up secret back-channel communications with Moscow, the firing of FBI Director James Comey who was in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation, unexplained Trump server connections with a Russian bank, and an extraordinary fake news operation, it’s becoming harder to gloss over the hacks of voter registration rolls and equipment manufacturers.

We may never know what happened in Florida, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania to deliver the anomalies in counties that used electronic voting machines or between exit and actual polling results, because the machines don’t leave a paper trail. The FBI is still actively investigating Russia’s hacks of voters rolls and voting machines and, considering the context of the unprecedented effort by Russia to undermine the US democracy, investigators cannot be letting any of this go.

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The Republican Party is imploding. Young Republicans are fleeing and President Donald J. Trump’s support is eroding as quickly as you can spell ‘Russia’. 

On the eve of Montana’s special election to elect a new congressman, Republican front-runner Greg Gianforte body-slammed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. Gianforte’s attack was in response to Jacobs’ question about a health care bill which threatens to rob many in the party’s base of affordable health coverage. The brutality of the assault, and subsequent lie about what happened, is a canary in the coal mine for a Republican Party falling apart, devoid of values and wholly owned by Russian autocrats.

“I’m sick and tired of you guys,” Gianforte yelled as he body-slammed Jacobs. “The last guy who came here did the same thing. Get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here. The last guy did the same thing. Are you with the Guardian?”

All that for asking a question. Almost unnoticed in the scuffle, is evidence the Guardian Newspaper dug up about Gianforte’s investments in two Russian Index Funds which invest heavily in sanctioned Russian companies.

Both are indexed to the Russian equities market and have significant holdings in companies such as Gazprom and Rosneft that came under US sanctions in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of the Crimea.

Gianforte is an independently wealthy tech entrepreneur (he’s estimated worth is $315M) but his investment in the Index funds is a clear bet on Russia’s economy. Why would he do that unless he believed Russian sanctions would be lifted?

Gianforte may be a canary, but he is not alone. The rot inside the Republican rank and file runs deep, is well-funded and operates with unparalleled sophistication in coordination with its Russian overlords. Together, ‘Russia-GOP’ prey on people’s fears and keep opponent supporters at home, by peddling fake news micro-targeted to people’s Facebook and other social media accounts.

Take Cambridge Analytica, the murky “psychographic” marketing company which figures out your personality profile and targets your fears by amplifying them with conflated or blatantly false content. The company is thought to be responsible for the unexpected ‘Brexit’ vote in the UK, the inexplicable campaign of Ben Carson, the bizarre rise of Ted Cruz and of course, the election of Donald Trump.

According to Newsweek,  The company is principally owned by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire who supported Trump and was a leading investor in Breitbart.  Stephen Bannon, Trump’s campaign chairman (after Manafort) and now chief strategist at the White House, was the vice president of Cambridge Analytica’s board as well as the executive chairman of Breitbart before joining Trump’s team in August.

Investigators want to know how Cambridge Analytica is linked to Russia’s unprecedented cyber operation to manipulate the election, according to Time.

It’s common knowledge, Robert Mercer backed Cruz in the Republican primaries but when that campaign couldn’t seal the deal, Mercer swung towards Trump, deploying Cambridge Analytica on behalf of number 45. It’s also believed Mercer’s daughter, Bekah, was instrumental in installing National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the Trump cabinet. According to the Washington Post, Flynn returned the favor by granting Cambridge Analytica’s parent company a lucrative contract, during his 18 day tenure as National Security Advisor.

I’ve already reported that Flynn, Sessions, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Carter Page were all involved in a secret meetings with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last Summer, in an effort to soften the party’s plank on Ukraine and who-knows-what-else. The photo below reportedly snapped minutes after one Trump-Russia meeting shows Kislyak, Manafort and Sessions returning from one of their sideline meetings.

Intelligence Community leaks now suggest there are intercepted recordings of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) accepting Russian money from Kislyak during the Republican convention. And now it’s emerged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) super-PAC accepted $2.5 Million from a pro-Putin Ukrainian businessman during the last election cycle (images below). The Republican Party has, in essence, become a money-laundering operation for Russia’s murderous regime and its oligarchs.

It’s almost hard to believe the Republican Party, which was founded by anti-slavery activists built on the principles of the revolution and which gave the country Abraham Lincoln has been so thoroughly defiled by this extent of corruption. The future of the Republic – and democracy – requires a strong GOP founded on the values it holds dear. Voters – especially poor white ones – across the country have been betrayed by their leadership.

At the same time, Citizens United needs to be overturned. The Supreme Court decision to label corporations as citizens has corrupted our politics top to bottom, left and right. If Republicans are true patriots, and have any chance of survival, they will fight to return power to its citizenry.  And if any unccorupted Republicans still exist, when will they stand up to their leaders and root out the disease which is eating its way through their party? What America needs now, more than ever, is a rebirth of the Grand Old Party – the party of Lincoln – flushed of its corruption and ready to serve the people. If the politicians can’t do it, the people will.

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President Donald J. Trump has become a clear and present danger to the republic and US lives. Trump shared classified information about an ISIS plot to blow up commercial planes using laptop bomb with our enemies, endangering US lives. But that’s only the beginning of the constitutional crisis we’re heading into.

The Washington Post and the New York Times just reported President Donald J. Trump shared secret code-word information with the Russians that could isolate the US from the free world and endanger the lives of Americans. Trump handed over the classified information to the Russians when he held a closed-door meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, on Wed May 10.  The code word intel (which is classified above top secret) was acquired by a foreign intelligence agency and provided to the US under strict intelligence rules.

The information Trump revealed would help the Russians identify a secret agent within ISIS who had revealed a plot to use “laptop bombs” aboard commercial planes. The Kremlin would be keen to eliminate or disrupt the asset because of their reprehensible support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The result could mean US lives are at risk whenever Americans fly.

Although the foreign country is not named in the reports, the United States is part of the “Five Eyes” global international community which means intelligence agencies from New Zealand, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and the US share information on their common good. Other alliances exist with allies who may be less forgiving of such a lapse of judgment by the US President. Even though President Trump can declassify information “at will”,  that doesn’t extend to information gathered by non-US agencies.  In short, Trump threatens the US relationship with our key allies if he reveals information the US didn’t obtain directly.

Trump’s breach of allies’ trust comes just days after Trump potentially committed another serious crime – obstruction of justice – when he colluded with Vice President Michael Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire FBI Director James Comey.

The White House’s public pretext for the firing was related to Comey’s handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation, as outlined in a memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein but that memo was easy bait for a President looking for a reason to fire the FBI Director.

In a deft move, Rosenstein threatened to resign over the use of his memo as cause for Comey’s ouster. The next day, absent a pretext, Trump sat down for an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt and was forced to reveal the truth. The emperor, it seems, had no clothes.

“When I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russian thing with Trump and Russia … is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election.”

Trump also copped to Holt he asked Comey on three separate occasions if he was under investigation personally.  That’s not a question you would ask once, never mind three times, if you really believed the whole thing was “a made up story”, “a ruse” or “a hoax”, as the President has said in his many tweets.  It’s also now clear that Trump summoned Comey to the White House and asked him to “pledge his loyalty” just days after acting attorney General Sally Yates alerted the White House that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was “compromised by the Russians”. Yates was later fired. A second count of obstruction of justice.

A just released memo written by Comey after Flynn was fired reveals President Trump asked the FBI Director to drop the entire investigation.  “I hope you can let this go,” Comey quotes Trump in the memo he wrote as part of a paper trail documenting the President’s efforts to obstruct justice. As an F.B.I. agent, Comey’s notes will be used in court as credible evidence.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

It’s also been reported by the New York Times, the President and Vice-President secretly conspired to remove Comey. Vice President Mike Pence, who parroted the White House lie, could have been the next President of the US but he’s now been infected by the corruption virus by Trump. Pence should face an indictment on obstruction of justice charges and needs to be impeached. By conspiring with Trump, Pence has placed the US into a succession crisis.

However, even if the Justice Department indicts Trump and Pence along with the exhaustive list of co-conspirators, nothing can force the House, controlled by the Republicans, to begin impeachment proceedings. Up until now Republicans seem hesitant to even appoint an independent prosecutor so impeachment hearings seem unlikely, unless something else happens. And that something else is beginning to emerge.

Russia’s efforts to destabilize US Democracy ran very deep and now threaten to embroil the entire leadership of the GOP – including House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senator Ted Cruz and others. Ryan has been full-throatedly supporting Trump recently framing the President as “a driven, hands-on leader, with the potential to become a truly transformational American figure.” Now it’s emerging, there’s good reason Ryan is Trump’s pocket. According to “Kremlingate” watchers, Ryan also accepted money from Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to fill the GOP coffers. If Ryan and other Republican leaders are removed from office too, the balance of power and sheer political survival in 2018 should compel remaining Republicans in the House to act.

I asked Associate Professor Gary Darden, who teaches US Civil War at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey to explain how impeachment would work if such an indictment was coming:

“An impeachment is constitutionally speaking an indictment issued by the House for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” while the trial itself would take place in the Senate with senators as jury and chief justice as presiding judge. If the president were to be indicted in a court of law, then that would be, I think, the basis for articles of impeachment in the House. If 2/3 of the House votes in favor of any article (or charge) if impeachment, then it mandates a trial in Senate, where a conviction requires 2/3 of that body.”

The House could be reluctant to act but Darden believes:

“If criminal charges come out of the Justice Dept against the President, then it would be the basis for the House to act. If it didn’t it would be political negligence of the highest order.” 

Still, Darden points out Republicans who supported Trump hold a disproportionate number of seats in the house so the impeachment seems unlikely, but just the threat of it, and a potential lengthy prison sentence for the entire Trump family, could render the President impotent and force a resignation, as it did with Nixon.

If you’re keeping track, that now leaves Trump, Pence and Ryan all out of the running to take over as  President. The next in line for the White House is Senator Orrin Hatch (UT-R), the President pro tempore of the United States Senate. After Hatch, It’s the Secretary of State, Putin-buddy Rex Tillerson (likely to be indicted too) and then Jeff Sessions (clearly already compromised) and the rest of the cabinet.  This is why there are two potential outcomes to an impeachment crisis: President Orrin Hatch or the next Speaker of the House, if Ryan is implicated.

Whomever it is, would be President until 2020 as there simply is no mechanism for a snap election in the US. Even under these extraordinary times.

“Hate is a far better motivator than love,” a boastful Roger Stone told NPR this week. “It’s one of Stone’s golden rules.”  Stone is the political operative who helped put Donald Trump in the White House.  He says of the President, “I was like a jockey looking for his horse. You can’t win a race without a horse.” Stone is about to see his golden rule work against his winning horse.  Trump has now threatened American lives, betrayed the country, our allies, the rule of law and made his bed – with Vladimir Putin – the end result will enrage the American population which should have brutal consequences for both the President and the Russian autocrat.

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Sally Yates revealed much more than you’ve read at today’s Senate Judiciary Hearing. She revealed an attempt by President Trump to cover-up his administration’s ties to Russia. She may have lost her job for it, but she could save the Republic. 

Sally Yates had no way of knowing it would be her last day on the job when she picked up the phone to call the White House counsel first thing on a cold and snowy last Monday morning in January.  The acting Attorney-General had promised WH Counsel Don McGhan she’d arrange for him to view the “problematic” evidence the FBI had on the National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s connection to Russia. She had made those arrangements over the weekend and it was her first priority on Monday to finalize those plans.

McGhan didn’t return the call until much later that afternoon.  By 9 PM that Monday night, Yates had been fired, so we don’t know if McGhan ever followed up to view the evidence. In a press release that night, President Trump said she had “betrayed” the American people.

On the face of it, Yates’ betrayal was not related to the Flynn matter but her refusal to implement an unconstitutional executive order banning nationals from 7 mostly-Muslim countries from entering the US but the newly revealed Flynn timeline, may explain why she was given 2 minutes to vacate her job after learning about her dismissal via this aggressively worded press release.

During the previous week,  Yates made two extraordinary visits on consecutive days to meet with McGhan at the White House. She had vital information to share: the National Security Adviser was not only lying to the Vice-President but was susceptible to blackmail by Russia. Appearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee today, Yates outlined the timeline and content of the meetings.

“The first meeting occurred on January 26, I called Don McGahn  and told him that I had a very sensitive matter that I needed to discuss with him, that I couldn’t talk about it on the phone and that I needed to come see him. And he agreed to meet with me later that afternoon.”

McGhan’s office was a “skiff” – intelligence parlance for a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility”. In that secure location, Yates could share confidential information about the “problematic” FBI investigation into Flynn. Yates says she went into a great amount of detail about Flynn’s potentially illegal activities and revealed Russia was in a position to blackmail Flynn because they were in possession of the identical information. “We believed Flynn was compromised by the Russians,” Yates says.

The Russians likely had the identical information because the FBI obtained it during surveillance of Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.  The Washington Post would later report, Flynn was leaking sensitive information to Kislyak via phone and texts and illegally coordinating policy using this back channel to Russia’s most powerful envoy.  To make matters worse, Yates told McGhan, Flynn was lying to the Vice-President about it. She said action needed to be taken.

“We also told the White House Counsel that General Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI on January 24. Mr. McGahn asked me how he did and I declined to give him an answer to that. And we then walked through with Mr. McGahn essentially why we were telling them about this and the first thing we did was to explain to Mr. McGahn that the underlying conduct that General Flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself,” Yates revealed today.

The following afternoon, Yates went back to McGahn’s office at the White House to answer 4 key questions. McGahn wanted to know why the Justice Department would care if one White House official was lying to another, even if it’s the National Security Adviser and the Vice-President? McGhan also wanted to know about the applicability of criminal statute to Flynn’s actions. He also asked if the White House acted, would it interfere with a current investigation and he requested to look at the underlying evidence. Yates said she would look into this and by Monday morning had arranged this request. Later that day, she had been fired.

It took 18 days for the president to act on Flynn.  He publicly defended his National Security Adviser’s unprecedented contacts with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and only fired Flynn when the Washington Post obtained leaked documents revealing Flynn’s flagrant violations, even though he knew Flynn had lied to the Vice President and FBI investigators two and a half weeks earlier.

During those 18 days, Flynn participated in a call with Vladimir Putin, a dinner with the Japanese PM, was involved in national security matters related to North Korea and put Iran “on notice” for new sanctions.

Senator Al Franken at today’s hearings had this to say:

“Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t get rid of a guy who lied to the vice president, who got paid by the Russians, who went on Russia Today, because there are other people in his administration who met secretly with the Russians and didn’t reveal it until later, until they were caught. That may be why it took him 18 days, until it became public, to get rid of Mike Flynn, who is a danger to this republic.”

Flynn (and others) will be prosecuted for lying to the FBI, failing to disclose contacts with Russian officials under oath, failing to register as foreign agents and for failing to disclose payments from a foreign governments, among many other charges.

Sitting next to Yates at the Senate hearing today, the former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper sounded an alarm.

“If there has ever been a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundation of our democratic political system, this episode is it.”

Why did Trump say Sally Yates “betrayed” the US? How could he call her “weak on protecting our borders” when she was the one courageous enough to sound the alarm on a clear and present danger within his administration? How could he fail to act on this information until the Washington Post revealed it? And how long does it take for what he calls a “hoax” to turn into a cover-up? Not long, thanks to Sally Yates.

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A terror attack on St. Petersburg and a chemical attack in Syria. Two events intricately connected to Vladimir Putin’s appalling intentions for the world. What you need to know about why Putin needs to be stopped.

Russia’s winters are said to be spellbinding and cruel. Nowhere is this true more than in in St. Petersburg, where the Telegraph says you can find the ‘proper’ form of the coldest season. “Frozen lakes, white sculptural landscapes, startling blue skies, snowdrifts groping the windowsills, a dry, sharp cold that crackles and snaps and presses your nostrils,” says the Telegraph.

St. Petersburg bears the name of its founder, Peter, the Great. Peter was the Czar who turned Russia from a country, into an Empire. It was after just one such empire-building offensive against the Swedes in 1703 that Peter dismounted his horse alongside the Neva River and carved a cross in the ground with his sword, declaring “here will be a city”.

St. Petersburg was born. An extraordinary port city emblematic of Russian architectural prowess and its global imperialist ambitions but also of its geographical cruelty. Russia is the world’s largest country, linking Europe and Asia, but it is mostly landlocked save a few brutally cold ports whose waters are frozen for long periods of the year.

“Russian strategists have, over the last two hundred years, sought to remedy this through a steady, but relentless drive to the seas,” says Global Security. For Russia, access to warm water ports is the primary strategic goal with which it can expand Russian power and trade to the rest of the world. All of Moscow’s foreign exploits, including its recent genocide in Syria, the standoff with NATO and the recent interference in US democracy, are best understood when viewed through this lens.

When I’m asked why should Americans care if President Donald J. Trump colluded with the Russians to gain office? This is the reason. The world’s nations have always measured their greatness through trade. Most of the world’s goods are still carried over seas and ships need accessible warm water ports to disembark their cargos. The US has quite a few, conveniently straddling Europe and Asia and two oceans. It’s given America an unprecedented edge over other countries. That’s been good for America and good for freedom, justice and equality. Conversely, Russia has suffered. Until now, America has won, Russia has lost.

If President Trump allows President Vladimir Putin to pursue his strategic objectives unfettered, he allows America’s greatest nuclear adversary to increase its global dominance. This will rebalance the scales of human justice and freedom away from Western-style democratic freedoms and towards a backwards leaning autocracy of kleptocrats with little concern for human rights. Russia wants to equal or supersede the US and become a true global superpower. Imagine a country which slaughters innocent children, rounds up people based on sexual orientation and executes political opponents with that kind of power? That is how serious the stakes of Russia’s interference in the U.S. really are.

Considering the brutality of Russia and its winters, it’s no wonder the country loves one of the world’s roughest sports: Ice Hockey.  I’m an occasional fan of the sport, and am always gripped by the “power play” – when a fouled player is taken off the ice – allowing the opposing team two minutes to do their best against a team short one player. The power play is a good analogy for what is going on right now geopolitically. With the cloud of suspicion over the Trump White House ever-growing, the mass confusion in US foreign and domestic policy, Russia is left to advance its geo-political interests unfettered.

This was likely not the outcome Putin was looking for when he influenced the U.S. elections, probably preferring his efforts would lead to détente between Washington and Moscow, but the current chaos still plays into his strategy.  While the Trump administration is weighed down by a domestic agenda and a looming scandal. Putin is able to continue his global game of chess, lining up access to warm water ports and aligning spheres of influence without a countervailing American presence.

And it’s already happening right now while no-one is paying attention.

Russia already has a naval base in Tartus in Syria, as a result of its alliance with Bashar al-Assad and in Sevastopol in the Ukraine, after its annexation of Crimea.

Russian troops are now focused on Libya. Moscow has deep ties to General Khalifa Haftar, a warlord who is in control of large parts of Western Libya, says Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the commander of U.S. Africa Command.

The port city of Tripoli in Libya used to be an access port for Russia under Muammar Gaddafi so it seems likely Putin is looking to bolster Haftar as a Libyan leader to regain access to the port and Libya’s large oil reserves. The U.S. says it also has evidence Russian troops are in Eastern Egypt supporting Haftar but also potentially growing their influence over Cairo.

Russia’s Mediterranean strategy has not been secret but that it is playing out in such dramatic fashion is spectacularly ballsy of Vladimir Putin. In 2015, the Russians openly declared their plan when they released the “Maritime Doctrine of Russian Federation 2020”, without of course revealing they also intended to hijack US and other democracies to pursue their goals.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly at the time that “…the Atlantic has been emphasized because of NATO expansion, the need to integrate Crimea and the Sevastopol naval base into the Russian economy, and to re-establish a permanent Russian Navy presence in the Mediterranean.”

Russia has also strategically aligned with Turkey, as that country is poised to leave the NATO. Turkey has the 6th largest air force in the world, the second largest army in Europe, after Russia, and the most powerful navy in the Mediterranean. In the past, Syria and Turkey have been adversaries but Moscow has been able to turn the tide in Istanbul by concocting a deal between itself, Syria and Turkey.

Iran remains the big question. Moscow can’t get land-access to Syria’s ports without crossing over Iran, which lies between the two countries. Now that we know Trump associate and funder, Blackwater CEO’s Erik Prince, held a back channel meeting with Russian and UAE officials in the Seychelles, it’s become clear that Iran is the pivot on which the Trump-Putin pact turns.

The thrust of the meeting in the Seychelles was, according to reports, to see if Russia would drop its support for Iran, in exchange for a more normalized sanctions-free involvement with the global community. That realignment will come at the cost of disrupting U.S. democracy and increasing Moscow’s presence in Libya, Syria, Turkey and wherever else Putin has his sights. If President Donald J. Trump can’t deliver a dropping of sanctions, Russia will remain loyal to Iran. Either way, Russia wins or at least forces the U.S. to play catch-up in this game of global 3D chess.

It may not seem it, but the world is at war. While the American presidency has been pulverized by Putin’s power play, our democracy is faced inwards while Putin and his corrupt allies can trample over the globe.

The good news about power plays, in hockey at least, is they only last two minutes. America can reclaim its footing if it also reclaims the moral high ground. This means mounting a serious opposition to Russia’s flagrant human rights violations and global ambitions. No-one wants a world full of injustice and genocide. Freedom has always been the source of U.S. power as leader of the free world. If we don’t continue to champion human rights, we risk plunging the entire planet into a long dark winter without hope and justice built in the image of its Russian architect.

The post Putin’s Power Play appeared first on Narativ.

Amidst all the squabbling about numbers, are we missing what’s really going on in our country?

The idyllic 90’s alt rock-band, “Counting Crows” is best known for its catchy hit “Mr Jones.” You know the one? “Sha, la, la, la, la, la, la”? The Crows took flight in an era of ironically worn lumberjack shirts and work boots set against a soundtrack of “Nirvana” and a backdrop of the Gulf War and AIDS. The band took its name from an old English nursery rhyme which dates back to the early 1800’s about predicting the future by counting the number of magpies, or crows, which crossed your path.

“One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret, never to be told, eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, ten for a time of joyous bliss,” the rhyme goes. Of course, there’s no actual basis for this type of prophecy, but in an unsure time, when science and logic weren’t plentiful, counting crows was a good a method, as any, of predicting the future.

As the 45th president of the United States was being sworn in on Friday, we were all aflutter over a different count. This time we were counting attendance as if it foretold a President’s success. How many people showed up? Counting crowds, not crows, is the fashion of the day.

One concludes that democracy is alive and well in the Republic, but all is not well. Crows are symbolic harbingers of change in many of the world’s mythologies, and it struck me, amid all the squabbling over numbers, we may be missing ours. So just for a minute, let’s put aside the partisan squabbling, and look at what President Trump is doing that many would agree on –  even Bernie Sanders.

To be sure, Trump’s inauguration address, was dark. After 8 years of remarkable hope and progress under President Barack Obama, the idea of America as a dystopian wasteland littered with empty “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones” is hard to fathom, but it’s as true as the remarkable legacy of the outgoing president.

While America has prospered and our standard of living has improved, free trade has filled our homes and stores with cheap Chinese goods but it has also come at a cost – ripping out our nation’s heart. It has robbed us of a vibrant industrial sector, left hundreds of thousands in poverty and created an epidemic killing Americans at an alarming rate. Mostly in states in the middle of the country. States Trump won. States you need to win to be president.

How did we get here?  Ask any two economists whether global trade costs US jobs, and you’re likely to get an argument. Economists, like crows, are not always accurate foretellers of things to come.

The US runs large trade deficits with almost every one of our trading partners – 90%, to be sure. The largest deficits are with China, Mexico, Japan and Germany.  The U.S.-Mexico trade balance, for example,  swung from a $1.7 billion U.S. surplus in 1993 to a $54 billion deficit by 2014. Economists will argue endlessly about the cause and effect of NAFTA, but while modernization has made up for some of those lost jobs, the economy in parts of the country have been obliterated.

Mexico’s deficit pales in comparison to China’s $318 billion, “The deficit is five times bigger, says Wharton’s Mauro Guillen. For every job we have lost in the U.S. to Mexico, five [jobs] were lost to China.”

Respected economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson published a study last year called “The China Shock” analyzing the cost to Americans of China’s trade explosion.  They found, “wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining elevated” a decade after China’s global trade boom.

You’re not at fault for not knowing this. No-one reports it. It’s easier to count crowds than actually travel to Idaho to show a rusted factory. Anyone who has worked in a network newsroom, as I have, will tell you if it can’t be reported in the Tri-State region, it rarely gets coverage. Consequently, the networks have missed what’s been going on in the rust belt. The people who elected President Trump are not all racists, misogynist or narrow-minded people the media would like you to think.  They are our fellow Americans crying out for work.

Yes, the unemployment rate is at an all time low but it doesn’t tell the whole story Basically, if you’re not getting unemployment help, you don’t get counted. In most cases, government insurance lasts 26 weeks. If you’ve run out of insurance, you’re considered out of the labor force. Consequently, almost a quarter of 25-54 year olds (the prime working years) are not working and the labor participation rate is down 4%, from 66% in 2006 to 62% now.

Along with this jobs flight, a despondent and disheartened population has turned to drugs. The Opioid crisis in the heartland is out of control. 55,403 people died from drug overdoses in 2015, more than guns or car crashes. The second biggest killer, suicides, are also up. (For white men aged 35-64 suicides are up 40% between 1999-2010.) Families have been broken apart, children left homeless, dreams shattered.

When President Donald J. Trump talks of “neighborhoods blighted by crime, drugs and gangs,” he is not wrong.  Whether it’s drugs, suicides or malaise, America’s white uneducated men are dying at increasing rate. Since 1999, the number of deaths of middle-aged, uneducated white American men has increased 22%, while dropping for other demographics.

This is not a moral issue, it’s economics. Restarting a pointless war on drugs with draconian measures and incarceration will reinforce a cycle of suffering. If President Trump brings purpose and jobs back to the heartland, he’ll stem the crisis, as Portugal did when it decriminalized drugs and invested in jobs (The number of overdose deaths plummeted to among the lowest in the EU).

We are witnessing the rise of the Precariat, as British economist Guy Standing calls it. “A multitude of insecure people, living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs, without a narrative of occupational development, including millions of frustrated educated youth who do not like what they see before them.”

This week, President Trump will meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May.  She leads a country which, like ours, is moving away from large economic unions. Brexit is Trump for the same reasons. A disconnect between the elite and the middle class in the middle of the country. Trump and May will likely forge a new type of economic union which encourages what she describes as an “active industrial strategy” or bringing manufacturing back home.

Yesterday, Trump withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership and is promising to renegotiate NAFTA. He’s threatening to increased tariffs, reduce corporate taxation and slash regulation (worryingly at the EPA if it hurts the environment). It may not work, but it’s the best plan America’s heartland has heard for a long time.

The Counting Crows imagine a better world in “Mr. Jones” as they sing about a different time with equally despairing prospects.

“Believe in me because I don’t believe in anything
and I want to be someone to believe.”

Trump is not perfect, and untested in public life, but he has responded to a yearning cry from our fellow Americans who are suffering. If this was happening in other parts of the world, our compassion would stir us to action. Yes, we have to be watchful of allowing the new administration to roll back rights, enter thoughtless wars for enrichment or cozy up to corrupt dictators but we’d be hurting our brothers and sisters if we didn’t seek to help them now as they try to bring their lives back. What could be more American than that?

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How Vladimir Putin’s ‘Kremlin, Inc.’ is pulling the levers of power in the next White House and why President-elect Donald J. Trump doesn’t mind.

To understand the relationship, we need to understand how Putin rules. The Russian President controls his country through his party, the congress (Duma) and the liberal civil service which oversee the day-to-day operation of the government. He also wields power through a handful of Russian billionaires, commonly referred to as “the oligarchs” or as one Russian magazine calls them, “Kremlin, Inc.” As a unit, they represent one fifth of Russia’s annual economic output.

Putin inherited the oligarch system from his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Under Putin, the faces have changed and power has been consolidated but its vast control over all of Russia’s key industries remains. He is the undisputed Chairman who blesses any deal made by the oligarchs and retains the right to hire and fire any oligarch at any time.

The Russian President meets with his heads of business often, either at regular evening parties at his dacha in Barvikha, West of Moscow, or at his Black Sea home, near Sochi. While Putin still controls the day to day operations of the government, he largely exerts power through the oligarchs, often using the companies as foreign policy instruments of power, as he did with Gazprom in the Ukraine.

Trump’s Secretary of State appointee and outgoing ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson’s relationship with Putin goes back almost two decades. Tillerson has been jockeying for power in Putin’s inner circle since. His break came in 2012, in an apparent coup of Russia’s oil industry co-ordinated with Putin’s Energy Tsar and ally, Sergei Sechin.

At the time, Russia’s oil output was controlled by two entities, state-controlled Rosneft and privately-held TNK-BP (a joint-venture between British Petroleum and a group of oligarchs led by Mikhael Fridman).

At this point, it may be useful to give you a bit of history on Mikhael Fridman. Forbes ranks him as Russia’s second richest man, valued at more than $15.3 Bn dollars. In the years following the demise of the USSR, he went from owning a window washing company to purchasing a biscuit factory and then, with his friends, launched Alfa Bank. He recruited Pyotr Aven, a Russian insider who back in the 90’s was able to help Vladimir Putin avoid corruption charges in the St. Petersburg government. Fridman climbed the ranks and was an undisputed oligarch at “Kremlin, Inc.”

As the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia once ruled, after considering a libel suit filed by the bankers, “Aven and Fridman have assumed an unforeseen level of prominence and influence in the economic and political affairs of their nation.”

Fridman was at once a Moscow insider and a thorn in Putin’s side. As TNK-BP was unraveling, Fridman and his partner began to lose influence at “Kremlin, Inc.” One former Alfa Bank employee recalled a ceremony a decade ago at which Putin awarded Aven a government honor. In typical Putin style, he couldn’t resist a wry remark as he presented the award.

Putin: “Remind me, why am I giving this to you?”
Aven: “Because I haven’t done anything you can put me in jail for.”
Putin: “No, not yet.”

In 2012, Fridman resigned as TNK-BP’s CEO, after falling out with his British partners and Putin. BP began looking elsewhere for access to the Russian market, and found it in a deal with state-controlled Rosneft to develop the prized Arctic resources in Russia – but Fridman blocked the deal.

Enter ExxonMobil Chief Executive and now Secretary of State appointee, Rex Tillerson. He threw Exxon’s weight into the Arctic deal and won it in exchange for Rosneft’s access to energy projects in the US and globally. For his work, Tillerson was awarded the Order of Friendship by Putin – one of Russia’s highest honors. He was now firmly entrenched in Putin’s oligarch circle of power at “Kremlin Inc.” Fridman was on his way out.

Mr Putin – who presided over the deal signing at his Black Sea resort – called it one of the most important deals involving Russia and the US, potentially valued at $500 Bn. The deal was subsequently killed by President Obama’s sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Ukraine. As many have noted, the lifting of Russian sanctions will not only stand to enrich Exxon, it also gives Russia a substantial stake in the global oil market including, in the US.

In 2013, Rosneft consolidated its hold over the Russian oil industry. They bought out the oligarch’s share of TNK-BP for $27BN in a $55 Bn cash and stock deal, again presided over by Vladimir Putin – this time at his mansion outside Moscow. The deal made the state-run company one of the world’s largest producer of oil.

After the collapse of TNK-BP, Fridman and his co-horts left Russia, distancing themselves from Putin and have been left largely unaffected by US sanctions. In October, Slate magazine published an article citing well-regarded cyber-security sources who uncovered what they say is an unusual regular server connection between Alfa Bank and Trump Towers.

Which brings us to Carter Page – President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s now ex-foreign affairs advisor and point-man on all things Moscow. While fashioning himself as a foreign affairs analyst, his roots are as an investment advisor with a mixed track record in Russia.

In March, Trump listed Page as one of his top foreign affairs advisers when he spoke to the Washington Post Editorial Board but by July, Trump’s team was at pains to point out that he is not a representative of the campaign.

Page may no longer represent Trump, but he remains an advisor to sanctions-targeted Gazprom, run by another of Putin’s oligarchs, Alexey Miller.  Gazprom, is the crown jewel of Putin’s resource companies at “Kremlin, Inc.” The gas corporation has been heavily affected by US sanctions, yet Page has been involved in some of its biggest deals – including the development of The Sakhalin Oil And Gas Field. Gazprom’s former deputy CFO is now an official adviser to Page’s firm, Global Energy Capital LLC.

Gazprom is more than just a gas company, it is a Russian instrument of foreign policy and power. It was Gazprom that shut off gas to its biggest and most lucrative customers during the military incursion into Crimea. The company maintains a private army, employs a half million people and runs entire cities around Russia. Gazprom’s Alexey Miller has also hosted Secretary of State appointee Rex Tillerson in public forums.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov says, “although Gazprom is an international corporation, the largest shareholder is the Russian state. There is nothing strange in the fact that the relationship between the government and Gazprom is really very close.”  In, 2001, Gazprom, led a forceful takeover of NTV, a popular television channel that was openly critical of the government.

In July this year, Carter Page – still acting as a Trump adviser – met with Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, and Igor Diveykin, a high–ranking Russian intelligence official.

The meeting alarmed Washington’s intelligence community and outgoing Democratic Senator Harry Reid, who scribed a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking, “whether a Trump advisor who has been highly critical of U.S. and European economic sanctions on Russia, and who has conflicts of interest due to investments in Russian energy conglomerate Gazprom, met with high-ranking sanctioned individuals while in Moscow in July of 2016, well after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee?”

Page has denied the meeting took place calling the accusations, “absolute garbage” but regardless of whether the meeting took place or not, Trump’s advisor has been very vocal about President Obama’s policy of exporting American values.

Page recently told the New Economic School in Moscow, “Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change.”

In February 2015, Page described the West as “football team bullies” citing “condescending mistreatment” of Russia, Iran and China. He likened the treatment of these nations to the treatment of slaves and blamed the US for spurring “economic disaster” in Russia and Ukraine.

Now Senator Reid, is calling on FBI Director James Comey to be investigated, comparing him to another famed Bureau Chief with political ambitions. “I did not believe Comey was the new J. Edgar Hoover,” Senator Reid said. “I thought that he would do the right thing for the country.”

So, what we know is that Trump is now indirectly connected to at least two of the biggest oligarchs in Russia. His Secretary of State appointee, Rex Tillerson is one of Putin’s closest non-Russian friends and tied directly to business deals with Rosneft CEO Sechin. Trump’s ex-advisor, Carter Page, reportedly met Sechin in July and  is also an investment advisor to another oligarch, Alexey Miller of Gazprom.

Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s pick for National Security Adviser is also connected to Putin. Flynn appears regularly on the Kremlin sponsored English language cable news network RT. Flynn flew to Moscow last year for RT’s gala and sat with Putin.

Then there’s John Bolton, who is being touted as a potential Deputy Foreign Secretary. Bolton is connected to the group of oil oligarchs and to Dick Cheney but that’s a story for another day.

And if you’ve been keeping score, Trump’s former campaign chief, Paul Manafort, worked as an adviser to Viktor Yanukovych, who was Putin’s puppet president of Ukraine.

There’s another factor driving a deep connection between Trump and Putin and that is liquid cash. While his net-worth is estimated at $3 Bn, his debt has climbed from $350M last year to $650 m this year. To finance this ballooning line-item, Trump has been highly reliant on money from Russia because US banks have mostly black-balled Trump.

According the Washington Post, “since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Trump isn’t denying his appreciation of all things Putin. It’s his calculation that closer ties with Moscow are a benefit to Washington. He believes America’s policy of advancing human rights ahead of economic benefit is working against US interests. In a Trump world, anything that advances the country’s power is worth the price of doing business – even if it’s with autocratic rulers with a poor human rights record.

It should be noted, Putin’s aggressive stance on US politics comes at a time when sanctions have left him with a large deficit. Last week on Wednesday, the state sold off a 19% stake in Rosneft to Swiss Commodity firm, Glencore, with a sovereign wealth fund in Qatar as secondary funders. The $11 Bn dollar deal will help Kremlin pay for the growing deficit but it won’t turn the tables on the US.

Putin is betting “Kremlin, Inc.” can do that with its new ally in the West, President-elect Donald J. Trump. With Tillerson at State and Flynn as National Security Adviser, Putin will have direct influence over world affairs and the country’s military strategy, potentially working around the President-elect. This would represent an unparalleled intrusion into the most important levers of foreign influence and give Putin unprecedented power to not only benefit Russia, but to exert pressure on any nation on the planet.

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