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mat-ty
Joined: 07 Jul 2007
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 Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2019 11:06 pm Post subject: |
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| boggsman1 wrote: | | Sorry bruh, I trust the great Leon Panetta over you .. no offense.. |
You can have the meatball....not so sure he is a constitutional expert..far from it!!!
I'll take Dershowitz.  |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
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| Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2019 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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| mat-ty wrote: | | boggsman1 wrote: | | Sorry bruh, I trust the great Leon Panetta over you .. no offense.. |
You can have the meatball....not so sure he is a constitutional expert..far from it!!!
I'll take Dershowitz. |
Of course you would take despicable accused child rapist Dershowitz......
He is also a best friend of Epstein and even defended the scum. Again right wingers attacked Hillary for having to defend a guy who may have raped one adilt when she was ordered by a judge to defend him. She pleaded with the judge when she was just out of lawschool that she not have to take the case and he made her. Right wing said she was a defender of rape for it.
Where Dershowitz a millionaire a professor was not ordered to defend Epstein defended what he knew was a serial child rapist. a case that no-one would ever want. But your hero did.
that does tell us a lot about how you love accused child rapists... People who support child rapists like trump and Epstein should be removed from voting is my opinion, child rapist enablers are scum.
barrs father hired Epstein without a degree to teach at an elite private school. Wht did he have on the Barrs..?
kenny Boy Starr was defending Epstein, what did Epstein have over Starr, again Epstieen is reported to have raped over 60 children, why do you defend such a sicko and why is it all right wing heros involved with him saying he is a great guy.
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real-human
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| Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2019 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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why so many top repugnats all tied to epstin and gee the FBI did not interview a list of witnesses of 25 gee why did Barr stop the FBI?
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
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| Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2019 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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this is a great one to listen to..
it shows trump knew about russian interference from early on. and obviously gave the green light. that is essentially what stone was doing. all in his emails. lock him up....
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/stone-trial-opens-new-window-on-trump-s-awareness-of-russian-help-73014341650?cid=eml_mra_20191107
RACHEL MADDOW
Stone trial opens new window on Trump's awareness of Russian help
SHARE THIS -
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Rachel Maddow looks at the prosecution's opening statement in the trial of Roger Stone and points out that as much as much as this trial is about Stone, it is also significantly about what and when Donald Trump knew about Russia's effort to help his 2016 campaign. |
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real-human
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| Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2019 5:25 am Post subject: |
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again sufficient evidence to charge the traitor ...
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
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Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2019 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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All of the gates are about doing favors for oligarchs so money flows back to Trump and his donors.
| Quote: | Nov. 11, 2019, 6:47 AM PST / Updated Nov. 11, 2019, 6:49 AM PST
By Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine — Two political supporters of U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry secured a potentially lucrative oil and gas exploration deal from the Ukrainian government soon after Perry proposed one of the men as an adviser to the country's new president.
Perry's efforts to influence Ukraine's energy policy came earlier this year, just as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's new government was seeking military aid from the United States to defend against Russian aggression and allies of President Donald Trump were ramping up efforts to get the Ukrainians to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Ukraine awarded the contract to Perry's supporters little more than a month after the U.S. energy secretary attended Zelenskiy's May inauguration. In a meeting during that trip, Perry handed the new president a list of people he recommended as energy advisers. One of the four names was his longtime political backer Michael Bleyzer.
A week later, Bleyzer and his partner Alex Cranberg submitted a bid to drill for oil and gas at a sprawling government-controlled site called Varvynska. They offered millions of dollars less to the Ukrainian government than their only competitor for the drilling rights, according to internal Ukrainian government documents obtained by The Associated Press. But their newly created joint venture, Ukrainian Energy, was awarded the 50-year contract because a government-appointed commission determined they had greater technical expertise and stronger financial backing, the documents show. |
Here's the guy:
| Quote: | Michael Bleyzer
President & Chief Executive Officer
Founding Partner
Michael Bleyzer
Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Mr. Bleyzer was raised and educated in the Soviet Union, graduating from Kharkiv Institute of Radioelectronics with a Master of Science in digital electronics and quantum physics. His career took him to Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, before he came to the U.S. in 1978 where he became an American citizen. Mr. Bleyzer then embarked on a career in finance and management, which over 15 years at Exxon and Ernst & Young included a variety of operational, management and executive positions in Texas, Louisiana and Europe.
Mr. Bleyzer co-founded SigmaBleyzer Investment Group, LLC in 1994. Since its founding, SigmaBleyzer has invested primarily in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. SigmaBleyzer’s approach to private equity investments is operational level value creation, combined with advocacy of the economic reforms in emerging markets provided by The Bleyzer Foundation. With offices in Houston, Kiev and Kharkiv, SigmaBleyzer has raised and invested approximately one billion dollars in over 100 companies in a variety of industry sectors and have realized over 90 exits. SigmaBleyzer’s back-office has been located in Houston, Texas since inception in 1994 and provides institutional quality Investor Relations, accounting, tax and reporting services to over 100 investors in the United States, Europe, Middle East and South America. |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
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| Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2019 9:44 am Post subject: |
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to me this alone is an impeachable offense. when trump lied to the americns when assanges arrest, and later stones apartment was raided and said he was not involved with stone wikileaks and even furthur tainting the jury (his base) about the crimes of stone that he knew to be true.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/stone-trial-testimony-sheds-new-light-trump-wikileaks-connections?cid=eml_mra_20191112
Stone trial testimony sheds new light on Trump, WikiLeaks connections
| Quote: | Just hours after Julian Assange’s arrest in April, Donald Trump fielded a question from reporters about the developments. “I know nothing about WikiLeaks,” the president replied. “It’s not my thing.”
Even by Trump standards, this was ridiculously untrue, and the lie led to ample coverage of the Republican’s enthusiastic embrace of WikiLeaks when it was disseminating materials stolen by Russia in order to help Trump gain power. The White House tried to spin away the president’s obvious falsehood, but it did not go well.
Of course, Trump’s dubious claims on the subject weren’t limited to his public rhetoric. The president also submitted written responses as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Russia scandal, and Trump claimed he didn’t remember receiving advance word on WikiLeaks disclosures or discussing WikiLeaks with longtime associate Roger Stone.
It’s against this backdrop that Stone is now on trial, accused of, among other things, obstructing justice and lying as part of the investigation into Russia’s attack on our 2016 elections. And while time will tell what happens to the longtime Republican operative, of greater national significance is what we’re learning by way of the trial about Donald Trump. Reuters reported this morning:
The 2016 Trump election campaign was keen to keep abreast of the release of emails potentially damaging to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, reaching all the way to Trump, the Republican’s former deputy campaign chairman testified in court on Tuesday.
Rick Gates, testifying in the criminal trial of President Donald Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone, said he witnessed a call with Trump and Stone related to WikiLeaks website in July 2016. |
| Quote: | | * Update: This wasn’t clear in some of the earlier reporting, but Politico’s report noted, Roger Stone first told one of Donald Trump’s top aides in April 2016 that WikiLeaks had plans to dump information in the heat of the presidential race, kickstarting a scramble inside the campaign to take advantage of the expected releases…. The revelation means the Trump campaign was aware of WikiLeaks’ election-year plans much earlier than previously understood. And it also shows that the president was involved in conversations about the issue, something he has previously denied.” |
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14879
Location: on earth
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| Posted: Fri Nov 22, 2019 9:55 am Post subject: |
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right wing are traitors to the USA...
| Quote: | Fiona Hill, President Donald Trump's former top adviser on Russia and Europe, and David Holmes, a counselor for political affairs at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, testified before the House Intelligence Committee for more than five hours on Thursday — capping the week's long list of public hearings in the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry.
Image
Photo by AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Hill butted heads with Republican lawmakers after accusing them of echoing Russian propaganda by repeatedly bringing up the "fictional narrative" that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.
"I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests," Hill said. "I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia —attacked us in 2016."
She issued a dire warning that Russian intelligence and its proxies are gearing up to interfere again in 2020 — and that the U.S. is "running out of time to stop them."
"Our nation is being torn apart," she testified.
Image
Photo by Getty/Jim Watson
David Holmes, in his testimony, described in great detail how Rudy Giuliani directed a shadow Ukraine diplomacy team that included Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry — a trio known as the "three amigos."
Holmes also described the now-famous phone call he overheard between President Trump and Gordon Sondland, where Sondland told Trump that "Zelenskiy loves your ass" and that Trump asked Sondland if they were "going to do the investigation."
Holmes, in his testimony, offered a comical observation about how outrageous many — even Sondland — found the arrangement to be.
He recalled a time when Sondland, frustrated with how “active in the media” Giuliani had been “with respect to Ukraine,” exclaimed, “Dammit, Rudy. Every time Rudy gets involved he goes and f---- everything up.” |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2019 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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Another area where Mensa Matty has been consistently unpleasant, and consistently wrong.
| Quote: | By
Shane Harris,
Josh Dawsey and
Carol D. Leonnig
Dec. 19, 2019 at 2:09 p.m. PST
Almost from the moment he took office, President Trump seized on a theory that troubled his senior aides: Ukraine, he told them on many occasions, had tried to stop him from winning the White House.
After meeting privately in July 2017 with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Trump grew more insistent that Ukraine worked to defeat him, according to multiple former officials familiar with his assertions.
The president’s intense resistance to the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia systematically interfered in the 2016 campaign — and the blame he cast instead on a rival country — led many of his advisers to think that Putin himself helped spur the idea of Ukraine’s culpability, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Two other former officials said the senior White House official described Trump’s comment to them.
The Ukraine theory that has consumed Trump’s attention has now been taken up by Republicans in Congress who are defending the president against impeachment. Top GOP lawmakers have demanded investigations of Ukrainian interference for which senior U.S. officials, including the director of the FBI, say there is no evidence.
One former senior White House official said Trump even stated so explicitly at one point, saying he knew Ukraine was the real culprit because “Putin told me.”
Two other former officials said the senior White House official described Trump’s comment to them
Allegations about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 race have been promoted by an array of figures, including right-wing journalists whose work the president avidly consumes, as well as Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer. But U.S. intelligence officials told lawmakers and their staff members this past fall that Russian security services played a major role in spreading false claims of Ukrainian complicity, said people familiar with the assessments.
The concern among senior White House officials that Putin helped fuel Trump’s theories about Ukraine underscores long-standing fears inside the administration about the Russian president’s ability to influence Trump’s views.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The Russian Embassy in Washington declined to address whether Putin told Trump that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 campaign, saying only that information about the two leaders’ conversations is available on the Kremlin’s website.
This article is based on interviews with 15 former administration and government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer their candid views about the president.
Aides said they have long been confounded by the president’s fixation on Ukraine — a topic he raised when advisers sought to caution him that Russia was likely to try to disrupt future elections.
A presidential loathing for Ukraine is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry
“He would say: ‘This is ridiculous. Everyone knows I won the election. The greatest election in the world. The Russians didn’t do anything. The Ukrainians tried to do something,’ ” one former official said.
Trump, the official said, offered no proof to support his theory of Ukraine’s involvement.
“We spent a lot of time . . . trying to refute this one in the first year of the administration,” Fiona Hill, a former senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council, told impeachment investigators in October.
A debunked theory takes hold
The claims that Ukraine sought to tilt the 2016 election have taken several forms. One early version was promoted by Paul Manafort, Trump’s then-campaign chairman, who suggested to campaign aides as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukrainians may have been behind a hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), rather than the Russians, his deputy, Rick Gates, later told federal investigators.
Gates said that Manafort’s theory “parroted a narrative” that was advanced at the time by Konstantin Kilimnik, an employee of Manafort’s whom the FBI has assessed to have connections to Russian intelligence. (Kilimnik, who is believed to be in Moscow, has denied such ties.)
Two weeks after Trump took office, Putin floated another claim: that figures in Ukraine had helped boost Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“As we know, during the election campaign in the U.S., the current Ukrainian authorities took a unilateral position in support of one of the candidates,” Putin said at a news conference in Budapest on Feb. 2, 2017. “Moreover, some oligarchs, probably with the approval of the political leadership, financed this candidate.”
Ukrainian steel magnate Viktor Pinchuk’s foundation donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, but there is no evidence that he contributed money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which would be prohibited under federal law. Pinchuk has also supported Trump: In 2015, he made a $150,000 donation to Trump’s foundation.
RT, the Russian government-funded media network, spotlighted other arguments that Ukraine worked to help Clinton’s campaign, focusing on contacts between a part-time DNC consultant and Ukrainian Embassy officials in Washington.
“Democrat-Ukraine collusion seems far deeper than anything so far proven between the Trump campaign and Russia,” an op-ed columnist wrote in July 2017.
Trump added his own twist on the conspiracy theory in April 2017, in his first public allegation about Ukraine’s role.
In an interview with the Associated Press, the president claimed that CrowdStrike, a computer security company the DNC hired to investigate the breach of its email systems, was based in Ukraine and played some role in hiding evidence from the FBI.
“Why wouldn’t [Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta and Hillary Clinton allow the FBI to see the server? They brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based,” Trump said. “I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian, that’s what I heard. But they brought in another company to investigate the server. Why didn’t they allow the FBI in to investigate the server?”
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In fact, CrowdStrike is based in California, and it is not owned by a Ukrainian. Dmitri Alperovitch, the company’s co-founder, is a Russia-born U.S. citizen who is an expert in cybersecurity and national security.
It is unclear where Trump first got the idea of a Ukrainian connection to CrowdStrike. At the time, the notion was not yet being widely discussed on Twitter, his social media platform of choice and a fertile bed for disinformation, according to social media experts.
“Prior to Trump’s mentioning it in his interview with the Associated Press, the idea that CrowdStrike was Ukrainian based and concocted the story of the DNC hack existed on social media but was far from mainstream,” said Darren Linvill, an associate professor of communication at Clemson University who studies social media and online disinformation and conducted an analysis of tweets during that period for The Washington Post.
“On Twitter, messages pushing the argument can be measured in the hundreds, not even the thousands, and in this context those are small numbers,” Linvill said.
Trump has returned to the false Ukraine-CrowdStrike connection many times, arguing that the company had covered up Ukraine’s hacking of the DNC and that it had even spirited the DNC server to Ukraine, former White House officials said.
In June, for instance, he called in to Sean Hannity’s Fox News program and repeated his complaint that the FBI hadn’t taken possession of the DNC email server.
“How come the FBI didn’t take the server from the DNC? Just think about that one, Sean,” Trump said.
That same day, Breitbart News had published a story about the FBI relying on information from CrowdStrike.
In fact, the bureau’s forensic experts had taken complete copies of dozens of servers used by the DNC, which then-FBI Director James B. Comey later testified was an “appropriate substitute” for examining the actual equipment. The intelligence community also knew months before CrowdStrike was hired that the Russians had infiltrated the DNC.
Most significantly, Trump raised CrowdStrike in the July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to his impeachment.
“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike . . . I guess you have one of your wealthy people. . . . The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump said, according to a memorandum the White House released of the call.
Privately, officials tried in vain to convince the president that CrowdStrike was not a Ukrainian company and that it would be impossible for the server to be located there, a former administration official said.
One of the officials who Hill said tried to convince Trump, former homeland security adviser Thomas P. Bossert, publicly pleaded with the White House in September to drop the Ukraine theory, which he called “completely debunked.”
“The DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go,” he told ABC News’s “This Week.” “If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”
Bossert pointed to Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, as a persistent source of the server claim. “I am deeply frustrated with what [Giuliani] and the legal team is doing in repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again.”
An early coolness
Trump’s suspicions about Ukraine manifested in other ways. Early in the administration, then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was eager to secure a White House meeting with Trump — ideally before he met publicly with Putin — to demonstrate U.S. commitment to defending Ukraine against Russia.
But Trump resisted the meeting, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter. White House aides were confused: Ukraine was an ally in a war against a country that had just undermined the U.S. elections. Meeting with Poroshenko was a “no-brainer,” one former official said. “It was utterly mystifying to us why Trump wouldn’t agree.”
Another former official said it was clear from the beginning of Trump’s presidency that he wanted to improve relations with Russia and form a bond with Putin.
John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff from mid-2017 until the end of 2018, marveled to other aides that Trump expressed far less skepticism of Putin, whom Trump sometimes called “my friend,” than other leaders, said a former senior White House official.
Kelly tried to get U.S. experts to speak to Trump before his scheduled calls with the Russian president to push back on some of Trump’s misconceptions, the official said.
Putin and Hungary’s Orban helped sour Trump on Ukraine
Some wondered whether Trump’s coolness toward Ukraine was intended not to offend Putin.
Poroshenko came to the White House on June 20, 2017, to meet with Vice President Pence. Trump had a short “drop-in” with the Ukrainian leader, allaying some U.S. officials’ concerns that he wouldn’t bother to say hello.
The two leaders posed for photos with reporters in the Oval Office and made short remarks. (Notably, Trump did not mention Ukraine’s war with Russia.) But the brevity of their encounter underscored Trump’s reticence. He had already met with several foreign leaders for more formal, longer meetings, followed by joint news conferences. Trump hadn’t snubbed Poroshenko, but he hadn’t strongly embraced him, either.
The meeting stood in stark contrast to Trump’s warm reception a month earlier of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Sergey Kisylak, who was then Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Trump told his guests that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted White House officials to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people, according to three former officials with knowledge of the matter.
Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in U.S. election
U.S. officials who had been working to deter Russia were aghast. They thought the Russians would take it as a signal that they were free to interfere in upcoming U.S. elections and those in Europe, as well.
A private meeting
On July 7, 2017, Trump had his first in-person encounter with Putin, at the G-20 meeting in Hamburg. Their highly anticipated formal conversation lasted more than two hours. But later that day, they met informally for an additional hour, at a dinner for heads of state and their spouses.
At the time, U.S. and Russian officials didn’t disclose the conversation. During the meal, Trump left his chair and sat next to Putin. Trump went alone, and Putin was assisted by his interpreter.
For some White House officials struggling to understand Trump’s obsession with Ukraine, the Hamburg meetings were a turning point.
Three former senior administration officials said Trump repeatedly insisted after the G-20 summit that he believed Putin’s assurances that Russia had not interfered in the 2016 campaign. The officials said Kelly, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson all tried to caution Trump not to rely on Putin’s word, and to focus on evidence to the contrary that U.S. intelligence agencies had collected.
Over the next several months, Trump privately told aides on several occasions that he believed Ukraine had interfered and tried to help Clinton win the White House, former officials said.
“The strong belief in the White House was that Putin told him,” one former official said.
Trump repeatedly told one senior official that the Russian president said Ukraine sought to undermine him, the official said.
There was no evidence that Putin pushed the Ukraine theory with Trump in their official phone calls and meetings, which were witnessed by interpreters and aides, several former administration officials said.
However, White House aides were not part of Trump’s private conversation with Putin in Hamburg, or a later meeting he had in Helsinki for two hours with the Russian president, when they were accompanied by only their interpreters.
Trump also took steps to conceal the details of his formal meeting with Putin in Hamburg, taking the notes away from his interpreter and instructing her not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, The Post reported earlier this year.
Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration
In the wake of Hamburg, top leaders were dispatched to try to convince him that Russia interfered in the campaign. On different occasions, Kelly asked Bossert, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and his principal deputy, Sue Gordon, to brief the president on the intelligence community’s Russia assessment, said former officials with knowledge of the briefings.
They did not convince him.
A year after Trump met Putin in Hamburg, they reconvened at a summit in Helsinki. After his one-on-one with the Russian president, Trump expressed doubt that the Kremlin interfered in the campaign.
“My people came to me, Daniel Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia,” Trump said at a joint news conference, standing beside the Russian leader. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.”
Intelligence officials were stunned that Trump would publicly side with Putin over his own advisers. His comments also revealed that he still clung to his suspicions about Ukraine.
“I really believe that this will probably go on for a while, but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server,” Trump said.
Later that day, Coats issued a public statement that read like a rebuke.
“The role of the Intelligence Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments possible for the President and policymakers,” Coats said. “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.”
But after returning to Washington, Trump continued to press the Ukraine theory with more frequency, former officials said. They worried that his meeting with Putin had again influenced his thinking.
The narrative takes hold
In the run-up to Trump’s impeachment, some GOP lawmakers have echoed the Ukraine-did-it theory, weaving together events that did occur — such as the then-Ukrainian ambassador’s criticism of Trump in a 2016 op-ed — as part of a conspiracy they equate with the Kremlin’s intelligence operation.
“The Democrats cooperated in Ukrainian election meddling,” Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, alleged at a Nov. 14 hearing to collect evidence for the impeachment.
Sen. John Neely Kennedy (La.) suggested in a Fox News appearance that Ukraine, not Russia, may have broken into the DNC’s email system. He later retracted the comment, but in a subsequent interview on “Meet the Press,” Kennedy said “both Russia and Ukraine” had interfered in 2016.
Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) told the same program this month that there was “considerable evidence” that Ukraine had interfered.
This fall, U.S. intelligence officials informed lawmakers about what they have concluded has been an organized campaign by Russian propagandists to spread the Ukraine theory on social media, said people with knowledge of the reporting.
The reports by intelligence analysts cite evidence that the propagandists were taking credit for helping to spread disinformation that equated Ukraine’s actions to Russia’s, and celebrating the traction it was getting, particularly with conservative news organizations.
The intelligence reports were shared with members of Congress and their staff, including lawmakers who have in recent weeks become some of the most vocal advocates for investigating Ukraine’s alleged interference, said people with knowledge of the matter. The New York Times first reported the briefings to lawmakers.
In her public testimony in the impeachment proceedings, Hill, the NSC’s former Russia director, admonished lawmakers not to take the Kremlin’s bait.
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” she said. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
Hill implored the lawmakers not to help Russia’s campaign. “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”
Last month, RT rejected the idea that Russia had promoted such a narrative, noting that Putin said in July that he did not think the actions of wealthy individuals in that country amounted to “interference by Ukraine.”
More recently, however, the Russian president has expressed satisfaction in the new focus on Ukraine.
“Thank God no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore; now they’re accusing Ukraine,” the Russian president said at a news conference in Moscow in November. “Well, let them sort this out among themselves.”
Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller contributed to this report.
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Nearly everything Trump has done in a foreign policy arena has helped Vlad. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
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