Posts Tagged ‘CIA’
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In Bureaucracy, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 23, 2025 at 12:12 am
Since the end of World War II, Republicans have falsely accused Democrats of being Communists—or, as they’ve put it: “Comsymps,” “pinkos,” “fellow travelers.”
Yet it is President Donald Trump who has done more to weaken the United States to the advantage of Russia than any Democrat.
TREASON EXAMPLE #5: On January 20, 2017—the day Donald J. Trump became the 45th President of the United States—Michael Flynn took office as the nation’s 25th National Security Adviser.
On February 13, The Washington Post reported that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had warned Trump in late January that Flynn had lied about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December, 2016.
During those exchanges, Flynn had talked about removing the sanctions placed on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration.
Michael Flynn
Flynn was forced to resign that same day—after only 24 days as National Security Adviser.
On December 1, 2017, Flynn appeared in federal court to formalize a deal with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III. He pleaded guilty to a felony count of “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI.
On November 25, 2020, Trump pardoned him, tweeting: “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon.”
TREASON EXAMPLE #6: On May 9, 2017, President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential race.
There were four reasons for this:
- Comey refused to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump. Trump had made the “request” during a private dinner at the White House in January.
- Comey told Trump that he would always be honest with him. But Trump wanted the head of the FBI to act as his personal secret police chief—as was the case in the former Soviet Union.
- Trump had tried to coerce Comey into dropping the FBI’s investigation into Michael Flynn, for his secret ties to Russia and Turkey. Comey had similarly resisted that demand.
- Comey had recently asked the Justice Department to fund an expanded FBI investigation into well-documented contacts between Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents. The goal of that collaboration: To elect Trump over Hillary Clinton, a longtime foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
James Comey
TREASON EXAMPLE #7: On May 10, 2017, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office—and gave them highly classified Israeli Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
Kislyak is reportedly a top recruiter for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. He has been closely linked with Jeff Sessions, then Attorney General, and fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.
“I just fired the head of the FBI,” Trump told the two dignitaries. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
TREASON EXAMPLE #8: On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—as partners in a conspiracy: “You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server, why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
“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.”
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin in Helsinki
TREASON EXAMPLE #9: On June 9, 2018, Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the G7.
“I think it would be an asset to have Russia back in,” he said during an impromptu press conference at the summit.
“I think it would be good for the world. I think it would be good for Russia. I think it would be good for the United States. I think it would be good for all of the countries of the current G7. I think the G8 would be better.”
Russia was ousted from the group in 2014 after Putin annexed Crimea—the first violation of a European country’s borders since World War II.
“Today crystallizes precisely why Putin was so eager to see Trump elected,” said former Obama National Security Council spokesman Ned Price.
“For Putin, this is return on his investment, and it’s safe to say that his investment has paid off beyond even his wildest dreams,” he said in a statement to CNN.
TREASON EXAMPLE #10: In early 2020, members of the elite SEAL Team Six raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in American cash. The recovered funds led the American intelligence community to believe that the government of Vladimir Putin had offered money to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Additional confirmation came from the interrogations of captured militants and criminals.
As early as January, the SEALS in Afghanistan alerted their superiors of this danger.
Trump claimed he wasn’t briefed on these Intelligence assessments. He made his denial through White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany: The information had not been “verified.”
This despite the fact that every morning he received the President’s Daily Briefing, a top-secret document containing highly classified Intelligence analysis.
In fact, the Intelligence assessment had been under discussion within the Trump administration since at least March.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 22, 2025 at 12:15 am
Donald Trump took office as the 45th President of the United States on a promise to “make America great again.”
Yet the chief beneficiary of his treasonous reign has been the former Soviet Union.
TREASON EXAMPLE #4: Trump has repeatedly praised and defended Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin
On December 18, 2015, Trump appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Its host, Joe Scarborough, was upset by Trump’s praise for Putin:
SCARBOROUGH: Well, I mean, [he’s] also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?
TRUMP: He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader. Unlike what we have in this country.
SCARBOROUGH: But again: He kills journalists that don’t agree with him.
TRUMP: I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is.
On October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement blaming the Russian government for the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. Its motive: “To interfere with the US election process.”
Two days later, Trump publicly stated: “But I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians are—maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia.”
On December 16, 2016, FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House.
Trump, however, steadfastly denied any such role by Russia: “I think it’s ridiculous,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it….No, I don’t believe it at all.”
Clinton Watts, a consultant to the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division, is an expert on cyberwarfare.
Testifying before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on March 30, 2017, Watts outlined cyberwarfare measures that Russia used to subvert the 2016 Presidential campaign.
This pattern of Russian falsehoods and social media manipulation of the American electorate continued through Election Day and persists today.
Many of the accounts we watched push the false Incirlik story in July now focus their efforts on shaping the upcoming European elections, promoting fears of immigration or false claims of refugee criminality.
They’ve not forgotten about the United States either. This past week, we observed social media campaigns targeting Speaker of the House Paul Ryan hoping to foment further unrest amongst U.S. democratic institutions, their leaders and their constituents.
As we noted two days before the Presidential election in our article describing Russian influence operations, Russia certainly seeks to promote Western candidates sympathetic to their worldview and foreign policy objectives.
But winning a single election is not their end goal. Russian Active Measures hope to topple democracies through the pursuit of five complementary objectives:
- Undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance;
- Foment and exacerbate divisive political fractures;
- Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions;
- Popularize Russian policy agendas within foreign populations;
- Create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
From these objectives, the Kremlin can crumble democracies from the inside out creating political divisions resulting in two key milestones:
- The dissolution of the European Union and
- The break up of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO).
TREASON EXAMPLE #5: On January 20, 2017—the day Donald J. Trump became the 45th President of the United States—Michael Flynn took office as the nation’s 25th National Security Adviser.
Flynn, a former United States Army lieutenant general and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, seemed the perfect choice for safeguarding the country’s security.
Two days later, The Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn was under investigation by U.S. counterintelligence agents for his secret communications with Russian officials.
On February 8, Flynn denied having spoken to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December, 2016, about removing the sanctions placed on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration.
The sanctions had been placed in retaliation for Russia’s efforts to manipulate the 2016 Presidential election.
On February 13, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had warned Trump in late January that Flynn had lied about his contacts with Kislyak—and that he could be blackmailed by Russian Intelligence.
Sally Yates
Flynn was forced to resign that same day—after only 24 days as National Security Adviser.
Officially, the reason given was that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence. But Flynn’s deception had already been known—via the warning to Trump by Yates.
Only after Yates’ warning became known to the media was Flynn forced to resign.
The same Washington Post story reported that, in December, 2015, Flynn had appeared on Russia Today, the news network that American Intelligence agencies consider “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.”
He had also received more than $45,000 as a “speaking fee” from the network for a talk on world affairs. At the gala where Flynn received the fee, he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin for dinner.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 21, 2025 at 12:10 am
Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential race by promising to “Make America Great Again.”
Yet if any country emerged as the chief beneficiary of Trump’s tenure in the White House, it was Russia.
Among Trump’s many acts that placed the United States at a disadvantage in dealing with its mortal adversary:
TREASON EXAMPLE #3: Many of those Trump appointed to office had strong ties to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of these was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In 2013, as the chief executive of ExxonMobil, he was presented with Russia’s Order of Friendship award. He had just signed deals with the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft. Its chief, Igor Sechin, is a loyal Putin lieutenant.
Rex Tillerson
Another was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. During the 2016 campaign, Sessions—then serving as a surrogate for Trump’s campaign—twice spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. But during his Senate nomination hearings, Sessions denied that he had had “communications with the Russians” during the campaign.
It was the discovery of those contacts by the news media that forced Sessions to recuse himself from any Justice Department cases involving Trump and Russia. All of these—including the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller III—would be handled by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
This led Trump to rage at Sessions—in person, in press conferences and on Twitter: “If I had known he would do this, I would have never appointed him.”
It wasn’t Sessions’ perjury that troubled Trump—it was its discovery.
On November 7, 2018, the day after the Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives, Trump fired him.
Jeff Sessions
The Moscow Project is an initiative of the Center for the American Progress Action Fund. Its objective: “Analyzing the facts behind Trump’s collusion with Russia and communicating the findings to the public.”
According to its March 21, 2018 report (updated on July 10): “In total, we have learned of 80 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives, including at least 23 meetings.
“And we know that at least 24 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisors were aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them….
“The Trump campaign issued at least 15 blanket denials of contacts with Russia, all of which have been proven false.”
Members of the Trump team who had contacts with Russians during the campaign or transition included:
- Michael Cohen
- Roger Stone
- Donald Trump Jr.
- Jeff Sessions
- Paul Manafort
- Jared Kushner
- Carter Page
- Michael Flynn
- Erik Prince
- George Papadopoulos
- Anthony Scaramucci
- Rick Gates
George Papadopoulos, a member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, pleaded guilty to making false statements about his contacts with Russians to the FBI. So did Flynn.
Paul Manafort was convicted for money-laundering relating to his work for the government of the Putin-supported president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych.
The discovery of numerous contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian Intelligence agents led the FBI to investigate Russia’s efforts to subvert the 2016 Presidential election.
In July, 2018, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller charged 12 officers of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, with crimes committed to the high-profile hacking and leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign.
Robert S. Mueller III
On numerous occasions, Donald Trump has fiercely denied any Russian connections. For example:
July 27, 2016: “I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.”
October 24, 2016: “I have nothing to do with Russia, folks, I’ll give you a written statement.”
January 11, 2017: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
February 7, 2017: “I don’t know [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy.”
In fact, Trump had a highly profitable relationship with Russia—as his two sons, Donald, Jr., and Eric, unintentionally revealed.
In 2008, Donald Trump, Jr. said at a New York real estate conference: “In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. Say, in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo, and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
Donald Trump, Jr.
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
And Trump’s son, Eric, has been quoted as saying in 2014: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.”
In 2005, the Trump Organization signed a one-year contract for a construction project in Moscow to erect a Trump skyscraper. It was stipulated any spas or fitness areas be branded “The Spa by Ivanka Trump.”
The project fell through—because news reports emerged then about the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee, making a Russian business connection a political liability.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 20, 2025 at 12:11 am
“Who has not known men who discovered the truth about themselves only to be tortured by it for the rest of their lives? Is a man worse off when he doesn’t know who he is or when he learns he is truly a coward? When he is ignorant of his true nature or when he knows he is a traitor at heart? Not that I pity either cowards or traitors. To the contrary: In a just world, they would all be made to face the hard truth about themselves before they died.”
—James Carlos Blake, The Friends of Pancho Villa
On June 28, 2019, President Donald Trump demonstrated how seriously he took American election security.
It came during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Osaka, Japan—their first since the March 22 release of the Mueller Report, which documented Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
An NBC News reporter asked: Would you tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 Presidential election?
“Yes, of course I will,” replied Trump, grinning. “Don’t meddle in the election, please.”
And he jokingly wagged his finger at Putin: “Don’t meddle in the election.”
Putin grinned back.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that there was “no collusion” between him and members of Russia’s Intelligence community. But from the outset, he has acted like a guilty man desperate to stop an investigation before it uncovers the full extent of his criminality and treason.
TREASON EXAMPLE #1: On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of his Presidential campaign met at Trump Tower with at least two lobbyists who had ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The participants included:
- Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.;
- His son-in-law, Jared Kushner;
- His then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort;
- Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin; and
- Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence.
The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump originally claimed that the meeting was “about the adoption of Russian children.” Eventually he admitted that it had been “a meeting to get information on an opponent.”
Donald Trump
TREASON EXAMPLE #2: On July 22, 2016, Wikileaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from computers of the highest-ranking officials of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Early reports traced the leak to Russian hackers.
On July 27, 2016, during his campaign for President, Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing [from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s computer]. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
This was nothing less than treason—calling upon a foreign power, hostile to the United States, to interfere in its Presidential election.
Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts.
Clinton Watts is a consultant and researcher on cyberwarfare. He has served as:
- An FBI Special Agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF);
- The Executive Officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC); and
- A consultant to the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division (CTD) and National Security Branch (NSB).
In a statement he prepared for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Watts outlined cyberwarfare measures that Russia used to subvert the 2016 Presidential campaign.
He delivered this on March 30. 2017. Part of this reads as follows:
Through the end of 2015 and start of 2016, the Russian influence system….began pushing themes and messages seeking to influence the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election.
Russia’s overt media outlets and covert trolls sought to sideline opponents on both sides of the political spectrum with adversarial views toward the Kremlin. The final months leading up to the election have been the predominate focus of Russian influence discussions to date.
Clinton Watts
However, Russian Active Measures were in full swing during both the Republican and Democratic primary season and may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed.
The final piece of Russia’s modern Active Measures surfaced in the summer of 2016 as hacked materials from previous months were strategically leaked.
On 22 July 2016, Wikileaks released troves of stolen communications from the Democratic National Committee and later batches of campaign emails. Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks revealed hacked information from a host of former U.S. government officials throughout July and August 2016.
For the remainder of the campaign season, this compromising material powered the influence system Russia successfully constructed in the previous two years.
TREASON EXAMPLE #3: Many of those Trump appointed to office had strong ties to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of these was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In 2013, as the chief executive of ExxonMobil, he was presented with Russia’s Order of Friendship award. He had just signed deals with the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft. Its chief, Igor Sechin, is a loyal Putin lieutenant.
Rex Tillerson
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 17, 2025 at 12:13 am
Arizona United States Senator John McCain knew firsthand about torture.
A Navy pilot during the Vietnam war, he was shot down over Hanoi on October 26, 1967, and captured. He spent five and a half years as a POW in North Vietnam—and was often brutally tortured. He wasn’t released until March 14, 1973.
So he had strong feelings when he learned about President Donald Trump’s pick for director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
John McCain
This was Gina Haspel, who, in 2002, had operated a “black” CIA site in Thailand where Islamic terrorists were often waterboarded to make them talk.
After the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., no one knew if other attacks were about to occur. Or where. The FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA) and other Intelligence agencies were under huge pressure to discover—and foil—any future plots.
The administration of President George W. Bush ruled that waterboarding was not a form of torture, and thus did not violate the Geneva Convention.
Gina Haspel
But for John McCain, waterboarding was torture, even if it didn’t leave its victims permanently scarred and disabled.
As a result, when Haspel’s name was put up for nomination, McCain quickly made clear his opposition.
Enter White House Special Assistant Kelly Sadler, who handled surrogate communications.
Aware that the 81-year-old McCain was dying of brain cancer, Sadler joked to intimates about the Senator’s opposition to Haspel: “It doesn’t matter. He’s dying anyway.”
Leaked to CNN by an anonymous White House official, Sadler’s remark touched off a furor of criticism—and demands for her firing.
McCain’s daughter, Meghan, said on the ABC talk show, “The View”: “Kelly, here’s a little news flash … we’re all dying. I’m dying, you’re dying, we’re all dying. And I want to say, since my dad has been diagnosed … I really feel like I understand the meaning of life, and it is not how you die, it’s how you live.”
Not to be outdone by Sadler, retired Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney went on the Right-wing Fox News Network to personally attack McCain.
Torture, he said, was effective: “The fact is, is John McCain—it worked on John. That’s why they call him ‘Songbird John.’
“The fact is those methods can work, and they are effective, as former Vice President Cheney said. And if we have to use them to save a million American lives, we will do whatever we have to,” said McInerney.
There’s no evidence that McCain ever betrayed the United States during his captivity.
CNN correspondent Jake Tapper angrily replied to McInerney’s slander: “First of all, no one calls him ‘Songbird John’ except for crazy people and jerks—and I’m using my language carefully here.”
Meghan McCain responded to McInerney’s attack: “My father’s legacy is going to be talked about hundreds and hundreds of years. These people: Nothingburgers. Nobody is going to remember you.”
Her comment echoed a remark by former President Harry S. Truman about Indiana United States Senator William Jenner. Jenner, a Right-wing Republican, had attacked the patriotism of George C. Marshall, who, as chief of staff of the United States Army, was rightly called “the architect of Allied victory” in World War II.
Asked by biographer Merle Miller for his opinion on Jenner, Truman responded: “In my opinion, General Marshall will go down as one of the great men of his time. And, of course, people like Jenner, they aren’t even a footnote in history.”
Others were equally outraged. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close friend of McCain, said: “Ms. Sadler, may I remind you that John McCain has a lot of friends in the United States Senate on both sides of the aisle. Nobody is laughing in the Senate.”
And Meghan McCain added during her appearance on “The View”: “I don’t understand what kind of environment you’re working in when that would be acceptable and then you can come to work the next day and still have a job.”
Of course, for anyone familiar with Donald Trump and his vicious reactions to even the smallest opposition, Sadler’s jibe at McCain should come as no surprise.
Donald Trump
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump infamously said of McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
This from a man who sought—and got—five draft deferments during the Vietnam War. And who has compared his reckless sex-life during the 1970s to risking his life in service to his country.
Officially, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to confirm or deny Sadler’s joke: “I’m not going to get into a back and forth because people want to create issues of leaked staff meetings.”
Unofficially, Sanders was furious—not at the joke about a dying man, but that someone had leaked it. After assailing the White House communications team, she pouted: “I am sure this conversation is going to leak, too. And that’s just disgusting.”
Since past is usually prologue, this serves as a warning of what the United States can expect for at least the next four years.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on January 15, 2025 at 12:10 am
On August 1, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Anne Applebaum warned about Donald Trump’s dictatorial ambitions on the PBS Newshour. As the author of Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, she brings a specialist’s perspective to this subject.
She defines an “autocrat” as someone “who seeks to rule with no checks and balances, with no checks on his authority, with no judges, no media, no intermediary figures or institutions, who wants to control everything that happens in the state and to make all of the decisions.”
Asked if Trump wants to be an autocrat, she replied:
“Sometimes, he says so in the language he uses about—whether it’s about President Xi, who he admires, or President Putin, who he admires, or even the dictator of North Korea, who’s driven his country into poverty and isolation, who he also admires….
“And he has very few kind words for American allies or for fellow democracies. It’s really the absolute—people with absolute power that he wants to be like.
“And you can also hear in the language he uses, whether it’s about judges, or whether it’s about the media, or whether it’s about American institutions of other kind, about the electoral system, that he has great disdain for the institutions of democracy and the rules that were set up to make sure that power is checked in our country and that the executive isn’t a king.
“And those are disturbing traits. And they would be disturbing at any time in history, but they’re particularly disturbing now, when we have the rise of so many leaders with absolute power around the world who would love to have a transactional American president to do deals with.”
Anne Applebaum
Hb19821970, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Upon taking office as the Nation’s 45th President, Donald Trump deliberately set out to attack or undermine one long-cherished public or private institution after another.
Among these:
- American Intelligence agencies: Even before taking office, Trump refused to accept the findings of the FBI, CIA and NSA that Russian Intelligence agents had intervened in the 2016 election to ensure his victory.
- “I think it’s ridiculous,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it….No, I don’t believe it at all.”
- American military agencies: In 2020, Trump declined to visit an American military cemetery near Paris, and referred to U.S. Marines buried there as “losers” and “suckers.”
- While President, Trump regularly abused military officials, calling Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley a “dumbass” and his former Secretary of Defense James Mattis “the world’s most overrated general.”
Mark Milley
- The press: On February 17, 2017, Trump tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
- At the Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC) on February 24, 2017, Trump said: “I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake….I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources. They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there.”
- The judiciary: Trump repeatedly attacked Seattle US District Judge James Robart, who halted Trump’s first Muslim travel ban.
- In one tweet, Trump claimed: “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”
- Barack Obama: For five years, Trump popularized the slander that Obama was born in Kenya—and not an American citizen or a legitimate President.
- Trump was later forced to admit he had no evidence to back up his slanderous claims.
* * * * *
Since leaving the White House, Donald Trump has continued to undermine one American institution after another.
- Facing 91 criminal counts in four cases, he has attacked judges, prosecutors, witnesses—and even their family members.
- He has attacked Independent Counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and accused him of trying to invalidate his candidacy for President in 2024.
- He claims voter fraud where none exists, casting doubt on the integrity of the electoral system.
- He has attacked retired U.S. Army General Mark Milley for calling him “a wannabe dictator,” and said that Milley deserved execution as a traitor.
- He claims himself to be the victim of “the deep state” inside the federal bureaucracy.
- He attacks the integrity of the FBI—causing previously “law and order” Republicans to demand its defunding.
Donald Trump isn’t crazy, as many of his critics charge. He knows exactly what he’s doing—and why.
He intends to strip every potential challenger to his authority—or his version of reality—of legitimacy with the public.
If he succeeds, there will be:
- No independent press to reveal his failures and crimes.
- No independent law enforcement agencies to investigate his abuses of office.
- No independent judiciary to hold him accountable.
- No independent military to dissent as he recklessly hurtles toward a nuclear disaster.
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge him for re-election in 2028—or any other year..
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge his remaining in office as “President-for-Life.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 14, 2025 at 12:10 am
Donald Trump’s ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.
This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants.
Under Project 2025:
- Republicans consider federal employees to be subversives who comprise the “deep state.”
- Replacing tenured civil servants with thousands of political hacks will arm Republicans with the power to establish an absolute dictatorship under the next Republican president.
- Republicans believe the Department of Justice has “forfeited the trust” of the American people by investigating Donald Trump’s proven collaboration with Russia to win the 2016 Presidential election.
- As a result, the DOJ must be thoroughly “reformed” and tightly overseen by the White House.
- The director of the FBI must be personally accountable to the President—just as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Vladimir Putin.
Seal of the Justice Department
- Federal employees could be instantly fired for not obeying illegal orders, or on mere whim—including the whim of the President.
- The Department of Homeland Security would be abolished.
- The Environmental Protection Agency would be stripped of its authority to protect the air, water and soil.
- States would be prevented from adopting stricter regulations on vehicular emissions, like California has done.
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which the project calls “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” would be abolished.
- Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—would be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
- Federal funding for all public transit systems across the country would be eliminated.
- Traditionally independent federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would be placed under Presidential control.
- The wealthiest 1% would receive massive tax cuts at the expense of the poor and middle class.
- Conception would be designated as the point where life begins.
- Abortion would be outlawed.
- Access to birth control would be sharply restricted, if not banned.
- Christianity would be designated as the official religion of the United States—the way Islam is designated as the official religion of Saudi Arabia.
- The use of capital punishment would be revived and expanded—and the right of appeals sharply restricted.
Trump has prospered by slandering Democrats as “Marxists,” “Socialists” and “Communists.” And other Republicans have also deployed the terms. Yet he has repeatedly expressed admiration for such brutal Communist dictators as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and China’s Xi Jinping.
In a closed-door speech to Republican donors on March 3, 2018, then-President Trump had revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
He praised China’s President, Xi Jinping, for recently assuming full dictatorial powers: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
The statement was greeted with cheers and laughter by Republican donors.
He has lavishly praised Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, such as during his appearance on the December 18, 2015 edition of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”:
“He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country”—-a reference to then-President Barack Obama.
During a February, 2017 interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Trump defended Putin’s killing of political opponents.
O’Reilly: “But he’s a killer.”
Trump: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
Another Communist dictator he has lavishly praised is North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un. Asked by a Fox News reporter why he did so, he replied:
“He’s a tough guy. Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, tough people, and you take it over from your father…If you could do that at 27 years old, I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that.”
in short: Kim must be doing something right, because he’s in power. And it doesn’t matter how he came to power—or the price his country is paying for it.
Asked about his relationship with Kim, Trump infamously said: “[Kim] wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”
Upon taking office as the Nation’s 45th President, Donald Trump attacked or undermined one public or private institution after another.
Among these:
- American law enforcement agencies: Trump repeatedly attacked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from agents pursuing the Russia investigation.
- On November 8, 2018, Trump abruptly fired him, following Democrats’ winning control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections.
- He intended to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 election during the summer of 2017, but was talked out of it by aides fearful that it would set off calls for his impeachment.
- When FBI Director James Comey dared to pursue a probe into “the Russia thing,” Trump fired him without warning.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 13, 2025 at 12:10 am
“I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.”
—Tony Montana, “Scarface”
“Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”
On July 26, former President and Presidential candidate Donald Trump confirmed—intentionally or unintentionally—that the fears of his enemies were correct. If he won office for a second time, he would act as the all-powerful dictator he has long lusted to be.
And which he nearly became in 2020, after refusing to accept the outcome of a legitimate Presidential election where former Vice President Joe Biden got more votes than he did.
The site of his confession was the Turning Point Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida. To his audience of evangelical Christians, Trump announced:
“You gotta get out and vote. Just this time. In four years you don’t have to vote, OK? In four years don’t vote, I don’t care. But we’ll have it all straightened out, so it’ll be much different.
“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine! You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians! I’m a Christian.
“I love you, you got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”
Why would they not have to vote again? Because Trump would be President until he died.
Donald Trump at Turning Point Believers’ Summit
From the moment Trump declared his candidacy for the Presidency on June 15, 2015, throughout his four years in office and the Presidential campaign of 2024, much of the mainstream media repeatedly ignored the threats he posed.
But Trump’s comments at the Turning Point Believers’ Summit grabbed attention from the nation’s most important news media. Among these:
- MSN Metro
- Reuters
- CBS News
- The New York Times
- Mother Jones
- News Nation
- USA Today
- Newsweek
- The Hill
- CNN
- National Public Radio
- The Washington Post
Democrats pounced on Trump’s statements. Vice President Kamala Harris released a statement of her own: “When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) who had presided over Trump’s first impeachment trial, wrote: “This year democracy is on the ballot, and if we are to save it, we must vote against authoritarianism.”
Naturally Trump’s campaign disagreed: “President Trump was talking about the importance of faith, uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt.”
In fact, it was Donald Trump who had created “the divisive political environment.” On July 31 he appeared at the National Association of Black Journalists—to falsely accuse Kamala Harris of misleading voters about her race:
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
As for the motives for Thomas Matthew Crooks’ July 13 assassination attempt on Trump: A vigorous FBI investigation has revealed him as an intelligent loner with few friends, a thin social media presence and no strong political beliefs offering a motive for his action.
Officially, now that Trump has won a second term in the White House, he can—by law—serve only four years. But Trump has spent his entire life defying the law—including when he was President.
His most egregious offense came after he lost the 2020 Presidential election: He refused to accept his defeat, refused to leave office, tried to pressure states to “find” non-existent Electoral College votes for him, and finally incited a violent riot against Congress to stop the Electoral Vote count.
Stormtrumpers attacking the Capitol Building
Tyler Merbler from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
In May, 2024, speaking at a National Rifle Association gathering, Trump “joked” about serving more than two terms as president.
He referred to the four-term, 12-year Presidency of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was the only president to serve more than two terms. The two-term limit was added after Roosevelt’s death.
“You know, FDR, 16 years—almost 16 years—he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?”
By raising the question of “three terms,” Trump was resurrecting The Big Lie: That he won the 2020 Presidential campaign but was cheated of victory by massive voter fraud.
In fact, Trump’s ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.
This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace heretofore protected federal civil servants.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 19, 2024 at 12:14 am
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
So warned Abraham Lincoln in a speech in January 1838.
On November 5, 2024, Americans chose to die by suicide.
They re-elected Donald Trump President by 76,429,164 votes over 73,736,923 votes for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Abraham Lincoln
The two issues securing his victory were hatred of illegal immigrants and inflationary prices.
Harris had repeatedly cited Trump as a threat to democracy. In her “closing argument” to voters on October 29. She warned that Trump was “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”
Trump “would walk into [the Oval] Office with an enemies list when elected.”
It hasn’t taken long to prove Harris’ warning correct. On November 16, the NBC News website carried the following story:
“The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.
“Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason.”
The Pentagon
The article stated that Trump had condemned the withdrawal as a “humiliation” and “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.”
Ignored in all of this:
- The military officers were following the lawful orders of President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
- Trump first reached an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, roughly 13,000 troops, and release 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison.
- The Biden administration then completed the withdrawal and badly overestimated the ability of Afghan government forces to fight the Taliban on their own.
Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, has criticized the withdrawal, saying the U.S. lost the war and wasted billions of dollars.
In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, Hegseth wrote, “The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired. The debacle in Afghanistan, of course, is the most glaring example.”
This despite the blunt reality that the United States had been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001.
The war began as a “find and destroy” mission against Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11. He was then living in Afghanistan under the protection of its ruling thugocracy, the Taliban.
Osama bin Laden
The administration of President George W. Bush demanded his immediate surrender to American justice.
The Taliban refused.
So, on October 7, 2001—less than one month from the 9/11 attacks—American bombers began pounding Taliban positions.
The whole point of the campaign was to pressure the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden.
But the Taliban refused. Bin Laden holed up in the mountains of Tora Bora, and then ultimately escaped into Pakistan.
After December, 2001, American Intelligence completely lost track of Bin Laden. CIA officials repeatedly said he was likely living in the “no-man’s-land” between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Still, the United States continued to commit forces to Afghanistan—to turn a primitive, warlord-ruled country into a modern-day democracy.
There was, admittedly, a great deal to detest about the Taliban:
- When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they turned soccer stadiums into execution plazas for mass beheadings or shootings.
- Taliban “fighters” proved their “courage” by throwing acid into the faces of women who dared to attend school.
Taliban religious police beating a woman
- On August 8, 1989, the Taliban attacked Mazar-i-Sharif. Talibanists began shooting people in the street, then moved on to mass rapes of women. Thousands of people were locked in containers and left to suffocate.
- The Taliban forbade women to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative and wearing the burqa—a traditional dress covering the entire body. Those who disobeyed were publicly beaten.
Yet, as horrific as such atrocities were, these did not obligate the United States to spend eternity trying to bring civilization to this barbaric country.
On July 8, 2021, President Joseph Biden said that America would withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan by August 31, thus ending the nearly 20-year war.
“How many more, how many more thousands of American daughters and sons are you willing to risk?” Biden said to those calling for the United States to extend the military operation.
Biden thus became the first President since 2001 to recognize the futility of sacrificing American lives to turn a hopelessly barbaric pseudo-country into a modern nation.
He gave lawful orders for such a withdrawal.
Now those officers who followed those lawful orders risk being court-martialed and imprisoned—or even executed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 14, 2024 at 12:14 am
After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, many people feared he would embark on a radical Right-wing agenda. But others hoped that the Washington bureaucracy would “box him in.”
The same sentiments echoed throughout Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.
The 1983 TV mini-series, The Winds of War, offered a dramatic example of how honorable men can be overwhelmed by a ruthless dictator.
Based on the bestselling 1971 historical novel by Herman Wouk, the mini-series factually re-created the major historical events of World War II.
One of those events took place on November 5, 1939.
General Walther von Brauchitsch is summoned to the Chancellery in Berlin to meet with Adolf Hitler. He carries a memorandum signed by all the leaders of the German Wehrmacht asserting that Case Yellow—Hitler’s planned attack against France—is impossible.
Meanwhile, at the German army headquarters at Zossen, in Berlin, the Wehrmacht’s top command wait for word from von Brauchitsch.
CHANCELLERY:
Von Brauchitsch hands the memorandum to Hitler, who reads it.
Adolf Hitler (slamming down the memorandum): So—what is new in all this?
Gunter Meisner as Adolf Hitler in “The Winds of War”
Walther Von Brauchitsch: Fuhrer, it is the army’s final position that Case Yellow cannot proceed.
Hitler: Why not?
Von Brauchitsch: Because of the military fundamentals as stated. The meteorologists predict continuous soaking rains for weeks.
Hitler: It rains on the enemy, too.
ZOSSEN:
Brigadier General Armin Von Roon: The conspiracy has been going on that long—since Czechoslovakia [1938)?
Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder: If the British had not caved in at Munich [where France and Britain sold out their ally, Czechoslovakia]—perhaps. But they did. And ever then, ever since his big triumph, it has been hopeless. Hopeless.
Von Roon: Empty talk, talk, talk. I am staggered.
Halder: A hundred times I myself could have shot the man. I can still at any time. But what would be the result? Chaos. The people are for him. He has unified the country. We must stick to our posts and save him from making military mistakes.
CHANCELLERY:
Von Brauchitsch: Fuhrer, even the supply of artillery shells is totally inadequate.
Wolfgang Preiss as Walter von Brauchitsch in “The Winds of War”
Hitler: Do you know how many artillery shells of all calibers we have in the staging areas—right this minute?
Von Brauchitsch: No.
Hitler: How many we have in the reserve dumps in the West? What the monthly annual production of shells is? What the projected rise in production of the next six months is, month by month?
Von Brauchitsch: Who keeps such figures in his head?
Hitler: I do! The supply is adequate. I tell you so. And I’m a field soldier who depended on artillery for four years to protect his life. [He hands von Brauchitsch a sheaf of armaments figures.] Check with your staff. if one of those figures is wrong, you can postpone Case Yellow. Otherwise—you march! And next time you come to see me, know what you’re talking about!
Von Brauchitsch: The morale of the army was low, even in the Polish campaign.
Hitler: Back up this monstrous assertion! In what units was morale low? What action was taken? How many death sentences were handed out for cowardice? Speak up! I’ll fly to the front and pass the death sentences myself. Name one specific instance.
Von Brauchitsch: It was common knowledge—
Hitler: Common knowledge? What is common knowledge is that army headquarters at Zossen crawls with cowards. You opposed me in rearming the Rhineland. You opposed me on the [union] with Austria. You opposed me on Czechoslovakia, until the British came crawling to me. You dirtied in your trousers, you heroes at Zossen, at the idea of marching into Poland. Well, have I once been wrong? Have you once been right? Answer me!
Von Brauchitsch: Mein Fuhrer—
Hitler: Tell everyone who signed this insubordinate Zossen rubbish to beware! I will ruthlessly crush everybody up to the rank of a Field Marshal who dares to oppose me. You don’t have to understand. You only have to obey. The German people understand me. I am Germany.
President Donald Trump:
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
- Attacked the integrity of the American Intelligence community.
- Attacked the free press as “the enemy of the American people.”
- Tried to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, his presumed Democratic opponent in the 2020 Presidential election.
- Repeatedly lied about the dangers posed by the COVID-19 virus, thus enabling it to ravage the country and kill 400,000 by the time Trump left office.
- Incited his followers to violently attack the United States Capitol Building to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election and prevent Joe Biden, the winner, from taking office.
Fast forward 79 years from Adolf Hitler’s stormy confrontation with Walter von Brauchitsch to January 6, 2021.
Like Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump could truthfully say: I am America.
And that was before the United States Supreme Court declared that a President has absolute immunity for his official acts—including criminal ones.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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TREASON IS A TRUMP’S BEST FRIEND: PART FOUR (OF SIX)
In Bureaucracy, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 23, 2025 at 12:12 amSince the end of World War II, Republicans have falsely accused Democrats of being Communists—or, as they’ve put it: “Comsymps,” “pinkos,” “fellow travelers.”
Yet it is President Donald Trump who has done more to weaken the United States to the advantage of Russia than any Democrat.
TREASON EXAMPLE #5: On January 20, 2017—the day Donald J. Trump became the 45th President of the United States—Michael Flynn took office as the nation’s 25th National Security Adviser.
On February 13, The Washington Post reported that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had warned Trump in late January that Flynn had lied about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December, 2016.
During those exchanges, Flynn had talked about removing the sanctions placed on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration.
Michael Flynn
Flynn was forced to resign that same day—after only 24 days as National Security Adviser.
On December 1, 2017, Flynn appeared in federal court to formalize a deal with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III. He pleaded guilty to a felony count of “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI.
On November 25, 2020, Trump pardoned him, tweeting: “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon.”
TREASON EXAMPLE #6: On May 9, 2017, President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential race.
There were four reasons for this:
James Comey
TREASON EXAMPLE #7: On May 10, 2017, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office—and gave them highly classified Israeli Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
Kislyak is reportedly a top recruiter for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. He has been closely linked with Jeff Sessions, then Attorney General, and fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.
“I just fired the head of the FBI,” Trump told the two dignitaries. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
TREASON EXAMPLE #8: On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—as partners in a conspiracy: “You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server, why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?
“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.”
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin in Helsinki
TREASON EXAMPLE #9: On June 9, 2018, Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the G7.
“I think it would be an asset to have Russia back in,” he said during an impromptu press conference at the summit.
“I think it would be good for the world. I think it would be good for Russia. I think it would be good for the United States. I think it would be good for all of the countries of the current G7. I think the G8 would be better.”
Russia was ousted from the group in 2014 after Putin annexed Crimea—the first violation of a European country’s borders since World War II.
“Today crystallizes precisely why Putin was so eager to see Trump elected,” said former Obama National Security Council spokesman Ned Price.
“For Putin, this is return on his investment, and it’s safe to say that his investment has paid off beyond even his wildest dreams,” he said in a statement to CNN.
TREASON EXAMPLE #10: In early 2020, members of the elite SEAL Team Six raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in American cash. The recovered funds led the American intelligence community to believe that the government of Vladimir Putin had offered money to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Additional confirmation came from the interrogations of captured militants and criminals.
As early as January, the SEALS in Afghanistan alerted their superiors of this danger.
Trump claimed he wasn’t briefed on these Intelligence assessments. He made his denial through White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany: The information had not been “verified.”
This despite the fact that every morning he received the President’s Daily Briefing, a top-secret document containing highly classified Intelligence analysis.
In fact, the Intelligence assessment had been under discussion within the Trump administration since at least March.
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