Stalin Makes a Comeback in Putin's Wartime Crackdown on Dissent
With President Vladimir Putin tightening the screws of repression as his invasion of Ukraine drags on, the Soviet dictator is making a comeback as a victorious World War II leader rather than the man responsible for the deaths of millions of his citizens. Russia's Communist Party, still the second-largest in the parliament, voted this month to press for full political rehabilitation of Stalin, who's shown flanked by children offering flowers and gratitude in the metro station sculpture unveiled in May.
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Fox News
19 minutes ago
- Fox News
JONATHAN TURLEY: The key players in the Russia collusion hoax, and why they're sweating now
The release of declassified material has shed new light on the creation of the Russian collusion investigation and many of the names are crushingly familiar. Indeed, Congress is moving to "round up the usual suspects" in light of the new revelations. It is the story of the real Russian conspiracy: how high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration seeded this false claim with the help of an eager, unquestioning press corps. Not surprisingly, the media, which spent years repeating the false Russian collusion claims, is doing a full-court press to kill the story. Yet, many of these key figures are retaining counsel in anticipation of the unfolding investigation. Many previously secured contracts with MSNBC or CNN, or book deals, where they doubled down on the false claims detailed in these new documents. Here are just a few of the usual suspects: Brennan is arguably the most at risk in the new disclosures, which appear to contradict his prior testimony before Congress. On May 23, 2017, Brennan testified that the infamous Steele dossier "wasn't part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done." However, the new material shows that Brennan was the key figure insisting on the inclusion of the Steele dossier in an intelligence assessment, suggesting that the Russians did influence the election in favor of Trump. Brennan not only intervened to include the dossier but overruled the CIA's two most senior Russia experts, who said it "did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards." One analyst recounted how "[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier's main flaws, responded, 'Yes, but doesn't it ring true?'" Notably, it was Brennan who briefed Obama in 2016 about Hillary Clinton's plan to create a Russian conspiracy "to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service." Months later, it would be Brennan who actively incorporated the dossier secretly funded by Clinton's campaign. James Clapper, former DNI under Obama, is expecting the worst and said that he has "lawyered up." Clapper was in the briefing in July 2016 when Obama was told that Clinton was planning to create a Russian conspiracy narrative. In November 2016, Clapper received an assessment from the intelligence community that Russia was "probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means." He also received talking points from staff on Dec. 7, 2016, "Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome." On Dec. 9, 2016, another report stated that "Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure." That Presidential Daily Brief was scheduled to be published on Dec. 9, but CDNI Clapper's office stopped its publication "based on some new guidance." Clapper later joined Obama with Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and others, in a meeting where a new assessment was ordered that would detail the "tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election." Brennan then reportedly handpicked the analysts who seemed to flip the earlier assessments without any credible intelligence. In a 2018 interview with the Harvard Gazette, Clapper continued to spread the false narrative, referring to the high-confidence judgment that "Putin directly ordered the hacking and election interference." He added, "I think they [Russians] actually influenced the outcome." Clapper later added to his tarnished legacy by signing the letter with more than 50 former intelligence officials dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election as having the [hall]marks of "Russian disinformation." James Comey would use this contrived intelligence to green-light the investigations that overwhelmed the first Trump term. The FBI was aware early that the Steele dossier was an unreliable political hit job funded by the Clinton campaign. Moreover, the CIA told the FBI that Trump associate Carter Page was a U.S. intelligence asset, not a Russian spy. The FBI ignored such countervailing intelligence, violated protocols, and lied to a federal court to maintain the Russian investigation. In an interview with Fox's Bret Baier, Comey was asked about the lack of evidence of "Russian collusion." Comey dismissed the question by saying "collusion's not a word that I'm familiar with." Putting aside the lunacy of that statement, Comey then says the question is whether Americans were "in cahoots with the foreign intelligence activities." It appears "cahoots" is a word he is familiar with. He then denied knowing, in April 2018, that the Clinton campaign had funded the report. Comey routinely seems unfamiliar with terms or facts that contradicted his investigating Trump, even years later. Comey repeatedly testified to a lack of memory on key decisions made in the Russian investigation. However, documents show that it was Comey who pushed back on a planned statement by Clapper, stating that they had not determined the dossier to be reliable. Andrew McCabe, now a CNN contributor, was fired after career Justice Department officials found that the former acting FBI director not only lied to investigators but deserved to be fired. That recommendation was reportedly embraced by the career officials in the inspector general's office. He was accused of lying four times, including twice under oath. Not surprisingly, McCabe makes appearances in the new disclosures. He is not only present at critical meetings, but it also appears that McCabe was allegedly responsible for blocking congressional investigators from interviewing the FBI analysts who supported Brennan and drafters of the controversial ICA. Congress alleged that at least 30 FBI employees associated with the dossier were walled off by McCabe. These and other names are not new. As the media was spreading the false narrative of Russian collusion, many of these figures knew that there was no evidence of such collusion. They said nothing. Instead, after Obama ordered a new assessment effectively flipping the conclusions of the earlier assessment, anonymous sources leaked the false narrative to the media, which eagerly ran with the story. While leaks of the false narrative were rampant, none of the actual facts were leaked to the media. In the meantime, figures like then Rep. Adam Schiff, now a Democratic senator from California, continued to claim, even after Special Counsel Robert Mueller rejected evidence of collusion, that he had secret evidence to the contrary in the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff never revealed that evidence, and the public now knows that the intelligence community rejected the collusion claims from the outset. The public is now learning about the real Russian conspiracy and its key players. It was the most infamous -- and successful -- political hit job in history. The same media that pushed the false claims are now, again, imposing a news blackout as they did with the Hunter Biden laptop. The problem is that the truth, like water, tends to find a way out. That trickle just turned into a flood for the architects of the Russian collusion hoax.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Gabbard and White House 'lying' about intel on Russian interference in 2016, ex-CIA official says
The former senior CIA officer who helped oversee the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russia's interference in the 2016 election says Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the White House are 'lying' when they claim that it was an attempt to sabotage President Donald Trump. Susan Miller, a retired CIA officer who helped lead the team that produced the report about Russia's actions during the 2016 campaign, told NBC News it was based on credible information that showed Moscow sought to help Trump win the election, but that there was no sign of a conspiracy between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. 'The director of national intelligence and the White House are lying, again,' Miller said. 'We definitely had the intel to show with high probability that the specific goal of the Russians was to get Trump elected.' She added: 'At the same time, we found no two-way collusion between Trump or his team with the Russians at that time.' Miller spoke to NBC News after Gabbard alleged Wednesday that the 2017 intelligence assessment was based on 'manufactured' information as part of a 'treasonous conspiracy' by the Obama administration to undermine Trump and tarnish his electoral victory. Gabbard cited a 2020 report from Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which she declassified and released this week, that asserted there was insufficient information to conclude Russia had been trying to tip the scales in favor of Trump. Miller said 'it is clear that Trump and his followers have a script they want to follow, despite the facts.' She said that when her team briefed Trump and others about their assessment in 2017, they made clear there was no way to gauge the impact of the Russian information warfare on the vote, and that Trump was the country's lawful commander in chief. 'Both me and my team readily acknowledged — to Trump and others in the USG [U.S. government] we briefed — that we could not say if this attempt by the Russians actually worked unless someone polled every single Trump voter to see if this disinformation was what led them to vote for Trump,' she said. 'Both my team and I and DCIA [the director of the CIA] said clearly in our report to Trump himself and to the intel committees [in Congress] that Trump was our president,' Miller said. Trump thanked the CIA director for the briefing, Miller said. 'That part was left out by Gabbard,' Miller said. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence dismissed Miller's comments. 'Susan is wrong. And the American people can read for themselves hundreds of reasons why she is wrong in the declassified HPSCI report,' said ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman, referring to the 2020 Republican House intelligence report. The Republican House report was emphatically rejected at the time by Democratic lawmakers on the panel. But a bipartisan Senate probe released the same year endorsed the intelligence agencies' assessment that Russia had spread disinformation and leaked stolen emails from the Democratic party to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy and bolster Trump's prospects. Trump's current secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was the acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time and endorsed the conclusions of the panel's report. When asked about Miller's defense of the intelligence assessment, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said: 'Director Gabbard declassified documents in the name of transparency to show the world that the Obama administration was indeed behind the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Those who participated in criminal activity will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.' The CIA declined to comment. 'Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,' Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for former President Barack Obama, said in a statement this week. 'But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.' In advance of the 2016 election, intelligence reporting indicated Russia was trying to influence the election with disinformation, Miller said. After the vote, John Brennan — who was CIA director at the time and is now a paid NBC News and MSNBC contributor — asked her to put together a task force that would rigorously examine Russia's role in the election. Miller, who served nine tours abroad with CIA during her 39-year career, was head of agency counterintelligence at the time. She said she put together a team with a range of skills and expertise, including analysts and officers working in counterintelligence. As they began their work on the assessment, Miller said, she and the rest of her team were keenly aware of the polarized political climate in the country in the aftermath of the election. They were facing pressure from officials both inside and outside the CIA. 'There were people that hated Trump that wanted us to find that Trump was complicit. And there were those that loved Trump. They wanted us to find nothing. And we ignored all of it,' Miller said. 'We just kept ourselves neutral,' she added. 'We just decided to let the data speak for itself. ... We had very, very good data coming in.' Brennan did not pressure or micromanage the task force, she said. Gabbard, current CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the White House have accused Brennan of fabricating intelligence about the 2016 election to undermine Trump. Brennan has rejected the allegations as 'baseless.' The task force examined every possible angle, Miller said, including whether Trump and his campaign somehow conspired with the Kremlin to skew the election outcome. They did not find intelligence to support that scenario, she said. After sifting through all the intelligence and publicly available information, the team concluded that Russia had waged a large-scale information warfare campaign to undermine America's democratic process, damage Hillary Clinton's candidacy and boost Trump's chances. 'The paper was multiple pages long, but the summary of it is 100% they tried to influence the election, and 100% we can't say if it worked unless we polled every voter,' Miller said. When the assessment was wrapping up and a draft was being edited, then-FBI Director James Comey asked that the report include a dossier about Trump by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, according to Miller and a Senate report from 2020, which cited accounts from multiple officials, including Comey and Brennan. The dossier featured unverified allegations about Trump that had not been corroborated by U.S. intelligence agencies, and CIA officials argued against adding references to the dossier in the report. 'We had already written the paper and it was going through edits,' Miller said. The FBI's stance annoyed Miller. Her view was that 'we can't just shove this in' to the assessment at such a late stage and that 'it's going to take us another six months to go and try to figure out if this is true,' she said. But the FBI insisted that if the dossier were not included, the bureau would withdraw and not endorse the intelligence assessment, according to Miller. 'The FBI said that 'unless you tag it onto the end of it, then we're not going to sign off on this,'' she said. In the end, the CIA and the FBI worked out a compromise. The dossier was included in an annex to the assessment, with a disclaimer that the claims in the file had not been verified by the intelligence community. Comey could not be reached for comment. Later on during the first Trump administration, Miller was called up to the general counsel's office at the CIA. There, she said, an agency lawyer told her she was facing possible criminal charges over her role leading the assessment. Miller assumed it was a joke. 'I laughed out loud.' But it was not. Miller decided to hire a lawyer, though it was unclear what potential criminal charge was in play. The administration eventually used a special counsel, John Durham, to investigate how the previous administration had handled probes into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. Durham's team questioned Miller for hours. They asked her questions about whether she had an anti-Republican bias that influenced how the assessment was written, Miller said. 'I was answering questions like, 'Tell us how you hate all Republicans, and that's why you wrote this paper.' Actually, if you look at my registration, I'm a Republican.' Miller was never charged with any crime and she said she was never disciplined in any way over the intelligence assessment. She retired during the Biden administration after 39 years with the CIA. Earlier this month, Ratcliffe declassified an internal 'lessons learned' review looking at how the intelligence assessment was drafted. The internal review found that some standard procedures were not followed and that the report was rushed, but did not question the conclusions of the assessment. Miller said no one at the CIA contacted her for the internal review. The CIA declined to comment. Nine years since the 2016 election, Russia is likely pleased to see yet more political acrimony in Washington over what transpired, according to Miller. 'Putin and his BFFs in the Kremlin are toasting vodka shots as we speak at the turmoil this is creating,' she said. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Polish leader warns of conflict with Russia by 2027
Europe and Poland should be prepared for a possible major conflict with Russia by 2027, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Saturday. He said that his government would make maximum use of the next two years to stabilise the situation in Poland and ensure security, according to reports by the news agency PAP. The prime minister referred to a similar assessment by the new NATO Supreme Commander Alexus Grynkewich with whom he had spoken shortly before. According to this assessment, Russia and China could become strong enough by 2027 to seek a coordinated confrontation with NATO and the US. Given Russia's war against Ukraine, a range of possible scenarios are circulating among Western military experts about when other European states could face aggression. 2027 is the earliest estimate mentioned yet. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said 2029. EU states are rearming and aim to be able to repel a Russian attack by 2030. Russia is also expanding its armed forces. However, the Moscow leadership has dismissed the idea NATO territory would be attacked as nonsense. The Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda recently flipped the narrative, alleging NATO plans to attack Russia in 2027. Russia continues to attack Ukraine daily, in the full-scale invasion launched by the Kremlin in 2022. Solve the daily Crossword
