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Report Undercuts Claim That Russia Is Trying To Help Trump’s Re-election

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American intelligence does not indicate that Russia is attempting to help President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, according to a new report.

According to CNN, who spoke with several U.S. intelligence officials, Shelby Pierson, the top election intelligence official, overstated the intelligence community’s assessment on Russian interference in the 2020 election during a recent classified briefing with the House Intelligence Committee. She told lawmakers that Russia is attempting to aid Trump’s re-election, the New York Times reported last week.

However, the intelligence simply does not indicate that.

“The intelligence doesn’t say that,” a senior national security official told CNN. “A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it’s a step short of that. It’s more that they understand the President is someone they can work with, he’s a dealmaker.” (Read more from “Report Undercuts Claim That Russia Is Trying To Help Trump’s Re-election” HERE)

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2 Russians Escape Coronavirus Quarantine

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Two women being quarantined in Russian hospitals amid the coronavirus outbreak escaped after complaining of dire conditions upon their return from China, where the virus originated and has killed more than 1,100 people and sickened more than 45,000 others.

One patient jumped out of a hospital window and another disabled an electronic lock in order to flee their isolation. Both had complained of uncooperative doctors, lax protocol and poor conditions, and feared they would become infected.

Russia has only two confirmed cases of the virus, but authorities have taken measures to prevent its spread by hospitalizing people returning from China as a precaution. Both women were quarantined after returning from Hainan, a tropical region in China.

One of the women published a lengthy Instagram post describing her ordeal. She said her son came down with a cough and fever days after returning to their home in Samara. The boy was diagnosed with a respiratory infection and tested at a hospital for the coronavirus.

The boy responded to treatment but his test results had been delayed for several days, she said. She accused doctors of obstructing her when she pressed for information about her son. On her fifth day in the hospital, she took a home pregnancy test, which came out positive. (Read more from “2 Russians Escape Coronavirus Quarantine” HERE)

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Top Trump Russia-Europe Official Yanked Pending Mysterious Security Concerns

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By NBC News. The top White House official responsible for Russia and Europe has been put on indefinite administrative leave amid a security-related investigation, two U.S. officials and a former U.S. official said.

The official, Andrew Peek, who took over the Russia portfolio at the National Security Council in November, had been scheduled to join President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week before he was abruptly put on leave, one of the officials said. The officials declined to specify the nature of the investigation. . .

Peek’s absence, at least temporarily, creates a void in a key position responsible for pushing back on Russian aggression and coordinating U.S. policy toward Moscow. It adds another jolt of uncertainty to an office that has experienced significant turnover during the past year.

Peek, whose background is in Middle East affairs, took over the Russia and Europe portfolio from Tim Morrison, who was a key witness in House hearings on Trump’s impeachment. The Russia and Europe role is the same one that was previously occupied by Fiona Hill, another key impeachment witness during last year’s hearings. (Read more from “Top Trump Russia-Europe Official Yanked Pending Mysterious Security Concerns” HERE)

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Trump Loses Another Russia Adviser, Adding to NSC Turnover

By Bloomberg. The top Russia expert on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council has left his post after about three months, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Andrew Peek, the NSC’s senior director for European and Russian affairs, was escorted from the White House grounds on Friday, two of the people said, asking not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to discuss personnel matters. A spokesman for the NSC declined to comment, citing the same reason. Peek also declined to comment.

Axios reported earlier Saturday that Peek was placed on administrative leave pending a security-related investigation.

Peek is the third departure from the position in less than a year. The NSC has been marked by turbulence and turnover over Trump’s three years in office, as the president has repeatedly sought national security advisers more in-line with his own ideology. (Read more from “Trump Loses Another Russia Adviser, Adding to NSC Turnover” HERE)

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Media, Federal Government Tougher on Roger Stone Than Child Molester Jeffrey Epstein. Why?

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Roger Stone was convicted in federal court last week on seven felony charges stemming from the since-closed Russia collusion investigation. Stone’s main crime was lying to Congress about who he had or had not spoken to about Russia.

By the time Stone’s trial began in Washington the larger scandal that ensnared him had long been debunked. Nobody was talking about WikiLeaks anymore; nobody cared. And yet prosecutors continued zealously as if it were still 2017. For lying about something that is now officially irrelevant, they argued that Roger Stone should spend up to 50 years in prison, effectively the rest of his natural life.

Now, at the very moment prosecutors were making that case, that Stone’s misstatements ought to be a death penalty offense, Congressman Adam Schiff was busy lying to the rest of us about new things, some of which actually mattered. Schiff didn’t seem worried about his lying. He knew he would never be prosecuted for it. In Washington dishonestly is strictly a one-way offense.

Yet despite the obvious irony of all of this, Roger Stone was convicted anyway. And official Washington cheered. “Rot in hell!” they screamed on Twitter, oblivious to karma, which, by the way, is real.

What’s interesting about the response to Stone’s case, both from federal prosecutors and from the conventional opinion-makers on television, is how much harsher and more outraged it was than anything that greeted convicted child molester Jeffrey Epstein. Do you think ABC’s George Stephanopoulos would even consider having dinner at Roger Stone’s house? Well, of course not. That would be immoral. (Read more from “Media, Federal Government Tougher on Roger Stone Than Child Molester Jeffrey Epstein. Why?” HERE)

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Rolling Stone: ‘Hillary Clinton Is Nuts’

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Hillary Clinton decided to use her name and allies to smear Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI). Tulsi endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. Clinton floated this insane theory that Rep. Gabbard was being groomed by the Russians to mount a third-party run to ensure a Trump victory in 2020. . .

While Rolling Stone suffered a knifing to the kidneys and heart over the University of Virginia rape story that turned out to be a total hoax which led to the magazine being sued and found guilty of libel, its analysis of the Russian agent paranoia that had engulfed the Democratic Party was pretty spot on. In short, the Democratic Party position on this subject is that we’re all Russian agents now. It’s ironic in two ways. First, the so-called intellectual elite, those who think that rural Americans and those without college degrees are trash, falling victim and being susceptible to digesting such tin foil hat garbage is priceless. These condescending and utterly revolting people appear to be so incapable of understanding why they lost in 2016 they’ve resorted to InfoWars-like cuckoo theories over why Trump is where he is at present. Second, remember when Democrats laughed at Mitt Romney about Russia being our biggest geopolitical foe? This was anachronistic, right? Well, post-2016, the Left has their own red scare brewing their minds, driving them insane, and leaving them spewing total insanity to the masses. The Russians were a joke in 2012, and now they’re everywhere. Oh, man—there is not enough popcorn for this show (via Rolling Stone):

Hillary Clinton is nuts. She’s also not far from the Democratic Party mainstream, which has been pushing the same line for years.

Less than a week before Clinton’s outburst, the New York Times — once a symbol of stodgy, hyper-cautious reporting — ran a feature called, “What, Exactly, is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?” The piece speculated about the “suspicious activity” surrounding Gabbard’s campaign, using quotes from the neoconservative think-tank, the Alliance For Securing Democracy, to speculate about Gabbard’s Russian support.

(Read more from “Rolling Stone: ‘Hillary Clinton Is Nuts'” HERE)

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Big Trump-Russia Report Is Coming, but How Much Will Remain Secret?

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On May 23 of this year, President Trump gave Attorney General Bill Barr “full and complete authority” to declassify information relating to the actions of the FBI and intelligence community in investigating the 2016 Trump campaign.

Granting Barr that authority “will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions,” the White House said.

The move immediately set off speculation. What would Barr do? Would the public see a flood of secret documents, like records of informants and spying on the Trump campaign, like documents relating to the start of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” probe, like papers on the use of the secret FISA court and wiretap authority? Congressional investigators and journalists who had long wanted to see such documents were in a state of high anticipation. . .

But now, anticipation is building again. On Friday, Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz sent a letter to key members of Congress saying he has finished his investigation into what Republicans call “FISA abuse,” but which GOP lawmakers suspect will be a much more wide-ranging look at the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. . .

How much will be hidden? Some lawmakers have said they think as much as one-fifth of the Horowitz report might be redacted. That would be entirely antithetical to the public’s need to understand the beginnings of the Trump-Russia affair. (Read more from “Big Trump-Russia Report Is Coming, but How Much Will Remain Secret?” HERE)

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Russia to Begin Peace Talks With Taliban

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A Taliban negotiating team arrived in Russia on Friday, less than a week after President Trump announced that peace talks with the Islamic militant group in Afghanistan were essentially “dead.” . . .

The Russian state news agency Tass, citing the Taliban’s Qatari-based spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, reported that the delegation had met with Zamir Kabulov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy to Afghanistan. A Taliban official confirmed the visit to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Russia has been accused of aiding the Taliban as a safeguard against a burgeoning affiliate of the Islamic State (ISIS) that has close ties to the Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, a militant group in Central Asia. Russia has stepped up its defenses in Central Asia and has claimed thousands of ISIS fighters were in northern Afghanistan. . .

On Saturday, Trump announced he had called off secret meetings with Afghan government leaders and Taliban officials that were to take place at Camp David. The president noted that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for a recent attack in Kabul that left 12 dead, including an American soldier.”

“What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?” Trump asked in a statement on Twitter, before adding that if the Taliban cannot agree to a cease-fire, “then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway.” (Read more from “Russia to Begin Peace Talks With Taliban” HERE)

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Surprise: India and Russia Challenging China in South China Sea

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India is challenging Chinese influence in the South China Sea with its outreach to regional powers, including Russia, with which it has agreed to launch a maritime route that would partly go through the hotly contested waters, analysts said.

Under the memorandum of understanding signed by India and Russia – two traditional security allies – during a regional economic forum this week, a new Indo-Pacific sea route will extend from the port city of Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East, to Chennai, on the Bay of Bengal in eastern India.

The shipping route will partly traverse the South China Sea, the scene of numerous territorial disputes involving China and neighbouring countries over the years.

In addition to cooperating on the planned maritime route, India and Russia could ramp up their alliance in the military and technological spheres, according to a joint statement released at the economic forum in Vladivostok. . .

“This could signal that India’s cooperation with Russia is now coming to a substantial phase,” Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview. (Read more from “Surprise: India and Russia Challenging China in South China Sea” HERE)

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Mysterious Radiation Cloud over Europe Traced to Secret Russian Nuclear Accident

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A vast cloud of nuclear radiation that spreadover continental Europe in 2017 has been traced to an unacknowledged nuclear accident in southern Russia, according to an international team of scientists.

The experts say the cloud of radiation detected over Europe in late September 2017 could only have been caused by a nuclear fuel-reprocessing accident at the Mayak Production Association, a nuclear facility in the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural Mountains in Russia, sometime between noon on Sept. 26 and noon on Sept. 27. . .

The lead author of the new research, nuclear chemist Georg Steinhauser of Leibniz University in Hanover, Germany, said that more than 1,300 atmospheric measurements from around the world showed that between 250 and 400 terabecquerels of radioactive ruthenium-106 had been released during that time.

Ruthenium-106 is a radioactive isotope of ruthenium, meaning that it has a different number of neutrons in its nucleus than the naturally occurring element has. The isotope can be produced as a byproduct during nuclear fission of uranium-235 atoms.

Although the resulting cloud of nuclear radiation was diluted enough that it caused no harm to people beneath it, the total radioactivity was between 30 and 100 times the level of radiation released after the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011, Steinhauser told Live Science. (Read more from “Mysterious Radiation Cloud over Europe Traced to Secret Russian Nuclear Accident” HERE)

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Federal Judge Took Democrats’ Russia Collusion Lawsuit Against the Trump Campaign to the Woodshed

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. . .Back to the lawsuit, the judge was quite clear, there was no wrongdoing on behalf of the Trump campaign since they didn’t break any laws concerning obtaining the information from the Wikileaks dump. Those emails from John Podesta and the Clinton campaign aired out a lot of dirty laundry and made things quite awkward on the eve of their 2016 convention in Philadelphia. In short, the judge, a Clinton appointee, took a hatchet to the Democrats’ case, saying it was divorced from the facts (via Fox News):

A federal judge in frank terms Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) against key members of the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over hacked DNC documents, saying they “did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place” and therefore bore no legal liability for disseminating the information.

The ruling came as Democrats increasingly have sought to tie the Trump team to illegal activity in Russia, in spite of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings that the campaign in fact refused multiple offers by Russians to involve them in hacking and disinformation efforts.

The DNC asserted in court filings that the Trump team’s meetings “with persons connected to the Russian government during the time that the Russian GRU agents were stealing the DNC’s information” were “circumstantial evidence” that they were conspiring with the Russians to “steal and disseminate the DNC’s materials.”

(Read more from “Federal Judge Took Democrats’ Russia Collusion Lawsuit Against the Trump Campaign to the Woodshed” HERE)

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