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Hillary Clinton’s Pro-Putin Hatchet Man Swept up in ‘Trump-Russia’ Investigation

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Sid Blumenthal, a longtime confidant to Hillary Clinton, was reportedly interviewed by FBI agents about the infamous “Trump-Russia” dossier.

National security journalist Sara Carter revealed late Wednesday that Blumenthal was allegedly interviewed in connection to the dossier. It has been over a year since Buzzfeed decided to publish the dossier, and none of the substantive claims in the document have been proven as factual.

Blumenthal has a reputation in Washington as a hatchet man for Hillary Clinton. He was behind the Clinton campaigns efforts to spread the “birther” conspiracy alleging that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Given his role in the smear campaign, President Obama refused to allow Clinton to bring him onto her official staff.

While Hillary Clinton was serving as Secretary of State, Blumenthal acted as something of a private intelligence operative for her. Clinton’s private email archive reveals that the former Secretary of State relied on Blumenthal as one of her most trusted confidants. Using shady resources, Blumenthal often delivered her intricate reports on geopolitical matters.

Given his apparent connection to the Trump-Russia probe, it’s relevant to point out that Blumenthal has consistently advocated for cozying up to Moscow.

Blumenthal has also lobbied on behalf of a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In emails disclosed by Wikileaks, Blumenthal consistently advocated for Clinton to adopt a pro-Moscow position in Eastern Europe. Additionally, Blumenthal’s son is a pro-Putin propagandist who now openly advocates for Russia’s foreign policy priorities.

Blumenthal’s is not the only individual connected to the dossier who is close with the government of Russia. Glenn Simpson, who leads Fusion GPS–the organization that compiled the dossier–has substantial ties to the government of Russia and individual Kremlin operatives. It has led observers of Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation to ask whether Fusion GPS worked with the Kremlin to use the dossier as a way to sow discord within the country.

Through Hillary Clinton’s election campaigns and her stints in government, the two have remained ultra close. In October, Blumenthal was spotted at Clinton’s birthday party.

This revelation comes as questions continue to arise about the Clinton campaign’s connections to the “Trump-Russia” dossier. We already know that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for the research that led to the dossier. What remains unclear is if the unproven allegations were used as the main piece of evidence to spy on the Trump campaign. Evidence continues to build suggesting that she did indeed play a role. Republican congressional investigators — who reportedly have had access to the FISA court warrant — continue to suggest, in very pointed questions, that Clinton played a much bigger part than what has been publicly acknowledged. (For more from the author of “Hillary Clinton’s Pro-Putin Hatchet Man Swept up in ‘Trump-Russia’ Investigation” please click HERE)

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Even the Eyelashes Freeze: Russia Sees Minus 88.6 Degrees

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Even thermometers can’t keep up with the plunging temperatures in Russia’s remote Yakutia region, which hit minus 67 degrees Celsius (minus 88.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas Tuesday.

In Yakutia — a region of 1 million people about 3,300 miles (5,300 kilometers) east of Moscow — students routinely go to school even in minus 40 degrees. But school was canceled Tuesday throughout the region and police ordered parents to keep their children inside.

In the village of Oymyakon, one of the coldest inhabited places on earth, state-owned Russian television showed the mercury falling to the bottom of a thermometer that was only set up to measure down to minus 50 degrees. In 2013, Oymyakon recorded an all-time low of minus 71 degrees Celsius (minus 98 Fahrenheit). (Read more from “Even the Eyelashes Freeze: Russia Sees Minus 88.6 Degrees” HERE)

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UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s Dishonesty Recorded in Prank Call by Russian Comedians

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A pair of Russian comedians appear to have successfully prank-called U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley by posing as a Polish government official.

The two comedians, Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, posted a video over the weekend in which a woman identified as Haley believes she is speaking to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. . .

“You know Binomo?” the man said, to which Haley replied “yes, yes.”

“They had elections and we suppose Russians had its intervention,” the man said.

“Yes, of course they did, absolutely,” Haley replies. “We’ve been watching that very closely, and I think we will continue to watch that as we deal with the issues that keep coming up about the South China Sea.” (Read more from “UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s Dishonesty Recorded in Prank Call by Russian Comedians” HERE)

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‘Collusion’ Author Stumbles When Asked for Evidence

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The author of a book alleging “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia admits it’s really unknown whether the Russians exerted inappropriate influence over the candidate.

The revelation comes from Luke Harding, a foreign correspondent with the Guardian newspaper of London, who wrote “Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.” . . .

However, while he talked about the tradition of Russia trying to compromise foreign leaders, he was unable to provide Maté with evidence of that happening with Trump.

The interviewer immediately asked the key question: “Luke, welcome. Let’s start with the book’s title. Do you think there actually was collusion?”

Harding said “we’re already across the line in terms of collusion” and cited Trump’s “first trip to Soviet Moscow in 1987 paid for by the Soviet Union where he was discussing hotel deals.” (Read more from “‘Collusion’ Author Stumbles When Asked for Evidence” HERE)

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Wife Claims Husband Is Behind ‘Russiagate’

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There’s an FBI special counsel, Robert Mueller, investigating the Trump campaign’s so-called “collusion” with “Russia.”

But there also are developing congressional investigations into how those claims were created, from where they came, and who first made them.

Because, as a report in TabletMag suggests, it would be precedent-setting for what President Trump has described as a swamp in Washington to actually have used government channels and resources to make up allegations about a presidential candidate, and then a president-elect.

“To date the investigation into the Fusion GPS-manufactured collusion scandal has focused largely on the firm itself, its allies in the press, as well as contacts in the Department of Justice and FBI,” TabletMag said. “However, if a sitting president used the instruments of state, including the intelligence community, to disseminate and legitimize a piece of paid opposition research in order to first obtain warrants to spy on the other party’s campaign, and then to de-legitimize the results of an election once the other party’s candidate won, we’re looking at a scandal that dwarfs Watergate – a story not about a bad man in the White House, but about the subversion of key security institutions that are charged with protecting core elements of our democratic process while operating largely in the shadows.”

In support of that idea, TabletMag now has reported that Mary Jacoby, the wife of GPS founder Glenn Simpson, boasted “on Facebook about how ‘Russiagate’ would not exist if it weren’t for her husband.” (Read more from “Wife Claims Husband Is Behind ‘Russiagate'” HERE)

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BEYOND INSANE: CIA Now Alleging That Third Party Presidential Candidates are Evidence of Russian Collusion

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A U.S. Army Veteran’s Russian Election Interference

By Zak Carter. In 2012 I worked as communications director for the Free And Equal Elections Foundation. We produced a series of two presidential debates that year, both attended by Jill Stein. The CIA lists those debates as evidence of Russian interference in our elections.

As F&E’s communication director, I was tasked with increasing viewership of those debates. In 2008 F&E hosted a presidential debate that was moderated by F&E’s chairwoman and broadcast by CSPAN 2. Nobody knew about it, and nobody watched it. So I reached out to Larry King’s producer at ORA TV and got the ball rolling on Mr. King moderating one of our debates. I then started contacting other television networks to ask them to broadcast, and having Larry King attached to the debates did help open a few doors. We managed to get broadcast commitments from Link TV, Free Speech TV, CSPAN, along with ORA TV as would be expected since their host would be moderating. Missing from that list though were any of the major networks. When contacting FOX, CNN, ABC, CBS and ABC etc, I was either met with silence or told that this was something that they couldn’t broadcast due to their relationship with The Commission on Presidential Debates.

We wanted as many people watching as possible though, so I went to the international media. I managed to get commitments from both Al Jazeera and Russia Today. Other international media ran stories on the debates but did not broadcast. Thanks to Al Jazeera and Russia Today broadcasting the debates, we were inundated with interview requests for weeks by journalists all over the globe, from Switzerland to New Zealand, who had no idea that there was a Green or Libertarian Party in America till then. They thought there was nothing but Republicans and Democrats here.

After that first debate at the Chicago Hilton on October 23rd, 2012, F&E was close to broke (I believe we spent close to $150k on that night) and on a shoestring budget. Russia Today offered to put us up in their studio in DC and have Thom Hartmann moderate, and being broke, we accepted. We drove from Chicago to DC, and thanks to Superstorm Sandy, we delayed the debate till November 5th, the night before the election. After the debate we had dinner with Misha Solodovnikov, Russia Today’s DC bureau chief, so I really must be guilty of something.

What I’d like to know is if the CIA called those debates evidence of Russian meddling in our elections, what else is questionable in that report? And if Jill Stein and I are guilty of anything, clearly Larry King, an icon of our media, along with Thom Hartmann, darling of mainstream liberal talk radio, must be complicit as well, right along with CSPAN and the other American networks that broadcast our debates. Lawrence O’Donnell at MSNBC did a very positive segment on the first debate and should likely be questioned too while we’re at it.

Bottom line for me is, if The Commission on Presidential Debates didn’t block participation from independent and 3rd party candidates, I never would have called Russia Today. Open the presidential debates and I promise I won’t do it again.

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U.S. Intelligence Agencies Criticize Russia Today TV for Hosting Minor-Party Presidential Debates

By Richard Winger. Intelligence agencies of the United States have just published a booklet, “Intelligence Community Assessment”, which sets forth evidence that Russia, and the television network Russia Today (RT), intervened in the United States presidential elections of 2012 and 2016. The publication is from the “Intelligence Community”, including the CIA, FBI, and NSA. Here is a link to the booklet.

Annex A, in the second half of the report, on page six, says, “In an effort to highlight the alleged ‘lack of democracy’ in the United States, RT broadcast, hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the U.S. two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham.’”

In 2012 RT carried the general election presidential debate between Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Virgil Goode, and Rocky Anderson. In 2016, during the primary season in the first half of the year, RT broadcast a debate between various candidates for the Green Party nomination. It also carried a debate between some of the candidates for the Libertarian nomination. Thanks to antiwar.com for the link. See this antiwar commentary about the report. (For more from the author of “U.S. Intelligence Agencies Criticize Russia Today TV for Hosting Minor-Party Presidential Debates” please click HERE)

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Russia Banned From Winter Olympics

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Russia’s Olympic Committee has been banned from the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and ordered to pay $15m in costs after making what the International Olympic Committee called an “unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and sport”.

Tellingly the IOC also accepted, for the first time, that the Russian state had been involved in widespread institutional doping by banning the then minister of sport, Vitaly Mutko, and his then deputy minister, Yuri Nagornykh, from any participation in all future Olympic Games.

It is the first time the IOC has imposed a ban on a country competing under its own flag for doping. Russia’s athletes were, however, thrown a lifeline by the IOC president, Thomas Bach, who confirmed they would be able to compete in South Korea in February provided they were not involved in a massive state-sponsored doping programme that corrupted the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. Such athletes will have to compete under the Olympic flag and in a uniform bearing the name “Olympic athlete from Russia”. If any Russian athlete wins a gold, the Olympic anthem will be played at the medal ceremony.

Mutko, who is now deputy prime minister for sport, tourism and youth policy and the head of the organising committee for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, rejected suggestions there had been systematic doping only last week. Fifa also released a statement on Tuesday insisting Mutko’s ban does not affect planning for next summer’s finals.

The IOC’s decision was announced after its 14-person executive committee spent Tuesday afternoon poring over the final report of the Schmid commission, which has been examining whether there was an “institutional conspiracy” by Russian officials within the ministry of sport to corrupt the London 2012 Olympics and the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. (Read more from “Russia Banned From Winter Olympics” HERE)

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Russian Lawyer Who Met Don Jr. Submits Senate Testimony — There’s Just One Problem

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The Russian lawyer who attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting denied interacting with the founder of Trump dossier research firm Fusion GPS that same day, in direct contradiction to what the opposition researcher told Congress last month.

Natalia Veselnitskaya told the Senate Judiciary Committee in written testimony submitted last month that she did not have contact with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson on the day of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

But her denial is inconsistent with previous reporting and with what Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in a closed-door interview last month.

“Did you have contact with Glenn Simpson on June 8, 9, or 10, 2016?” reads one of the 94 questions posed to Veselnitskaya by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“No, there had been no contacts with him on [sic] specified dates,” Veselnitskaya said in her written testimony, which was submitted electronically on Nov. 20 and published on Tuesday by NBC News. (Read more from “Russian Lawyer Who Met Don Jr. Submits Senate Testimony — There’s Just One Problem” HERE)

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No ‘Russia Collusion’ in Mueller’s Case Against Flynn

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By Art Moore. It’s significant that Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty Friday to the “process crime” of lying to FBI agents rather than to a conspiracy of collusion, contends a former assistant U.S. attorney.

Flynn’s plea in federal court centered on his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. in December 2016, during the presidential transition period. ABC News reported Flynn plans to testify that Trump himself directed him to reach out to Russians.

But Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, argues Special Counsel Robert Mueller would not permit Flynn to settle the case with a single count of lying to FBI agents if his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak had provided evidence that the Trump administration would ease or eliminate sanctions on Russia as a payback for Russia’s cyber-espionage against the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.

He pointed out that the only major case Mueller previously has brought was against former Trump-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate, which had nothing to do with the 2016 election.

“It is becoming increasingly palpable that, whatever ‘collusion’ means, there was no actionable, conspiratorial complicity by the Trump campaign in the Kremlin’s machinations,” McCarthy wrote in a column for National Review. (Read more from “No ‘Russia Collusion’ in Mueller’s Case Against Flynn” HERE)

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Dem Senator: Mueller Must Be Protected From ‘Another Saturday Night Massacre’

By Brandon Carter. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned Friday that Congress must protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump, or risk “another Saturday Night Massacre.”

“We proposed legislation that would stop [Trump] from firing the special counsel, and it would shield the special counsel from any sort of political interference, which now seems increasingly threatening,” Blumenthal said on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.”

“It is a shattering moment for the Trump presidency,” he continued. “Comparing it to Watergate – there’s a real danger of another Saturday Night Massacre.”

The “Saturday Night Massacre” occurred in 1973 when then-President Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor in charge of the Watergate investigation, which also triggered the resignation of the attorney general and deputy attorney general.

Blumenthal said the Senate should “send a signal” and pass a bill to protect Mueller to ensure Trump is “discouraged or deterred from endangering our democracy.” (Read more from “Dem Senator: Mueller Must Be Protected From ‘Another Saturday Night Massacre'” HERE)

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We’ll Soon Find out How Much Robert Mueller Has Spent on Trump-Russia Probe

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The Justice Department is set to release a report next week that lays out how much Special Counsel Robert Mueller has spent on the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential campaign.

According to The Hill, the report will be made public and sent to Congress.

The document will provide the first insight into how much Mueller has spent on a sprawling investigation that is looking at Russia’s meddling in the presidential campaign as well as the activities of Trump campaign officials. Mueller is also investigating the business dealings of former Trump advisers, including campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Mueller indicted Manafort last month and secured a plea deal from former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI about contacts he had with Russians during the campaign. A former FBI director, Mueller is also keying in on Flynn’s consulting work last year for the Turkish government. (Read more from “We’ll Soon Find out How Much Robert Mueller Has Spent on Trump-Russia Probe” HERE)

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