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6 Crimes Special Counsel Might Pursue in Trump-Russia Probe

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What ousted FBI Director James Comey tells Congress could set the tone for what his predecessor, now the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, looks into.

But, barring any new bombshells when Comey testifies Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, legal experts identify a few directions the case could go under Robert Mueller’s direction if evidence emerges of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Mueller’s probe could lead to “obstruction of justice charges and possibly form the basis for impeachment,” said Nick Akerman, who served on the teams of two special prosecutors, Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, during the Watergate investigation.

But Ron Hosko, a former assistant director for the FBI assigned to its Criminal Investigative Division, said he doubts it will go quite that far.

“I don’t see today individual transactions forming a broader criminal conspiracy, which is what Democrats want to see, evidence of knowing agreement,” Hosko, who served under both Mueller and Comey, told The Daily Signal.

“Comparisons to Watergate are way over the top,” Hosko added.

However, Akerman and Hosko agree that certain evidence, if uncovered, could lead to charges against people who work or worked for President Donald Trump, either during the campaign or in the administration.

One chief criticism of the congressional investigations before the Justice Department tapped Mueller is the lack of evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to weaken Hillary Clinton politically or put Trump in the White House.

Commentators on both the right and the left also question what the underlying crime would be. Even some Democrats have said there is no evidence so far of a crime.

The landscape covered by Mueller’s probe includes the actions of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the emails connected with Clinton’s campaign, and any communication between Trump campaign or transition officials and the Russians.

Here are six laws and potential charges that legal experts say could be brought:

1.) Logan Act

The “heart of the investigation” would be whether Flynn or anyone else violated the Logan Act, said Robert Ray, the independent counsel who completed an investigation of President Bill Clinton.

The law, dating to 1798, prevents unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments that are at odds with the United States.

“Between the election and inauguration, if someone was making promises about foreign policy, whether it’s the president himself or someone working for the president, it could be a crime,” said Ray, now in private practice.

This would require evidence of actual promises, deals, or negotiations.

2.) Cyber Intrusion

According to federal officials, Russia apparently hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee or the emails of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, correspondence that ended up on the WikiLeaks site.

If evidence emerges that Trump campaign workers were involved in assisting the Russians, it could tie them to a violation of a statute called Fraud and Related Activity in Connection with Computers, legal experts said.

“This could be a cyber intrusion violation,” said Hosko, now president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. “There are laws against aiding and abetting hacking.”

3.) Espionage Act

The Espionage Act may apply on two fronts: anonymous government employees’ leaking classified information to damage Trump, or Trump’s talking to Russian officials during a much-publicized Oval Office meeting.

The FBI recently arrested 25-year-old National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner and charged her with illegally mailing intelligence information about Russian interference with the election to a news organization.

Considering other aspects of the probe seem to lack actual evidence, leaks by government employees might be the most direct route to prosecution, said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

“Leaks of classified material is a federal crime,” von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department lawyer, told The Daily Signal, adding:

But so far in the so-called collusion investigation, there is no evidence of any violation of any federal law that I know of. Similarly, the big to-do over Kushner talking to the Russian ambassador—that is perfectly legitimate and not any violation of federal law. Mueller can certainly investigate leaks.

The Heritage legal expert was referring to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and one of his top White House aides.

In May, the Trump administration fended off press reports about Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in which sources claimed Trump disclosed intelligence about the Islamic State and aviation safety issues.

A procedure exists for presidents to declassify information, Akerman said, and this action could be prosecutable.

“It could have been a plot beforehand, [such as] ‘I’ll tell you in the light of day and then no one will think I’m in cahoots with you guys,’” said Akerman, now in private practice.

Others point out that the president has the power to decide what is and isn’t classified.

4.) Obstruction of Justice

Comey, during his testimony on Capitol Hill, reportedly will not accuse Trump of trying to obstruct the FBI’s investigation of Flynn.

A Comey memo reportedly noted that after dinner at the White House, Trump told him in a February meeting: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”

It would be tough to make Trump’s stating this in a meeting with Comey the basis of an obstruction charge, Hosko said. But it could give Mueller reason to seek all records of communications or behind-the-scenes actions by Trump regarding the FBI’s Flynn probe.

“The president could have been expressing his wishful thinking to Comey,” Hosko said. “If his true intent was to decapitate an investigation, it would be a more troubling issue.”

Under a “unitary executive” view of the law, it would be difficult to charge a president for seeking to shut down an investigation within the executive branch, Ray said.

“It might be constitutional grounds for impeachment, but it’s not obstruction of justice,” he told The Daily Signal.

5.) Foreign Agent Registration Act

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, has argued that Flynn, a retired Army general, lied on his national security disclosure forms about past work with Russia.

Flynn allegedly worked for entities with ties to Russian and Turkish governments without disclosing the information, as required under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

Trump ousted Flynn, a campaign adviser, as his national security adviser after three weeks because Flynn had one or more interactions with the Russian ambassador before Trump’s inauguration and then misinformed Vice President Mike Pence about it.

This could be a serious offense, Ray said.

“There could be a charge of making false statements with regard to vetting and financial disclosure forms,” Ray said.

Akerman agreed.

“When you get a security clearance, they instill the fear of God in you to be honest and provide information about contacts; that’s not something you just forget,” Akerman told The Daily Signal.

6.) Campaign Finance Law

The investigation could uncover a campaign finance scandal, wrote Bob Bauer, former White House counsel for President Barack Obama.

“The law prohibits foreign nationals from providing ‘anything of value … in connection with’ an election,” Bauer wrote. “The hacking of the Podesta emails, which were then transmitted to WikiLeaks for posting, clearly had value, and its connection to the election is not disputed.”

Such an in-kind contribution case is “theoretically possible, but would be difficult to prove,” Ray said.

Hosko agreed.

“There is no hint of any Russian money being involved. Trump’s campaign was largely self-funded,” the former assistant FBI director said. “You did have peripheral players such as Michael Flynn, [former Trump campaign manager] Paul Manafort, and [informal Trump adviser] Roger Stone, who supposedly made money from Russians. But you would have to prove that money ended up in the campaign.” (For more from the author of “6 Crimes Special Counsel Might Pursue in Trump-Russia Probe” please click HERE)

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Trump Says He Didn’t Mention Israel in Meeting With Russians

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President Donald Trump on Monday defended himself against allegations he divulged classified information in a recent meeting with Russian diplomats, saying alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he never identified Israel in his Oval Office conversation.

At the end of his appearance with Netanyahu, Trump said that he “never mentioned the word or the name Israel” in his conversation with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador. “So you have another story wrong,” he said.

Various reports, quoting anonymous officials, have said Trump did share classified information with Russian diplomats about the threat posed by the Islamic State group, and several have said that information came from Israeli intelligence. But news accounts have not accused Trump of naming Israel as a source of the information. (Read more from “Trump Says He Didn’t Mention Israel in Meeting With Russians” HERE)

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Former FBI Director Mueller Named to Lead Trump-Russia Probe

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The Justice Department on Wednesday appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee a federal investigation into potential coordination between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

The appointment gives Mueller, who led the FBI through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and served under presidential administrations of both parties, sweeping powers to investigate whether Trump campaign associates colluded with the Kremlin to influence the outcome in his behalf, as well as the authority to prosecute any crimes uncovered during the probe. The broad mandate, beyond any specific Trump-Russia connection, also covers “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, facing scathing criticism for authoring a memo that preceded the firing last week of James Comey as FBI Director, said in a statement that Mueller’s appointment was “necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome.” (Read more from “Former FBI Director Mueller Named to Lead Trump-Russia Probe” HERE)

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McMaster on WaPo Claim Trump Gave Russians Highly Classified Info: ‘I Was in the Room, It Didn’t Happen’

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The Washington Post ran a story late this afternoon claiming Donald Trump, in his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador, disclosed highly classified information, including information that could reveal sources and methods.

Despite the length of the story, the allegations of substance are all in this single paragraph:

Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States learned only through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat.

From that, WaPo argues:

The identification of the location was seen as particularly problematic, officials said, because Russia could use that detail to help identify the U.S. ally or intelligence capability involved. Officials said the capability could be useful for other purposes, possibly providing intelligence on Russia’s presence in Syria. Moscow would be keenly interested in identifying that source and perhaps disrupting it.

Russia and the United States both regard the Islamic State as an enemy and share limited information about terrorist threats. But the two nations have competing agendas in Syria, where Moscow has deployed military assets and personnel to support President Bashar al-Assad.

(Read more from “McMaster on WaPo Claim Trump Gave Russians Highly Classified Info: ‘I Was in the Room, It Didn’t Happen'” HERE)

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Paris and Washington Send a Message to Moscow: No Sanctions Relief Until Russian Troops Leave Ukraine

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The Kremlin’s gambit to secure sanctions relief by redrawing the political landscapes in Europe and the United States has, so far, been a failure.

In 2014, the U.S. and the European Union levied punitive economic sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and subsequent proxy war in eastern Ukraine. New presidential leadership in Washington and Paris have both made clear this year that the sanctions will stay in place until the Kremlin fulfills its commitments in implementing the Ukraine cease-fire, known as the Minsk II agreements.

Those commitments include the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, the return of Ukrainian control over its border with Russia in the Donbas, and unhindered access for international monitors in the conflict area.

“We will not submit to Russia or Mr. Putin’s values, as they are not the same values as ours,” French President-elect Emmanuel Macron said during the campaign, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Macron, a 39-year-old pro-European centrist, was elected president in a May 7 landslide over his pro-Russian, anti-EU rival, Marine Le Pen. Macron is set to enter office on Sunday.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pressed for the full implementation of the Minsk agreements during a Wednesday meeting in Washington with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“Sanctions on Russia will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement following the meeting.

Consequently, there will be no workaround for the Kremlin to avoid fulfilling its Minsk II commitments. And, so far, neither the EU nor the U.S. has been willing to make concessions about Ukraine for tighter cooperation with Russia in combatting the Islamic State terror group in Syria.

“The [Trump] administration should be wary of getting distracted by Russia and [Bashar] Assad in Syria at the expense of countering Russia’s continued aggression in Europe,” Daniel Kochis, policy analyst in European affairs at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

Setback

Macron’s victory over Le Pen in the May 7 French presidential election was widely perceived to be a setback to Putin’s efforts to influence Europe’s political future through a hybrid campaign of propaganda and cyberattacks.

Macron’s opponent, Le Pen, represented the pro-Russia, anti-EU National Front party.

In November 2014, according to French news reports, the National Front received a 9 million euro ($9.8 million) loan from the Russian-owned First Czech-Russian Bank, part of a larger 40 million euro request.

During the 2017 campaign, Le Pen said she would lift sanctions on Moscow. She praised Putin, criticized U.S. policy regarding Ukraine and Russia, and traveled to Moscow to meet with the Russian leader on March 24.

“Regarding Ukraine, we behave like American lackeys,” Le Pen told the Polish news site Do Rzeczy. “The aim of the Americans is to start a war in Europe to push NATO to the Russian border.”

“I will not accept to have my behavior dictated by Mr. Putin, and that is the difference with Mrs. Le Pen,” Macron said during the campaign.

In the last two days of the campaign, Macron’s campaign said it had been the target of a massive computer hack that dumped internal campaign emails online. Multiple independent investigations cited in news reports claimed the hackers had ties to Russian military intelligence. Moscow denied it was involved.

Without conclusively pinning the Macron campaign hack on Russia, U.S. National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers told Congress on Tuesday that the spy agency had warned French authorities about the threat of a Russian cyberattack before the election.

“If you take a look at the French election … we had become aware of Russian activity,” Rogers told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We had talked to our French counterparts prior to the public announcements of the events publicly attributed this past weekend and gave them a heads-up: ‘Look, we’re watching the Russians, we’re seeing them penetrate some of your infrastructure.’”

On May 8, the day after the French election, Putin made a conciliatory overture to Macron, urging Franco-Russian cooperation on shared security challenges such as combatting terrorism.

“The citizens of France have trusted you with leading the country at a difficult time for Europe and the whole world community,” Putin told Macron in a telegram, according to Russian news reports.

“The growth in threats of terrorism and militant extremism is accompanied by an escalation of local conflicts and the destabilization of whole regions,” Putin said in the message. “In these conditions it is especially important to overcome mutual mistrust and unite efforts to ensure international stability and security.”

Across the Pond

In Washington, the election of President Donald Trump has not resulted in any significant change in U.S. policy regarding sanctions on Moscow.

On Wednesday, Trump met with Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, as well as Ukraine’s foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, in the Oval Office during separate appointments.

Trump subsequently published pictures of his meetings with both Klimkin and Lavrov on Facebook, along with the message: “Yesterday, on the same day – I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin. #LetsMakePeace!”

“The United States is ready to be further involved in making Russia implement Minsk agreements,” Klimkin said following the meeting with Trump, according to Ukrainian news reports.

Klimkin also suggested the U.S. might join the Minsk II negotiations, known as the Normandy format, which currently comprises leaders from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday—one day before Lavrov’s Oval Office meeting with Trump—a Russian fighter jet flew within 20 feet of a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea, NBC News reported Friday.

Speaking to reporters in Moscow on Friday, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov blamed the current tensions between Russia and the U.S. on Trump’s predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

“Naturally, we do not expect that all problems—and there are quite a few of them—will be resolved overnight, because Obama and his team have left the gravest legacy on the Russian track and clearing away these obstructions will be extremely difficult,” Ushakov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“Russia is open for dialogue with the United States in various spheres, including Syria and any other areas where our interests meet or can meet,” Ushakov said.

A History of Violence

Russia’s failure to achieve sanctions relief has not had a cooling effect on the Ukraine war. Overall, the conflict is stuck in a cyclical pattern of waxing and waning violence.

On May 7, the same day that French voters went to the polls to choose their next president, combined Russian-separatist forces fired more than 150 mortars at Ukrainian positions throughout the war zone, according to Ukrainian military officials.

On that day, one Ukrainian soldier was killed in combat; another soldier died in a military hospital due to wounds from a sniper shot on April 30. During the preceding week, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed due to enemy fire, and 40 were wounded.

Ukrainian military forces are engaged in a three-year-old proxy war with Russia in the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the Russian border.

Along a 250-mile-long front line, Ukrainian troops are entrenched within a network of trenches and fortified fighting positions. Across no man’s land, they face a combined force of about 35,000 pro-Russian separatists and approximately 5,000 Russian regulars, according to Ukrainian and NATO intelligence estimates.

Artillery and rocket attacks, tank shots, and small arms gunfights are still daily occurrences. As are casualties, both military and civilian, on opposite sides of the conflict. At some places, no man’s land is only a few hundred meters wide—close enough for the enemy camps to hear each other talking.

The Minsk II cease-fire prohibits the use of heavy weapons above certain calibers within prescribed buffer zones around the front lines. The cease-fire also prohibits both sides from taking new ground or using airpower.

However, the war never ended. About one-third of the war’s 10,000 deaths have occurred since Minsk II went into effect in February 2015.

The international organization tasked with monitoring the cease-fire, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, has suspended operations in the war zone after an American paramedic attached to one of its patrols was killed in a landmine blast on April 23 in separatist-controlled territory.

The paramedic, 36-year-old Joseph Stone, was the first OSCE patrol member killed while on duty in eastern Ukraine.

“The restrictions have reduced the geographical scope of our patrols and have entailed a grounding of our mid-range unmanned aerial vehicles,” Alexander Hug, principal deputy chief monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, said during a press briefing in Kyiv.

“All of which means we are unable to monitor and report on facts, including violations, to the extent that we usually do,” Hug said. “The OSCE SMM imposed these restrictions in order to protect our unarmed civilian monitors.”

On Thursday, combined Russian-separatist forces attacked Ukrainian units 28 times, using mortars, small arms, grenade launchers, and heavy armor, Ukrainian Ministry of Defense spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kyiv on Friday.

Lysenko said two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and six were wounded during Thursday’s attacks.

“We assess that Moscow’s strategic objectives in Ukraine, maintaining long-term influence over Kyiv and frustrating Ukraine’s attempts to integrate into Western institutions, will remain unchanged in 2017,” Director of U.S. National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats told the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Thursday hearing.

“Russia largely controls the level of violence, which it uses to exert pressure on Kyiv and the negotiating process,” Coats said. (For more from “Paris and Washington Send a Message to Moscow: No Sanctions Relief Until Russian Troops Leave Ukraine” please click HERE)

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The Russia Investigation: A Scandal About Smoke

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The cliche about the Russia investigation is that there’s a lot of smoke. And with the firing of FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump rolled a military-grade smoke grenade into the room.

There were many legitimate reasons to fire Comey, who repeatedly went outside Department of Justice guidelines to comment on the investigation of Hillary Clinton during last year’s presidential campaign. Annoyance with his handling of the Russia investigation isn’t one of them.

The firing has stoked charges of a cover-up and again raised the questions, Why, if Trump has nothing to hide, does he act so guilty? Why, if there’s no fire, is there always so much smoke?

But so far, the scandal is nothing but smoke: We get hints of what might be, pending further revelations, serious misconduct, always augmented by Trump’s defensive bluster. It’s all highly suspect, yet it’s hard to see what exactly will constitute the grave underlying offense.

The most plausible of these suspicions, that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, has never made much sense on the face of it. The Russians hacked Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails and walked across the street to hand them over to WikiLeaks for dissemination. Why would any coordination with the Trump campaign be necessary? (Read more from “The Russia Investigation: A Scandal About Smoke” HERE)

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US May Send Patriot Missile to Lithuania Amid Moscow Threat

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U.S. defense officials said a long-range Patriot missile battery may be deployed to the Baltic region later this year as part of a military exercise. The move, if finalized, would be temporary but signal staunch U.S. backing for Baltic nations concerned about the threat from Russia.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday declined to confirm the specific deployment, but said, “We are here in a purely defensive stance. Everyone knows this is not an offensive capability. For anyone who says otherwise, I would just say I have too much respect for the Russian army to think that they actually believe there’s any offensive capability.”

At a news conference with Lithuania President Dalia Grybauskaite, Mattis said the U.S. “will deploy only defensive systems to make certain that sovereignty is respected. The specific systems that we bring are those that we determine necessary.” (Read more from “US May Send Patriot Missile to Lithuania Amid Moscow Threat” HERE)

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Veteran Justice Department Officials Weigh Need for Special Prosecutor in Russia Probe

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President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey gave more fodder to Democrats, many of whom were already calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, is unsure this case measures up to past cases involving special prosecutors.

“Usually, there is some intractable conflict where the Justice Department is unable to do its job,” Whitaker, now the executive director for the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a watchdog group, told The Daily Signal.

“It’s not so much about the level of evidence or the sensibilities of the case,” he continued. “It’s about the confidence in the system.”

In the past, administrations have named special prosecutors that could conduct an investigation independent of the Justice Department, which is part of the executive branch. This is usually the case when there is consensus that the Justice Department cannot objectively investigate a matter, or can’t assure public trust that the probe was done without bias.

Under President Bill Clinton, an independent counsel was named to investigate the Whitewater matter, which eventually led to the investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. After President George W. Bush took office, and the independent counsel statute had expired, the administration named a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged leak of a CIA operative’s name.

Whitaker said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is highly respected. Rosenstein, who recommended to Trump that Comey be fired, will ultimately oversee any Justice Department probe into the Trump campaign and Russia because Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from any investigation that could relate to the 2016 election.

However, Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor who worked for special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, believes this case is ripe for an independent view.

“This is a classic example for the need of a special prosecutor,” Akerman, who later became the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told The Daily Signal. “It’s extremely serious when there is Russian interference in an election and the possibility that one of the candidates was in cahoots with the Russians.”

Democrats and critics of the Trump administration allege that the firing came as a result of Comey stating the FBI is investigating potential Russian ties to the Trump campaign.

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Wednesday that every investigation that was going on Monday is going on today.

“There is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia,” Sanders told reporters.

While Sanders said the administration welcomes the investigation, she said a special prosecutor isn’t necessary because the House, the Senate, and the Justice Department are all separately investigating the matter.

When Trump met with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the White House, a reporter asked, “Why did you fire Director Comey?”

Trump responded: “He wasn’t doing a good job. Very simply. He was not doing a good job.”

He was also asked if this affected his meeting Wednesday at the White House with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He answered, “Not at all.”

During the press briefing, a reporter asked a question about Trump meeting with Kissinger and a Russian official at a time when Democrats are talking about Russian ties and making President Richard Nixon comparisons. Sanders said the two meetings were planned well in advance.

Previous administrations, including independent counsel Ken Starr during the Clinton administration and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald during the George W. Bush administration, expanded their investigations beyond the original topic of inquiry.

Both former federal prosecutors say that doesn’t have to be the case.

“The more narrow, the better,” Akerman said. “The scope of this shouldn’t expand beyond possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”

Whitaker said past precedents demonstrate why an administration would be concerned about naming a special prosecutor to any case.

“The investigations can go far afield if the prosecutor is outside the regular chain of command, so, that’s viewed as a risky proposition,” Whitaker said. “But the investigation can be narrowly focused.”

This isn’t a matter that needs an independent investigation if the FBI has the proper resources to look into the matter, said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director.

“What would make me feel better is knowing that the FBI will get every tool they need to explore the scope of Russian interference,” Hosko, now the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, told The Daily Signal. “I think Congress is a pile of politics and hypocrisy and is incapable of investigating this.” (For more from the author of “Veteran Justice Department Officials Weigh Need for Special Prosecutor in Russia Probe” please click HERE)

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Russian Bombers, Fighter Jets Fly Near Alaska, Prompting Air Force Escort

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Two Russian Bear bombers — escorted for the first time by a pair of Su-35 “Flanker” fighter jets — entered Alaska’s Air Defense Zone on Wednesday night, U.S. officials told Fox News.

The Russian formation was intercepted by a pair of U.S. Air Force F-22 stealth fighter jets that were already flying a patrol about 50 miles southwest of Chariot, Alaska. A NORAD spokesperson told Fox News the intercept began at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday and a defense source said it also occurred into Thursday.

It was the first time the U.S. Air Force has seen advanced Russian Su-35 fighter jets escort Russian Cold War-era bombers near Alaska.

The Russian fighter jets were unarmed and remained in international airspace, officials said.

Late last month, Russian bombers flew near Alaska over four consecutive days for the first time since 2014. (Read more from “Russian Bombers, Fighter Jets Fly Near Alaska, Prompting Air Force Escort” HERE)

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CIA Confirmed Russians’ Role in Shooting of Pope John Paul II, Reagan Biographer Writes

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Contrary to what “pragmatists” in U.S. government agencies concluded, top officials with the Soviet Union were behind the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, a biographer of Ronald Reagan told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview.

Paul Kengor, a Grove City College political science professor and author, has acquired what he calls never-before-seen information about the Reagan administration’s “supersecret investigation” into the shooting and wounding of the pope.

The information details the role of the Soviet GRU, the Russians’ brutal foreign military intelligence unit, and KGB spy agency head Yuri Andropov in the attempt on John Paul II’s life, Kengor said.

President Reagan and his CIA chief, William Casey, had suspected from the outset that the Soviets had a hand in the shooting of John Paul II on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, he said.

But their suspicions weren’t confirmed until after Casey organized his own secret probe spearheaded by two female researchers, according to Kengor’s just-released book, A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century.

“Their suspicions ran completely contrary to the establishmentarians in the institutional CIA, at the State Department, and among the White House pragmatists,” Kengor told The Daily Signal. “That being the reality, Casey, I learned, actually ordered a truly supersecret investigation into the shooting, researched by two impressive women in their 30s and 40s, known only to a handful of agency people.”

A Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca, 23, fired four bullets from a handgun at John Paul II, two of which struck him, as the pontiff entered the square. An Italian court eventually sentenced Agca, an escaped murderer, to life in prison. John Paul later forgave Agca, and Prime Minister Carlo Ciampi pardoned him at the pope’s request, deporting him to Turkey in 2000.

The final report of the Casey-ordered investigation never was released, and Kengor says he is not sure where it is. The author did suggest that someone in the Trump administration, including perhaps the president, could ask that the report be released.

Kengor said he believes he may have learned the names of the two female CIA employees. He emailed one, he said, but did not receive a response.

One source told the college professor that the report was “the most secretive thing I’ve ever seen,” Kengor said, declining to name the source.

“We had to practically remove the eyeballs of those who read it,” the source told him. “That report was the blockbuster of the 20th century.”

But even without the actual report in hand, Kengor said, he learned its major findings.

“I did get the results of the investigation, the background, the thinking of Reagan and Casey,” he said in an email to The Daily Signal. “I even pinpointed the date/time that I believe Casey briefed Reagan on the conclusions: May 16, 1985, 11:02-11:17 a.m. I have the president’s daily schedule from that day.”

Both Reagan, who died in 2004, and John Paul II, who died in 2005, decided it would be best not to disclose the findings at the time, Kengor said.

The pope was concerned about starting World War III and “shrewdly figured that people would rightly blame Moscow anyway,” he said.

Reagan was asked several times about a possible Soviet role in the shooting, but was “very careful not to say what was truly on his mind,” Kengor said. “This is an impressive act of diplomacy by Reagan.”

Putin and the Missing Report

So why hasn’t the report of the “supersecret investigation” been released?

Kengor has one possible explanation.

“The current head of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was in the KGB at this exact time,” he said, adding:

But I have to be very clear, I doubt very much that Putin knew anything or was involved. He wasn’t high-ranking enough. This was, as William Safire put it, ‘the crime of the century,’ and a tiny few Russian officials were permitted to know. It was actually the GRU that organized the assassination attempt.

That was the big finding in the Casey investigation, given that everyone else had been looking for, but couldn’t find, KGB fingerprints. That said, the GRU organized the shooting with Yuri Andropov’s direct order, blessing, and enthusiasm at the KGB. Andropov, as head of the KGB, was Vladimir Putin’s boss.

Since coming to power in 2000, Putin has been a “major protector of the GRU and KGB,” Kengor said. “Maybe that’s why this Cold War report still hasn’t been disclosed by Washington. Maybe Washington has heretofore feared offending Putin and hurting U.S.-Russian relations.”

“I wonder,” he added, “if our new president would have any such fears?” (For more from the author of “CIA Confirmed Russians’ Role in Shooting of Pope John Paul II, Reagan Biographer Writes” please click HERE)

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