With impeachment dominating everything from news headlines to dinner conversations to the halls of Congress, America’s most vital international relationships are easily lost in the shuffle.
It starts with Ukraine, the foreign country at the center of the scandal. The impeachment proceedings place U.S. ties with Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky — a man elected by the Ukrainian people to help solve the country’s deadly conflict with Russia and to deliver what some call a “revolution of dignity” — in a perilous position.
The much-discussed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/official-readout-president-trump-s-july-25-phone-call-with-ukraine-s-volodymyr-zelensky/4b228f51-17e7-45bc-b16c-3b2643f3fbe0/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/official-readout-president-trump-s-july-25-phone-call-with-ukraine-s-volodymyr-zelensky/4b228f51-17e7-45bc-b16c-3b2643f3fbe0/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFeiE-OAXVQlo6ZbKlHaqiHwHpBOQ">call</a> between President Donald Trump and Zelensky has become famous not for the world leaders’ conversation on a diplomatic roadmap featuring defense and energy collaboration, but rather on the alleged quid pro quo that sparked the impeachment inquiry.
For Ukraine, the allegations are harmful, at best, and disastrous, at worst. The young post-Soviet state depends on a $400 million annual aid package from the U.S. in order to defend itself against Russia, which in 2014 annexed Crimea in defiance of international law. Yet at this time, when Ukraine remains highly vulnerable to Russian intervention, Kiev’s allies in Washington are engulfed by the continued fallout of the Trump-Zelensky call.
In fact, American support for Ukraine is part of a longer-term strategy. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the U.S. has supplied foreign aid to Ukraine in hopes of fostering pro-Western political and military ties — and it has worked. When Russia annexed Crimea, the U.S. swiftly sanctioned Russia and increased its military backing of Ukraine.
Now, American assistance to Ukraine has transformed into a political football. Trump initially withheld military aid funds, for example, ahead of his call with Zelensky — though they have long since been delivered. Ultimately, any threat to these bilateral relations could simultaneously erode Ukraine’s independence and undercut Washington’s strategic objectives in its ongoing rivalry with Moscow. On the latter issue, one of the most vital aspects of American-Ukrainian diplomatic relations is energy independence. Ukraine and another U.S. ally in the region, Azerbaijan, are studying the possible expansion of the Azerbaijani-led Southern Gas Corridor initiative, which bypasses Russia and promises to diversify the gas supplies available to Europe.
“Ukraine supports the implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor project,” <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-azerbajdzhan-aktivizuyut-spivpracyu-u-sferi-mizh-58929" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-azerbajdzhan-aktivizuyut-spivpracyu-u-sferi-mizh-58929&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGLAmXztou5dUS8jcg0c0MdmQfL7w">Zelensky told the press</a> following a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku last month. “We have agreed to consider its expansion. This is an important factor in the diversification of the gas supply to European consumers.”
America’s strategic ties in the region also bring to light the moral compass of U.S. foreign policy. In particular, it is incumbent upon the U.S. to be consistent in its treatment of post-Soviet separatist conflicts, as well as to respect the territorial integrity of all post-Soviet states and regions. This priority spans from Ukraine to Azerbaijan and from Crimea to Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory which is the source of the decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenia carries out an ongoing, illegal occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other adjacent regions of Azerbaijan — in violation of several U.N. resolutions as well as the <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rt/snec/c7560.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rt/snec/c7560.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF0tsytOIeYg8_8enkV7h2pxJ5V2A">U.S. State Department policy</a> that “supports the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.”
At the same time, some of the most vocal congressional advocates for impeachment over the Ukraine allegations — Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), and Brad Sherman (D-CA) — are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/miller-impeachment-focused-house-democrats-should-clean-their-own-house" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/news/miller-impeachment-focused-house-democrats-should-clean-their-own-house&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFB5b7y0glonStMlfNCnQCaG1laPA">among Capitol Hill’s leading backers of the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh</a>.
Ukraine and Azerbaijan have also consistently supported one another on the issues of restoring sovereignty and territorial integrity within internationally recognized borders.
“Our relations withstood the tests of time,” Zelensky <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-azerbajdzhan-demonstruyut-blizki-poziciyi-z-baga-58921" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-azerbajdzhan-demonstruyut-blizki-poziciyi-z-baga-58921&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGzkKbiPeneZTVepBme61R-N2CoYA">said in a separate statement</a> to the media last month. “We have always helped one another in difficult moments, very difficult moments of modern history. So, Azerbaijan has been, is and will be a reliable friend for Ukraine, and I am sure that it will be a strategic partner.”
Russia and Armenia — the respective occupiers of internationally recognized Ukrainian and Azerbaijani territories — also have their own foundational strategic relationships. Yet they maintain those alliances with a number of adversaries of the U.S. and rogue states, such as Iran, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela.
As a world power, America has a responsibility to stand up not only for its own strategic interests, but also for the broad principles of sovereignty and respect for nations&#8217; internationally recognized lands. All-consuming episodes likes impeachment, however, threaten to disrupt the balance and direction of U.S. policy. Rather than succumbing to its domestic polarization, America must prioritize the strategic relationships that will outlive the Trump era.
&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Author/Maayan-Jaffe-Hoffman">Maayan Hoffman</a> is news editor and head of online content and strategy at The Jerusalem Post. She has been an American-Israeli international journalist for more than two decades.

U.S. President Trump At The World Economic Forum (WEF)

HOFFMAN: Impeachment Threatens America’s Strategy Toward Post-Soviet States

Armenians

Donald Trump

Foreign Policy

Impeachment

Russia

Soviet Union

Ukraine

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) suggested Tuesday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is under the sway of Russian interests because he won&#8217;t bend to Democrats&#8217; demands to include witnesses in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial.
Despite having no evidence to back up her claims, Pelosi reportedly suggested that McConnell has &#8220;Russian connections&#8221; during discussions with fellow Democrats ahead of Wednesday&#8217;s House vote to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate, according to sources that spoke to CNN. She made similar claims during interviews over the weekend.
The <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/pelosi-floats-russia-conspiracy-theory-about-mcconnell/">Washington Free Beacon reports</a> that Pelosi floated the Russian conspiracy theory about McConnell during closed-door sessions with her caucus over the weekend as a way of explaining away her and Sen. Chuck Schumer&#8217;s (D-NY) failure to force McConnell to the bargaining table.
Pelosi &#8220;mused that sometimes she wonders whether McConnell has Russian connections,&#8221; CNN said.
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Pelosi told her colleagues in private that Mitch McConnell is acting like a rogue Senate leader, as she’s said before. She mused that sometimes she wonders whether McConnell has Russian connections, per attendees. <a href="https://t.co/vy2mHHLSlW">https://t.co/vy2mHHLSlW</a>
&mdash; Manu Raju (@mkraju) <a href="https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1217116932228423680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Pelosi&#8217;s reference to &#8220;Burisma&#8221; is a call back to an incident that came to light last week. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hackers-burisma-ukraine.html">According to the New York Times</a>, evidence has surfaced that Russians hacked the Ukrainian oil and gas company, most famous for putting Hunter Biden on its board, perhaps at the behest of then-Vice President Joe Biden. There is, of course, no evidence linking Trump, the White House, or Mitch McConnell to the hack, and, as the NYT notes, its not even clear what the hackers were after (though given the timing, its likely they were looking for information damaging to the Bidens).
On Sunday, Pelosi told ABC&#8217;s George Stephanopolous that she believes Russians may try to hack the elections a second time in 2020, adding that she believes President Donald Trump is in “complete denial” over Vladimir Putin&#8217;s efforts to influence American democracy.
But after lighting into Trump, Pelosi again repeated allegations that McConnell is under some sort of Russian influence.
“Sometimes I wonder about Mitch McConnell too,” Pelosi told Stephanopolous. “What’s he — why is he an accomplice to all of that? He has resisted sources going in a manner commensurate with the threat for state agencies, whichever they are in a state, could be the secretary of state or whatever, to protect our infrastructure, our critical infrastructure of elections.”
Despite labeling McConnell &#8220;Moscow Mitch,&#8221; there&#8217;s been little actual evidence presented that McConnell is somehow laboring under instructions from superiors in the Kremlin, and a report, submitted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, comissioned by Democrats, found no evidence that any Trump campaign or transition official actively collaborated with the Russians to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. McConnell isn&#8217;t even mentioned in that report.
McConnell responded to the &#8220;Moscow Mitch&#8221; moniker when it first appeared over the summer, likening the allegations that he is in league with Putin to accusations of treason.
Pelosi will finally hold a vote Wednesday to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial, but noted even Wednesday morning, in a press conference held to announce the &#8220;impeachment managers&#8221; &#8212; the prosecutorial team that will present the case against President Trump for the House Democrats &#8212; that it was McConnell who was being unreasonable in not submitting to Democrats&#8217; demands that the Senate trial include witness testimony, not House Democrats who hold no sway over the Senate process.
&nbsp;

Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi Suggests Mitch McConnell Under Russian Control, Says Senate Leader Has ‘Russian Connections’

Mitch McConnell

On Wednesday morning, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the entire government resigned as President Vladimir Putin proposed constitutional changes to potentially extend his rule.
&#8220;Russian President Putin on Wednesday proposed a nationwide vote on sweeping constitutional changes that would shift power from the presidency to parliament and the prime minister, a move that could allow him to extend his rule after leaving the Kremlin, Reuters reports,&#8221; NBC News reported.
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BREAKING: Russian President Putin on Wednesday proposed a nationwide vote on sweeping constitutional changes that would shift power from the presidency to parliament and the prime minister, a move that could allow him to extend his rule after leaving the Kremlin, Reuters reports.
&mdash; NBC News (@NBCNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1217445574116630529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Following the breaking news, Tass state news agency reported that Medvedev submitted his resignation to Putin. &#8220;Russian news agencies said Putin thanked Medvedev for his service, but added that the prime minister’s Cabinet failed to fulfill all the objectives set for it,&#8221; noted NBC News.
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BREAKING: Tass state news agency reports that Russian PM Medvedev has submitted his resignation to President Putin.
Russian news agencies said Putin thanked Medvedev for his service, but added that the prime minister’s Cabinet failed to fulfill all the objectives set for it.
&mdash; NBC News (@NBCNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1217446166243299328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Of course these are very serious changes to the political system,&#8221; Putin said during his annual state-of-the-union address.
&#8220;It would increase the role and significance of the country&#8217;s Parliament &#8230; of parliamentary parties, and the independence and responsibility of the prime minister,&#8221; the Russian president said, adding a proposal for a nationwide vote on such changes.
According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-prime-minister-medvedev-cabinet-submit-resignation-11579095839?mod=e2tw">The Wall Street Journal</a>, &#8220;Mr. Medvedev will stay on as prime minister until the new government is formed, Mr. Putin said on state television. He added that Mr. Medvedev would be offered the newly created post of deputy chairman of Russia’s security council.&#8221;
&#8220;The prime minister and government’s approval ratings have fallen steadily over the past five years, during which Mr. Putin took credit for most foreign policy decisions and the government was responsible for domestic policy. Over the same period, Russians’ living standards have fallen and <a class="icon none" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-blames-sanctions-energy-prices-for-declining-russian-incomes-11561035133?mod=article_inline">economic growth has slowed</a>,&#8221; the outlet noted.
&#8220;What’s happening here? Putin appears to be changing the constitution, including shifting powers to PM, to allow him to continue to rule Russia after term limit as president is up,&#8221; CNN&#8217;s Jim Sciutto reacted to the news.
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What’s happening here? Putin appears to be changing the constitution, including shifting powers to PM, to allow him to continue to rule Russia after term limit as president is up. <a href="https://t.co/YaYseaBLh9">https://t.co/YaYseaBLh9</a>
&mdash; Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) <a href="https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1217456415343771648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Putin has been president or prime minister for nearly two decades, noted NBC. The Russian leader &#8220;was due to finish his fourth presidential term in 2024, after which the constitution would bar him from immediately running for president again.&#8221;
Putin&#8217;s latest announcement confirms speculation from Russian media outlets that the president would try to stay in power past 2024.
“The main point of Putin’s message: what kind of idiots (and/or crooks) are all those who said Putin will leave in 2024,&#8221; posted anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny in response to the news. &#8220;Remaining the sole leader for life, taking ownership of an entire country, and appropriating wealth to himself and his friends is the only goal of Putin and his regime.&#8221;
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Главный итог послания Путина: какие же олухи (и/или жулики) все те, кто говорил, что Путин уйдёт в 2024 году. Оставаться пожизненным единоличным лидером, захватив в собственность целую страну, присвоив себе и своим друзьям её богатства &#8211; единственная цель Путина и его режима.
&mdash; Alexey Navalny (@navalny) <a href="https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1217401962175459328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s daughter tied the developments to President Donald Trump.
&#8220;Putin dissolved Russia’s government to keep himself in power. Jealous as you may be [President of the United States], you can’t do this here,&#8221; wrote Christine Pelosi via Twitter. 
&#8220;You are <a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao css-16my406 r-1n1174f r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" role="link" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ImpeachedForLife?src=hashtag_click" data-focusable="true">#ImpeachedForLife</a>,&#8221; she added, &#8220;and will be voted out of office within a year &#8211; one way or anothe[r].&#8221; 
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Putin dissolved Russia’s government to keep himself in power. Jealous as you may be <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>, you can’t do this here. You are <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ImpeachedForLife?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ImpeachedForLife</a> and will be voted out of office within a year &#8211; one way or anothe <a href="https://t.co/duS3w0Pu8P">https://t.co/duS3w0Pu8P</a>
&mdash; Christine Pelosi (@sfpelosi) <a href="https://twitter.com/sfpelosi/status/1217455638659252225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Speaker Pelosi has long accused President Trump and the GOP of having nefariously ties to Putin and Russia. On Tuesday, Pelosi &#8220;continued to play up claims that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is beholden to Russian interests during a caucus meeting,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pelosi-continues-to-suggest-russians-hold-sway-over-mcconnell/">National Review</a> noted.
&#8220;Pelosi told her colleagues in private that Mitch McConnell is acting like a rogue Senate leader, as she’s said before. She mused that sometimes she wonders whether McConnell has Russian connections, per attendees,&#8221; reported CNN’s Manu Raju.

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Entire Russian Government Resigns As Putin Moves To Extend His Rule. Pelosi’s Daughter Takes Trump Jab.

Vladimir Putin

&#8220;In the Soviet Union, the important thing was to overcome the fear.&#8221; That is what former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky told me over tea in a Jerusalem cafe.
In the totalitarian, atheist Soviet Union, Jewish identity was forcibly submerged. &#8220;The only Jewish thing that was in my life,&#8221; Sharansky says, &#8220;was anti-Semitism!&#8221; That was until 1967. Israel&#8217;s victory in the Six-Day War, Sharansky says, changed the way the Soviets viewed Jews, and changed the way Soviet Jews viewed themselves. They were now, to friend and foe alike, part of something larger than themselves, connected to the Jewish state and to Jews the world over. With this knowledge, Soviet Jewish dissidents were no longer afraid and had the courage to confront the Evil Empire.
Sharansky has told this story many times before, but faced with the rising tide of anti-Semitic attacks and libels against Jews worldwide, I asked him about an often forgotten aspect of the crusade for human rights in the Soviet Union. There were many dissident groups with different goals, but the group that was best organized and had the most reliable contacts with the outside world were the Jewish “Refuseniks” (Soviet Jews who were denied the right to emigrate to Israel).
Sharansky, their spokesperson, was happy to help others. And that included many, many persecuted Christians.
Reports about the abuses suffered by Christians in the Soviet Union made their way through Sharansky&#8217;s network to the Western press and human rights groups. With each new revelation, demands on the Soviets to respect freedom of religion increased.
The importance of this channel wasn&#8217;t lost on Christians. &#8220;A group that I helped to establish their first contacts to reach the foreign press and to speak to the world were Pentecostals. I was very pleased later to find out that when I was arrested, there were tens of thousands of Pentecostals in Siberia who were fasting in solidarity with me.&#8221;
When the Soviets arrested Sharansky and sent him to the Gulag, his communist tormentors thought they might break him by placing him in a cell with a Christian activist. A religious Jew and a religious Christian would surely tear each other apart, they thought. But it did not turn out that way.
&#8220;You discover in prison [that] you can never know who is an informer and who is not. (That&#8217;s what you discover in general in Soviet life.) But what you discover is that with people with strong identities, there is less chance that they will be informers. Because, exactly as you have other values than physical survival — you have your identity you want to be a part of — they also have their own identities.&#8221; Strong identities give people values worth fighting for. &#8220;And that&#8217;s why if he was [an] activist, like Pentecostal or Christian activist, you knew that the chance that he [was] KGB [was] much less.&#8221;
Sharansky&#8217;s closest friend in the Gulag was a Christian activist named Vladimir Poresh. &#8220;I describe in this book,&#8221; he says, pointing to my copy of his 1988 memoir Fear No Evil, &#8220;ecumenical readings of the Bible, which we called &#8216;Reagan&#8217;s readings.&#8217; Because in 1983 it was in the Soviet press that Reagan called it the &#8216;Year of the Bible.'&#8221;
I recalled that in Fear No Evil, he describes going on a hunger strike so his friend can get back his Christian Bible. &#8220;Oh yeah! It was a very long hunger strike!&#8221; he said. When I expressed my amazement at this, he said that the fact that they were of different faiths was not an issue. &#8220;It was all about our rights to be free people and live in accordance with our conscience. And then you feel at this critical moment that, after all, we all have one God.&#8221;
The Soviet Union was a regime that depended on fear and control. When people found the courage to speak out, control would slip a little more, and more people would then find their courage. It was a death spiral, and the strain became too much for the regime to bear.
Here in the United States, the land of the free, Jews should not have to live in fear of being attacked. Christians must stand with them. The bonds of brotherhood between Jews and Gentiles should not require the Gulag to bring to the surface.

Natan Sharansky

EXCLUSIVE: Soviet Dissident Recalls Jews And Christians Stood United Against Fear

Anti-Semitism

Communism

Israel

Judaism

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The U.S. Navy&#8217;s Middle East-based fleet revealed Friday that a Russian warship &#8220;aggressively approached&#8221; the USS Farragut destroyer in the North Arabian Sea on Thursday, initially refusing to respond to the destroyer&#8217;s warning signals in an action that &#8220;increased the risk of collision.&#8221;
&#8220;On Thursday, Jan. 9, while conducting routine operations in the North Arabian Sea, USS Farragut was aggressively approached by a Russian Navy ship,&#8221; the U.S. Navy&#8217;s Fifth Fleet stated in a series of tweets Friday that include video of the encounter.
&#8220;Farragut sounded five short blasts, the international maritime signal for danger of a collision, and requested the Russian ship alter course in accordance with international rules of the road,&#8221; the Fifth Fleet explained.
&#8220;The Russian ship initially refused but ultimately altered course,&#8221; the fleet said. &#8220;While the Russian ship took action, the initial delay in complying with international rules while it was making an aggressive approach increased the risk of collision.&#8221;
&#8220;The U.S. Navy continues to remain vigilant and is trained to act in a professional manner,&#8221; the Fifth Fleet added.
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On Thursday, Jan. 9, while conducting routine operations in the North Arabian Sea, USS Farragut (DDG 99) was aggressively approached by a Russian Navy ship. <a href="https://t.co/SCVyTINNqe">pic.twitter.com/SCVyTINNqe</a>
&mdash; U.S. 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) <a href="https://twitter.com/US5thFleet/status/1215658745205796864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Farragut sounded five short blasts, the international maritime signal for danger of a collision, and requested the Russian ship alter course in accordance with international rules of the road. <a href="https://t.co/OGCeAGKOy3">pic.twitter.com/OGCeAGKOy3</a>
— U.S. 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) <a href="https://twitter.com/US5thFleet/status/1215658818882998272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
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While the Russian ship took action, the initial delay in complying with international rules while it was making an aggressive approach increased the risk of collision. 
The U.S. Navy continues to remain vigilant and is trained to act in a professional manner.
&mdash; U.S. 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) <a href="https://twitter.com/US5thFleet/status/1215658823471501315?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Two defense officials told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/10/politics/russian-warship-us-aircraft-carrier-video/index.html">CNN</a> the Russian warship &#8220;got as close as 180 feet from the US ship and that there was bridge to bridge communication between the two warships.&#8221;
CNN notes that the Farragut &#8220;is part of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier group and the Farragut is tasked with intercepting potential enemy ships to prevent them from approaching the aircraft carrier.&#8221;
A similar close encounter between U.S. and Russian ships took place in the Pacific in June 2019, with both sides blaming the other for the near disaster. A U.S. warship came <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/07/politics/us-russia-navy-near-collision-intl/index.html">as close as 50 feet</a> from a Russian warship, both ships reportedly forced to engage in emergency maneuvers to avoid running into each other.
The tense moment comes amid increased tension in the Middle East after a standoff between the U.S. and Iran. On Tuesday, Iran launched ballistic missile strikes on two Iraqi bases at which U.S. and coalition personnel were stationed in retaliation for a Trump-ordered airstrike that took out Iran&#8217;s top military leader, who was responsible for hundreds of Americans&#8217; deaths and helped orchestrate countless terror operations.
Following the strikes, which resulted in no American or Iraqi casualties and minimal damage to the bases, Iran quickly signaled that it hoped for de-escalation, reaching out to the U.S. “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/iran-sent-messages-through-three-back-channels-to-u-s-after-attack-to-say-they-were-done">through at least three back channels</a>” to make clear that the missile strikes would be the extent of their military retaliation if the U.S. did not take further action.
President Trump delivered a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-addresses-nation-after-attack-no-lives-lost-iran-appears-to-be-standing-down">televised statement</a> the next morning, announcing that &#8220;Iran appears to be standing down,&#8221; which he called &#8220;a good thing for all parties concerned, and a very good thing for the world.&#8221; While making clear that the U.S. would not tolerate Iran continuing its &#8220;destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East,&#8221; Trump announced new economic sanctions on Iran, indicating that the U.S. would not retaliate militarily for the strikes.
“For far too long, all the way back to 1979, to be exact, nations have tolerated Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East. Those days are over,” Trump said. “Iran has been the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We will never let that happen.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/iran-sent-messages-through-three-back-channels-to-u-s-after-attack-to-say-they-were-done">Iran Sent Messages Through ‘Three Back Channels’ To U.S. After Attack To Say They Were Done</a>
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USS Farragut

WATCH: Russian Warship ‘Aggressively’ Approaches American Destroyer In North Arabian Sea

Iran

Middle East

U.S. Navy

Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) promoted pro-Iran propaganda from Russian state media on Monday which claimed that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not target civilians, which comes just weeks after the Iranian government murdered 1,500 of its own citizens.
Ocasio-Cortez &#8220;liked&#8221; a tweet from Rania Khalek, a far-left journalist who works for In the Now, who wrote: &#8220;A friend flying into the US says he hasn&#8217;t seen so much security since 9/11. The US is terrified of how Iran will retaliate. Iran won&#8217;t attack civilians, that&#8217;s what al Qaeda does. But it shows this assassination did the opposite of making Americans safer and our leaders know it.&#8221;
When a Twitter user &#8220;likes&#8221; a tweet, the tweet becomes temporarily available to that user&#8217;s followers for a period of time, meaning that Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s millions of followers were likely exposed to the anti-American propaganda she promoted.
Khalek&#8217;s claims that Iran &#8220;won&#8217;t attack civilians&#8221; is laughably false as numerous reports from various news organizations and from the United States government state that Iran killed up to 1,500 of its own citizens during the protests that rocked the country late last year.
The Free Beacon <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/aoc-likes-tweet-from-russian-state-media-claiming-iran-doesnt-target-civilians/">reported</a> that In the Now is &#8220;a company funded by the Russian government that was kicked off Facebook for its pro-Russia propaganda.&#8221;
Khalek &#8220;previously served as an editor for anti-Israel site The Electronic Intifada but resigned after speaking at a pro-Bashar al-Assad conference in Syria,&#8221; the Free Beacon added. &#8220;The extent of Khalek&#8217;s pro-Iran advocacy was on full display in a recent YouTube livestream in which the activist claimed that &#8216;Iran is a country that mostly keeps to itself.&#8217; She also said &#8216;it&#8217;s a really brave country that&#8217;s been essential to keeping the Middle East stable throughout the last several decades.'&#8221;
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AOC liked a tweet saying: &quot;Iran won&#39;t attack civilians.&quot; 
Quick reminder: According to the US State Department, Iran is &quot;the world&#39;s worst state sponsor of terrorism.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/1DppW6Fodl">pic.twitter.com/1DppW6Fodl</a>
&mdash; Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NathanBrandWA/status/1214304873963048965?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
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During the bloodshed in Iran late last year, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told his officials, “The Islamic Republic is in danger. Do whatever it takes to end it. You have my order.”
&#8220;About 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest that started on Nov. 15,&#8221; Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-protests-specialreport-idUSKBN1YR0QR">reported</a>. &#8220;The toll, provided to Reuters by three Iranian interior ministry officials, included at least 17 teenagers and about 400 women as well as some members of the security forces and police.&#8221;
Ocasio-Cortez responded to the U.S. military killing Iranian terrorist leader Qassem Soleimani by attacking the Trump administration and failing to congratulate the U.S. military on killing the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in recent years.
Ocasio-Cortez also promoted information from the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) that falsely claimed that the U.S. government was targeting Iranian-American citizens.
NIAC tweeted, &#8220;URGENT: we are hearing credible reports of detentions at US borders, both of Iranian Americans and permanent residents. We are working to independently verify, coordinating with lawmakers &amp; allies. If you have information please share it directly with us at info@niacouncil.org&#8221;
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URGENT: we are hearing credible reports of detentions at US borders, both of Iranian Americans and permanent residents. We are working to independently verify, coordinating with lawmakers &amp; allies. If you have information please share it directly with us at info@niacouncil.org
&mdash; NIAC (@NIACouncil) <a href="https://twitter.com/NIACouncil/status/1213885371802701825?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Ocasio-Cortez retweeted that tweet for all her millions of followers to see.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responded to the false information being promoted by Ocasio-Cortez by stating: &#8220;Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false. Reports that DHS/CBP has issued a related directive are also false.&#8221;
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Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false. Reports that DHS/CBP has issued a related directive are also false.
&mdash; CBP (@CBP) <a href="https://twitter.com/CBP/status/1213951246463328256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
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No hate no fear solidarity march in New York, US

Ocasio-Cortez Promotes Pro-Iran Propaganda From Russian State Media On Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

On Monday, a Russian court ordered the detention of two men arrested on suspicion of plotting a terror attack during the New Year holidays in St. Petersburg. Russian authorities made the arrests Friday after getting tipped off about the planned attack by the U.S.
&#8220;The Federal Security Service (FSB), the main KGB successor agency, said in a statement that the suspects detained on Friday confessed to plotting the attacks. It added that it also seized materials proving their guilt,&#8221; <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russian-court-jails-terrorism-suspects-arrested-us-tip-67989106">ABC News</a> reports. &#8220;The FSB didn&#8217;t elaborate on their alleged motives or targets, but Russia&#8217;s state television reported that the suspects had recorded a video swearing their allegiance to the Islamic State group.&#8221;
The FSB says the suspects &#8220;intended to carry out terrorist acts in crowded places in St. Petersburg during the New Year holidays,&#8221; as reported by the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7836799/Putin-thanks-Trump-intelligence-helped-Russia-foil-New-Years-terror-attack.html">Daily Mail</a>. &#8220;Evidence proving preparations for staging the terror attacks has been seized from the detained persons,&#8221; the agency said.
Russian officials credited information provided by their &#8220;American partners&#8221; for the uncovering of the plot and the arrest of the two alleged ISIS terrorists.
The two suspects have been identified as Nikita Semyonov and Georgy Chernyshev. On Monday, a court in St. Petersburg ordered that they should remain in custody until their trial.
Video footage published by the Daily Mail appears to show the dramatic moment that armed FSB agents arrested the two suspects, uncovering what appear to be knives and shotgun shells. &#8220;The men appeared to resist arrest but later the FSB said that they had started &#8216;confessing&#8217; to plotting terrorism attacks,&#8221; the outlet reports.
On Tuesday, Trump posted a statement on social media noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had called him to thank him and the U.S. for helping prevent the attack and celebrating the &#8220;important coordination&#8221; between the U.S. and Russian intelligence agencies.
&#8220;President Putin of Russia called to thank me and the U.S. for informing them of a planned terrorist attack in the very beautiful city of Saint Petersburg,&#8221; Trump tweeted. &#8220;They were able to quickly apprehend the suspects, with many lives being saved. Great &amp; important coordination!&#8221;
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President Putin of Russia called to thank me and the U.S. for informing them of a planned terrorist attack in the very beautiful city of Saint Petersburg. They were able to quickly apprehend the suspects, with many lives being saved. Great &amp; important coordination!
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1212012065440894976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 31, 2019</a></blockquote>
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A spokesman for the Kremlin says Putin called Trump Sunday to thank him for intelligence &#8220;transmitted through the special services that helped prevent terrorist attacks in Russia,&#8221; as reported by ABC. The spokesman pointed to the sharing of the information as &#8220;vivid proof of the efficiency&#8221; of the two countries&#8217; counter-terrorism coordination.
&#8220;The Kremlin said Putin passed on his gratitude to Trump for the tip from US special services during a phone call on Sunday. It gave no further details,&#8221;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/29/putin-thanks-trump-for-tip-russia-says-foiled-terror-attacks"> The Guardian</a> reports, noting: &#8220;Diplomatic ties between Washington and Moscow are fraught over disagreements concerning Ukraine and Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the US presidential election, but Trump and Putin have kept personal lines of communication open.&#8221;
The White House  has since <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/30/white-house-confirms-trump-phone-call-with-putin-that-foiled-terror-plot/">confirmed</a> the Kremlin&#8217;s report on the call between the two leaders; Trump first addressed the call about the foiled plot in his tweet Tuesday.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-iran-behind-attack-on-u-s-embassy-in-baghdad-will-pay">Trump Threatens Action Against Iran After Attack On U.S. Embassy In Baghdad</a>

Putin Trump

U.S. Helps Foil New Year’s Terror Plot In Russia; Trump: ‘Many Lives Saved’

Islamic State (ISIS)

Terrorism

On Thursday, Washington Post Media Critic Erik Wemple <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/26/rachel-maddow-rooted-steele-dossier-be-true-then-it-fell-apart/">slammed</a> far-left MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, claiming that she &#8220;seemed to be rooting&#8221; for the veracity of the now-infamous Steele Dossier before the document&#8217;s credibility ultimately &#8220;fell apart.&#8221;
&#8220;Name a host on cable news who has dug more deeply into Trump-Russia than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow,&#8221; Wemple wrote. &#8220;She’s read hundreds, maybe thousands, of court filings; she’s read the plume of literature on Russia-Trump; and she’s out with a new book on the bane of petro-states: &#8216;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525575472/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=0525575472&amp;linkId=2a858da9155bc9edba3471d6ec9df3bb" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="36">Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth</a>.'&#8221;
Wemple, entering the realm of full-on snark, then excoriated Maddow&#8217;s self-obsessed &#8220;Russianist phase.&#8221;
&#8220;As part of her Russianist phase, Maddow became a clearinghouse for news increments regarding the dossier,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Just days after BuzzFeed published the dossier in its entirety, she reported on the frustration of congressional Democrats with then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who was declining to divulge whether his people had opened an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.&#8221;
Wemple systematically walked the reader through a timeline of Maddow&#8217;s on-air reporting from 2017–2018, during which Maddow repeatedly glommed onto snippets of left-leaning reporting to tendentiously give off the impression to MSNBC viewers that the dossier was something other than the salacious rumormongering that Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General has since confirmed it indeed was.
Wemple continued to describe the release of former DOJ Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s eponymous report on 2016 Russian electoral interference as a &#8220;kick in the derrière&#8221; for those who were invested in the Steeler dossier&#8217;s overarching narrative of nefarious Trump-Russia collusion.
&#8220;The release of the Mueller report in April provided a kick in the derriere for backers of the dossier. 
Wemple wrote. &#8220;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/24/what-steele-dossier-said-vs-what-mueller-report-said/?tid=lk_inline_manual_40" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="116">As Glenn Kessler pointed out in The Post</a>, the central allegation of the dossier — an &#8216;extensive conspiracy between campaign team and Kremlin, sanctioned at highest levels and involving Russian diplomatic staff based in the U.S.&#8217; as well as an &#8216;agreed exchange of information established in both directions&#8217; — found no corroboration from Mueller’s investigation, even though the special counsel’s team was charged with probing just this matter.&#8221;
But Maddow didn&#8217;t seem to care for the Mueller&#8217;s report dismissal of the dossier, Wemple opined.
&#8220;Several days after the Mueller report emerged, Maddow addressed not the dissonance between Mueller and the dossier, but a point of possible corroboration,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;In perhaps its most famous allegation, the dossier claimed that Trump had rented a suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow and &#8217;employed&#8217; prostitutes to perform a perverted ritual for him. It suggested that there were tapes of the show, the better to amass kompromat against Trump. A <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Muelller-Report-Redacted-Vol-II-Released-04.18.2019-Word-Searchable.-Reduced-Size.pdf#page=32" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="130">footnote</a> in the Mueller report, noted Maddow, bore a possible connection to this part of the dossier.&#8221;
Wemple concluded by comparing the relative merits of the &#8220;case for Maddow&#8221; and the &#8220;case against Maddow,&#8221; and concluding that the latter is &#8220;far stronger.&#8221;
&#8220;The case against Maddow is far stronger,&#8221; Wemple stated. &#8220;When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document.&#8221;
Ouch.

Rachel Maddow

Washington Post Media Critic Blasts Rachel Maddow Over Steele Dossier

2016 election

Department of Justice

Leftism

Media

Media Bias

Michael Horowitz

Progressivism

On Friday, Iran joined China and Russia to conduct joint naval drills. Iranian flotilla admiral Gholamreza Tahani stated, “The message of this exercise is peace, friendship and lasting security through cooperation and unity&#8230; and its result will be to show that Iran cannot be isolated,” according to <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7829979/Russia-China-Iran-begin-unprecedented-joint-naval-exercise-Middle-East.html">The Daily Mail</a>. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/27/asia/china-russia-iran-military-drills-intl-hnk/index.html">CNN</a> reported he also stated that the exercise would cover 17,000 square kilometers and consist of &#8220;various tactical exercises,&#8221; which included target practice and rescuing ships from assaults and fires … Among the objectives of this exercise are improving the security of international maritime trade, countering maritime piracy and terrorism, exchanging information regarding rescue operations and operational and tactical experience.”
The Daily Mail added, “China said on Thursday it was sending a guided missile destroyer to the four-day drills, which it called a &#8216;normal military exchange&#8217; between the three armed forces … Russia&#8217;s Defense Ministry said on Friday it had sent three ships from its Baltic Fleet — a frigate, a tanker and a rescue tug boat — to take part in the drills, Red Star, the official newspaper of Russia&#8217;s armed forces, reported.”
Beijing&#8217;s defense spokesman Wu Qian said, &#8220;The upcoming naval drills are aimed at deepening exchange and cooperation among the navies of the three countries, and displaying the three sides&#8217; strong will and capabilities to jointly maintain world peace and maritime security, while actively building a maritime community with a shared future.”
In August, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation&#8217;s Maritime Administration, Iran upped the ante in its confrontation with the West, tricking oil tankers into thinking Iranian vessels were U.S. and British warships and prompting them to enter Iranian waters, where they could be seized.
The <a href="https://www.maritime.dot.gov/content/2019-012-persian-gulf-strait-hormuz-gulf-oman-arabian-sea-red-sea-threats-commercial-vessels">Maritime Administration’s website</a> stated:
<blockquote>Vessels operating in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman may also encounter GPS interference, bridge-to-bridge communications spoofing, and/or other communications jamming with little to no warning.
Since May 2019, the following maritime incidents have occurred in this region:
Six attacks against commercial vessels; Shoot-down of U.S. Navy remotely piloted aircraft over international waters; Attempted at-sea interdiction of Isle of Man-flagged M/V BRITISH HERITAGE; Seizure of ex-Panama-flagged M/V RIAH; Seizure of U.K.-flagged M/V STENA IMPERO; and Detention and subsequent release of Liberian-flagged M/V MESDAR.
In at least two of these incidents, vessels reported GPS interference. One vessel reportedly shut off its Automatic Identification System (AIS) before it was seized, complicating response efforts. Vessels have also reported spoofed bridge-to-bridge communications from unknown entities falsely claiming to be U.S. or coalition warships.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/07/politics/us-warns-of-iranian-threats-to-shipping/index.html">CNN</a> reported, “A U.S. defense official told CNN that Iran has placed GPS jammers on Iran-controlled Abu Musa Island, which lies in the Persian Gulf close to the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz. The official said that Iran had placed the jammers at that location in an attempt to disrupt civilian aircraft and ship navigation systems, hoping ships or planes will mistakenly wander into Iranian waters or airspace while their GPS systems were not functioning properly, giving Iranian forces the pretext needed to seize them.”

Iran &#8211; Military drills in in the Strait of Hormuz

China, Russia Join Iran To Conduct Naval Drills

China

Carter Page, the man at the center of the recent Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) report about how the FBI handled FISA warrants to surveil the 2016 Trump campaign, says he understands how the government watchdog didn’t arrive at its conclusion that political bias did not play a role in the FBI’s investigation.
Page, in an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire, said that political bias as most Americans understand it – that is, Democrat vs. Republican – is not what led to the FBI’s focus on him; it was policy bias.
Asked about his reaction to the IG report – which found <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ig-report-here-are-the-17-specific-inaccuracies-and-omissions-in-the-fbis-fisa-warrants-against-carter-page">significant errors</a> in the form of “inaccuracies and omissions” when it came to the FBI’s FISA warrant applications against Page – the former Trump campaign aide echoed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) by saying the report was “a first step.” One of the limits of IG Michael Horowitz’s report, Page said, was that it relied on many of the same people who had been described in previous reports as having a “lack of candor.”
“I would say one of the biggest constraints is that many of the people he talked to have a track record of being less than forthcoming, as seen in some of their interviews before and after the release of the report,” Page said. “The IG report marked a positive development, but there&#8217;s a lot more to do. So, we&#8217;ll have to wait and see what happens next.”
As to the IG’s conclusion – repeated ad nauseum by the mainstream media – that he did not find political bias is what caused the FBI’s malfeasance, Page said he believes that Horowitz was “being careful” and that it was policy bias, not party bias, that drove the FBI.
It’s not that Horowitz found no political bias or that it didn’t happen, Page said, it’s “just that he couldn&#8217;t firmly establish political bias.”
“The fundamental drivers of the impeachment process have an overlap with factors inherent in the IG report,” Page said. “In each instance, I would say that the primary issue wasn&#8217;t political bias per se, such as Democrat versus Republican. The defining aspect of this was instead policy bias.”
During his testimony before the Senate regarding the IG report, Horowitz <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jtj2DDaLXs&amp;feature=youtu.be">told</a> Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that they simply “could not prove” the bias, so the report laid out “what we can prove.”
Page told The Daily Wire that he had received numerous death threats throughout the media and Democrats’ portrayal of him as an enemy of the U.S. In a February 4, 2019 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Page explained that the most death threats he received came on March 20, 2017 – the same day former FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Intelligence committee. On that day, in addition to other threats, Page received a voicemail from an unknown caller, who referred to something Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said during Comey’s testimony.
“We know what the f*** you’ve been doing, you piece of s*** mother f***er,” the caller said. “You think you’re not, you know you’re not in f***ing in cahoots with f***ing [Russian energy company] Rosneft and every f***ing Russian oligarch over there? You f***ing half-wit, f***ing piece of s***. You deserve everthing you f***ing get. Every f***ing thing you get. If it was up to me, after we f***ing tried you for treason, we’d take you out in the street and beat the f***ing piss out of you with baseball bats, you cock sucking mother f***er. Next time you turn your back on your f***ing country, you’ll f***ing regret it.”
Remember, the IG report showed that the coverage of Page was unwarranted, as he had a previous working relationship with the FBI and CIA, who were aware of his Russian contacts. In sum, the IG report showed that Page was an asset to America, not Russia, in contradiction to how he had been portrayed since 2016.
Page called Schiff “completely dishonest” for the California Democrat’s repeated claims, including one recently made on “Firing Line” in which Schiff said: “It&#8217;s hard to be sympathetic to someone who isn&#8217;t honest with you when he comes and testifies under oath.”
Page said Schiff is the one who is being dishonest, as Schiff repeatedly claims Page met with a Russian while Page said the extent of that “meeting” was a few words spoken during a receiving line after the man spoke at a conference.
In the wake of the IG report, the FBI promised to review its processes and fix them. When asked if there were any proposed fixes he thought the FBI should make, Page said it was “not so much a question of just making new rules,” but: “ensuring that people to actually follow the existing rules. This must include doing the right thing, and acting ethically as attorneys.”
As for what’s next for Page, he said he would be able to give more information “in the new year.”
“There&#8217;s a lot of follow-up I need to do,” Page said, referring to what kind of recourse he has in the wake of the IG report. “This has been a pretty historic, massive development, and it takes work to resolve some of these crimes. It&#8217;s a step-by-step rehabilitation process for our country.”
But Page wouldn’t opine about his own situation, instead reflecting on how the FBI’s actions toward him hurt the country as a whole.
“My primary concern is the damage that&#8217;s been done to the country,” Page said. “Like most people who are military veterans, we make sacrifices and there&#8217;s a bigger purpose beyond the personal impact that it&#8217;s had on just yourself.”
While the IG report laid out the corruption in the FBI’s warrant application process, another, bigger, investigation is taking place into the origins of the narrative that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election. This investigation, led by prosecutor John Durham, was ordered by Attorney General William Barr and is still ongoing. Those who opposed the Russia-collusion narrative expect accountability from the Durham investigation.

Carter Page

EXCLUSIVE: Carter Page: It Was Not Just Political Bias That Led To FBI Spying On Me, But Policy Bias, Too

Democratic Rep. Norma Torres (CA), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Friday that she believes Russian President Vladimir Putin may have blackmail on President Donald Trump – a conspiracy theory that is so fringe that even CNN repeatedly challenged her on the claim.
CNN&#8217;s Brianna Keilar asked, &#8220;I wonder how concerned you are that Putin was able to influence not just through sort of Russian meddling and trying to persuade voters or Americans, but actually to influence the president in a way that has him picking what Putin’s saying over his own Intel community?&#8221;
&#8220;I think after the 2016 elections, the gloves were really off when it came to Vladimir Putin’s influence with President Trump and the GOP,&#8221; Torres responded. &#8220;Because let’s not forget, the GOP continues to parrot, not only on the floor, but also going onto Fox News, all of the things, the lies that Putin continues to spread, blaming and deflecting everyone else on his interference in our U.S. Elections.&#8221;
&#8220;Why do you think the president was such an easy target for Putin here?&#8221; Keilar pressed.
&#8220;I am afraid that Vladimir Putin may have something on the president, and it is the reason why the president has continued to play the handmaid to Vladimir Putin, inviting him to the White House and opening the doors and not having any advisers present, taking the notes from the interpreter and continuing to talk to him and continuing to parrot everything that he tells him,&#8221; Torres responded. &#8220;Russia is no friend of the U.S. They have never been a friend to us. They continue to compromise us internationally; they continue to attack our friends and our allies overseas. So, we have to be very careful, and we have to keep a close eye on how this continues to evolve.&#8221;
&#8220;You said you think that Putin may have something, meaning compromising information – Kompromat, as it’s said in Russia – on President Trump? Do you have proof of that?&#8221; Keilar pressed. &#8220;Is there something specific that you’re thinking of when you say that?&#8221;
&#8220;Well, there is no other reason why President Trump continues to capitulate to what Putin is telling him. He doesn’t do that with anyone else,&#8221; Torres responded. &#8220;He doesn’t do that with his advisers. He doesn’t do that with his American ambassadors who are providing him information, who have told him time and time and time again, national security advisers, that this is nothing but Russian propaganda that he continues to not believe our own intelligence over Putin.&#8221;
WATCH:
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Democrat Rep. Norma Torres of California, who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, promotes a conspiracy theory on CNN that Putin has blackmail on President Donald Trump. <a href="https://t.co/oghB1NNYJY">pic.twitter.com/oghB1NNYJY</a>
&mdash; (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonrantz/status/1208192734093135872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Keilar continued to press Torres by falsely suggesting that Trump&#8217;s election victory might not have been “legitimate,” and asked if that could be a reason to explain Trump&#8217;s behavior. Keilar failed to note that the Trump administration has been more aggressive toward Russia than any administration in recent memory and that Trump has repeatedly provided lethal weapons to Ukraine.
&#8220;No, I think it was – we are beyond 2016’s election,&#8221; Torres said. &#8220;I was present on January 20th to see President Trump take the oath of office. And I was there because I believe in the rule of law, because I believe in a peaceful transfer of power. So we are beyond 2016. The fact that this President of the United States continues to depend on Russia to win the next election that he has coming, asking not only Russia, but asking Ukraine and China openly on TV to investigate his political opponents who could be challenging him, and who absolutely have an opportunity to win in this next election, I think is unconscionable. We have to work toward securing our elections, and not only has President Trump blocked us from securing our elections, Republicans in Congress have also done that.&#8221;

Norma Torres

WATCH: Democrat Peddles Such A Wild Trump Conspiracy Theory That Even CNN Pushes Back

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about how Adam Schiff has played into the hands of Putin by falling for the Russian collusion conspiracy theory. Video and partial transcript below: 
The Republicans are basically threatening to turn the tables on this entire investigation. Bill McGurn has a terrific column in [The Wall Street] <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-job-for-adam-schiff-11576540574">Journal</a> [Tuesday,] saying:
<blockquote>Now that his impeachment work is over, here&#8217;s a new assignment for Adam Schiff: to investigate whether the bad intel in the Christopher Steele dossier was there because the former British spy was a sloppy partisan — or because he was the patsy in a Russian disinformation campaign.
As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Schiff is plainly the man for the job. Such an investigation fits comfortably with his oft-stated complaint that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election and will do so again in 2020 if we don&#8217;t stop it. Meanwhile, the allegation that the Steele “dossier” was a product of Russian disinformation comes from one of Mr. Schiff&#8217;s own star witnesses, Fiona Hill.</blockquote>
&#8230; The myth that the Democrats spread around and that [former Special Counsel Robert] Mueller helped spread was that Vladimir Putin was trying to get Trump to win and Hillary to lose — I said from the very beginning, that is absolutely absurd. Everyone knew, including me, everyone knew Hillary Clinton was going to win. There was no way Vladimir Putin had any idea that Donald Trump could win because nobody had any idea Donald Trump could win. So I speculated, “Well, what was he doing?” He&#8217;s obviously just screwing around with our election and their own witness, Fiona Hill, said the same thing. Here she is:
<blockquote>HILL: The Russians interests, frankly, to delegitimize our entire presidency. So one issue that I do want to raise and I think that this would resonate with our colleagues, some on the committee from the Republican Party, is that the goal of the Russians was really to put whoever became the president by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale under a cloud. 
So if secretary, former first lady, former Senator Clinton had been elected as president, as indeed many expected in the run up to the election in 2016, she too would have had major questions about her legitimacy. And I think that, you know, what we&#8217;re seeing here as a result of all of these narratives, is this is exactly what the Russian government was hoping for. If they seed misinformation, they seed doubt, they have everybody questioning the legitimacy of a presidential candidate being President Trump or potentially President Clinton, that they would pit one side of our electorate against the other, that they would pit one party against the other. </blockquote>
See, this is the thing, and I said this from the very beginning, because it has to be true as the only way the story makes sense. Vladimir Putin has been messing with our elections forever. They do all this kind of — they take out ads and they do whatever they can to disrupt things. He doesn&#8217;t care whether Donald Trump is president. This whole mythology that Donald Trump was a Russian asset, [which] Brennan and Clapper were selling on TV to cover up their own bad behavior in the Obama administration, it just doesn&#8217;t make sense. 
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4wEPL1w2akA?start=1170" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
There was simply no way for Vladimir Putin to know there was any chance of Donald Trump winning. He went after Clinton because it was obvious she was going to win — that&#8217;s why he&#8217;s mostly targeting Clinton, not Trump. But if it had been clear that Trump was going to win, he would have targeted Trump. It&#8217;s America that he&#8217;s after — it&#8217;s us — he wants us at each other&#8217;s throats. 
So who are the Russians&#8217; assets? Because this is Putin&#8217;s success that he couldn&#8217;t even have dreamed of, Adam Schiff going on TV and convicting Trump for two years of Russian collusion, falsely, of lying about it. Adam Schiff lying about his relationship with the whistleblower in the Ukraine affair, Adam Schiff lying now about whether he could have known that the FBI FISA warrant process was out of control when Devin Nunes knew two years ago. Why didn&#8217;t he know? Because he was lying. 
Adam Schiff is a Russian asset. I don&#8217;t think on purpose, I just think he&#8217;s a patsy who [has] played into the Russian plan to make us to turn us against each other. James Comey, another guy who went after Trump with a vengeance, who made it sound as if it were possible that Donald Trump was some kind of colluding with the Russians — I think it was Lindsey Graham [who] recently said Donald Trump doesn&#8217;t collude with anybody. He doesn’t collude with his own government, why would he collude with the Russians? It&#8217;s nonsense. 
Of course, Jerry Nadler, who just does whatever that [he’s] told, I&#8217;m sure, who&#8217;s bumbling around trying to make this impeachment thing sound like it&#8217;s a constitutional emergency. These are the three Russian stooges, these are the guys who either the Moe, Larry, and Curly of Russia&#8217;s attempt to fiddle with our country, and they have just been patsies for this guy, who is very good at this information and who sent that disinformation through Christopher Steele and through this — now we know, bogus, dossier. Who fell for it? I didn&#8217;t, they did. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on iTunes. </a> 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show">Watch “The Andrew Klavan Show” on-demand!</a>

House Intelligence Committee Holds Hearing On Impeachment Inquiry Of President Trump

KLAVAN: Adam Schiff: The Unwitting Russian Asset

Adam Schiff

The release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz&#8217;s report on alleged misconduct by the FBI in its investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016 shredded any hint of legitimacy of the infamous Democrat-funded anti-Trump dossier compiled by Christopher Steele. The extensive IG report&#8217;s utter dismantling of any claims to the legitimacy of the dossier has given previous mainstream media coverage of the &#8220;dirty&#8221; document some rather devastating context.
The Steele Dossier, Horowitz&#8217; investigation found, played a &#8220;central and essential role&#8221; in the FBI’s decision to surveil the Trump campaign. &#8220;We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order&#8221; targeting Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, reads the report.
Though it played a pivotal role in the decision to move forward with the surveillance of the Trump campaign, the dossier — created by oppo research firm Fusion GPS and funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign — was viewed by the CIA as based on &#8220;internet rumor&#8221; and was largely discredited by intelligence officials by the time it was used to help begin the surveillance of the Trump campaign, Horowitz explains.
The Rolling Stone&#8217;s Matt Taibbi summed up the report&#8217;s findings about the Steele Dossier in a piece titled, &#8220;<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/horowitz-report-steele-dossier-collusion-news-media-924944/">‘Corroboration Zero’: An Inspector General’s Report Reveals the Steele Dossier Was Always a Joke</a>&#8221; (formatting adjusted):
<blockquote>The Steele report reads like a pile of rumors surrounded by public information <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/16/politics/steele-information-dossier/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">pulled off the Internet</a>, and the Horowitz report does nothing to dispel this notion. At the time the FBI submitted its first FISA application, Horowitz writes, it had “corroborated limited information in Steele’s election reporting, and most of that was publicly available information.” Horowitz says of Steele’s reports: “The CIA viewed it as ‘internet rumor.’”
Worse (and this part of the story should be tattooed on the heads of Russia truthers), the FBI’s interviews of Steele’s sources revealed Steele embellished the most explosive parts of his report. The “pee tape” story, which inspired countless grave headlines (see this chin-scratching <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/world/europe/donald-trump-russia.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">New York Times history of Russian “sexual blackmail</a>”) and plunged the Trump presidency into crisis before it began, was, this source said, based a “conversation that [he/she] had over beers,” with the sexual allegations made… in “jest”!
Steele in his report said the story had been “confirmed” by senior, Western hotel staff, but the actual source said it was all “rumor and speculation,” never confirmed. In fact, charged by Steele to find corroboration, the source could not: corroboration was “zero,” writes Horowitz.</blockquote>
Taibbi goes on to list a few more glaring red flags with the dossier, but you get the point.
In light of the report&#8217;s findings, <a href="https://news.grabien.com/story-media-americans-course-trump-dossier-true-supercut">Grabien</a> went back and looked at how the mainstream media reported on the claims of the &#8220;dirty dossier,&#8221; and what the outlet found was gravely damaging to the credibility of those supposedly tasked with giving Americans the facts.
Initially, mainstream outlets repeatedly assured their viewers that substantive details in the dossier had been &#8220;corroborated,&#8221; a claim that Horowitz made clear is false. When more and more claims in the Democrat-funded dossier were discredited, the media shifted to asserting that it hasn&#8217;t been &#8220;conclusively disproven.&#8221;
A few sample quotes from Grabien&#8217;s devastating supercut, which is packed with clips of various anchors, host and analysts from CNN and MSNBC, as well as a few Democratic lawmakers:
<ul>
<li>&#8220;Parts of the now-infamous dossier on Donald Trump have proven to be true,&#8221; CNN tells its viewers.</li>
<li>&#8220;I know the history of the dossier, but it hasn&#8217;t been discredited,&#8221; CNN&#8217;s Alisyn Camerota insists. &#8220;In fact, it&#8217;s been the opposite. It&#8217;s been corroborated.&#8221;</li>
<li>&#8220;It hasn&#8217;t been discredited!&#8221; Camerota declares again. &#8220;Your intel community has corroborated all of the details in there!&#8221;</li>
<li>&#8220;Some of the substantive content of the dossier we were able to corroborate in our intelligence community assessment, which, from other sources, in which we have very high confidence in,&#8221; insists CNN analyst and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.</li>
<li>&#8220;We know that with the FISA application, the relevant parts of Christopher Steele&#8217;s dossier were corroborated,&#8221; claims far-left Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, asserting falsely in another clip: &#8220;We also know that as time goes on, more and more parts the Steele dossier get corroborated.&#8221;</li>
<li>&#8220;If the application included information from the dossier, it would only be after the FBI had in fact corroborated information through its own investigation,&#8221; another CNN anchor assures the American people.</li>
<li>&#8220;So when the president refers to it as &#8216;fake dossier,&#8217; that is false?&#8221; a CNN host asks Clapper, who responds: &#8220;I don&#8217;t think that is an accurate characterization of the entirety of the dossier.&#8221;</li>
</ul>
Video below via Grabien:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
SUPERCUT — Media to Americans: Of course the Trump dossier is true! <a href="https://t.co/R2uOijnMeJ">pic.twitter.com/R2uOijnMeJ</a>
&mdash; Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1205542093831233536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 13, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fact-check-republicans-famous-memo-on-fisa-abuse-blasted-by-democrats-ended-up-getting-it-mostly-right">WaPo Admits: Republicans’ Famous Memo On FISA Abuse Blasted By Dems Ended Up Getting It Mostly Right</a>

Alisyn Camerota

WATCH: Supercut Of Media Declaring Discredited Steele Dossier Is Legitimate

James Clapper

The Left continues to use its ready-made excuse for election losses: Just claim Russia meddled. The most prolific purveyors of this excuse (which is only used when the Left loses) are the co-founders of Fusion GPS, the research firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia.
Though the work of Fusion GPS, which culminated in the “Steele Dossier,” has been almost entirely discredited, its founders were allowed to pen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/12/britain-mueller-report-russian-media-uk-us">an op-ed</a> in The Guardian. Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch are now claiming that the “British political system has become thoroughly compromised by Russian influence.”
“The efforts in both countries had much in common. They were aided by a transatlantic cast of characters loosely organised around the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Many of them worked in concert and interacted with Russians close to the Kremlin. The outcome in both countries was also eerily similar,” the pair wrote. “Both countries have been at war with themselves in the three years since, pulling them back from the international stage at a time when Putin has consolidated his position in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/22/annexing-crimea-putin-make-russia-great-again">Crimea</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/08/ukraine-president-volodymyr-zelenskiy-vladimir-putin-paris">Ukraine</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/23/putin-middle-east-russia-turkey-syria">Syria</a> and beyond.”
Of course, no one believes this op-ed would have been written had the Labour Party won Thursday night.
Incredibly, the two cite their discredited work as the basis for their authority on the subject.
“Our Washington-based research firm, Fusion GPS, conducted much of the early investigations into <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/22/donald-trump-links-to-russia-steele-dossier-uk-book-claims">Russia’s support of the Trump campaign</a>, aided by our colleague Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk. While our initial focus was on Russian meddling in US politics, it has since become increasingly clear that Britain’s political system has also been deeply affected by Russian influence operations,” Simpson and Fritsch wrote.
The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross, who has followed the Fusion GPS saga more than most others, <a href="https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1205323286873333760">said</a> Simpson and Fritsch didn’t disclose that “they’re being paid millions through The Democracy Integrity Project to find evidence wherever they can that Russia meddled in Brexit.”
The Project was launched just after Trump was inaugurated and its sources consist of the same ones that provided false information to Christopher Steele, who compiled the “Steele Dossier.”
Simpson and Fritsch fail to note that much of the disinformation they provided the left-wing media has been discredited by either the report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller or the Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG). The IG report found that the FBI relied almost exclusively on the Steele Dossier to obtain FISA warrants against one-time Trump aide Carter Page. That dossier, the IG determined, was based on Internet rumor and innuendo. One of the most salacious and infamous claims in the Steele Dossier – that Russia had video of Trump urinating on a Russian prostitute – was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-critic-eviscerates-media-and-fbi-over-trump-russia-investigation">a joke</a> from one of Steele’s sources. Further, Steele embellished his claims and the FBI failed to corroborate the dossier before obtaining the warrants. They never did corroborate the dossier.
Simpson and Fritsch have proven themselves to be disinformation peddlers. That’s not to say Russia doesn’t meddle in elections, but the specific claims the Fusion GPS co-founders make have proven to be false. In their Guardian article, despite the existence of the Mueller and IG reports, Simpson and Fristch continue to claim that the Russians who meddle are connected to Trump.
It is unclear how much longer the Fusion founders’ schtick will still be accepted.

Simpson and Fritsch

Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theorists Take Their Show Global, Now Claim Russia Meddled In U.K Election

Fusion GPS

The report regarding the origins of the investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election is not the slam dunk the media is claiming.
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, certainly no fan of Trump, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/horowitz-report-steele-dossier-collusion-news-media-924944/">took the media to task</a> for its portrayal of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report into how the FBI began its surveillance of the Trump campaign.
“If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a ‘clearing’ of the FBI, never clear me of anything,” Taibbi wrote in an article published on Tuesday. “Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was.”
The press, Taibbi wrote, has been focusing on Horowitz’s conclusion that “political bias or improper motivation” was not the cause of the numerous errors in the FBI’s investigation. Basically, Taibbi wrote, Horowitz blamed incompetence for the errors instead of corruption:
<blockquote>However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose “serious” procedural problems and omissions of “significant information” in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president).
Officials on the “Crossfire Hurricane” Trump-Russia investigators went to extraordinary, almost comical lengths to seek surveillance authority of figures like Trump aide Carter Page. In one episode, an FBI attorney inserted the words “not a source” in an email he’d received from another government agency. This disguised the fact that Page had been an informant for that agency, and had dutifully told the government in real time about being approached by Russian intelligence. The attorney then passed on the email to an FBI supervisory special agent, who signed a FISA warrant application on Page that held those Russian contacts against Page, without disclosing his informant role.</blockquote>
Taibbi goes on to list how “the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong.”
For example, many members of left-wing media outlets reported that the dossier compiled by ex-British Intelligence official Christopher Steele didn’t play much of a role in obtaining FISA warrants against one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The Horowitz report, however, makes it clear that this dossier “played a central and essential role” in obtaining the FISA warrant.
Media outlets also derided what has come to be known as the “Nunes memo,” which was sent about by then-House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA). Instead, the outlets favored a competing memo from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). As Taibbi points out, Horowitz’s report “ratifies the major claims” from Nunes’ memo, including that the Steele Dossier was essential to obtaining the FISA warrant and that Steele was the source for a Yahoo News article that the FBI previously claimed merely confirmed the dossier.
Finally, the Horowitz report confirmed that the Steele dossier was little more than “Internet rumor,” there was no corroboration for his claims, and Steele embellished much of what was in his report. For example, left-wing media outlets wrote numerous headlines about an alleged “pee tape” the Russians could use to blackmail Trump. In reality, Horowitz found, was based on a “conversation” one of Steele’s sources “had over beers,” and the allegations were made in “jest.”
Never forget the years of reporting on this topic from left-wing media outlets and Trump’s opponents, Some of these outlets even received Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting, which has been utterly eviscerated by Horowitz’s report.

President Trump

Trump Critic Eviscerates Media And FBI Over Trump-Russia Investigation

On Monday, the World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive committee voted to recommend banning Russia from the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
As <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/12/07/russia-olympic-ban-wada-doping/">The Washington Post</a> reported, “On Nov. 22, WADA’s Compliance Review Committee recommended that the executive committee find the Russian Anti-Doping Agency in violation of the World Anti-Doping because of &#8216;an extremely serious case of noncompliance with the requirement to provide an authentic copy of the Moscow data, with several aggravating features.&#8217;”
<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7771795/Russia-BANNED-global-sporting-events-including-2020-Tokyo-Olympics-doping.html">The Daily Mail</a> reported, &#8220;Russia&#8217;s Anti Doping Agency (RUSADA) has 21 days to appeal against the ban, after the sanctions effectively strip the agency of its accreditation. RUSADA chief Yury Ganus branded the doping ban a &#8216;tragedy&#8217; for clean Russian athletes and said there is &#8216;no chance&#8217; of winning an appeal. If it does so, the appeal will be referred to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). But athletes untainted by the scandal will be allowed to compete independently under a neutral flag, as was the case during the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.&#8221;
<div class="artSplitter mol-img-group">
<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics-2020/article-7769859/Russia-braced-blanket-Olympic-ban-doping-athletes-set-froze-out.html">The Daily Mail</a> had previously reported, “Even Russia’s own anti-doping agency head, Yuri Ganus, has admitted he fears the worst after discovering that thousands of entries on a key database of athletes’ test results had been doctored despite his calls to come clean. They (the sanctions) are to be expected and they are justified. It’s a real tragedy for our sport.’
</div>
Russian athletes have been stripped of over 30 Olympic medals since 2008. Russia’s track and field athletes were not permitted to compete in the Rio Games in 2016.
The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) was reinstated in 2018 but it was supposed to <a href="https://www.wada-ama.org/en/media/news/2019-01/wada-update-on-extraction-of-moscow-laboratory-data-and-rusada-compliance-status">supply data from the former Moscow Laboratory</a> by the end of 2018. Russia missed the deadline.
In response, WADA president Craig Reedie said, “I am bitterly disappointed that data extraction from the former Moscow Laboratory has not been completed by the date agreed by WADA’s ExCo in September 2018. Since then, WADA has been working diligently with the Russian authorities to meet the deadline, which was clearly in the best interest of clean sport. The process agreed by WADA’s ExCo in September will now be initiated.”
After they supplied the data in January 2019, investigators found some anomalies. The Post reports that investigators say the Russians &#8220;planted fabricated evidence&#8221; in an alleged attempt to implicate Grigory Rodchenkov, a whistleblower who was the head of the Moscow lab.
Reedie said, “The intelligence and investigations team have produced very compelling evidence that there was manipulation and deletion of items of data. Having extracted the data and done all the work on it, it’s very disappointing to discover someone had tampered with it.”
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/08/sports/olympics/Wada-Russing-doping.html">The New York Times</a> commented: “Whispers of systemic doping in Russia at the start of the decade led to revelations of <a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/13/sports/russia-doping-sochi-olympics-2014.html">a huge doping program</a>, which led to <a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/sports/russia-doping-mclaren-report.html">more revelations</a> and <a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/sports/olympics/ioc-russia-ban-rio-track-and-field.html">serious punishments</a>, which led to a brokered deal that <a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/sports/olympics/olympics-russia-doping.html">allowed Russians to compete</a> in the Rio and Pyeongchang Games, which led to <a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/sports/russia-doping.html">the latest attempted</a> cover-up, which has led to the current calls for <a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/sports/russia-wada-olympics.html?action=click&amp;module=RelatedLinks&amp;pgtype=Article">more draconian punishments</a>— like the global ban WADA will vote on when it meets Monday.”
&nbsp;

Russian Olympic Committee in session

Russia Banned From 2020, 2022 Olympics Over Doping Scandal

Olympics

Hollywood just can’t quit the Russian collusion hoax.
Oh, the industry adored the notion that Mother Russia, not that accursed Orange Man, defeated Hillary Clinton three years ago. Late Night TV became Russia-palooza. “Saturday Night Live” dedicated entire sketches to The Muller Report, its version of The Bible, thinking it would seal the collusion deal.
Samantha Bee also weighed in with a very special <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/samantha-bee-robert-mueller-investigation-trump-763896/">Mueller Christmas</a>.
“This holiday season, as the Trumps gather around the blood tree, Trump will probably be at least a little afraid that it’ll be his last Christmas in the White House,” says ‘Full Frontal’ host.
Oscar winner Patricia Arquette even bragged about her Mueller votive candle.
And then the roof caved in. The actual Mueller Report felt like Geraldo Rivera <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/78842/oral-history-30-years-ago-geraldo-rivera-opened-al-capones-vault">cracking Al Capone’s vault</a> all over again.
That hasn’t stopped Hollywood, Inc. from obsessing over Russia.
Still.
The latest proof comes courtesy of a <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/russian-election-interference-movie-works-farewell-producers-1259186">new film project tied to Russian electoral interference</a>. The focus is on Reality Winner, who gained notoriety after leaking government information to the press.
“The Spy Who Dumped Me” filmmaker Susanna Fogel will direct the drama “Winner.” The biopic will tell the real-life story of Reality Leigh Winner, a former American intelligence specialist who was the first to expose Russia&#8217;s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She was arrested in 2017 and is currently serving a five-and-a-half year prison sentence.
The comments by the new film’s producers more than suggest the tone of the project.
&#8220;We have been longtime fans of Susanna Fogel and can think of no one better to capture this complex character through an empathetic and human lens,” [producer Dani] Melia said Tuesday in a statement….
Added [producer Peter] Fogel: “Reality Winner is a mouthpiece for a generation of young people who are struggling to square their personal ethics with the crumbling ethics of our country’s institutions, which we want to be proud of and have allegiance to.”
The producers have picked <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/reality-winner-sympathized-terrorists-wanted-burn-white-house-down/">a curious person</a> as their cinematic hero, beyond her illegal leaking.
…government officials found Winner’s hand-written notes: “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4586680/Reality-Winner-wanted-burn-White-House-down.html">I want to burn the White House down</a> . . . find somewhere in Kurdistan to live,” she wrote in one note. In other notes, Winner sympathized with Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.
Then again, showing sympathy for Winner isn’t out of the ordinary. Hollywood starlet Charlize Theron recently admitted playing a former Fox News anchor <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/bombshell-theron-lithgow-fox-news-conservatives/">troubled her more</a> than bringing a serial killer to the big screen.
It’s hardly the only indication Hollywood hasn’t given up on the Russia-Trump connection. As recently as June a gaggle of notable stars, including “Bombshell” star John Lithgow, Annette Bening and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, took part on <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/ny-john-lithgow-annette-benning-mueller-report-20190624-tofhdxe3zvfpxegbix7d6jeu3q-story.html">a live reading</a> of The Mueller Report.
If only we saw our best and brightest actors read the report our collective minds would change. Meanwhile, that very same report isn’t playing a starring role in the current impeachment drive.
Last week, celebrated director Rob Reiner used Twitter to <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7748539/Rob-Reiner-says-GOP-pact-Putin-siding-white-supremacists-support-Trump.html">accuse Republicans</a>, not just Trump, of colluding with Russia.
‘Every elected Republican knows that this President is guilty of countless Impeachable offenses … But they, along with many White Evangelicals &amp; White Supremacists have made a pact with Putin.
Stephen Colbert, who famously called Trump President Vladimir Putin’s “c***holster<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-colbert-condemns-trump-for-doing-putins-bidding-in-syria">,” refuses to let the Trump/Russia hoax go</a>.
In October Colbert attacked the president’s policies on Syria, making the same ol’ connection – wink, wink.
“It could be argued that getting out of the endless wars in the Middle East is not a bad thing, but the way Trump did this, make no mistake who wins here: his buddy Vladimir Putin, who yesterday met with Erdogan to carve up Syria like a Christmas shawarma.”
Last month, Colbert went back to the well. The far-left activist <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/colbert-reveals-the-winner-of-donald-trumps-rap-contest-and-yeah-its-putin-video/">imitated Putin’s entry</a> into a pro-Trump rap contest.
<blockquote>Call Russia to-day 
You trust me more than your own CIA 
Invite me to the White House 
Which I want badly 
I got ideas for next election make you much happy</blockquote>
You see, not only did Putin win the 2016 election for Trump. He’s got plans for 2020, too.
That speaks volumes about Hollywood’s enduring Russia obsession. It’s not just about 2016. Stars are setting the stage for 2020, in case Candidate Biden/Warren/Buttigieg/Sanders loses to President Trump.
They’re rehearsing their excuse lines for Nov. 4, 2020.

Samantha Bee Christmas

TOTO: Hollywood Just Can’t Quit The Russian Collusion Hoax

Robert Mueller

One of the explanations offered by Donald Trump critics for his stunning upset victory over &#8220;inevitable&#8221; Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is that a pro-Trump Russian troll campaign somehow manipulated gullible Americans into voting for the former reality TV star over the seasoned politician. A new study, however, strikes right at the heart of that theory, finding that Russian online influencers appear to have no &#8220;substantial&#8221; impact on Americans on key issues.
Among the outlets on the left that have pushed the &#8220;Russians trolls got Trump elected&#8221; conspiracy theory is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump">The New Yorker</a>, which interviewed Kathleen Hall Jamieson last year about her book “<a class="ArticleBody__link___1FS03" href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GJM18PL/?tag=thneyo0f-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" data-amzn-asin="B07GJM18PL">Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know</a>.&#8221;  Here&#8217;s an excerpt from the piece (formatting adjusted):
<blockquote>Extensive studies of past campaigns, Jamieson said, have demonstrated that “you can affect people, who then change their decision, and that alters the outcome.” She continued, “I’m not arguing that Russians pulled the voting levers. I’m arguing that they persuaded enough people to either vote a certain way or not vote at all.” The effect of such manipulations could be momentous in an election as close as the 2016 race, in which Clinton got nearly 2.9 million more votes than Trump, and Trump won the Electoral College only because some eighty thousand votes went his way in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. In two hundred and twenty-four pages of extremely dry prose, with four appendixes of charts and graphs and fifty-four pages of footnotes, Jamieson makes a strong case that, in 2016, “Russian masterminds” pulled off a technological and political coup. Moreover, she concludes, the American media “inadvertently helped them achieve their goals.”</blockquote>
So, did &#8220;Russian masterminds&#8221; really succeed in carrying out a &#8220;technological and political coup&#8221; for Trump?
A <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/20/1906420116">study</a> of online activity in 2017 published this week by the National Academy of the Sciences suggests that the premise of that theory is fundamentally flawed. Though the study does not attempt to provide any conclusions about 2016 activity, which was not part of the study, online activity the following year provides some helpful insights into the plausibility of such a troll-orchestrated &#8220;coup.&#8221;
&#8220;While numerous studies analyze the strategy of online influence campaigns, their impact on the public remains an open question,&#8221; reads the study&#8217;s summary. &#8220;We investigate this question combining longitudinal data on 1,239 Republicans and Democrats from late 2017 with data on Twitter accounts operated by the Russian Internet Research Agency.&#8221;
&#8220;We find no evidence that interacting with these accounts substantially impacted 6 political attitudes and behaviors,&#8221; the study&#8217;s authors assert.
The study also found that those who interacted most with trolls appear to be those who have already strongly formed political opinions — in other words, those whose political opinions are the least likely to be influenced by a troll campaign.
&#8220;Descriptively, interactions with trolls were most common among individuals who use Twitter frequently, have strong social-media &#8216;echo chambers,&#8217; and high interest in politics,&#8221; the summary continues. &#8220;These results suggest Americans may not be easily susceptible to online influence campaigns, but leave unanswered important questions about the impact of Russia’s campaign on misinformation, political discourse, and 2016 presidential election campaign dynamics.&#8221;
The study&#8217;s abstract provides more details on the researchers&#8217; methods and findings:
<blockquote>There is widespread concern that Russia and other countries have launched social-media campaigns designed to increase political divisions in the United States. Though a growing number of studies analyze the strategy of such campaigns, it is not yet known how these efforts shaped the political attitudes and behaviors of Americans. We study this question using longitudinal data that describe the attitudes and online behaviors of 1,239 Republican and Democratic Twitter users from late 2017 merged with nonpublic data about the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) from Twitter. Using Bayesian regression tree models, we find no evidence that interaction with IRA accounts substantially impacted 6 distinctive measures of political attitudes and behaviors over a 1-mo period. We also find that interaction with IRA accounts were most common among respondents with strong ideological homophily within their Twitter network, high interest in politics, and high frequency of Twitter usage. Together, these findings suggest that Russian trolls might have failed to sow discord because they mostly interacted with those who were already highly polarized. We conclude by discussing several important limitations of our study—especially our inability to determine whether IRA accounts influenced the 2016 presidential election—as well as its implications for future research on social media influence campaigns, political polarization, and computational social science.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/20/1906420116">Read the study here</a>.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-reveals-four-women-he-might-choose-as-vice-president">Biden Reveals Four Women He Might Choose As Vice President</a>

Hillary Clinton

Study: Russian Trolls Don’t Actually Influence Americans In Any Meaningful Way

On Monday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about the upcoming inspector general (IG) report about the FISA abuse in the Trump-Russia probe. Video and partial transcript below: 
The IG report is coming out. Now, this is the interesting thing, because this entire impeachment charade has been to mask the malfeasance — I have now used the word “malfeasance” twice in one show, which is a record, I think — of the Obama administration. The scandal-free Obama administration, which spied on Donald Trump. 
So now there&#8217;s a story that has come out, CNN broke the story and it was in The Wall Street Journal as well, and remember — Kimberley Strassel came on, from The Wall Street Journal, and told us not to think that this IG report is going to be a big deal. It&#8217;s supposed to come out in full on December 9, and she said, [paraphrasing] “don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s going to be a big deal. It is the Durham report from the DOJ that&#8217;s the big deal.” 
But here&#8217;s from The Wall Street Journal:
<blockquote>The Justice Department&#8217;s inspector general is expected to conclude there was a proper legal basis for the government&#8217;s application to monitor a former Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser. &#8230;</blockquote>
This is Carter Page — 
<blockquote>&#8230; [B]ut that errors and lapses in judgment were made during the process, according to people familiar with the matter. </blockquote>
The usual sources —
<blockquote>Among the findings identified in the report is that an FBI lawyer altered an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, people familiar with the matter said Friday. The conduct didn&#8217;t change the watchdog&#8217;s overall conclusion.</blockquote>
So in other words, they&#8217;re saying the IG is going to say, “No, it was right to monitor Carter Page, but somebody tinkered with the FISA warrant, with the information on the FISA warrant.”
Now, first of all, there&#8217;s so much about this that needs to be unpacked, the fact that it broke on CNN, [which] now has Andrew McCabe — he&#8217;s a CNN commentator. They&#8217;ve got all these FBI commentators of the former general counsel, I’m getting this from Andrew McCarthy at National Review. James Baker is a frequent CNN guest, so these are the people spinning the IG report, before it comes out, hoping to make it &#8230; as unimportant as they possibly can. 
This is a Deep State enterprise, to make it seem that the FBI did nothing wrong. But first of all, the first thing you should remember is that Rod Rosenstein — this is back in June of last year — he was before the House Judiciary Committee doing an oversight of the FBI, and Matt Gaetz had him on the ropes, and he was saying, [paraphrasing] “When you signed these FISA reports, did you even read them? Did anybody brief you on them?” 
But I want to play the second cut by Rod Rosenstein, where he&#8217;s trying to explain the process by which he approved of these FISA warrants. Listen to this: 
<blockquote>ROSENSTEIN: We sit down with a team of attorneys from the Department of Justice, all of whom review that, provide a briefing for us about what&#8217;s in it, and sir I’ve reviewed that one in some detail, and I can tell you, sir, that the information that&#8217;s public about that doesn&#8217;t match with my understanding of the one that I signed.</blockquote>
So in other words, he was told what was in the FISA warrant — he was briefed on it by guys like Peter Strzok and all the other FBI characters, and he signed off on it. Then it came in and he said, “Wait, that&#8217;s not what you told me was in this report,” and obviously what we&#8217;re talking about is the fact that they used this Steele dossier, paid for by the Clinton campaign, as evidence that they should be able to to spy on Donald Trump. 
Now, what they&#8217;re talking about — and this is something that Adam Schiff does all the time, you’ve heard him do it before — he keeps saying that Trump denies it was Russian interference in the election. That&#8217;s not the case. He keeps saying that when Trump says there was Ukrainian interference in the election, that means he&#8217;s denying that there was Russian interference in the election. That&#8217;s not the case. There can both be Russian interference and Ukrainian interference, and according to Politico, the Democrats were working with the Ukrainians to get dirt on Donald Trump or to get things that were helpful to Hillary Clinton.
So none of this is what Trump is saying. You know, all that Trump is saying, “I didn&#8217;t do it. I&#8217;m not with the Russians. I&#8217;m not working with the Russians,” which turned out, as we know from the Mueller report, turns out to be absolutely true. That&#8217;s why Trump is saying, let&#8217;s have a trial. …
Of course, he wants a trial in the Senate. He&#8217;ll waltz back into the White House if there&#8217;s a trial in the Senate. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on iTunes.</a> 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show">Watch “The Andrew Klavan Show” on-demand!</a>

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe Testifies To House Committee On FBI&#8217;s Budget

KLAVAN: CNN Actually Broke A Story About The Deep State.

Rod J. Rosenstein

The Justice Department Inspector General found evidence “that an FBI lawyer manipulated a key investigative document related to the FBI’s secretive surveillance” of former Trump aide, Carter Page, according to Fox News.
The outlet reports that the edit was “enough to change the substantive meaning of the document.”
The revelation represents the first in what is expected to be a parade of details from the report, which is due out in full next week, according to sources within the Justice Department. Attorney General William Barr alluded to the report early last week, telling media that Inspector General Michael Horowitz had completed his investigation, authored his report, and spoken with officials named in the report in order to clear the way for publication.
The full report, which will hit shelves on December 9th, is also expected to demonstrate a number of irregularities with the FBI’s investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign, and, subsequently, the Trump transition team, coordinated with Russian officials to first alter the outcome of the 2016 presidential election and then install an information and communication pipeline between the Kremlin and President Trump in the West Wing.
In House Intelligence Committee hearings last year – commanded by Republicans who were then in charge – witnesses revealed that the FBI and DOJ relied on a now-discredited dossier on Donald Trump, authored by foreign agent Christopher Steele, to obtain permission to wiretap key Trump transition officials through the FISA courts.
Then Attorney General Jeff Sessions commanded the Inspector General undertake an investigation into the incident, and, it seems, Horowitz found at least some evidence of FBI malfeasance.
“Horowitz reportedly found that the FBI employee was involved enough in the FISA process to falsely state that he had ‘documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis’ for the FISA warrant application,” according to Fox News, quoting the Washington Post. “Then, the FBI employee allegedly ‘altered an email’ to substantiate his inaccurate version of events. The employee has since been forced out of the bureau.”
Neither the Post nor Fox News identified the official, and both suggested the report doesn’t identify him either, but Fox News says, the Post initially reported that the “person under scrutiny&#8230;worked beneath former deputy assistant director Peter Strzok,” the FBI agent whose clear bias against Trump tainted the investigation.
The Post, Fox News reports, later removed that tidbit for unknown reasons.
Horowitz’s report has very specific boundaries, and will cover only the FISA application and the events leading up to the FBI’s pursuit of warrantless wiretaps against a handful of specific Trump transition aides, but it is expected to come in handy for investigators, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, looking into “Justice Department misconduct in the run-up to the 2016 election through the spring of 2017” – a much wider probe.
Durham is specifically looking into whether multiple investigations into the Trump transition team and the fledgling Trump Administration – specifically investigations into whether President Donald Trump and his team were in the pocket of the Russians &#8212; were politically motivated.
That investigation is said to be producing shocking results, potentially enough for a criminal probe.

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