Trump does not care that Putin put a bounty on our soldiers heads!
Trump is the #1 biggest, most dangerous, informant to the Communists. Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russia’s Foreign Minister.
The disclosure to the Russians by the President, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure.
According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.
The covert source provided information for more than a decade,
The removal happened at a time of wide concern in the intelligence community about mishandling of intelligence by Trump and his administration. Those concerns were described to CNN by five sources who served in the Trump administration, intelligence agencies and Congress.
Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo told other senior Trump administration officials that too much information was coming out regarding the covert source, known as an asset.
Trump met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg and took the unusual step of confiscating the interpreter’s notes. Afterward, intelligence officials again expressed concern that the President may have improperly discussed classified intelligence with Russia, according to an intelligence source with knowledge of the intelligence community’s response to the Trump-Putin meeting.
Those concerns grew in early 2017 after the US intelligence community released its public report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which said Putin himself ordered the operation.
In the first months of his administration, Trump’s handling of classified intelligence further concerned intelligence officials. Ultimately, they decided to launch the difficult operation to remove an asset who had been working for the US for years.
edition.cnn.com/2019/09/09/politics/russia-us-spy-extracted/index.html
A secret hidden in plain sight: President Donald Trump’s role as a Russian asset
December 20, 2020
One need not dabble in conspiracy theories to ask a simple question today: What should be done about Donald Trump having served as a Russian asset for the past four years?
An American president’s refusal to push back publicly and strongly against a major hostile act by an adversary is more than a matter of bad optics. At best it’s a display of humiliating weakness. At worst, it’s an act of surrender and — in Trump’s case with Russia — a strong suggestion of complicity.
On October 25, the Washington Post published an epic piece documenting Trump’s history with Russia headlined “Tumult at home, ailing alliances abroad: Why Trump’s America has been a ‘gift’ to Putin.”
The Post’s reporting was hardly unique. In 2019, CNN recounted “37 times Trump was soft on Russia.” The New York Times published a definitive op-ed piece in 2018 from national security expert Susan Rice headlined “How Trump Helps Putin.” On and on it goes. So why the stunned indignation today when Trump wouldn’t even criticize Putin — much less condemn him — for what was essentially an act of war on the nation he’s sworn to protect?
There’s no mystery here. Trump’s fealty to Putin has been an ongoing national scandal in full public view, perhaps so blatantly that the nation is numbed to its traitorous essence.
Here’s a list of “Trump’s Greatest Hits as a Russian Asset”
Trump has mounted — and maintains — a vicious attack on the legitimacy of American democracy and the integrity of its elections. That has topped Putin’s anti-American wish list beyond his wildest imagination.
On Trump’s watch, Russia has launched possibly the most damaging cyber-attack in American history, an act of war that might prove lasting enough in its damage to supplant #1 above.
Trump seriously degraded America’s NATO alliances — arguably Putin’s top international priority — by feuding with the organization over dues and petty differences and weakening its resolve to treat Russia as a threat.
Trump handed Putin undeserved international legitimacy at a Helsinki summit by publicly siding with him over the unanimous U.S. intelligence community with regard to his denials of Russian meddling in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.
Trump held foreign aid to Ukraine hostage — aid it needed to defend itself against Russia — as part of a failed extortion scheme to muddy Joe Biden.
Trump failed to raise a whimper of protest when it was revealed the Russia had placed bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Trump pulled the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, isolating the nation from the world community and creating a void for Russia and others to fill.
Trump pulled the U.S. out of the World Trade Organization. See item 7.
Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. See item 7.
Trump pulled U.S. troops from Syria, a major strategic victory for Putin and his client, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That was beyond item 7 in value to Russia, which swiftly filled the void left by the U.S.
Trump weakened the European Union — as he did with NATO — by supporting Brexit and sending Steve Bannon to Europe to support anti-government movements.
Trump supported Putin with silence over the poisoning of Russian Alexei Navalny with the same nerve agent used to poison ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018. Trump stayed silent for as long as possible on that one as well.
Trump shared highly classified intelligence information about ISIS with two top Russian officials in an infamous Oval Office meeting.
Trump has met repeatedly in person and by phone with Putin without allowing independent notetaking and documentation customarily included in meetings with foreign leaders.
Trump lifted sanctions from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Putin ally, over 2016 election interference, prompting bipartisan outrage from the U.S. Senate.
Trump defended Putin’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea, which had caused Russia to be kicked out of the Group of Eight (G8). Trump has led a one-man effort to bring Russia back into the G8 with no concessions. (Europeans are calling it G6 + 1 as long as Trump is around.)
Trump’s continual support for dictators across the globe has aided the ascent — with his support — of pro-Putin autocrats in Europe.
Trump has consistently resisted the implementation (and reduced the size) of U.S. sanctions aimed at punishing various Russian misdeeds.
The Trump administration last year pressured the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to delete part of a report concluding that Russia was aiming to help Donald Trump win reelection in 2020.
Trump even went out of his way at a Cabinet meeting to laud Russia’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan in which U.S.-backed Afghan militants had fought the Russians.
“If Trump isn’t a Russian asset, why did he do all these things to help Putin?”
one of the biggest of Trump’s Big Lies: That all the investigations into his sleazy and criminal interactions with Russia were nothing more than a “hoax.”
To refresh memories, here are some key conclusions of the Mueller report
The Russians had led a campaign to swing the 2016 election in Trump’s favor and committed crimes to achieve that goal
Donald Trump Jr said he would “love” to receive dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government
As a candidate, Trump publicly urged the Russians to hack Clinton’s emails
Trump pursued a lucrative Trump Tower project in Moscow during the campaign
Multiple top Trump campaign and administration officials were CONVICTED of lying to investigators about their contacts with Russians
Mueller also pointed out at least 10 instances in which Trump acted in a way that might have led to obstruction of justice charges WERE HE NOT PRESIDENT. And let’s not forget this passage from the Mueller Report:
“[T]he investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
Add to all this Trump’s countless relationships with shady figures such as Paul Manafort with their Russian connections, and those hazy efforts at business dealings — including the fateful 2013 Miss Universe visit to Moscow — and the refusal to release tax returns that might show some of Trump’s Russian business affairs. It’s not a pretty picture. If Trump owes Russian interests as part of the gigantic foreign debts facing him after office, it’s downright ugly.
www.rawstory.com/trump-putin-2649563857/
07/04/2020
Donald Trump Is Now ‘America’s No. 1 Traitor,’ Says Veterans Group
“Benedict Arnold can step aside,” VoteVets say
“No one has betrayed those in uniform like Donald Trump,”
in its latest anti-Trump attack ad, the 65-second spot references Trump’s siding with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and his dismissal of reports that U.S. officials knew Russia allegedly paid Taliban members to kill American troops.
The #BenedictDonald and #TRE45ON hashtags trended on Twitter as the ad was viewed more than 2 million times in its first 12 hours online.
www.huffpost.com/entry/veterans-group-donald-trump-benedict-arnold_n_5f003c3bc5b612083c5c90fa
06/29/2020
Veterans Group Rips ‘Traitor’ Trump Over Russian Bounties To Kill U.S. Soldiers
The U.S. government knew the Russian military paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing American soldiers. Trump was briefed on the situation in March, but took no action against Russia. To the contrary, Trump said he would like to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the next G-7 meeting in September.
Trump said on Twitter that he was not briefed about the alleged bounties, called the Times “fake news” and claimed “nobody’s been tougher on Russia” than his administration.
www.huffpost.com/entry/vote-vets-trump-afghan-bounty_n_5ef97f7dc5b612083c4f9201
Billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man called “Putin’s Chef.” has his own private mercenary army, which works with Russian military intelligence and has left fingerprints in Ukraine, Syria, Libya and a number of African states. The billionaire has long harassed and threatened independent journalists in Moscow and his home city, St. Petersburg, but he seems to have become emboldened in the last few years. Prigozhin was linked to organized surveillance and disinformation campaign against CNN journalists and to the murders of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic.
. . . What is very clear is that even if Putin himself did not personally endorse each act, the environment of impunity he has fostered leaves no doubt about where the responsibility for this violence ultimately lies.
June 30, 2020
Suspicions-proof of Russian Bounties Were Bolstered by Data on Financial Transfers
American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.
Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty program that detainees described during interrogations.
Investigators also identified by name numerous Afghans in a network linked to the suspected Russian operation, the officials said — including, two of them added, a man believed to have served as an intermediary for distributing some of the funds and who is now thought to be in Russia.
The intercepts bolstered the findings gleaned from the interrogations, helping reduce an earlier disagreement among intelligence analysts and agencies over the reliability of the detainees. The disclosures further undercut White House officials’ claim that the intelligence was too uncertain to brief President Trump. In fact, the information was provided to him [tRump] in his daily written brief in late February, two officials have said.
The three American officials who described and confirmed details about the basis for the intelligence assessment spoke on the condition of anonymity amid swelling turmoil over the Trump administration’s failure to authorize any response to Russia’s suspected proxy targeting of American troops and playing down of the issue after it came to light four days ago.
Democrats and Senate Republicans were also separately briefed at the White House on Tuesday morning. Democrats emerged saying that the issue was clearly not, as Mr. Trump has suggested, a “hoax.” They demanded to hear directly from intelligence officials, rather than from Mr. Trump’s political appointees,
Based on the intelligence they saw, the lawmakers said they were deeply troubled by Mr. Trump’s insistence he did not know about the plot and his subsequent obfuscation when it became public.
He added: “I do not understand for a moment why the president is not saying this to the American people right now and is relying on ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I haven’t heard,’ ‘I haven’t been briefed.’ That is just not excusable.”
Investigators are said to be focused on at least two deadly attacks on American soldiers in Afghanistan. One is an April 2019 bombing outside Bagram Air Base that killed three Marines: Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, of Newark, Del.; Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, N.Y.; and Sgt. Benjamin S. Hines, 31, of York, Pa.
Intelligence about the suspected Russian plot was included in the President’s Daily Brief in late February, according to two officials, contrasting Mr. Trump’s claim on Sunday that he was never “briefed or told” about the matter.
The information was also considered solid enough to be distributed to the broader intelligence community in a May 4 article in the C.I.A.’s World Intelligence Review, commonly called The Wire, according to several officials.
In a raid in Kunduz City in the north about six months ago, 13 people were arrested in a joint operation by American forces and the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, according to Safiullah Amiry, the deputy provincial council chief there. Two of the main targets of the raid had already fled — one to Tajikistan and one to Russia, Mr. Amiry said — but it was in the Kabul home of one of them where security forces found a half-million dollars. He said the Afghan intelligence agency had told him the raids were related to Russian money being disbursed to militants.
Two former Afghan officials said Monday that members of local criminal networks had carried out attacks for the Taliban in the past — not because they shared the Taliban’s ideology or goals, but in exchange for money.
Twenty American service members were killed in combat-related operations in Afghanistan last year, the most since 2014.
nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/politics/russian-bounties-afghanistan-intelligence.html
June 30, 2020
Spies and commandos warned months ago of Russian bounties on US troops
WASHINGTON — United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan alerted their superiors as early as January to a suspected Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The crucial information that led the spies and commandos to focus on the bounties included the recovery of a large amount of American cash from a raid on a Taliban outpost that prompted suspicions. Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019, another official has said.
The emerging details added to the picture of the classified intelligence assessment, which The New York Times reported Friday was briefed to President Donald Trump and discussed by the White House’s National Security Council at an interagency meeting in late March. The Trump administration had yet to act against the Russians, the officials said.
The president “needs to immediately expose and handle this, and stop Russia’s shadow war,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on Twitter.
one US official had told The Times that the report was briefed to the highest levels of the White House. Another said it was included in the President’s Daily Brief, a compendium of foreign policy and national security intelligence compiled for Trump to read.
The officials briefed on the matter said the assessment had been treated as a closely held secret but that the administration expanded briefings about it over the last week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces were among those said to have been targeted.
Republicans in Congress demanded more information from the Trump administration about what happened and how the White House planned to respond.
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, said in a Twitter message Sunday: “If reporting about Russian bounties on US forces is true, the White House must explain: 1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the PDB? 2. Who did know and when? 3. What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?”
Multiple Republicans retweeted Cheney’s post. Rep. Daniel Crenshaw, R-Texas, a former Navy SEAL, amplified her message, tweeting, “We need answers.”
On CNN, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that the reported Russian actions “would be consistent with the Russian practice over the last few years of doing its best secretly to try to undermine Western government, including the United States.”
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/spies-and-commandos-warned-months-ago-of-russian-bounties-on-us-troops/ar-BB164UHv
America’s past presidents have long promoted democracy, human rights and the rule of law abroad, yet Trump instead has waged an assault on those values at home, where he has weakened institutions, shredded norms and declared without evidence that the upcoming election will be “rigged.”
These highlights from Trump’s nearly four years in office read like Vladimir Putin’s wish list. Few countries have benefited more geopolitically from Trump’s time in office than Russia.
“The more dysfunctional, polarized and erratic the United States seems at home, the more beset by domestic problems, the more ineffective in demonstrating leadership and dealing with them, especially during the pandemic, the better that is for Russia because they benefit from a world in which the United States is seen as unreliable and unpredictable,” said William J. Burns, a former deputy secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to Russia under George W. Bush who now leads the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But the administration’s aggressive measures have met with stiff resistance from the president, who has had to be cajoled and prodded into supporting policies that enjoy strong bipartisan support, according to intelligence officials and his own public statements.
More than 130 Republican former military, intelligence, diplomatic and other national security officials signed a joint statement in August endorsing Biden because they said Trump had “failed our country,” in part because of his handling of Russian interference and alignment with Putin and other strongmen.
no president has done more to damage the United States or to advantage the Kremlin than Donald Trump.
Through his rhetorical attacks and norm-busting actions, Trump has eroded public faith in the Justice Department, the State Department and the intelligence community; demeaned the military leadership; threatened the freedom of the press; and challenged the courts.
“If you turn on state-controlled Russian language television in Russia, what they love talking about day in and day out is how much of a mess the United States is,”
A report by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” in hopes of helping Trump. Mueller also laid out evidence of 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice by Trump but concluded it was not his role to determine whether Trump broke the law.
Brian Murphy, the former top intelligence official for the Department of Homeland Security, alleged in a whistleblower complaint that the department’s acting secretary, Chad Wolf, told him “to cease providing intelligence assessments” on Russian interference and to begin reporting instead on activities by China and Iran. The instructions, Murphy has alleged, were passed down from Robert O’Brien, the White House national security adviser.
The Homeland Security Department has continued to produce reports on Russian election interference, according to officials with knowledge of the matter. But not much has been made public. And what has been publicized is the product of a balancing act, between carrying out an apolitical intelligence mission and not incurring the president’s wrath.
In its first ever homeland threat assessment – a high-altitude overview of domestic security concerns published earlier this month – the department portrayed Russia as the primary foreign threat to the election. That was the conclusion of career, nonpartisan intelligence analysts.
But in a separate note, Wolf wrote, “It is clear China and Iran also pose threats in this space.”
Trump has not only played down the Russian threat, he has sought to exploit it. In December, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani met with a Ukrainian lawmaker offering derogatory information about Biden, the former vice president, and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
The lawmaker, Andrii Derkach, “has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services,” the Treasury Department declared in September, sanctioning Derkach for his efforts to “undermine” the 2020 elections.
The previous month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence singled out Derkach for his role in helping Russia “denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment’ ” in the United States. Current and former officials said that the false information he peddled to Giuliani, which Trump has spread, also has been picked up by U.S. lawmakers, who are effectively laundering Russian propaganda.
“Trump has embraced Russian assistance to destroy his own political enemies,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a career CIA officer who oversaw the agency’s operations in Russia and Eastern Europe.
At times, it’s difficult to tell whether Trump is parroting Russian propaganda or if the Kremlin is echoing Trump.
In September, the Homeland Security Department issued an intelligence bulletin to state and local law enforcement agencies that Russia seeks “to undermine public trust in the electoral process” by spreading false claims that mail-in ballots are riddled with fraud and susceptible to manipulation. The department said Russia spreads such claims through a network of state-controlled media, proxy websites and social media trolls.
Kremlin officials have denied allegations that Russia is interfering in the 2020 U.S. elections.
Many of the false Russian claims are identical to repeated, unsupported public statements aired by Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr, who have said that mailed ballots aren’t trustworthy while warning of the potential for rampant fraud in November’s elections.
The bulletin didn’t cite any statements by Trump or other U.S. officials, but it stated that Russia is “amplifying” claims that mail-in voting is prone to fraud.
On Sept. 17, not long after the bulletin was reported in the press, Trump railed in a tweet against a “new and unprecedented massive amount of unsolicited ballots” sent to voters, arguing that the election result “may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED, which is what some want.” The same day, in another tweet, he publicly rebuked the FBI director for not saying China posed a greater threat than Russia to the elections, which experts say it does not. Twitter flagged both the president’s tweets on the grounds that they contained misleading information about voting.
At the same time, Trump has assiduously sought to cultivate a friendship with Putin, through regular phone calls and private in-person huddles. He has publicly excused Putin’s transgressions and has steadfastly avoided denouncing or even lightly criticizing the Russian president.
Time after time, Trump has taken Putin at his word, to the consternation of Trump’s top national security advisers.
Putin appears to have fueled Trump’s long-standing conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, and not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election — and that it did so to try to stop him from reaching the White House.
Putin seemed to relish the diversion. “Thank God no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore; now they’re accusing Ukraine,” the Russian president said at a news conference last November. “Well, let them sort this out among themselves.”
In 2018, Trump traveled to Helsinki for a summit with Putin, where he said he took Putin at his word that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, effectively rejecting the unanimous conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had done so.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the summit “fabulous” and “better than super,” according to Russian news agencies.
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-russia-putin/2020/10/24/4edb462e-13bb-11eb-ba42-ec6a580836ed_story.html
Trump hands Putin a diplomatic triumph by casting doubt on U.S. intelligence agencies
Trump’s warm rhetorical embrace of Putin, who he said had given him an “extremely strong and powerful” denial that Russia assaulted U.S. democracy, marked an extraordinary capstone to the first formal meeting between the current leaders of the world’s nuclear superpowers and sparked trepidation and horror among many in Washington and around the globe.
At a remarkable 46-minute joint news conference inside the Finnish presidential palace, Trump would not challenge Putin’s claim that the Russian government played no role in trying to sabotage the U.S. election, despite the Justice Department’s indictments Friday of 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking Democratic emails as part of a broad subterfuge operation to help Trump win the election.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the summit “fabulous” and “better than super,” according to Russian news agencies, while Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was snickering with exuberance as he watched the news conference from the sidelines.
Trump’s failure to confront Putin drew stern rebukes from leaders of both political parties in Washington and left the American national security establishment alarmed and dismayed.
Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats responded by stating that the intelligence assessment of Russia’s “ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy” has been clear and has been presented to Trump in an unvarnished and objective fashion.
Former CIA director John O. Brennan tweeted that Trump proved himself to be “wholly in the pocket of Putin” and that his comments were “nothing short of treasonous.”
Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said “there is no question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to undermine democracy.”
And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the Helsinki summit “a tragic mistake,” arguing that Trump delivered “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”
For three straight days leading up to the summit, Trump vented on Twitter and stewed in private with advisers over the indictments of a dozen Russian intelligence officers. The probe, overseen by Mueller, has produced charges against or guilty pleas from 32 Russians and Americans, including charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is in jail.
In a show of bonhomie, Putin, who hosted the World Cup soccer tournament that concluded Sunday in Moscow, handed Trump a souvenir soccer ball. “Now the ball is in your court,” Putin said. The United States, Canada and Mexico will jointly host the World Cup in 2026, after Qatar in 2022.
Trump tossed the ball to first lady Melania Trump, who was sitting in the front row at the news conference, and said they would give it to their son, Barron, 12.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who was critical of Trump’s performance Monday, tweeted, “If it were me, I’d check the soccer ball for listening devices and never allow it in the White House.”
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ahead-of-putin-summit-trump-faults-us-stupidity-for-poor-relations-with-russia/2018/07/16/297f671c-88c0-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html