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Post by Admin on Jul 23, 2018 18:21:39 GMT
A federal magistrate judge this week ordered that Butina must be jailed ahead of her trial on charges that she is a Russian agent, one tied to its FSB spy agency and one controlled from her first arrival as part of a deliberate influence campaign against the United States. Longtime readers will remember the many questions about how "infiltration" might have fit in to the broader campaign of active measures waged by Moscow for several years against the U.S. and the West. Butina has been traveling to the United States since 2015 and has been living in Washington, D.C., more or less full time on a student visa while enrolled at American University. She has been making contacts all along with conservative political leaders and via the National Rifle Association and at least one religious organization. With the assistance of a few Americans, she has been making clear all along to people she met that she provides a channel back to Moscow, according to court documents. Butina's attorney argues that the government's case is overblown. He also denies the charges against her and says the worst crime she has committed is convening a few dinners.
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Post by Admin on Jul 28, 2018 18:07:50 GMT
The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest, a Daily Beast forensic analysis reveals. That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference. McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia over the years, is widely considered to be among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats facing re-election this year as Republicans hope to hold their slim majority in the Senate. In 2016, President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points in the senator’s home state of Missouri. There’s no evidence to suggest that this attempt to lure McCaskill staffers was successful. The precise purpose of the approach was also unclear. Asked about the hack attempt by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, McCaskill told The Daily Beast on Thursday that she wasn’t yet prepared to discuss it. “I’m not going to speak of it right now,” she said. “I think we’ll have something on it next week. I’m not going to speak about it right now. I can’t confirm or do anything about it right now.”
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Post by Admin on Aug 7, 2018 18:06:09 GMT
Putin dismisses claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election, says Russia would react negatively to the expansion of NATO, blames terrorists for civilian casualties in Syria.
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2018 18:09:14 GMT
John Bolton, Dan Coats, Kirstjen Nielsen, Paul Nakasone and Christopher Wray join Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to outline the administration's strategy to combat U.S. election interference.
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Post by Admin on Aug 17, 2018 18:11:13 GMT
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent more than 2,200 days in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, should be granted immunity from prosecution if he agrees to testify in the US, Senator Rand Paul has said. “I think that he should be given immunity from prosecution in exchange for coming to the United States and testifying,” Paul said in an interview to the Gateway Pundit website. Paul believes that Assange “has information that is probably pertinent to the hacking of the Democratic emails that would be nice to hear.” But he doesn’t think Assange is likely to come and share it unless given “some type of immunity from prosecution.” Earlier this month the US Senate Intelligence Committee, investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, requested that the WikiLeaks editor testify. In a letter delivered to Assange, committee chairman Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) requested that Assange make himself available for a closed interview “at a mutually agreeable time and location.”
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