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But according to a
Daily Beast article published Thursday, Kallstrom first denied speaking at all to any active FBI agents and said his assessment of the mood of the bureau’s rank and file was based exclusively on conversations with retired agents. But later in that same interview, he said that he did interact with active agents who had reached out to him.

Kallstrom stuck with that story Thursday night on Fox News’s “The Kelly File,” where he disputed the Daily Beast’s assessment that he had claimed to have spoken with active FBI agents investigating Clinton.

“Well, they can write what they want. I never did claim I talked to the actual agents. I would never do that. I would never call up people that were investigating something and even put them on the spot. I wouldn’t do that,” Kallstrom said. “But I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of people in the FBI — mostly retired people and some people that are currently on the job that are not directly involved, but, you know, it’s a small organization. You know, they know what’s going on.”

“And the agents are furious. And I haven’t walked anything back,” he continued. “I didn’t walk anything up that deserved to be walked back. So I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Kallstrom, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, is the founder of the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, which was the beneficiary of the fundraiser Trump held last January instead of attending a GOP primary debate in Iowa. According to the Daily Beast, Kallstrom’s foundation has received at least three major gifts from the Manhattan billionaire, two of which came during the campaign, totaling over $1.3 million.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who Kallstrom told the Daily Beast is “a very good friend” of his, has similarly claimed to have a pipeline of information coming from the FBI’s rank and file, offering a similar assessment of its mood to the one Kallstrom has. A week ago, Giuliani teased “a couple of surprises” from the Trump campaign just days before Comey announced that the FBI is examining additional, potentially new evidence related to Clinton’s email scandal. He declined to elaborate at the time what those surprises would be, but said they would be “enormously effective.”

Jason Miller, the senior communications adviser to Trump’s campaign, told the New York Times that Giuliani did not have advance notice of Comey’s announcement.

“Rudy was just having fun,” Miller said. “To keep the other side on their toes.”

Disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner is no predator and should be spared from prison at his sentencing for sexting with a 15-year-old North Carolina girl who dreamed about affecting the U.S. presidential election, his lawyers told a judge on Wednesday.

The submission in Manhattan federal court referenced “Anthony’s operatic self-destruction,” describing the crime as “the final act … born of deep sickness.” But it blamed the girl, saying she has told government investigators it had been a goal of hers to affect last year’s election.

The court filing included letters from Weiner and his estranged wife, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who appeared with him in state court earlier in the day at a divorce proceeding.

In a heavily blacked-out letter, Abedin wrote: “With Anthony, I have repeatedly found myself in circumstances I never imagined. I am devastated by Anthony’s actions, and I understand he must face their consequences.”

Related: Anthony Weiner Pleads Guilty in Teen Sexting Case

The lawyers described Weiner, a once powerful Democrat, as having committed a crime, though “one far less egregious than any sexting case that has been prosecuted in this district.”

They said he never sought out teenagers on the internet and didn’t engage in other predatory behaviors typical of those arrested in similar cases.

“He responded to the victim’s request for sexually explicit messages not because she was a teenager but in spite of it,” the lawyers said.

The lawyers said Weiner had caught the eye of “a curious high school student, looking to generate material for a book the government has disclosed she is now shopping to publishers.” They said the girl documented their interactions from the outset, photographing her phone to preserve messages, before selling her story to a British tabloid for $30,000.

The lawyers said the investigation of Weiner was “quite improperly injected into the U.S. presidential election, quite possibly affecting its outcome.”

“After the election was over, the high school student told government investigators that this had been one of her goals from the outset,” Weiner’s lawyers wrote.

The girl told Inside Edition in an interview she knew that Clinton, a Democratic former U.S. secretary of state, senator and first lady, would be running for president last year.

“I wanted to see if Anthony was still up to the same antics,” she said.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, who will sentence Weiner on Sept. 25, Weiner wrote that “regret for my crime is profound” and that he had endangered the well-being of a 15-year-old girl.

“My continued acting out over years crushed the aspirations of my wife and ruined our marriage,” he said.

Hours earlier, Weiner and Abedin appeared briefly before a judge in their divorce case. They sat side by side and chatted casually while their lawyers met with state Supreme Court Justice Michael L. Katz.

An FBI investigation into Weiner’s online relationship with the girl became a factor in the presidential election. Then-FBI Director James Comey announced in late October 2016 that an investigation into emails that had been kept on Clinton’s private server needed to be reopened while the bureau looked at emails found during the Weiner probe.

Although Comey announced two days before the November election that nothing was found in the new search that would result in charges against Clinton, she has cited it as a reason for her loss to Donald Trump.

Trump, a Republican, became president in January and dismissed Comey in May.

Weiner, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2005 and 2013, is eligible for a harsh term of years in prison in the sexting case but is likely to face less time. As part of his plea bargain, he agreed not to appeal any sentence between 21 and 27 months.

In his sentencing letter, Weiner wrote that he now attends daily “mutual support meetings” as part of treatment and mentors those new to the program.

He said he was profoundly sorry to his victim.

“My life isn’t big and loud anymore,” he said. “Every day I quietly do what I can to keep getting better and to fix the damage I’ve done.”

Veteran activist Noam Chomsky has accused Israel of “brazenly” interfering in US electoral politics in a way that vastly outweighs any efforts that may have been carried out by Russia.

In comments in which he accused much of the media of concentrating on stories he considered marginal and ignoring issues such as the “existential threat” of climate change, the 89-year-old linguist said in much of the world, the US media’s focus with Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 was “a joke”.

“First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support,” he said.

Speaking to Democracy Now, Mr Chomsky added: “Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies – what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015.”

In March 2015, at the invitation of then Republican House Speaker John Boehner, and assisted by Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the joint houses of Congress about the yet to be signed Iran nuclear deal. He did so without formally informing the White House, something said to have infuriated Barack Obama, whose administration would the following month join a seven-party agreement to limit Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.

In a speech to Congress that was boycotted by more than 50 Democrats, Mr Netanyahu made clear his opposition to the deal.

“This deal won’t be a farewell to arms,” said Mr Netanyahu, to loud applause. “It would be a farewell to arms control. And the Middle East would soon be crisscrossed by nuclear tripwires. A region where small skirmishes can trigger big wars would turn into a nuclear tinderbox.”

Attacking Mr Obama proposal of dealing with Iran, he added: “We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”

Mr Chomsky said Mr Putin had never made such a speech to Congress, which political observers said was unique in the way a foreign leader so acidly attacked the policy of the US government.

“Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to…calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president,” he said.

“And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of- foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.”

The power of the pro-Israel lobby has long been one of the contentious, and disputed, issues in Washington. In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, which described the lobby as “loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction”.

The coalition includes groups such as the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) a US-based pro-Israel lobbying group this year has spent $1.75m to promote pro-Israel policies.

The group’s annual convention is a frequent stopping off point for politicians seeking election or reelection, and Mr Netanyahu has addressed it several times. In 2016, top speakers included Vice President Joe Biden, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Governor John Kasich, Senator Ted Cruz, and Speaker Paul Ryan.

The group’s website says: “The mission of AIPAC is to strengthen, protect and promote the US-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel.”

Neither the Israeli Embassy in Washington or AIPAC immediately responded to enquiries about Mr Chomsky’s claim.

In his comments to Democracy Now, Mr Chomsky said the media was “focusing on issues which are pretty marginal. There are much more serious issues that are being put to the side”.

“Of all Trump’s policies, the one that is the most dangerous and destructive, in fact poses an existential threat, is his policies on climate change, on global warming,” he said.

“That’s really destructive. And we’re facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage. The effects are already visible but nothing like what’s going to come.”

He added: “These are the kinds of issues that should be under discussion. Instead…here is a focus on what I believe are marginalia.”

Azerbaijani authorities have arrested a French national suspected of being a spy, Azerbaijan’s envoy to France said Tuesday amid a diplomatic spat with Paris which has been selling weapons to Baku’s rival, Armenia.

“Suspected of committing acts of espionage, Martin Ryan … was arrested on December 4,” Azerbaijan’s ambassador in Paris, Leyla Abdullayeva, told French newswire AFP.

Judicial authorities then “ordered his detention for a duration of four months,” the ambassador said, adding that the French embassy in Baku was informed “as soon as he was arrested.”

The news comes amid escalating diplomatic tensions between Azerbaijan and France over Paris’ support for Armenia.

France, which is home to the largest Armenian diaspora community in Europe, has stepped up its defense cooperation with Armenia in recent months.

Following Azerbaijan’s seizure of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, the French government in October announced it would sell air defense systems to Yerevan.

In December, Baku expelled two French diplomats over “conduct that is not compatible with their diplomatic status.” The French foreign ministry retaliated by expelling two Azerbaijani diplomats a day later, and said it “categorically reject[ed] the allegations.”

MOSCOW (AP) — A U.S. citizen has been arrested on drug charges in Russia, officials said Tuesday, a move that comes amid soaring Russia-U.S. tensions over Ukraine.

The arrest of Robert Woodland Romanov was reported by the press service of the Moscow courts. It said the Ostankino District Court ruled on Saturday to keep him in custody for two months on charges of preparing to get involved in illegal drug trafficking pending an official investigation. It didn’t offer any details of the accusations.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Russian media noted that the name of the accused matches that of a U.S. citizen interviewed by the popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020.

In the interview, the man said that he was born in the Perm region in the Ural Mountains in 1991 and adopted by an American couple when he was two. He said that he traveled to Russia to find his Russian mother and eventually met her in a TV show in Moscow.

The man told Komsomolskaya Pravda that he liked living in Russia and decided to move there. The newspaper reported that he settled in the town of Dolgoprudny just outside Moscow and was working as an English teacher at a local school.

The news about the arrest come as Washington has sought to win the release of jailed Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich. The U.S. State Department said last month that it had put multiple offers on the table, but they had been rejected by the Russian government.

Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was detained in March while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, about 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) east of Moscow. He has remained behind bars ever since on espionage accusations that he and the Journal have denied. The U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained.

Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, has been jailed in Russia since his December 2018 arrest on espionage-related charges that both he and the U.S. government dispute. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Analysts have pointed out that Moscow could be using jailed Americans as bargaining chips amid U.S.-Russian tensions that soared when Russia sent troops into Ukraine. At least two U.S. citizens arrested in Russia in recent years — including WNBA star Brittney Griner — have been exchanged for Russians jailed in the U.S.

The Kremlin will seek to diffuse the public’s attention through a barrage of events, distracting people from economic problems and rumors of further mobilization.