Category: The News And Times Blog

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By Steve Neavling

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, who is spreading debunked conspiracy theories about the FBI’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, said the bureau is “going down.”

In an interview with right-wing commentator Lara Logan,  the Louisiana Republican continued to advance his baseless theories about the FBI. This time, he claimed the FBI tracked Trump supporters just prior to the insurrection and treated them as terrorists. 

He also claimed, without providing proof, that the FBI put those Trump supporters on a list, and they are still being tracked by U.S. marshals, despite not being convicted of a crime. 

“We are in uncharted waters as it relates to the weaponization of our government against American people,” he said. 

He added, “I am not frightened of these people.”

Higgins said, “They are not going to take us without a fight. I am going to fight legally and peacefully and within the parameters of the U.S. Constitution.

“But they’re going down. These men in their high perch and their position of power and authority that are walking upon our entire history, our deepest core principles. They’re not going to get away with it.”

During a congressional hearing last month, Higgins claimed the FBI had confidential informants who arrived in “ghost buses” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

He asked Wray about the buses. 

“These buses are nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants dressed as Trump supporters, deployed onto our capital on January 6,” he said. “Your day is coming, Mr. Wray.”

Republicans have repeatedly claimed that the FBI was behind the Jan. 6 attack, a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked. 

A binder containing highly classified information regarding Russia’s efforts to meddle with the 2016 election disappeared from the West Wing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency —- and has never been found, according to a report from CNN. 

The binder, described as 10 inches thick and containing a trove of information on the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” Russia investigation, was moved from the CIA’s headquarters to the White House days before Trump left office so the former president could declassify its contents.

According to a Jan. 2021 White House memo issued the day before President Biden’s inauguration, Trump wrote that he had personally requested and received “a binder of materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Portions of the documents in the binder have remained classified and have not been released to the Congress or the public.” 

“I determined that the materials in that binder should be declassified to the maximum extent possible,” Trump wrote. 

Sources tell CNN that the declassification order caused chaos within the White House. The binder reportedly contained extremely sensitive, raw intelligence on Russia gathered by the U.S. and NATO allies. As White House lawyers scrambled to appropriately redact its contents — and retrieve improperly redacted copies — the original, unredacted binder vanished. 

Despite Trump’s order, the Justice Department has yet to make the documents available to the public. The binder was not identified among the hundreds of classified documents found in Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago during a 2022 search by the FBI.

According to transcripts released by the Jan. 6 committee last year, in closed-door testimony, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee she was “almost positive” the binder went home with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. 

“I don’t think that would have been something that he would have destroyed. It was not returned anywhere, and it never left our office to go internally anywhere. It stayed in our safe in the office safe most of the time,” Hutchinson said, adding that she realized the binder was no longer in the safe on her last day at the White House. 

Hutchinson also told the committee that Meadows had fiercely guarded the original, unredacted copy of the binder. “He wanted to keep that one close hold,” she said. “He didn’t want that one to be widely known about. I just know Mr. Meadows. He wouldn’t have had that one copied unless he did it on his own.” 

Attorneys for Meadows strongly denied the claims. “Mr. Meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to requirements for the proper handling of classified material, any such material that he handled or was in his possession has been treated accordingly and any suggestion that he is responsible for any missing binder or other classified information is flat wrong,” Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger said in a statement to CNN.

While Trump has not been directly linked to the binder’s disappearance, Rolling Stone reported last year that in the final days of his presidency, Trump told advisers he needed to preserve documents related to Russia to prevent their destruction by his enemies. 

Sources told Rolling Stone that the former president raised concerns that the incoming Biden administration would seek to “shred,” bury, or destroy documents containing “evidence” that Trump was somehow wronged by federal investigations into Russian election interference. 

Intelligence officials had long resisted Trump’s efforts to declassify the document and continued to thwart him after he left office. Several of the hastily redacted versions of the binder are now housed in the National Archives, and it’s certainly possible that if Trump regains the presidency in 2024 he will revive his efforts to secure the release of their contents. 

The report found no collusion between Mr Trump and Putin, but it ruled that Mr Trump was “receptive” to offers of assistance from the Russians.

The binder is believed to have been held at the CIA, with intelligence officials requiring top-level clearance to handle it within the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

But it later went missing during a frantic attempt to declassify reports relating to Russian interference by Mr Trump and his aides as he prepared to leave office in January 2021, multiple sources told CNN.

One aide to Mark Meadows, Mr Trump’s chief of staff, has testified to Congress that she is “almost positive it went home with [him]”. Mr Meadows denies that allegation.

The binder had not been found in Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where other classified documents were discovered, despite aides’ attempts to track it down, according to the report.

The existence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has since become the subject of a federal indictment against Mr Trump, who faces trial in Florida.

While the disappearance of classified documents at the end of Mr Trump’s tenure in the White House has been previously reported and investigated, the disappearance of the Russian interference binder was revealed yesterday.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, appeared to suggest that the Kremlin is hoping Mr Trump will win next year’s presidential election.

Rare interview

Mr Peskov told NBC in a rare interview with foreign press that the Russian president wants a more constructive relationship with the US built on the “importance of dialogue”.

Asked directly about Mr Trump, Mr Peskov said Putin wants to work with “anyone who will understand that from now on, you have to be more careful with Russia, and you have to take into account its concerns”.

Mr Trump has previously been criticised for his approach to Russia, and has described Putin as “smart” and a “genius” for his approach to the invasion of Ukraine.

He has also promised to end the war in Ukraine “in one day” if he was elected president, by brokering negotiations between the two countries.

In return, Putin has said he “cannot help but feel happy” about Mr Trump’s plan to “resolve all burning issues within several days”. The former US president responded: “I like that he said that, because that means what I’m saying is right.”

However, on Friday, Mr Peskov said the conflict was “too complicated” to end so quickly, and admitted for the first time it was a “war” rather than a “special military operation” – the phrase Russia has used until now to describe its activity in Ukraine.

Attacking the US, the Russian spokesman said the Biden administration was fuelling the war and putting Ukrainians at risk.

He said: “You are telling them: ‘Go and die. Don’t worry, we will give you enough money and enough armaments, but you should go and die.’ And you know pretty well that they cannot win.”

A Russian intelligence file that reportedly went missing at the end of Donald Trump‘s presidency could “get somebody killed” if it had fallen into the hands of Moscow, a former FBI official has warned.

A binder containing U.S. and NATO-ally “raw intelligence” on Russia and Russian agents was reportedly last seen at the White House during the former president’s final days in office.

Only lawmakers and congressional aides with top-secret security clearances could view the 10-inch-thick “Crossfire Hurricane” document related to Russian meddling in the 2016 election at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia. Russia has repeatedly denied interfering in the election, while Trump has called the FBI‘s investigation into the claims a hoax.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and former President Donald Trump in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi said a Russian intelligence file that went missing near the end of Trump’s presidency could compromise U.S. assets. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images

The disappearance of the document, has sparked fears that sensitive information could be shared, with a U.S. official telling The New York Timesthe matter was of such concern that the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed about it.

“We’ve got to know what happened with this binder and more importantly, whether this was a mere accident or whether the intention was to hand it to Russia to expose US Intel sources and methods against Russia,” Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, told MSNBC.

“A person who’s positioned and knows who’s reading this, like maybe a Russian official can easily discern sources and methods from it,” he told the network for which he is a contributor. “For example, if it says, ‘on this date, Vladimir Putin had this conversation with this person’— that reveals who the human sources or whether there’s a microphone in Putin’s office or not.

“All of that could literally get somebody killed or cause us to lose well-placed technical methods that that are in place,” he said.

Trump issued an order with the aim of declassifying most of the binder’s contents before he left office, with a source close to the former president telling the New York Times that the binder’s contents captured his attention. A redacted version is available on the FBI website.

During the segment, Figliuzzi suggested there should be a warrant issued to search the home of former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who has been blamed for the document’s disappearance by both White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and Trump himself.

George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer for Meadows, told the Times the former chief of staff was not responsible and “never took any copy of that binder home at any time.” Newsweek has contacted Terwilliger and the Trump team for comment.

Last week, the former president’s estranged niece, Mary Trump, alleged in a blog post that the former president may have sold or given the document to Russia, without providing any evidence. As previously reported by Newsweek, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek he rejected the claim, saying: “what proof do you have?”

The report found no collusion between Mr Trump and Putin, but it ruled that Mr Trump was “receptive” to offers of assistance from the Russians.

The binder is believed to have been held at the CIA, with intelligence officials requiring top-level clearance to handle it within the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

But it later went missing during a frantic attempt to declassify reports relating to Russian interference by Mr Trump and his aides as he prepared to leave office in January 2021, multiple sources told CNN.

One aide to Mark Meadows, Mr Trump’s chief of staff, has testified to Congress that she is “almost positive it went home with [him]”. Mr Meadows denies that allegation.

The binder had not been found in Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where other classified documents were discovered, despite aides’ attempts to track it down, according to the report.

The existence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has since become the subject of a federal indictment against Mr Trump, who faces trial in Florida.

While the disappearance of classified documents at the end of Mr Trump’s tenure in the White House has been previously reported and investigated, the disappearance of the Russian interference binder was revealed yesterday.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, appeared to suggest that the Kremlin is hoping Mr Trump will win next year’s presidential election.

Rare interview

Mr Peskov told NBC in a rare interview with foreign press that the Russian president wants a more constructive relationship with the US built on the “importance of dialogue”.

Asked directly about Mr Trump, Mr Peskov said Putin wants to work with “anyone who will understand that from now on, you have to be more careful with Russia, and you have to take into account its concerns”.

Mr Trump has previously been criticised for his approach to Russia, and has described Putin as “smart” and a “genius” for his approach to the invasion of Ukraine.

He has also promised to end the war in Ukraine “in one day” if he was elected president, by brokering negotiations between the two countries.

In return, Putin has said he “cannot help but feel happy” about Mr Trump’s plan to “resolve all burning issues within several days”. The former US president responded: “I like that he said that, because that means what I’m saying is right.”

However, on Friday, Mr Peskov said the conflict was “too complicated” to end so quickly, and admitted for the first time it was a “war” rather than a “special military operation” – the phrase Russia has used until now to describe its activity in Ukraine.

Attacking the US, the Russian spokesman said the Biden administration was fuelling the war and putting Ukrainians at risk.

He said: “You are telling them: ‘Go and die. Don’t worry, we will give you enough money and enough armaments, but you should go and die.’ And you know pretty well that they cannot win.”

A majority of Americans and a majority of Congress want to help Ukraine win the war against Russia, and to stop the spread of autocracy into Europe. A majority of people in the European Union and a majority of EU leaders want the same. But small minorities of lawmakers—some inspired by Russian President Vladimir Putin or his money, some bent on bargaining for other things—have managed to block or delay that aid.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the crunch has arrived. The far-right faction that now controls the Republican Party captured the House last year and has successfully blocked a new spending bill for many months.The prime minister of Hungary, himself a de facto autocrat, is also blocking an EU financial package for Ukraine. Eventually the European prime ministers and the Biden administration alike may well do deals and allocate the money. But in the meantime—and just in case they fail—there is something else that American and European governments can do.

George Packer: ‘We only need some metal things’

At the very beginning of the conflict, the U.S., the EU, the United Kingdom, and other democratic governments jointly froze more than $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, mostly in Europe. This is money that Russia cannot sell or borrow against. Nor can Russia make use of any of the interest this money earns. At the time, many believed that the decision to freeze these assets would shock the Russian government into pulling back. That did not happen. After nearly two years, the countries that hold these assets—all of them—should take the next step and transfer the money to Ukraine.

Lawrence Tribe, the American constitutional scholar, has been promoting this idea for some time. In September, he and a team of lawyers published a 187-page report making the “legal, practical, and moral case” for transferring Russian assets to Ukraine. The moral argument is the easiest: Russia should pay for the damage it has done to Ukraine. The fundamental legal case, Tribe told me, rests on the many treaties that Russia broke by invading Ukraine, destroying whole cities, murdering civilians, deliberately damaging power grids and grain storage. By doing so, Russia lost any standing to complain about the violation of its sovereignty or property rights, since it denies those to Ukraine.

In truth, we in the West already crossed that bridge when we froze the assets in the first place. “If you have the authority to freeze the assets,” Tribe told me, “you have taken them away from the sovereign that claimed to be their owner. Why should they now have to lie idle while a country is decimated?” The frozen assets would solve some of Ukraine’s immediate budgetary and financial problems. More important, $300 billion is a reasonable down payment on the reparations that Russia should pay to Ukraine. Russian money should rightly compensate Ukrainians for the harm that Russia has done, and help rebuild the Ukrainian infrastructure that Russia destroyed.

Casey Michel: Make Russia pay

The strongest Western objections to transferring the frozen Russian money to Ukraine have been practical ones. Tribe cited an “inchoate concern that hegemony of the dollar will be threatened, and people’s willingness to park reserves in the U.S. and other Western countries will be jeopardized.” Some countries may fear that their own assets could be at risk if kept in Western financial institutions, and will instead place them in China or elsewhere. A handful of Europeans fear that redistributing the money would set a precedent, encouraging others to take their own national assets. A range of public officials, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and former World Bank President Robert Zoellick as well as David Cameron, the new British foreign secretary and former prime minister, have nevertheless argued in favor of the seizure. There isn’t an alternative reserve currency to the dollar right now, or anywhere safe outside the Western-dominated financial system for investors to go. Besides, as Tribe’s report argues, “assisting Ukraine in its time of need is worth the speculative risk to the dollar.”

This part of the argument has more significance now than it did in September, when Tribe and his colleagues published their report, because the stakes for Ukraine are higher and the need to take risks is greater. The crisis in Western funding—a crisis caused, I repeat, by pro-Russian politicians and factions in our own societies, some of whom are coordinating their activity with Russia—is now acute. It is also visibly emboldening Putin, who last week gave a press conference restating his goal in Ukraine, which is the same as it was two years ago: the destruction of the Ukrainian state. The dysfunction in Washington and Brussels is bolstering Putin’s belief that he will win the war simply by waiting for the West to give up.

Handing $300 billion of Russian assets to Ukraine will put a dent in this confidence. It will show Putin that the West is willing to take creative, even unprecedented, measures to win the war. It will also be popular, not only in Ukraine but in the U.S. and Europe. Most people will intuitively understand the fairness of making Russia pay for its own acts of vandalism. Whatever reputational damage this transfer of assets might cause for the West, it is vanishingly small in comparison to the reputational damage that the West will suffer if Russia succeeds in conquering Ukraine. The sooner we make this decision, the more quickly the impact will be felt on the ground. What are we waiting for?

Senator Menendez’s Home Searched: Gold bars connected to co-defendant found  TickerTV News

По словам министра обороны Грузии Джуаншера Бурчуладзе, через два года небо Тбилиси будет полностью защищено. По его словам, помощь, контракты и закупки, получаемые министерством в сотрудничестве с тем или иным международным игроком, будут служить повышению обороноспособность страны. Как указал глава Миноброны, в результате получения уже оформленных закупок через 2 года «у нас будет полностью защищенное […]

Израильская армия заявила в воскресенье, что ей удалось обнаружить самый большой туннель ХАМАС в секторе Газа. По словам представителей воеенного руководства страны, он расположен всего в нескольких сотнях метров от пограничного перехода Эрез. По словам фотографа AFP, получившего доступ к туннелю, его размеры позволяют проехать небольшому автомобилю. Туннель является частью более широкой разветвленной сети, общая длина которой составляет более четырех километров, отмечается в заявлении израильских военных. По их словам, строительство туннеля обошлось в миллионы долларов и заняло годы, а руководил проектом Мохаммад Яхья, брат главы ХАМАС Яхьи Синвара, который, как принято считать, был организатором нападения на Израиль 7 октября. Израильские военные говорят, что они обнаружили в туннеле большое количество оружия. По словам представителя израильской армии подполковника Ричарда Хехта, туннель был построен вблизи КПП Эрез, который Израиль использует для контролируемого въезда палестинских рабочих и лиц, нуждающихся в медицинской помощи. Лабиринт туннелей под прибрежной территорией Газы первоначально использовался, чтобы обойти израильско-египетскую блокаду, действующую с 2007 года. По имеющимся данным, несколько сот туннелей были проложены под границей с Египтом и в Синайской пустыне. В 2014 году сеть туннелей была расширена. Сообщается, что ХАМАС использует их для запусков ракет.

Напомним, что 7 октября боевики ХАМАС совершили внезапное нападение на юг Израиля, убив, по последним данным израильской стороны, около 1140 человек, в основном мирных жителей, и захватив около 250 заложников.

В ответ Израиль начал бомбардировки и наземное вторжение в сектор Газа с целью уничтожить ХАМАС.