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Home Front: WoT

FBI Ramps Up Manhunt For Iranian Intelligence Officer Plotting To Kill Key Trump-Era Officials

2024-03-05

[DC] The FBI is ramping up efforts to hunt down an Iranian intelligence operative who is believed to be plotting the assassination of former senior Trump administration officials.

The FBI field office in Miami, Florida, published a wanted poster on Friday of Majid Dastjani Farahani, an Iranian officer linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, who is accused of working to recruit individuals to conduct operations on U.S. soil, including assassination and “surveillance activities focused on religious sites, businesses, and other facilities in the United States.” Among Farahani’s suspected targets are key Trump administration officials whom Iran seeks “revenge” against for the death of Qasem Soleimani, the former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) lethal Quds Force (QF).

“If you have any information concerning this person, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate,” reads the FBI poster. The poster includes a photo and physical description of Farahani, who the FBI said frequently travels to Iran and Venezuela.

Seeking Information: Iranian intel officer Majid Dastjani Farahani is wanted for questioning regarding the recruitment of individuals for operations in the U.S., to include lethal targeting of current/former USG officials. https://t.co/jyL3ZYRbo3
— FBI Miami (@FBIMiamiFL) March 1, 2024

The FBI did not say exactly who Farahani’s targets are beyond “current and former United States Government officials.”

Former President Donald Trump and senior administration officials ordered the drone strike that killed Soleimani in 2020, prompting anger from Tehran. Soleimani was a de facto celebrity among the Iranian population and held considerable power in the country’s military; he is seen by Iranians as a martyr after his death.

The U.S. previously indicted members of the IRGC in 2022 for plotting to assassinate former National Security Advisor John Bolton. U.S. officials told Semafor that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Special Envoy to Iran Brian Hook are also likely among Iran’s targets.

U.S. intelligence agencies are providing the aforementioned officials with 24/7 security, given the serious nature of the threats. The costs associated with just protecting Bolton and Robert O’Brien, Trump’s second and final National Security Advisor, were over $12 million for 2021 alone, according to CBS.

Pompeo, Bolton, Hook and Robert O’Brien are all on Iran’s sanctioned person list, as is Trump himself.

Already-strained relations between the U.S. and Iran grew worse following the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, which killed over 1,200 civilians and prompted a broader regional conflict. The U.S. is backing Israel’s sweeping counteroffensive against Hamas in Gaza while Iran continues to support Hamas, which is masterminded and funded by the country.

Tensions rose sharply again after Iranian-backed proxies launched an airstrike against a coalition military base in Jordan in early February and killed three U.S. troops. The U.S. launched a series of retaliatory airstrikes against the proxies in Iraq and Syria in the following days and weeks.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Donald Trump corrects the biggest mistake of his first term as president

2024-02-14

The View from Russia
[REGNUM] The more victories former US President Donald Trump wins in internal party elections - caucuses and primaries - the more actively influential figures in the American establishment, inconspicuous apparatchiks of the Republican Party, big business sharks, and conservative thought factories are preparing for his new presidential term - think-tanks.

They do not have a common vision of the situation, they often compete with each other, pursue conflicting goals, and sometimes even "hate each other with a passion," as one Trump campaign official put it. But there is one common desire for all these people and groups.

All of them are aimed at ensuring that Trump's new term will not be similar to his first presidency.

The consensus about 2016—2020 is that Trump essentially had no prepared team, people were recruited almost at random, key figures were knocked out in the first months of the presidency ( Michael Flynn, first National Security Advisor, Steve Bannon, chief strategy advisor) or changed chaotically ( Herbert McMaster, John Bolton - national security advisers, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ).

As a result, throughout the four years of Trump’s presidency, he did not have a strong and well-coordinated team, which significantly weakened his position both domestically and internationally.

Trump relied heavily on his personal friends and relatives (such as daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner ), but this network was too small to staff federal agencies with competent and loyal people.

In the end, what happened was what happened: it was not Trump who drained the "Washington swamp," but the swamp that sucked in his administration and deprived him (most likely through fraud) of his victory in the 2020 elections.

THE ROAD TO THE OVAL OFFICE
Planning revenge in the 2024 elections, both Trump himself and the pressure groups supporting him are seriously aimed at forming an effective, coherent and maximally efficient administration.

In order not to repeat the mistakes of the past, the selection and training of personnel for the future administration is distributed among several centers, primarily the well-known conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute. The Heritage Foundation is coordinating Project 2025, which, according to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Robrets, "aims to recruit and train a deep pool of patriotic Americans ready to serve their country on day one of the next administration."

AFPI has a similar mission. Founded in 2021 by first Trump administration alumni Brooke Rollins and Larry Kudlow, the Path to 2025 initiative promises to "ensure the strongest policymakers and workforce are in place on Day One in January 2025."

Both groups are trying to make Trump 2024 a "better" president: more effective, more ruthless, more committed to conservative dogma. But Heritage and AFPI represent different factions of Trumpism, and each is suspicious of the other.

AFPI operatives see Heritage as latecomers to the Trump train, establishment wolves in the shoes of "America First." Some at Heritage see AFPI as a bastion of precisely those untrustworthy Trump appointees—con artists and RINOs ("Republicans in Name Only") who are trading on their relationships with the president to ensure their ability to hold top positions in a future administration.

An important role in Project 2025 is played by John McEntee, Trump's former personal bodyguard, later director of the White House Office of Personnel Management, reporting personally to the president. After leaving the White House, McEntee created a special dating service for conservatives, The Right Stuff, and is now recruiting employees who are fanatically (like himself) devoted to Trump. To a large extent, the selection of candidates for leadership positions in the new administration depends on McEntee, who, apparently, has the full confidence of Trump.

Vice President: lady's first

Attorney General for Operation Retaliation

Secretary of State and National Security Advisor
Fairly long & detailed - (IMO) fairly comprehensive intro

Link

Fifth Column

Someone uploaded one of those viral

2023-11-23

The words of Australian leftwing “activist” blogger Caitlin Johnstone. For some reason the Ron Paul Institute likes to publish her stuff.

[Twitter] Someone uploaded one of those viral "help identify this racist jerk" clips featuring a man accosting a street vendor with awful Islamophobic vitriol, and it turned out he was the former US State Department Deputy Director in the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.

It sounds made up, but that’s exactly what just happened; Vice has a whole article out about it. The video was uploaded today, and within hours the man was identified as Stuart Seldowitz, who helped direct US diplomacy on Israel-Palestine from 1999 to 2003 and then served on the Obama administration’s National Security Council.

Seldowitz’s identity was confirmed by his former employer Gotham Government Relations, who released a statement denouncing him and saying they’ve ended all affiliation with him.

Seldowitz is seen hounding the New York City vendors in multiple different videos wearing multiple different outfits,

...how very odd that someone was following him around the big city to film this...

showing a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse. He told them while fully aware he was being filmed that Israel killing thousands of Palestinian kids "wasn’t enough",

...to be more precise, he said if Israel killed 4,000 Palestinian children, it wasn’t enough. There was no admission of culpability from someone not in a position to know the facts. But Ms Johnstone claims to be an activist journalist, and her American husband/co-writer believes she is a good person instead of calling her on her propagandizing...

insulted their religion, threatened them, mocked their intelligence and their English, called them terrorists, and asked "Did you rape your daughter like Mohammed did?" From the videos he appears to be harassing them for no reason other than because they are Muslims selling halal food.

That such a horrible person could climb his way to the highest echelons of the world’s most powerful government — working on Palestinian affairs no less — illustrates an important point about the US empire and what it is. There are no barriers stopping such creatures from rising to the top of that power structure, just the opposite in fact — they get an express lane to the top. That’s why bloodthirsty swamp monsters like John Bolton, Lindsey Graham, Victoria Nuland and Elliott Abrams find themselves so intimately involved with US policymaking.

That’s the true face of the US empire, right there. That’s the empire at its most honest. Not dressed up in affable charm and slick PR work, but sneering and hurling racist invective at immigrants who are just trying to do their jobs in peace. Not performing carefully rehearsed faces of compassion for the Palestinians who are being tragically unintentionally killed as collateral damage in Israel’s war of defense against Hamas, but staring right into the camera and saying "If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough."

Ah. She got the if in there this time.

Too many people look at Israel as something separate from the US empire, seeing it as a small nation run by a historically mistreated ethnic group that everyone singles out and picks on unfairly. If you look at Israel separately from the US-centralized global power structure, it feels off to have any forceful animosity toward Israel and its government, because it feels like you’re picking on the little guy.

It’s only when you see clearly that Israel is just an arm of the same empire that’s been murdering people by the millions around the world with nonstop invasions, bombing campaigns, proxy conflicts, starvation sanctions and CIA coups that you understand that, yes, Israel really is exactly as evil as it appears to be, and its behavior in Gaza is exactly what it looks like.

Wheeeee! And there she goes, activisting set to eleven.

The US empire backs Israel for the same reason it backs most of the world’s dictatorships: because a globe-spanning empire can only be held together by nonstop violence and tyranny. Israel and other US-aligned states in the middle east are like the chair and the whip of a lion tamer — weapons used to violently abuse the populations of a crucial geostrategic region into compliance. It suits the empire perfectly to have a nuclear-armed government which exists in a constant state of war in the middle east governed by officials who speak English with American accents and interests which are reliably in alignment with those of the United States.

Stuart Seldowitz is not an aberration but a perfect manifestation of all this.

Yeah? Then why is this the only report of some American Jewish guy yelling at Moslem immigrants?

This is the sort of mind which keeps the empire marching along from administration to administration no matter who Americans elect. This is the sort of mind which keeps the weapons flowing, the blood pouring, the fossil fuels burning, and the terrified screams which power the imperial machine continually erupting into the night sky.

The New York Post has the deets. The jerk harassed one vender several times over two weeks, and lots of people are mad at him now, including the lobbyist company he worked for until the video came out. He was never as important as Ms Johnstone makes him put to be, though — just an assistant department head, as far as I can tell, and now an example of the “Hey, kids, get off of my lawn!” style of invective.
Update from the NY Post at 7:30 a.m.: He’s been arrested for harassment, and the vender is talking of suing him.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Biden has a secret, illegal deal with Iran that gives mullahs everything they want

2023-09-14

[NYPOST] In the latest phase of an unacknowledged and unlawful nuclear deal between the United States and Iran, President Joe The Big Guy Biden
Joe <q>The Big Guy</q> Biden

...46th president of the U.S. S Joe's wife and daughter weren't killed by a drunk driver. He didn't graduate with three or even two degrees, wasn't in the top half of his law class, and his daddy didn't come home from a hard day's work in the mines and play football with the guys. The NAACP hasn't endorsed him every time he's run....
this week formally approved giving the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism another $6 billion — ostensibly for the release of five Americans held hostage in Tehran.

But in bypassing Congress to avoid a political fight he knows he’d lose, Biden is not only guaranteeing more hostage-taking of American citizens, he’s also subsidizing Iran’s terrorism, military support for Russia, nuclear-weapons capabilities and repression of Iranian women.

In May, a top White House official visited Oman to pass a message to Tehran: Washington wants to broker a nuclear deal in secret.

Biden would lift sanctions restrictions on Iranian funds held outside its borders, and in exchange Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
would slow its steady march toward a nuclear-weapons threshold.

Iran would be free to continue hunting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former Special Envoy for Iran Brian Hook and other Americans.

Tehran could keep directing attacks against Israel through its Hezbollah, Hamas, the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®, and Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
terror proxies.

Biden has no secrets.

Link

Government Corruption

John Bolton Argues a Conviction ‘May Change Minds About Trump'

2023-08-18

[Breitbart] John Bolton, during a recent appearance on CNN, argued that Republicans should not back former President Donald Trump in 2024, as he could be a "convicted felon" by the 2024 Republican primary convention, and it would look bad for the Republican Party.

Bolton, who is anti-Trump but served as Trump’s national security adviser, said he would ask Republican voters, "Do you really want to vote for Donald Trump even if you don’t mind voting for a convicted felon for President?"

"I think a lot more Republicans will be bothered by that. And people think the broader public is certainly going to be bothered from it and it could be catastrophic for the Republican Party," he said.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Darth Bolton warns that prosecuting Trump is like playing 'Russian roulette' ‐ and it could backfire big time

2023-08-05

[BLAZE] Republican John Bolton warned Thursday that sending former President Donald Trump to trial is a "form of Russian roulette" that may backfire in a big way.

On Thursday, Trump was arraigned in federal court on four new criminal charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Trump pleaded not guilty.

While a court date has not yet been set for trial, Bolton told CNN anchor Jake Tapper that prosecuting the former president is risky — no matter how you cut it.

"I think it's the right thing to do, but it is a modified form of Russian roulette," Bolton declared.

"If Trump is convicted in one or both of the federal cases, I think that will turn things upside down. I think he could be denied the Republican nomination. He'd certainly lose the election," he continued. "But if he is acquitted or a hung jury results, which I think would be understood by most people as being the equivalent of acquittal, I think he would get the Republican nomination, and he could quite possibly win the election on the back of that."

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

US sanctions IRGC member over alleged plot to kill ex-Trump aide Bolton

2023-06-03

[IsraelTimes] Washington also targets other Iranians for suspected conspiracies to murder perceived threats against Tehran, which is seeking to avenge 2020 killing of top general

The US imposed sanctions Thursday on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official and others it says took part in wide-ranging plots to kill former national security adviser John Bolton and others around the world, including at least one additional US government official.

The alleged 2021 plot against Bolton, one of the best-documented of the alleged liquidation efforts, is part of what US prosecutors and former government officials describe as ongoing efforts by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to kill Trump-era officials behind a 2020 US ~~Arclight~~ airstrike

Link

Home Front: Politix

Tucker floats the idea of conducting his own RNC debate

2023-05-06

[PJ] We still don’t know for sure if Ron DeSantis is going to run. The rest of the field after Donald Trump is a bunch of weak controlled opposition Republicans including Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, John Bolton, and the immortal Asa Hutchinson. In light of all this, the Republican primary debates could end up being a major snoozefest. Tucker Carlson, however, has a tantalizingly different idea: he is considering hosting his own debate, outside of the Republic National Committee framework. Now that could liven things up considerably.

The snag that Carlson is still an employee of Fox News remains, but the Washington Post reported Thursday that if he is "willing to walk away from some of the millions that Fox is contractually obligated to pay him, if that would give him the flexibility to have a prominent voice in the 2024 election cycle." Bernie Sanders would tell Tucker that he has plenty of money already, so why not? If he does go this route, Carlson could "moderate his own GOP candidate forum, outside of the usual strictures of the Republican National Committee debate system."

That would be a breath of fresh air, as anyone who remembers the viciously biased performance of Chris Wallace in the first 2020 debate between Trump and Old Joe Biden can attest. Wallace did everything he could to sandbag Trump and let Old Joe get away with a cornucopia of lies, false denials, and false accusations. It was clear that Wallace was angling for the job he soon got at CNN, where he was a spectacular failure, and that he was eager in his debate "moderation" to make the doddering kleptocrat Biden look as good as possible, and the America-First president as bad as possible.

A debate with Tucker Carlson moderating would be an entirely different matter. It opens up the possibility of candidates, for the very first time in the history of modern presidential debates, being asked questions from a patriotic perspective and confronted about issues that the establishment media refuses to discuss. Instead of being led for the umpteenth time to the prepackaged conclusions that the Leftist political and media establishment demands that we accept, there might be an opportunity for candidates to think beyond sound bites and shibboleths and actually engage in some independent thought. Even in a debate featuring such lackluster establishment hacks as John Bolton and Asa Hutchinson, that could be positively scintillating.

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

America proposes a new grandiose foreign policy strategy

2023-04-19

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Petr Akopov

[RIA] "We need to make NATO global, and after the victory of Ukraine, we should seek to divide the Russia-China axis" - such a "new American grand strategy to counter Russia and China" offers former US national security adviser John Bolton in his article in The Wall Street Journal . He calls these the main tasks for the next US president, while he does not want to see either Biden or his former boss Trump.

What John Bolton has on his tongue is what Uncle Sam has on his mind - is this a fair conclusion? Or, to put it more simply, can Bolton's public proposals be seen as the hidden desires of the American establishment or the "deep state", the Washington "swamp"?

You can, of course, answer in the negative, especially since Bolton has long had a reputation as a "super hawk": in the 2000s he was one of those who promoted the idea of a US attack on Iran (which would lead to consequences an order of magnitude worse than even an invasion of Iraq), and for a year and a half of work in the White House (in 2018-2019) earned Trump the title of warmonger.
*Ahem* Ima call bullshit right there. Trump did more to disentangle us from foreign wars than anyone else.
Bolton is really as aggressive as possible, but he is also one of the best American specialists in international affairs. And the fact that he is now advocating a radical agenda is explained not only by his character, but also by what he sees: the United States is losing its global position. Bolton is one of those who believe that the United States can maintain its hegemony, it just needs to act much more firmly, assertively and consistently to do this. What does he offer?

In his previous article in The Wall Street Journal (mid-March), he criticized Biden for being inconsistent and cautious, saying that he wants Russia to lose, but does not want Ukraine to "really win." Fear of an escalation of the conflict, a clash between Russia and NATO, and even a nuclear war, Bolton resolutely brushes aside, considering all this a Russian bluff and part of our deterrence strategy (which, in his opinion, eventually works).

Bolton is in favor of allowing Ukraine to use American weapons to strike Russian territory and, in general, "focus on deterring Putin in various scenarios, up to the threat of his overthrow." That is, to work towards the liquidation of Russia - and he talks about this in his next article.

In which it is no longer about the Ukrainian conflict, but about a new "grand" American strategy, because "the United States and allies cannot afford to drift aimlessly as the tectonic plates shift in history." A new era has begun in which America is being challenged and must watch first for threats from a rising Russia-China axis, as well as "rogue states like Iran and North Korea."

Bolton lists three critical elements of the new strategy.

For starters, Washington and its allies should immediately increase defense budgets to Reagan-era levels (about six percent of GDP) and maintain such spending for the foreseeable future, without stopping at the fact that it will require cuts in other spending items.

There is even nothing to comment on here: a threefold increase in spending is impossible in any of the European NATO countries without changing the very model of their development. Simply put, European societies will not agree to this - and no amount of fanning of the "Russian threat" will help here. Polish leaders can scare the French and Germans with Putin's tanks in Berlin and Paris , but no one believes them.

Bolton's second proposal concerns American collective defense alliances - they need to be "improved and expanded": "We must make NATO a global organization by inviting Japan , Australia , Israel and other countries committed to the goals of NATO defense spending. <…> An Asian NATO is not inevitable, but there is huge room for innovative alliances with like-minded states, including increased cooperation between South Korea , Japan and the United States."

Worldwide NATO to contain Russia and China ? Yes, this is it - only its participants were not asked. Europeans are categorically against the spread of the principle of Atlantic solidarity to the Pacific Ocean - only Great Britain is playing this , well, Bolton's idea in itself is fully consistent with the principles of Anglo-Saxon geopolitics. Britain, USA, Canada , Australia - seniority in this family may change, but the goal, that is, global domination, remains unchanged.

It will not work to mobilize Europe on the Asian fronts, and the Asians themselves are not ready to line up in the anti-Chinese line. Moreover, Bolton believes: "The United States, together with partners in Europe and Asia , should build Taiwan into a collective security system and increase the amount of military assistance," that is, be ready for a direct conflict with Beijing . After all, "inclusion of Taiwan in the system of collective security" will automatically immediately lead to a complete rupture of relations with China - even Japan and South Korea will not subscribe to this.

And the idea of including Israel in a new global NATO is really "grand" in terms of possible consequences for the United States. The point is not even that European countries will never agree to this: there is hardly a better way to accelerate the already catastrophic decline in the influence of the Anglo-Saxons in the Greater Middle East and in the Islamic world as a whole, how to start the procedure for joining the Jewish state to the Atlantic alliance.

But the unrealistic nature of the first two elements of the strategy pales in comparison to the third, final one: “After Ukraine wins the military conflict with Russia, we should strive to split the Russia-China axis. Moscow’s defeat could overthrow the Putin regime . "Russia, especially east of the Urals , cannot be considered unthinkable. Beijing certainly has its eyes on this vast territory. The uncontrolled collapse of Russia could give China direct access to the Arctic , including even the Bering Strait bordering Alaska."

Here Bolton only partly echoes Henry Kissinger , who also fears the collapse of a nuclear-armed Russia. But if the former Secretary of State proposes to avoid this after the end of the war, to find a worthy place for Russia in the new world order (that is, to give some kind of security guarantees), then Bolton does not just believe in the victory of Ukraine (that is, the West) - for him, the collapse of Russia is only dangerous due to the fact that it can strengthen China. To prevent this, it will be necessary to somehow drag the defeated, weakened post-Putin Russia away from China, probably by intimidating it with a Chinese invasion and promising to restore contacts and trade with Europe and with the West in general.

The plan is grandiose - in its madness. Because he considers Russia only as the subject of someone else's will and external strategies, denying her the presence of her own strategy and subjectivity.

Russia began its pivot to the East (of which relations with China are an important part) even before Crimea—yes, it was slower than it wanted to be, but it was a conscious strategic choice. Russia staked on breaking the Atlantic model of globalization (that is, the era of American hegemony) more than a decade and a half ago. In the same years, Russia took up the reintegration of the post-Soviet space through the construction of the Eurasian Union (which was created with an eye on the further inclusion of Ukraine).

That is, Russia's strategy is consistent and unchanged - despite the gravity of the open conflict with the West, led by the Anglo-Saxons. Russia cannot lose to the West in Ukraine, Russia cannot disintegrate, Russia cannot become part of China, Russia is not going to abandon its favorable course towards a strategic alliance with China, Russia does not and will not trust the West. And most importantly, Russia is absolutely sure that the absolute majority of mankind is counting on its work to accelerate the decline of the Anglo-Saxon world order.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Stay in Your Lane

2023-04-12

[Yahoo] Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, asking a court to block elements of the congressional inquiry into his case against former President Donald Trump.

Calling it an "unprecedently brazen and unconstitutional attack" of an ongoing investigation, Bragg said in the suit that allowing Jordan's demands, including subpoenaing former Assistant DA Mark Pomerantz, would cause "imminent irreparable harm if the secret and privileged material is compelled to be disclosed."

Bragg's suit asked the court to block Jordan's subpoena of Pomerantz. Jordan, R-Ohio, wants Pomerantz to sit for a deposition as part of the Judiciary panel's investigation into the indictment of Trump. The former president pleaded not guilty last week to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his role in hush money payments made toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign.

"Chairman Jordan’s subpoena is an unconstitutional attempt to undermine an ongoing New York felony criminal prosecution and investigation," Bragg said in a statement Tuesday. "As our complaint details, this is an unprecedented, illegitimate interference by Congress that lacks any legal merit and defies basic principles of federalism."

A federal judge in New York has scheduled an April 19 hearing for Bragg’s lawsuit.

Bragg is also suing Pomerantz "to protect the District Attorney’s Office’s interests and privileges and in light of the District Attorney’s Office’s instruction to Mr. Pomerantz not to provide any information or materials relating to his work in the District Attorney’s Office in response to the subpoena."

In response, Jordan tweeted that the lawsuit attempts to block congressional oversight.

"First, they indict a president for no crime," he wrote. "Then, they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it."

He who pays the piper calls the tune. Which is why a few schools are giving up federal funds.

Pomerantz didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit said that beginning in March, Jordan launched a "transparent campaign to intimidate and attack" Bragg, "making demands for confidential documents and testimony from the District Attorney himself as well as his current and former employees and officials."

Bragg's office argued that "basic principles of federalism and common sense" as well as Supreme Court precedent forbid Congress from demanding "highly sensitive and confidential local prosecutorial information."

Congress doesn't have any power to supervise state criminal prosecutions or power to serve subpoenas "for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to punish those investigated," the lawsuit said.

Jordan's subpoena of Pomerantz last week "is no less of an affront to state sovereignty than subpoenaing the District Attorney himself," it continued.
Much more at the link

Link

Home Front: Politix

Trump critic John Bolton concedes Manhattan DA Bragg's case against Trump is weak, compares the Democratic prosecutor to Stalin's henchman

2023-04-06

[The Blaze] There is no love lost between former national security adviser John Bolton and former President Donald Trump, yet Bolton still cannot bring himself to pretend that Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has a strong case on his hands.

Bolton went on CNN Tuesday to discuss the indictment within hours of fellow Trump critic and U.S. Senator for Utah Mitt Romney stating, "The New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda."

Having previously claimed that Trump "does not represent the Republican cause that I want to back," Bolton indicated he was vexed by the toothlessness of the indictment.

"Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I'm extraordinarily distressed by this document," Bolton told CNN host Jake Tapper. "I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be. And I think it's easily subject to being dismissed or a quick acquittal for Trump."

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

The secret of the Andromeda yacht. Why did the US tie up Ukraine and the terrorist attack on Potoki?

2023-03-18

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[REGNUM] Former adviser to the President of the United States, John Bolton, noted with some bewilderment: there is a wave of publications in the American press about the Ukrainian trace in the terrorist attack on Nord Stream. But even Germany, which suffered from sabotage, believed in the “Kremlin operation” until the last moment. The mention of Ukraine undermines the confidence of European allies in Kyiv, Bolton worries and comes to unexpected, but hardly correct conclusions.

The idea that some pro-Ukrainian forces were involved in the explosions of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines could jeopardize the foreign aid that Kiev receives from its European allies. Such a warning was made in an article written for The Wall Street Journal by American politician John Bolton, who served as US permanent representative to the UN under George W. Bush and national security adviser to Donald Trump.

"New intelligence suggesting a 'pro-Ukrainian group' sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September sparked an unexpected political backlash in Europe,” Bolton notes in an article titled “Why the West won't let Ukraine beat Russia?" The epithet "unexpected" in relation to the reaction of Europeans is used, probably in an ironic manner.

Against the backdrop of "potential economic shocks" from undermining gas pipelines that sent fuel to Europe, "speculation about direct or indirect involvement of Ukraine" in the attack undermines the support that the West can provide to Kiev, Bolton points out.

In the same article, Trump's ex-adviser voiced the thesis: Joe Biden "wants Russia to lose, but is afraid of Ukraine's victory."

The attacks on Nord Stream, which took place in September last year, as you know, were again in the spotlight a month ago, after the publication of an investigation by American journalist Seymour Hersh. There it was about involvement in undermining the leadership of the CIA and specific individuals in the Biden administration .

The version about the Ukrainian trace in the terrorist attack, which left the Europeans without gas, began to be dispersed in the media about a week ago at the suggestion of The New York Times . An authoritative American publication, citing US intelligence, reported: intelligence transmitted to the US leadership indicates the involvement of a "pro-Ukrainian group." True, at the same time, a reservation was made: the US authorities do not have information about the group’s connection with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky or his “chief assistants”.

"Ukraine has denied any responsibility. The German authorities suggested that this could be a false flag operation by the Kremlin, prepared in order to arouse suspicion against Kiev," says John Bolton.

At the same time, the German media picked up the version of the Ukrainian trace. Die Zeit writes that the group's traces "lead to Ukraine", while Der Spiegel claims that his sources found the Andromeda yacht, which, according to the NY Times, was used by a "pro-Ukrainian group."

Moscow's attitude to these constructions is known - "complete nonsense," designed to distract specialists from the United States and Britain from the investigation into the involvement in the terrorist attack.

On the other hand, Kyiv also reacted sharply to the version coming from the United States. The head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Dmitry Kuleba, called a series of articles about the "pro-Ukrainian group" in various publications a coordinated action.

The publications, which are obviously caused by Washington's attempts to divert accusations caused by Hersh's revelations, American expert Dmitry Drobnitsky told REGNUM.

But the question remains: if it is necessary to divert suspicions from oneself, and the version of "Russian involvement" disappears due to obvious illogicality, then why Ukrainians loyal to the West (and not, for example, conditional international terrorists) are appointed to the role of "villains" who organized the terrorist attack? After all, as Bolton also points out, this clearly will not improve the reputation of Kyiv in the eyes of its European allies, primarily the Germans.

The version that slips in Bolton's article - "Biden is afraid of a Ukrainian victory" is not considered convincing by experts. Rather, this is a consequence of the chaos in domestic politics, when "the most important thing is to topple the hardware enemy," Drobnitsky believes.

According to the opinion, which he voiced earlier, the appearance of Hersh's revelations is connected with the struggle with the people of the Clinton clan surrounded by Biden. Specifically, with Assistant to the President for National Security Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns.

"Imagine: you want to divert suspicion from the Clintons, get them out of harm's way. Who then blew up the Nord Streams? Islamists? But how did they do it and why do they need Nord Stream? Moreover, if these are Islamists, then their act, therefore, must be condemned. And if you condemned them, does this mean that the Nord Streams were good for Europe?” - Drobnitsky reconstructs the logic of the customers of publications about the “Ukrainian version”.

"It means that the Ukrainians allegedly did this in retaliation for Russia. If the version "enters," then the United States has the opportunity to say: "We condemn any terrorist acts on the engineering infrastructure. However, the desperate Ukrainians who were subjected to a brutal attack by Russia can be understood," the interlocutor argues.

But, he notes, at the same time, Zelensky and other figures with whom the United States is "working" in Ukraine are clearly removed from the blow - "they did not know."

John Bolton, who is sounding the alarm about whether this will hurt support for Ukraine, is "a person who has little to do with the mentioned internal Washington showdowns and media and does not understand anything about them,” Drobnitsky notes. Bolton, being "a stubborn neo-conservative, a very direct and primitive person," makes flamboyant and aggressive, "hawkish" statements. And due to this, he gets a tribune in the press.

"It is naive to assume that the promotion of the version of Ukrainian involvement in sabotage means “draining” Kiev or even the West’s refusal to support specifically Vladimir Zelensky,” agrees Konstantin Blokhin, a leading researcher at the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. But, in his opinion, behind the emergence of the "Kyiv trace" is not chaos, but a well-thought-out strategy.

"For the United States now, the main thing is not to complicate relations with the countries of Europe against the background of how fatigue from the anti-Russian agenda is growing in these countries. The main thing is to prevent a split in the Euro-Atlantic unity," notes Americanist expert Malek Dudakov.

"This will not affect Europe’s attitude towards Ukraine, especially since there is a stuffing about an abstract "pro-Ukrainian group," the expert added. US allies are not in a position to change their attitude towards the Kyiv regime, let alone refuse to support it.

In order to divert suspicions of terrorism from oneself, fraught with image damage, the most primitive thing that can be done is to transfer responsibility to Ukraine, Blokhin told REGNUM news agency.

"For Kiev, this is like water off a duck's back, because it is "fighting against Russia," and in war, all means are good," he stressed. Now the head of Kyiv diplomacy, Kuleba, allows himself to be indignant, but if Washington gives the command, then Kyiv will take responsibility for the “action” without any objections, the expert believes.

March 17, 2023
Ivan Zhurenkov

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