Thursday, April 9, 2020

Russia-Trump: Who's who in the drama to end all dramas?

Russia-Trump: Who's who in the drama to end all dramas?




Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin



It was more gripping than any box set we could get our hands on.
Over two years, the investigations into Russian interference in the US election, and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin, delivered daily developments and drama worthy of anything seen in House of Cards.
In the end, 35 people and three companies were charged by Robert Mueller, the special counsel who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Here's our guide to the main characters in the four seasons of the only political drama that mattered.

Season One - The Election

This was the season in which Donald Trump, the reality TV star, took centre stage in his own political drama by launching a presidential campaign. He was supported by his family and got the attention of the Russians. The season ended with a cliffhanger - could Trump the outsider actually win?!
It's been a while since all of this happened, so let's remind you of the key players in this season.


Donald Trump - The boss

Who was he? Donald Trump, the billionaire candidate (who by Season Three is the 45th president of the United States). If you really need a refresher, here's his life story.
Key plot line As Donald Trump was busy traversing the country canvassing for votes in Season One, Russia hacked into the emails of his Democratic rivals, investigators later said.
The question is why? Was the Kremlin trying to alter the outcome of the election, and what did Trump and his campaign know?
Skip forward to the end of Season Four and Mr Trump stood triumphant before reporters in a Florida airport, celebrating what he called "a complete and total exoneration".
But in between, there was no shortage of drama or tension.


Paul Manafort - The manager

Who was he? He was Trump's campaign chairman before being forced to quit over his ties to Russian oligarchs and Ukraine.
Key plot line He was one of the biggest dominoes to fall. When he ended up being arrested, it was a big season-ending shocker.
Manafort hung around a bit in Season One, but then disappeared from view for a while.
He quit the campaign after being accused of having links to pro-Russian groups in Ukraine. He also sat in on a crucial meeting with a Russian lawyer who may have been trying to feed the Trump team classified information (more on that later).
After an FBI raid on his home in Season Three, Manafort was found guilty on eight charges of tax fraud, bank fraud, and failing to disclose foreign banks accounts and is sentenced to 47 months in prison.
In Season Four, he agreed to co-operate with a special counsel inquiry in exchange for a reduced prison term. But then, in a twist - prosecutors claimed he breached his plea bargain by repeatedly lying to the FBI.


Donald Trump Jr - The boss' boy

Who was he? The president's eldest child, who it emerged met some questionable Russians.
Key plot line Donald Trump Jr's role in this unfolding saga all came down to a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer, which was set up by a music publicist (the full details of which come out in Season Three). If it sounds random, then in many ways it is.
The publicist, Rob Goldstone, offered Trump Jr a meeting with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, promising him dirt on Hillary Clinton.
This meeting was the key to much of our plot line because it raised several key questions. Did this amount to the campaign colluding with a foreign government? Why did he agree to the meeting?
What happened at the meeting was the scene investigators played over and over again as they tried to work out if there was any impropriety. In the end, no collusion charges were brought.

Season Two - The Transition

Donald Trump confounded his critics by winning the presidency. But the transition was as gripping as the season before it as Trump picked his cabinet, introducing key characters to the mix.
The season ended with Trump taking the oath of office on a cold January morning - but there were more twists to come.


Michael Flynn - The General

Who was he? The granite-faced former general who later became the shortest-serving member of Donald Trump's cabinet. He resigned after not being honest about his contact with a Russian official - and was later charged with making false statements to the FBI.
Key plot line Flynn was appointed national security adviser just days after the election, against the advice of then-President Obama, who warned Trump not to hire him. Flynn's starring role came in December 2016, just before Trump was sworn in, when he spoke to the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.
The Washington Post and New York Times said the men discussed Russian sanctions, and that Flynn later lied to the Vice President Mike Pence about the conversation (Mr Kislyak says the men discussed only "simple things").
The substance of those talks eventually led to Flynn being prosecuted as part of the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.
At the end of Season Three, in December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to the FBI about what he and Kislyak discussed.
With that, the investigation reached Trump's inner circle.


Sergei Kislyak - the ambassador

Who was he? Many roads in this drama led back to Sergei Kislyak, the jolly and charismatic figure, who up until July 2017 was the Russian ambassador to Washington.
Key plot line Kislyak's role in this drama remained unclear up to the end - but many of the players in this drama had meetings with him, and that put them in awkward spots.
The key questions for investigators were: why were they drawn to him, and what was said? The Russian ambassador spoke to both Flynn and Attorney-General Jeff Sessions - meetings which both Trump officials didn't initially acknowledge took place.
Anything else we should know? Well, Russia fiercely fought back against claims on CNN that Kislyak was a "top spy and recruiter of spies".


Jeff Sessions - America's top lawyer

Who was he? Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III hovered in the background during Season One, when he was an Alabama senator and a trusted Trump adviser, but we really got to know him during Season Two, when he became Trump's nominee for attorney general, a job he kept for almost two years.
Key plot line Sessions was one of several Trump aides to meet Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, and question marks emerged over the nature of those meetings.
When the FBI investigation focused on the Trump campaign, Sessions stood down from the inquiry, much to Trump's irritation.
That decision to step down dogged him to the end, and he was written out of the series close to the end of Season Four, when Trump forced him to resign.
That move put control of the Mueller investigation into the hands of a Trump loyalist.

Season Three - The Presidency

This was where the drama really picked up and all the plot lines came together. A lot of the background characters we saw in Season One came back with a vengeance and the infighting got nasty - and this is when the police started circling.


Natalia Veselnitskaya - The go-between

Who was she? A Russian lawyer with a fearsome reputation who fought against US restrictions on Russia. But was she a Kremlin stooge?
Despite earlier denials, she admitted in April 2018 to being an "informant" for Russia's prosecutor general.
Key plot line Hers was a small but crucial role - she's the one who Manafort, Trump Jr and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner met in June 2016, the details of which begin trickling out a year later in a flashback sequence.
She said the meeting was to discuss adoptions - but those who helped set it up said she was offering dirt on the Democrats and Hillary Clinton's campaign.
While the meeting became a central plot point, whatever happened inside never actually led to any charges.
That meeting would never have happened without...


The Agalarovs - the pop star and his dad

Who were they? Emin Agalarov is Azerbaijan's biggest pop star, of course. Have you not heard Love is a Deadly Game? Emin helped bring Donald Trump's Miss Universe competition to Russia and the two are close enough to send each other birthday messages. His dad, Aras, is a billionaire who mixes in the highest circles of influence in Moscow.
Key plot line Again in a flashback scene, we met Emin as he set the wheels in motion on that Trump Jr meeting.
An email sent to Trump Jr suggested Emin was offering information on the Democrats (Emin said he wasn't). The email also said Aras Agalarov had apparently met the "crown prosecutor" of Russia - a role that weirdly didn't exist - and got information on Hillary Clinton.
Are you keeping up?


Rod Rosenstein - The deputy

Who was he? He became deputy attorney general under Jeff Sessions. In the TV drama of the Russia scandal, this is the sort of role that would go to a solid Broadway actor you recognise but can't put a name to.
Key plot line When Sessions stood down from leading the main investigation into the Trump-Russia ties, it fell to Rosenstein to do that job. In a major plot development, he appointed a special investigator - not a popular move with the White House.
       Jared Kushner - The son-in-law
Who was he? Married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka, Kushner was the character who was seen but very rarely heard.
Key plot line Amid cries of nepotism, he was given a plum White House job as senior adviser to the president with a wide-ranging portfolio. It was his contacts with the Russians during the election campaign and beyond that led investigators to circle him.
In June 2016, Kushner attended THAT meeting with Donald Trump Jr and the Russian lawyer. He said he was so bored he messaged his assistant to call him so he could leave.
Kushner was also another character who had repeated contact with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak - contact that he initially failed to disclose.
Source : BBC News
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

US, China play coronavirus blame game


WASHINGTON: The United States and China on Monday each demanded that the other stop smearing its reputation over the novel coronavirus as Donald Trump referred to the pathogen as the "Chinese Virus".
"The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus," the US president tweeted Monday night.
Trump's allies had previously referred to the pandemic as the "Chinese coronavirus," but the tweet marks the first time the president said it himself.
Critics slammed the move, calling it racist and potentially inciting a backlash against the Asian-American community.
"Our Asian-American communities -- people YOU serve -- are already suffering. They don't need you fueling more bigotry," tweeted New York city mayor Bill de Blasio, whose state is one of the hardest-hit by the virus in the US.
The clash came on the day that the World Health Organization said more cases and deaths had been reported in the rest of the world than in China, where the new coronavirus virus was first detected late last year.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a phone call he initiated with top Chinese official Yang Jiechi, voiced anger that Beijing has used official channels "to shift blame for Covid-19 to the United States," the State Department said.
Pompeo "stressed that this is not the time to spread disinformation and outlandish rumours, but rather a time for all nations to come together to fight this common threat," the department added.
The State Department on Friday summoned the Chinese ambassador, Cui Tiankai, to denounce Beijing's promotion of a conspiracy theory that had gained wide attention on social media.
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, in tweets last week in both Mandarin and English, suggested that "patient zero" in the global pandemic may have come from the United States -- not the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan.
"It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation," tweeted Zhao, who is known for his provocative statements on social media.
Scientists suspect that the virus first came to humans at a meat market in Wuhan that butchered exotic animals.

- 'Stern warning' to US -

Pompeo himself has sought to link China to the global pandemic, repeatedly referring to SARS-CoV-2 as the "Wuhan virus" despite advice from health professionals that such geographic labels can be stigmatising.
Yang issued a "stern warning to the United States that any scheme to smear China will be doomed to fail," the official Xinhua news agency said in its summary of the call with Pompeo.
The key Chinese foreign policy leader "noted that some US politicians have frequently slandered China and its anti-epidemic efforts and stigmatised the country, which has enraged the Chinese people," Xinhua said.
"He urged the US side to immediately correct its wrongful behaviour and stop making groundless accusations against China."
President Donald Trump is under fire over his handling of the pandemic, and his allies have sought to cast the coronavirus as a disease brought by foreigners.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton, a Trump ally, has spoken of the "Chinese coronavirus" and in a recent statement vowed, "we will hold accountable those who inflicted it on the world."
While Covid-19 -- the disease caused by the virus -- has largely come under control in China, it has killed more than 7,000 people around the world and severely disrupted daily life in Western countries.
The pandemic comes at a time of wide-ranging tensions between the United States and China on issues from trade to human rights to Beijing's military buildup.
Source :  Hongkong Post.com                                                                          
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

Monday, July 31, 2017

Putin’s Bet on a Trump Presidency Backfires Spectacularly


Russia Retaliates After U.S. Approves 


President Vladimir V. Putin bet that Donald J. Trump, who had spoken fondly of Russia and its authoritarian leader for years, would treat his nation as Mr. Putin has longed to have it treated by the West. That is, as the superpower it once was, or at least a major force to be reckoned with, from Syria to Europe, and boasting a military revived after two decades of neglect.
That bet has now backfired, spectacularly. If the sanctions overwhelmingly passed by Congress last week sent any message to Moscow, it was that Mr. Trump’s hands are now tied in dealing with Moscow, probably for years to come.
Just weeks after the two leaders spent hours in seemingly friendly conversation in Hamburg, Germany, the prospect of the kinds of deals Mr. Trump once mused about in interviews seems more distant than ever. Congress is not ready to forgive the annexation of Crimea, nor allow extensive reinvestment in Russian energy. The new sanctions were passed by a coalition of Democrats who blame Mr. Putin for contributing to Hillary Clinton’s defeat and Republicans fearful that their president misunderstands who he is dealing with in Moscow.
So with his decision to order that hundreds of American diplomats and Russians working for the American Embassy leave their posts, Mr. Putin, known as a great tactician but not a great strategist, has changed course again. For now, American officials and outside experts said on Sunday, he seems to believe his greater leverage lies in escalating the dispute, Cold War-style, rather than subtly trying to manipulate events with a mix of subterfuge, cyberattacks and information warfare.
That figure almost certainly includes Russian nationals working at the embassy, usually in nonsensitive jobs. (A 2013 State Department inspector general’s report, the last concrete numbers publicly available, said there were 934 “locally employed” staff members at the Moscow Embassy and three consulates, out of 1,279 total staff members. That would leave roughly 345 Americans, many of whom report regular harassment by Russian officials.) And of course there are many nondiplomats working for the United States government in Russia at any given time — experts from departments across the government, from energy to agriculture, and a large station of spies, some working under diplomatic cover.
“One of Putin’s greatest goals is to assure Russia is treated as if it was still the Soviet Union, a nuclear power that has to be respected and feared,” said Angela Stent, the director of Eurasian, Russian and East European studies at Georgetown University. “And he thought he might get that from Trump,” said Ms. Stent, who was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia during the administration of George W. Bush.
But now, she added, the Russians look at the chaos in the White House “and see a level of unpredictability there, which makes them nervous.” The reaction, she said, was to retreat to old habits — and the expulsion of diplomats is, of course, one of the oldest.
Those in the administration who served during the Cold War are also returning to that terminology. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told a security conference in Aspen, Colo., this month that he had no doubt that the Russians “are trying to undermine Western democracy.” His boss has never uttered a similar phrase.
A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity on what has become one of the most sensitive diplomatic problems facing the Trump administration, said the White House had not given up hopes for a better relationship. Mr. Putin’s interview on Russian television, in which he announced the reduction in staff, was free of bombast, the official noted. Russia seems uncertain about the direction of the relationship, leaving open the possibility of a reversal.
“The Russians would have preferred not to head down this path, but Putin didn’t feel he had a choice but to respond in the classic tit-for-tat manner,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who has served in a number of senior intelligence roles for the United States, including in Russia. “We’ve been in a new Cold War for some time now. Any hope for a short-term improvement in relations is gone.”
That downturn accelerated in the last days of the Obama administration, he argued, “when emotions took over the relationship.” Now, said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who recently became director of intelligence and defense projects at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School, “fear has replaced anger in dealing with Russia.”
Sergey V. Lavrov, the savvy Russian foreign minister, has struck a measured tone in his conversations with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. In public, he has blamed not Mr. Trump, or the investigation into the Russian influence operation around the election, but Congress. “The latest developments have demonstrated that the U.S. policy turns out to be in the hands of Russophobic forces that are pushing Washington toward confrontation,” the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, after the passage of the latest sanctions act.
Forty-eight hours later, Mr. Putin announced the huge reduction in diplomatic staffing. He said the order would take effect Sept. 1. That leaves time for haggling.
But the fundamental issue will not go away by then. Mr. Putin has now concluded that his central objective — getting relief from the American and European sanctions that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014 — is years away. Once new sanctions are enshrined in law, like the ones Congress passed and Mr. Trump has reluctantly agreed to sign to avoid an override of his veto, they generally stay on the books for years.
Moreover, Washington is awash in warnings that the attacks on the election system last year are just a beginning. “They are just about their own advantage,” James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee just before he was fired by Mr. Trump. “And they will be back.”
James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence and a veteran of the Cold War, echoed that thought recently and mixed in more than a few issues that sounded straight out of the 1980s nuclear competition. “What we don’t mention very often is the very aggressive modernization program they’re embarked on with their strategic nuclear capability,” he said.
And that, in the end, is the real risk. With the exception of Syria — where the militaries of both nations have had sporadic, if mutually suspicious, contact — there is virtually no military-to-military conversation of the kind that took place routinely during the Cold War. And with Russian and American forces both operating near the Baltics, and off the coast of Europe, the chances for accident and miscalculation are high.
This latest plunge in relations comes at the 70th anniversary of “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” an article George Kennan, the architect of Cold War strategy, published in Foreign Affairs in July 1947 under the 
It defined the strategy that dominated Washington for the next four decades, captured in Mr. Kennan’s line that the “United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
That was not the approach Mr. Trump had in mind a year ago. It may now be the approach forced upon him.
By DAVID E. SANGER
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)