Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor to President Obama, joins Lawrence O’Donnell after President Biden condemned the Ryanair flight diversion and called for the release of detained Belarus opposition activist and journalist, Roman Pratasevich. Rhodes calls the hijacking “an effort to upend international norms and put democracies on the defensive.”
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#MSNBC #Belarus #Putin
Lordy Lordy, first Bibi now Belarus – is Putin forgetting about them?
Putin is planning something BIG, but he needs America WEAK.
@Greg Knutson the elites wanted america to become increasingly vulnerable so other countries would enslave us. Without us nato is worthless.
@Florida Groyper bingo, U.N. rule
Start addressing Mr. Putin as president Putin. And Americans are so indoctrinated about Russians. Behold, not communism but Islam is a far bigger thread to USA. Russia is nowadays far more capitalistic than perhaps this Democratic government in USA.
@MVE I’ve been in Sebastopol and talked to the locals. Most of them were Russians who were suppressed and bullied by the Ukrainian government. Those Russian speaking Ukrainian people felt it like a liberation. So things are a bit more complicated. Americans lack a lot of general knowledge and most of them have never been outside USA. Anyway be blessed!
@Florida Groyper Stay strong and free! Pay attention: Islam is the biggest risk, not China or Russia.
Shocking!
Putin appointed the president of Belarus
And the former president of the US.
@Jeffrey Cohen zero evidence to back that false accusation
@Saul T. Nuts Your name says it all. You’re not worth the time.
@Jeffrey Cohen lol can’t argue with the truth, so you’re going straight to the ad hominem attacks, huh? Pretty pathetic
This could be used to target anyone.
Leaders of any movement of any size.
FIRST THEY CAME FOR JULIAN ASSANGE, CHELSEA MANNING, EDWARD SNOWDEN AND ALL CORPORATE MEDIA DIDN’T EVEN CARE
BECAUSE THEY WERE ARRESTING ONLY TRUTH TELLERS. NOW THEY ARE COMING FOR ANYONE THEY DON’T LIKE.
Wait. STFU. they chopped Jamal K up while his wife waited outside. Yet, we are supposed to be upset about this? It’s past what can be gotten away with. It’s about who can stop it. See Jan 6th. Even Putin said if he wanted Alexi dead he would have been. Well, step off the plane and guess what. Anyone see an pattern?
This is different and more brazen than Kashogi, who was not a US citizen and was killed on Turkish soil. That was brazen and crazy and depraved, but this is an act of war against the West… This has global implications w/r/t air travel and air-space jurisdictions
*PUTIN FRIEND TRYING TO STEAL AN ELECTION* they lost – wow – where have I heard that before – sounds familiar…
🎯💯👏👏👏💖💖💖
“There’s no way I could lose, Putin personally guaranteed it. So there must have been voter fraud like no one’s ever seen before.” -Mar-a-Lardo Mussolini
@Saul T. Nuts ok, now you’re just gaslighting, LMAO 😂 A Senate Republican-led commission pointed out Trump campaign officials colluded with Russia in 2016. Manafort gave internal (not public) campaign data to Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik, to help Russia better target its pro-Trump lies on social media.
@Akweli Parker zero evidence was sited to back this false claim at the time too, btw. There is no evidence this Kilimnik guy is even tied to Russian or Ukrainian intellegence
@Be Meek if you think the twice-impeached one is feeling raw now, wait until New York AND Georgia prosecutors get done savaging His Lardship in court. When he does his perpwalk and dons that appropriately orange jumpsuit, true American patriots will dance in the streets—peacefully and jubilantly. Tick-tock!!!
@Akweli Parker By Aaron Maté, RealClearInvestigations
May 19, 2021
The man cast as a linchpin of debunked Trump-Russia collusion theories is breaking his silence to vigorously dispute the U.S. government’s effort to brand him a Russian spy and put him behind bars.
In an exclusive interview with RealClearInvestigations, Konstantin Kilimnik stated, “I have no relationship whatsoever to any intelligence services, be they Russian or Ukrainian or American, or anyone else.”
Kilimnik, a longtime employee of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, spoke out in response to an explosive Treasury Department statement declaring that he had “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy” during the 2016 election. That press release, which announced an array of sanctions on Russian nationals last month, also alleged that Kilimnik is a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf.”
Treasury’s claim came shortly after two other accusatory U.S. government statements about the dual Ukrainian-Russian national. In March, a U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment accused Kilimnik of being a “Russian influence agent” who meddled in the 2020 campaign to assist Trump’s reelection. A month earlier, an FBI alert offered $250,000 for information leading to his arrest over a 2018 witness tampering charge in Manafort’s shuttered Ukraine lobbying case, which was unrelated to Russia, collusion, or any elections.
Treasury provided no evidence for its claims, which go beyond the findings of the two most extensive Russiagate investigations: the 448-page report issued in 2019 by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the 966-page report issued in August 2020 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Treasury has declined all media requests for elaboration on how it reached conclusions that those probes did not. Two unidentified officials told NBC News that U.S. intelligence “has developed new information” about Kilimnik “that leads them to believe” (emphasis added) that he passed on the polling data to Russia. But these sources “did not identify the source or type of intelligence that had been developed,” nor “when or how” it was received.
“Nobody has seen any evidence to support these claims about Kilimnik,” a congressional source familiar with the House and Senate’s multiple Russia-related investigations told RCI.
Despite the absence of evidence, the Treasury press release’s one-sentence claim about Kilimnik has been widely greeted as the Trump-Russia smoking gun. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC that Treasury’s assertion about Kilimnik proved that Russian intelligence was “involved in trying to help Trump win in that [2016] election. That’s what most people would call collusion.”
Speaking to RCI in fluent English from his home in Moscow, Kilimnik, 51, described these U.S. government assertions as “senseless and false accusations.”
His comments are backed up by documents, some previously unreported, as well as by Rick Gates, a longtime Manafort associate and key Mueller probe cooperating witness. (Gates pleaded guilty to making a false statement and to failing to register as a foreign agent in connection to his lobbying work in Ukraine.) The evidence raises doubts about new efforts to revive the Trump-Kremlin collusion narrative by casting Kilimnik as a central Russian figure.
“They needed a Russian to investigate ‘Russia collusion,’ and I happened to be that Russian,” Kilimnik said.
Highlights from the interview and RCI’s related reporting:
Kilimnik denies passing 2016 polling data to Russian intelligence, or any Russian for that matter. Instead, Kilimnik says he shared publicly available, general information about the 2016 American presidential race to Ukrainian clients of Manafort’s in a bid to recover old debts and drum up new business. Gates told RCI that the Mueller team “cherry-picked” his testimony about Kilimnik to spread a misleading, collusion-favorable narrative. The U.S. government has never publicly produced the polling data at issue, nor any evidence that it was shared with Russia.
Despite his centrality to the Trump-Russia saga, Kilimnik says no U.S. government official has ever tried get in touch with him. “I never had a single contact with [the] FBI or any government official,” Kilimnik says.
Kilimnik shared documents that contradict the Special Counsel’s effort to prove that he has Russian intelligence “ties.” Photos and video of his Russian passport and a U.S. visa in his name, shared with RCI, undermine the Mueller report’s claim that Kilimnik visited the United States on a Russian “diplomatic passport” in 1997. To judge from the images, he travelled on a civilian passport and obtained a regular U.S. visa. The Mueller team has never produced the “diplomatic passport.”
Kilimnik denies traveling to Spain to meet Manafort in 2017. If true, this would undercut the Mueller team’s claim that Manafort lied in denying such a meeting. That denial was used to help secure a 2019 court ruling that Manafort breached a cooperation agreement. The Special Counsel never furnished evidence for the alleged Madrid encounter.
While the Treasury Department and Senate Intelligence Committee claim that Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer, no U.S. security or intelligence agency has adopted this characterization.
Kilimnik has never been charged with anything related to espionage, Russia, collusion, or the 2016 election. Instead, the Mueller team indicted Kilimnik on witness-tampering charges in a case pertaining to Manafort’s lobbying work in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the FBI’s $250,000 bounty for Kilimnik is larger than most rewards it offers for the capture of violent fugitives, including those accused of child murder.
@Akweli Parker Every abbreviated federal policing agency, every Democrat Committee Chairman, and every State AG Left of Rand Paul spent four years investigating Trump, his family, his businesses and his campaign and they didn’t find jack. That’s why President Trump is golfing right now.
Imagine being gullible enough to believe two compromised politically-partisan Democrat activists like Fani Willis and Letitia James are going to find something the FBI, CIA and NSA didn’t.
Your TDS is in full-view, buddy. 🙄🤡🙄
Is Putin hoping to get his lapdog back into the White House? Is he banking on the infinite stupidity of large parts of the US population?
The stupid ones in this country vote Democrat buddy
What more do you expect from the filth of man. As they see the defenders of Democracy turn their backs on their own people.
Not to mention Mr. O’Leary. One psychopath lecturing two other psychopaths. Beyond cute.
Pay ‘ ZERO ‘ attention to Rand Paul receiving ” DEATH THREATS ” whatsoever!
Well, Biden wouldn’t be in power without the “sponsorship” of Dominion Voting Systems.🙀
and putin wouldnt be doing this if donnie didnt like him for 4 years.
He can annex,poison,assassinate. Hummm sounds like the U.S.A., Israel, and Britain.just saying…don’t want to leave anyone out of their fair share of credit.
This is outrageous! This needs to be answered for, strongly!!!!
What happened to Anatasia Vashukevich who was also detained in Belarus? Why wasn’t her allegations of Russian influence in 2016 taken more serious?
When Putin jailed Navalny all Biden did was tell him “No, no, Vlad.” Navalny himself gave the World a list of criminals, aka oligarchs, who need immediate sanctioning and Biden obviously didn’t even look at it. Biden is, to this point, all talk. And talk is c h e a p.
Corruption is as common in Belarus as in USA.
all you guys can do is red bait to cover up your screwups, it would be funny if so many people weren’t suffering because of it