Peter Lemkin Wrote:Russ Baker and two other researchers have written a very long and COMPLEX story entitled Why FBI Can't Tell All on Trump, Russia

It is posted on Who.What.Why. here http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/03/27/fbi-cant-tell-trump-russia/

I just read through it once and will have to read through it a few times - such are the complexities of the characters and their interconnections. At this point, I can't endorse or naysay about the general story or the details. It does seem, as I long suspected, that Trump has for a long time had loans and other business connections with wealthy Russians - some of them criminal oligarchs there. This may well play into his friendliness with Putin and Russia, generally. And while that [friendship with Russia] is NOT a bad thing, some of his business dealings with Russians might well be a 'Watergate' waiting to happen [and perhaps already beginning]. To add another layer of complexity, according to this investigative article, Trump is connected to a man who has long been used by the FBI as an informant on some Russian oligarchs and criminals. They posit that for this reason, and because the FBI doesn't want to expose its program and assets to penetrate these people, it can not do a fair evaluation of whatever nature of connections Trump and his friends have with Russians - or at least they can't reveal all they know. Again, I'm not saying yes or not to this, but it is worth reading and thinking about. I think this 'Russian Connection' to Trump is NOT going to go away and is much more complex than the MSM and the Democrats are trying to 'paint' it. That Trump rubs elbows with corrupt rich people is nothing new - and he is far from the only one within the Beltway guilty of that....in fact, most are. His attributing that he learned most of his business and political savvy from Roy Cohn gave away his penchant for being close to the completely corrupt long ago. All I can say is, if half of what they have so far come up with in this article is true, Trump may have a very hard time completely his term without a Watergate-like scandal and very possibly articles of Impeachment.

The one thing that confuses me about this, on first thought, it why the FBI obviously tried to undermine the campaign of Clinton if they indeed knew that Trump was involved in these kinds of matters - but the FBI itself is corrupt and very political and has never worked in the interest of justice and to uphold the law nor Constitution - let alone democracy.

This Trump-Russia 'thing' only grows more and more complex. I think soon many Republicans too will be wanting some kind of investigation of some of these matters - the problem is the LONG and HORRIBLE history of Congressional 'investigations' that are not investigations, but political efforts at non-investigation, or are so hamstrung they can't do the job they are empowered to do.

While I have little doubt that Trump and his associates [political and business] have some ties to 'criminal' businessmen and oligarchs in Russia, he also has ties to criminal businessmen and oligarchs in the USA and elsewhere. I don't think there is much of a moral distinction between the groups, although the US media, public, and propaganda machinery will make a big distinction, because Russia is always used as the 'evil other' to blame for much of the wrong in the World. It is guilty of wrongs, but then so are the 'Western' countries. So, I think the real problem is not that Trump and friends have dealings/associations with Russian criminals, but that he has such associations with criminals from wherever they have their passports. But on this, Trump is not the first President in such company, but he may be 'up there' in that league.

Me, I'm sitting here scratching my head over some of the connections and will now re-read this article. Russ Baker seems intent on continuing to pursue this matter further. Time will tell if he is on the right track or not. Take a read yourself and see how it strikes you. It certainly is in the 'stranger than we suspected' category, if true.

Quote:Felix Sater fits all of these (criminal) categories. A convicted felon, Sater worked in Trump Tower, made business deals with Donald Trump through Sater's real estate firm, Bayrock, cooperated with the FBI and CIA and was subsequently protected by the DOJ from paying for his crimes. And the Moscow-born immigrant remains deeply linked to Russia and Ukraine

Quote:Transcript:
Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to Radio WhoWhatWhy. I'm Jeff Schechtman.
Churchill said of Russia that it was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Much the same might be said of trying to untangle the relationship between Trump and his associates on the one hand, and Putin and a high power cast of Russian oligarchs and mobsters on the other. There comes a time in every political scandal when it reaches a tipping point. For Iran Contra, it was perhaps the revelation of the weapon sales. For Watergate, perhaps the testimony of Alexander Butterfield about the existence of the White House tapes. For Trump and Russia, it may very well be the revelations from a bombshell story just out from WhoWhatWhy.org.
The story gives us a whole new view of the Trump-Russia connection. One that stretches from Trump Tower to the FBI to the Kremlin. Here to reveal and explain all of this on Radio WhoWhatWhy, I'm joined by Russ Baker: the founder and editor in chief of WhoWhatWhy and Jonathan Larson, a former editor of the Village Voice and now a senior editor and board member of WhoWhatWhy. Russ Baker, Jonathan Larson, thanks so much for being here.
Russ Baker: Thank you.
Jonathan Larson: My pleasure.
Jeff Schechtman: Russ, I want to start with you because at the core of this story is this long running FBI investigation that was taking place that really involved things above and beyond politics. It really involved an international organized crime network. Talk a little about that first.
Russ Baker: I think the takeaway here is that Donald Trump was essentially partnered in business with a man who was connected to Russian organized crime and indirectly, to Vladimir Putin. The FBI knew about that and didn't want any of that to come out, so we don't see how the FBI can properly investigate Trump's relationship to Russia.
Jeff Schechtman: Talk a little bit about what that investigation was all about, Russ.
Russ Baker: This goes back to the 1990s, when the FBI was becoming increasingly concerned about the organized crime from the former Soviet Union. I called it Russian organized crime; it's basically from all of the various republics of the former Soviet Union that they were getting foothold of the United States, they were getting into everything and they were particularly concerned that they were getting into Wall Street, they were getting into the financial system. As they saw more and more examples of this, they were looking to do something about it and they discovered a particular scheme, which was targeting vulnerable people, particularly elderly and unsophisticated investors and they managed to shut it down. In the course of shutting it down, they cut a deal with one of the defendants and he became a very important informant. This man, Felix Sater is essentially the core of our story, along with Trump himself.
Jeff Schechtman: Jonathan, Russ talked about the fact that this started back in the nineties. Talk a little bit about the even earlier aspect of Trump Tower and the Trump Tower as a place with something that the FBI was looking at back as early as 1983.
Jonathan Larson: There were a lot of mobsters that seemed to be in and out of Trump Tower from its earliest days, including associates of the Union Concrete Boss, who actually built Trump Tower. He helped his girlfriend get two floors worth of apartments underneath Trump's triplex. She not only bought those apartments, she ended up getting mob money to help finance them and Trump also arranged for a mortgage for her and the bank that did that didn't ask her for any paperwork; she didn't have to sign anything, which is kind of unusual. There were a lot of strange characters from very early on, including some that had some ties to Russia.
Jeff Schechtman: It was remarkable how many of these strange characters populated Trump Tower. It was almost like if you put it on its side as an oil field, anywhere you would drill, you would run into somebody with a Russian connection. Talk about why that might have been.
Jonathan Larson: In the early days, there were a couple of Russian connections. There was a lot more of Italian organized crime. It's hard to say how that could be. They seem to get the choicest floors, they would buy multiple apartments and this lady friend of the concrete boss actually demanded that she be able to put in a swimming pool, which actually meant they had to redesign the building and put in even more concrete; good for the concrete business. Why this was so, it's very hard to say, but there certainly seem to be too many of them to be just a coincidence.
Russ Baker: One of the things I might add about that is that in terms of mobsters in general, certainly if you talk about the bling factor, I think they like the glitz and glamour associated with the Trump name and the building itself and as far as the people from the former Soviet Union whom we describe in some detail in the article, we only cover some of them who moved into the building and not to just get anybody who's from those areas is necessarily involved in any sort of wrongdoing at all, but the fact of the matter is that when the Soviet Union came apart, all of these newly minted millionaires' and billionaires' questionable, perhaps you could say ill gotten fortunes, they had to get the money out of there and as you probably know Jeff, real estate is a favored method of money laundering.
Jeff Schechtman: Talk a little bit Russ, about why this investigation was so important to the FBI, this investigation into the Russian mob.
Russ Baker: The Russian mob had practices that you did not see with La Cosa Nostra and particularly at the end of the Soviet Union, it recruited many highly skilled people: computer scientists, mathematicians, financial whizzes and they went right where the money was, which is the financial system and Wall Street and what have you. They got in a big way and I think the FBI was late to realize what was going on and then there was this panic that the whole financial system of the United States and perhaps the world could be destabilized. As they began scrambling and identifying this issue as perhaps their number one problem, they focused on a man who was called the boss of bosses of this former Soviet Union organized crime, a fellow named Mogilevich and they began trying to figure out how to gather information on him and what we know is that this man that they turned, this Felix Sater was involved with Russian organized crime, that the financial wrongdoing that he was involved with, it was not just him but was being orchestrated from some other level. Also, his father allegedly was an associate of Mogilevich. This particular man, for whatever reason and we don't know the details was considered to be an extremely, and I want to emphasize extremely high value asset, tremendously important figure in a tremendously, tremendously important operation.
Jeff Schechtman: Jonathan, talk a little bit more about Mogilevich and why he was so important and why he was considered such a real threat.
Jonathan Larson: Because he had global reach. He was beginning to send emissaries to the United States to set up money laundering operations, stock fraud operations and the Feds were beginning to believe that just one phone call from him could practically bring down the financial system. Felix Sater was part of one of these original groups, as Russ explained and in the indictment that the FBI brought against them, they figured that he was responsible for at least $40 million of fraud against his victims. The fact that they would turn him and make him a cooperating informant was kind of astonishing because they certainly could have put him away in jail and they kept working with him and he ends up in Trump Tower and doing business with Trump. Why was that? That's the great mystery at the heart of this. Were they helping through Trump to find out more about the Russian mob? Was it even conceivable that they were working with Trump directly? These are all things that will need to come out eventually, but that's part of the mystery of this FBI operation at the heart of Trump Tower.
Jeff Schechtman: Russ, talk about how the FBI originally came to Sater.
Russ Baker: They came to him because of this so called pump and dump stock scheme that he was involved with. As I mentioned, this was this thing where they victimized elderly and unsophisticated investors and this was the kind of thing that there was pressure on the bureau to shut them down and they did. One of the perps in there was this Felix Sater and I guess for whatever reason, once they either talked to him or investigated him, they found out what sort of connections he had and they became very, very interested. They became interested in Felix Sater prior to Felix Sater as John said, moved into Trump Tower with this company called Bayrock, which was a real estate development firm. Bayrock and Donald Trump became partners in a number of ventures around the world, most notably the Trump SoHo Hotel and Condominiums that's here in New York. He became very, very important, so important in fact, that according to Sater himself, he and Trump were extremely close and he had an office just on the floor below Trump's and that he would just walk up the stairs and just pop in to hang out with the Donald! Remarkably, he even had business cards of his own: Felix Sater, the Trump Organization. Here you've got a guy who is identified with Russian organized crime, he seems to be tied in with the most powerful gangster in the world and the number one target of the FBI, as we know and there he is, hanging out with the Donald. Obviously, this a very, very interesting relationship and it's a relationship that we'd like to know more about. Now, the problem is we can't know much more about it because the FBI and the US Attorney's Office has worked for years, the Justice Department has worked for years to suppress the details of this thing from coming out.
Jeff Schechtman: I know it's a little complicated to explain, but give it a try Jonathan. Why in fact, the revelation of so much of this, particularly with regard to the relationship between Sater and Trump puts the whole Trump financial empire at risk?
Jonathan Larson: The question is, did Donald Trump know that Felix Sater was a criminal and had this criminal history? If he did and he was in business with him in all of these various ventures as Russ mentioned, then he his liable for hundreds of millions of dollars from the other investors, people who bought condominiums, were co-investors in the hotel, like Trumps SoHo. In terms of Trump SoHo, that was really a Felix Sater operation from the beginning. He kind of thought it up. He got partners from Iceland, a bank called FL which seems to have relations with Putin and so he started bringing in Russian mob money to finance this so called Trump SoHo hotel. So, it was really more of a Sater SoHo than it was Trump SoHo hotel.
Jeff Schechtman: Russ, a lot of this money potentially was coming in at a time when Trump was in financial trouble as a result of some of his other operations.
Russ Baker: Well, that's a key point: that as his fortunes went south with problems with his decisions against the advice of all kinds of people, taking huge risks with all of those casinos in Atlantic City and all kinds of other things went south, yeah he had more and more problems and it is at this period that we see not just Felix Sater and the potential connections to the Mogilevich outfit and to Putin but we see all these other figures and entities tied into Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and so forth, all of these oligarchs again tied back to the approval of the Putin regime and they're basically propping Donald Trump up. The issue becomes, when the FBI is looking at the issue of whether Russia meddled in the election, there's a much larger issue, which is why did they like Donald Trump? What did they expect Donald Trump could or would do for them? To answer that question, you got to go back and look at this whole history of these people and these entities playing a critical role in his financial fortunes and their own relationships back to Putin.
Jeff Schechtman: Why then, now that so much of this is exposed, why does this present a problem for the FBI now in terms of its own priorities and where its investigation is going, Russ?
Russ Baker: We know that the FBI has strived mightily to keep this from coming out. There were some lawyers involved with a suit on behalf of someone who worked for Sater's company who's been trying to get to the bottom of some of this and they have been slammed down very, very hard, extraordinary measures where they've essentially been told, they say that they should not tell any of this to Congress. If the FBI is so concerned that none of this come out for some reason, one wonders how they could do that on one hand and on the other hand, be able to fairly and thoroughly investigate everything that we need to know about Donald Trump and Russia.
Jeff Schechtman: Why was the FBI, in your view and both of you can respond to this, Russ start with you, why was the FBI so concerned about this not coming out?
Russ Baker: We don't know the full why. We can speculate. One of the likely issues here is simply the kind of posterior covering that goes on. The FBI was working with a man who was guilty of extensive crimes and they advocated for him to be let off with a slap on the wrist, if that. They did that because they were using him. This is very, very similar to what happened in the notorious case of the mob leader Whitey Bulger up in Boston. This was a huge problem for the FBI, one of its biggest embarrassments in its history. It was basically protecting this criminal while he was continuing to commit crimes, including murders ostensibly because he was so high value. What Felix Sater was doing, if anything and we don't know. He may have gone straight and done nothing wrong but for some reason, they're very, very concerned that that relationship not be revealed. Of course, it would be very interesting to find out what that is about.
Jonathan Larson: Let me add that this could be embarrassing for the FBI in other ways. One of the FBI agents who was basically handling Felix Sater is now working for President Trump in his private security operation. Two of the prosecutors who helped work out the original deal and then spoke later on behalf of Sater in court proceedings are now working for the law firm that is supposed to be sorting out President Trump's conflicts of interest. There are kind of cross currents here that could be embarrassing, I think to the FBI and to Donald Trump.
Jeff Schechtman: How close did this investigation bring them to being able to do anything with respect to Mogilevich, Russ?
Russ Baker: Well, that's the rub. We don't really know if it was successful or if it was a colossal failure. Obviously, if it was a colossal failure, that's not the kind of thing that they want to come out either, especially why make this sort of a deal if you're not going to succeed. The indications are that they didn't really succeed. We know that Mogilevich was on the FBI's most wanted list and we know that several years ago, they removed him very mysteriously. We don't know why they removed him, there's nothing as far as we know. Reports one sees that world girdling criminal empire is very much still operating all over the place and now in many, many different facets and industries. What that was about, did they succeed, we don't know?
Jeff Schechtman: What do we know about the connection between Mogilevich and Putin?
Jonathan Larson: You can't operate in Russia without getting along with Putin. I think he put him in jail once very briefly to show that he was sort of in control, but let him off soon thereafter. The assumption is that they work pretty close together.
Russ Baker: Yeah, that's right, what John said. Also, in Russia, there is no clear line between the official establishment and, let's say, the unofficial establishment. Most experts believe that the government and the so called legitimate oligarchs and the underworld are intertwined in so many different ways that you can't even sort it out. Experts also say that Putin and Mogilevich are close. I think the most important thing of all is a man named Ivankov who was Mogilevich's lieutenant who came to the United States to run operations for him, who by the way, when the FBI wanted to find him, the first place they found him was living in Trump Tower. Then, they couldn't track him down and then they next found him at Trump's Taj Mahal. I think that's very significant. That man later returned to the Soviet Union and he stated on one occasion that Putin and Mogilevich were very close. Shortly thereafter, he was assassinated by a sniper while walking on the streets of Moscow.
Jeff Schechtman: What is the status of Felix Sater today, Russ?
Russ Baker: We don't know the exact status of Felix Sater, but he is certainly alive and well. This is another fascinating development. As you may know, in January, there was a meeting held at a hotel in New York City and at that meeting were Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney and Felix Sater and they met with a Ukrainian member of Parliament who is pro-Moscow. What we are told from news accounts is that at that meeting, the Ukrainian presented a proposed peace plan for Ukraine, which seemingly had been approved by or perhaps sponsored by Putin himself and there he is, meeting with Felix Sater and Trump's lawyer. According to this parliamentarian, they then agreed and Cohen took that proposal in an envelope and brought it to then national security advisor, General Michael Flynn. There's been some backpedaling on that story but it seems to be true. That's very, very interesting: that this mob person tied into Putin is still so active that he's able to sit down with Trump's personal lawyer and work something like this!
Jonathan Larson: By the way, when he surfaced at that meeting, he seemed to have gone back to his original spelling, which is S-A-T-E-R but the entire time he was being handled by the FBI, he gave his name at S-A-T-T-E-R, which is one reason why people cannot trace his criminal past and why many of his business associates had no idea that he was a convicted felon.
Russ Baker: Russ, I want to come back to this idea of why the FBI is so compromised as a result of this, particularly with respect to any further ongoing investigation with regards to Trump and the Russian connection.
Russ Baker: I think it's because in order to tell the public or Congress or some combination everything that they know about Trump's relationship with Russia and the back history and the origins, they would have to tell this story that we're telling here, but the whole story, all the other details. I think they simply can't do it. It's problematical on a whole host of fronts and it's probably a deep embarrassment as well.
Jonathan Larson: Even if it weren't an embarrassment, they just don't like to tell details of operations they've run because it gives inside into how they work an operation like this and they'd be very reluctant to reveal an operation this extensive.
Jeff Schechtman: What do you expect the reaction to this story to be, Russ?
Russ Baker: It's hard to tell. Of course, there have been so many revelations large and small coming at us, seemingly by the hour that one really can't tell. But, we would hope that this very thorough look at the larger picture behind this sort of more specific focus about hacking and so forth, the effort to get at the bottom of the whole matter to try to understand why Donald Trump seems to be so close with Vladimir Putin, what, if anything, Vladimir Putin or the Russians may have on him, that this would be seen as compelling enough and persuasive enough that the failure of the FBI which we think would be a failure of the FBI to get to the bottom of this could be circumvented through the appointment of an independent prosecutor or some kind of independent body to look into this whole matter.
Jeff Schechtman: It does seem that there are really three specific buckets and areas of investigation in all of this, and that's what makes part of it so complicated. There's the financial side, the criminal side and the political side.
Jonathan Larson: Right, Jeff. I think if this were really opened up, we'd find out just how much of Trump's operation was financed, not just through Russian banks but through Russian mobsters, and money laundering and that could be quite revealing. That's quite different than the rest of this investigation that Comey is conducting.
Jeff Schechtman: Finally, Russ, talk a little bit about the work that you and Jonathan and your associates have done in putting this story together. Give us a little background in how all of this came together over a period of several months.
Russ Baker: This was a team effort. The third member of the team: C. Collins did a tremendous amount of research on this, pouring over a large number of legal documents, extremely complicated technicalities in attempting to figure out what this all means. And then John and I came in to provide additional context, to do additional research and the three of us worked together very closely on this. And now we brought in more of our team, including a lot of editors and fact checkers, lawyers and so forth. It's really a terrific team effort and it has to be with something of this enormity.
Jeff Schechtman: Russ Baker, Jonathan Larson, the story appears at WhoWhatWhy.org. I thank you both for sharing some of this and encourage folks to read the whole story. Thank you both.

Quote:By Ann Wright

Fourteen years ago on March 19, 2003, I resigned from the U.S. government in opposition to President George W. Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq, an oil-rich Arab/Muslim country that had nothing to do with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the Bush Administration knew did not have weapons of mass destruction.

In my letter of resignation, I wrote of my deep concerns about Bush's decision to attack Iraq and the predictable large number of civilian casualties from that military attack. But I also detailed my concerns on other issues: the lack of U.S. effort on resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the U.S. failure to engage North Korea to curb nuclear and missile development, and the curtailment of civil liberties in the United States through the Patriot Act.

Now, three Presidents into the Iraq War and other unsettled conflicts, the problems that I was concerned about in 2003 are even more dangerous a decade and a half later.

As a U.S. diplomat, I was on the small team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2001. Sixteen years later, the U.S. is still battling the Taliban in Afghanistan, as the Taliban takes more and more territory, in America's longest war, while the graft and corruption within the Afghan government due to the mammoth U.S.-funded contracts for support of the U.S. military machine continues to provide the Taliban with new recruits.

The U.S. is now fighting against ISIS, a brutal group that emerged because of the U.S. war in Iraq, but has spread from Iraq into Syria, as the U.S. policy of regime change has resulted in arming international as well as domestic Syrian groups to fight not only ISIS, but the Syrian government. The deaths of civilians in Iraq and Syria continue to rise with the acknowledgement this week by the U.S. military that it is "likely" that a U.S. bombing mission killed over 200 civilians in one building in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Slaughtering Palestinians

With U.S. government acquiescence, if not complicity, the Israeli military has attacked Gaza three times in the past eight years. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed, tens of thousands have been wounded and the homes of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been destroyed.

Over 800,000 Israelis now live in illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian lands in the West Bank. Israeli government has built hundreds of miles of separation/apartheid walls on Palestinian land which separate Palestinians from their farms, schools and employment. Brutal, humiliating checkpoints purposely attempt to degrade the spirit of Palestinians. Israeli only highways have been built on Palestinian lands. The theft of Palestinian resources has ignited a worldwide, citizen-led boycott, divestment and sanctions program.

Imprisonment of Palestinian children for throwing rocks at Israeli occupation military forces has reached crisis levels. Evidence of the Israeli government's inhumane treatment of Palestinians has now been formally called "apartheid" in a United Nations report that resulted in massive Israeli and U.S. pressure on the U.N to withdraw the report and force the Under Secretary of the U.N. who commissioned the report to resign.

The North Korean government continues to call for negotiations with the U.S. and South Korea for a peace treaty to end the Korean War. But the U.S. government has responded with a rejection of any discussions with North Korea until North Korea ends its nuclear program. The U.S. also has increased U.S.-South Korean military drills, the last one named "Decapitation," moves that have resulted in the North Korean government continuing its nuclear testing and missile projects.

The war on civil liberties of U.S. citizens under the Patriot Act resulted in unprecedented surveillance through cellphones, computers and other electronic devices, massive illegal data collection and indefinite, perpetual storage of private information of not only U.S. citizens, but all inhabitants of this planet.

The Obama war on whistleblowers who have exposed various aspects of the illegal data collection has inflicted severe punishments on people accused of sharing truthful information with the public, including: bankruptcy for National Security Agency official Tom Drake in successfully defending against espionage charges; Pvt. Chelsea Manning's long prison sentence for exposing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan; forced exile for NSA contractor Edward Snowden for revealing U.S. government lies about the NSA's bulk collection; Julian Assange's virtual imprisonment in London's Ecuadorian Embassy for fear of retaliation against WikiLeaks' disclosures of U.S. government secrets.

Trump's Complaint

In the latest bizarre twist, President Donald Trump has accused President Barack Obama of "wiretapping" the Trump Tower in New York City during the Presidential campaign but then amid widespread denials refused to provide any evidence, although it's true that virtually all citizens have become targets of electronic surveillance.

The past 14 years have been difficult for the world due to U.S. wars of choice and the growth of the surveillance state. And, the next four years do not appear likely to bring any relief to the citizens of planet earth.

The election of Donald Trump, the first U.S. President who has never served in any level of government nor in the U.S. military, has led to in a little more than two months an unprecedented number of domestic and international crises, many self-inflicted:

The Trump administration has attempted to ban persons from seven mostly Muslim countries (later reduced to six);
The Trump administration has appointed to Cabinet positions members of the billionaire class from Wall Street and Big Oil, people who have the intention of destroying the agencies they are to lead.
The Trump administration has proposed a budget that will increase the U.S. military war budget by 10 percent, but slash the budgets of other agencies to render them ineffective.
The Department of State and International Affairs budget for conflict resolution by words not bullets will be slashed by 37 percent.
The Trump Administration has appointed a person to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who has declared the worsening climate chaos a hoax.

In retrospect, I am glad I resigned from the U.S. government when I did. My decision to resign has allowed me to speak publicly in the United States and around the world on issues that jeopardize international security from the perspective of a former U.S. government employee with 29 years of experience in the U.S. Army and 16 years in the U.S. diplomatic corps.

I am glad that I could join the millions of citizens around the world who are challenging their governments when the governments violate legal standards, kill innocent civilians and wreck havoc on the planet.

Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She served as a U.S. diplomat for sixteen years before her resignation in March 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience.

Flynn discussing immunity for testimony on Russia

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EVAN VUCCI/AP/FILE

Former national security adviser Mike Flynn in February.
By Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima THE WASHINGTON POST MARCH 30, 2017
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn has offered to cooperate with congressional investigators in exchange for immunity from prosecution, a suggestion that has been met with initial skepticism, according to people familiar with the matter.
"General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,'' Flynn's attorney, Robert Kelner, said in a statement Thursday evening. Out of respect for the committees, we will not comment right now on the details of discussions between counsel for General Flynn and the House and Senate intelligence committees, other than to confirm that those discussions have taken place. But it is important to acknowledge the circumstances in which those discussions are occurring.''
The committees are both looking into whether any associates of Donald Trump may have coordinated with agents of the Russian government seeking to meddle in last year's presidential election. The FBI is also investigating. The Trump administration has denied any such coordination.
The offer by Flynn's lawyer was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Flynn's overture seemed to have been aimed principally at the Senate committee, as Democrats on the House committee said they had not received word of an offer of testimony for immunity.




Officials said the idea of immunity for Flynn - who is considered a central figure in the probes because of his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States - was a non-starter,'' particularly at such an early stage of the investigations. A wide-ranging grant of immunity could protect Flynn from potential future charges from the Justice Department, but Congress has the power to grant only limited testimonial'' immunity, which means prosecutors cannot use witnesses' testimony against them in any prosecution. Ultimately, it is Justice's decision whether to grant immunity from prosecution for any underlying conduct that is discussed, or other matters that don't come up in testimony.
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• Read the statement of Mike Flynn's lawyer
  

It is not unheard of for potential congressional witnesses to seek immunity in exchange for testimony. During the Obama administration, former IRS official Lois Lerner sought immunity for her testimony to Congress, which was investigating how she and other officials scrutinized conservative groups. The FBI was also investigating the matter at the time. The committee declined to grant her immunity, and she was still called to testify at a hearing, in which she repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right to protect herself against self-incrimination.
Flynn's attorney said his client, a decorated former general, was now the subject of unfounded allegations, outrageous claims of treason, and vicious innuendo.''
The lawyer added: No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.''
Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor and an assistant special counsel in the prosecution of I. Lewis Scooter'' Libby, said that the Senate committee apparently did not want to screw up a possible prosecution.''
But, he added, there may be things more important than getting a prosecution of Flynn.'' Such as learning the extent of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials. That is a compelling and urgent need. A prosecution of Flynn could take several years. I wouldn't want them to wait that long to find out what Flynn knows.''

Quote:Trump's lawyer has told 4 different stories about the Russia-Ukraine 'peace plan' debacle

• Natasha Bertrand
  

• Feb. 21, 2017, 11:17 AM
  

Michael Cohen, an attorney for Donald Trump, arrives in Trump Tower on December 16. Richard Drew/AP
President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was at the center of a bombshellNew York Times reportpublished Sunday that said he hand-delivered a "peace plan for Russia and Ukraine" to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn before Flynn was asked to resign.
The plan which The Times said was pushed by Cohen, businessman Felix Sater, and Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Artemenko involved lifting sanctions on Russia in return for Moscow withdrawing its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to the report. It would also allow Russia to maintain control over Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Hours after the Times story was published, however, Cohen told The Washington Post that he hadn't delivered the peace plan to Flynn nor discussed it with anyone in the White House.
In an interview with The Post, Cohen corroborated The Times' reporting that he had met with Sater and Artemenko in a hotel lobby on Park Avenue in Manhattan in late January to discuss the proposal. He said that the meeting lasted less than 15 minutes and that he left with the plan in hand.
However, he "emphatically" denied "discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the White House and/or General Flynn," adding that he told Artemenko that he could "send the proposal to Flynn by writing him at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.," The Post reported.
Cohen shifted his story again on Monday, telling Business Insider in a series of text messages that he denies "even knowing what the plan is." But he said in a later message that he met with Artemenko in New York for "under 10 minutes" to discuss a proposal that Artemenko said "was acknowledged by Russian authorities that would create world peace."
"My response was, 'Who doesn't want world peace?'" Cohen said.
One of the Times reporters who broke the peace-plan story, Scott Shane, pointed Business Insider to a statement the newspaper's deputy managing editor gave on Sunday: "Mr. Cohen told The Times in no uncertain terms that he delivered the Ukraine proposal to Michael Flynn's office at the White House. Mr. Sater told the Times that Mr. Cohen had told him the same thing."
Cohen then appeared to alter his story again, telling NBC News that even if he had taken an envelope with a peace plan to the White House, "So what? What's wrong with that?"
Stephanie Keith/Reuters
Sater, a businessman of Russian descent who has boasted of his relationship with President Donald Trump, told The Post in May that he "handled all of the negotiations" for the Trump Organization's dealings in Russia in the mid-2000s. Trump has distanced himself from Sater, saying in sworn testimony as part of a 2013 lawsuit that "if he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn't know what he looked like."
Sater told The Post that he thought Cohen was going to deliver the plan to Flynn but that Cohen had to wait because Flynn was in the middle of a Russia-related firestorm.
Cohen was named as a "liaison" between Trump and the Kremlin in the explosive, unsubstantiated dossier that surfaced last month, a summary of which had been presented by top US intelligence officials to Trump.
Sater was "not practicing diplomacy" in pushing the plan, which he entertained only because he "wanted to promote peace," he told Fox Newson Monday. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Artemenko, who met with Trump's campaign during the election, was also involved in drafting the proposal. Artemenko told The Times he had evidence of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's corruption that could lead to his ouster.
Poroshenko has been locked in a war with pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine since he took power in 2014. He is considered friendlier to the West than his ousted predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych's political rise was heavily aided by former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who worked as an adviser on Yanukovych's presidential campaign.
Cohen called the reporting surrounding the meeting "#fakenews." He said he stands by his story that he didn't do anything with the plan.
"Change your fake story or lose my number," Cohen said. "I have no time for Trump haters."

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