Mark Rossini Surrenders To Federal Authorities In Puerto Rico - 9:13 AM 8/10/2022 - Selected Articles
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Mark T. RossiniFormer federal agent who participated in a bribery scheme against a former governor Wanda Vazquez GarcedoHe turned himself in before federal authorities in Puerto Rico and appeared for a trial on criminal charges against him this Tuesday.
Appearance before Judge Camille Velez Rive at 11:45 a.m.When he pleaded not guilty to the offenses of conspiracy, bribery and wire fraud.
Rossini was in Madrid Thus, he was not arrested by US authorities at the time of his indictment, on August 3, by a federal grand jury.
Head of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Puerto Rico, Stephen Muldrowconfirmed that Rossini had turned himself in to the offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, in English) in San Juan.
“It was given here”Muldrow said in an interview new day, “He decided to turn himself in and today he has a hearing and we are following the process.”
He said it is best as he does not have to go through the formal extradition process.
However, Muldrow declined to comment on the status of his move to take custody. banker Julio M. Herrera Velutini,
The former FBI agent was charged with conspiracy, bribery with federal funds, and illegal commissions to Vazquez Garsed. Vazquez Gard, also accused of this scheme, Herrera Velutini According to the indictment, the owner of Bancredito International Bank & Trust, which Rossini was advising.
The conspiracy sought to sack the former governor of the Office of the Commissioner for Financial Institutions (OCIF), George Joyner, and appoint someone close to Bancredito, to eliminate the audit to detect suspicious transactions. In the Herrera Velutini account. ,
Journalist Laura Quintero collaborated on this story.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI’s unprecedented search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence ricocheted around government, politics and a polarized country Tuesday along with questions as to why the Justice Department — notably cautious under Attorney General Merrick Garland — decided to take such a drastic step.
Answers weren’t quickly forthcoming.
Agents on Monday searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, which is also a private club, as part of a federal investigation into whether the former president took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence, people familiar with the matter said. It marked a dramatic escalation of law enforcement scrutiny of Trump, who faces an array of inquiries tied to his conduct in the waning days of his administration.
From echoes of Watergate to the more immediate House probe of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Washington, a city used to sleepy Augusts, reeled from one speculative or accusatory headline to the next. Was the Justice Department politicized? What prompted it to seek authorization to search the estate for classified documents now, months after it was revealed that Trump had taken boxes of materials with him when he left the White House after losing the 2020 election?
Garland has not tipped his hand despite an outcry from some Democrats impatient over whether the department was even pursuing evidence that has surfaced in the Jan. 6 probe and other investigations— and from Republicans who were swift to echo Trump’s claims that he was the victim of political prosecution.
All Garland has said publicly is that “no one is above the law.”
A federal judge had to sign off on the warrant after establishing that FBI agents had shown probable cause before they could descend on Trump’s shuttered-for-the-season home — he was in New York, a thousand or so miles away, at the time of the search.
Monday’s search intensified the months-long probe into how classified documents ended up in boxes of White House records located at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. A separate grand jury is investigating efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and it all adds to potential legal peril for Trump as he lays the groundwork for a potential repeat run for the White House.
Trump and his allies quickly sought to cast the search as a weaponization of the criminal justice system and a Democratic-driven effort to keep him from winning another term in 2024 — though the Biden White House said it had no prior knowledge and current FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump five years ago.
Trump, disclosing the search in a lengthy statement late Monday, asserted that agents had opened a safe at his home, and he described their work as an “unannounced raid” that he likened to “prosecutorial misconduct.”
Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson declined to comment on the search, including whether Garland had personally authorized it. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the West Wing first learned of the search from public media reports and the White House had not been briefed in the run-up or aftermath.
“The Justice Department conducts investigations independently and we leave any law enforcement matters to them,” she said. “We are not involved.”
About two dozen Trump supporters stood in protest at midmorning Tuesday in the Florida summer heat and sporadic light rain on a bridge near the former president’s residence. One held a sign reading “Democrats are Fascists” while others carried flags saying “2020 Was Rigged,” “Trump 2024” and Biden’s name with an obscenity. Some cars honked in support as they passed.
Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence, a potential 2024 rival, tweeted Tuesday, “Yesterday’s action undermines public confidence in our system of justice and Attorney General Garland must give a full accounting to the American people as to why this action was taken and he must do so immediately.”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell echoed Pence, saying, “Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately.”
“The FBI director was appointed by Donald Trump,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., when asked about GOP allegations that the raid showed the politicization of the Justice Department. She added, “Facts and truth, facts and law, that’s what it’s about.”
Trump was meeting late Tuesday at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club with members of the Republican Study Committee, a group headed by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana that says it is committed to putting forth his priorities in Congress.
The FBI reached out to the Secret Service shortly before serving a warrant, a third person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. Secret Service agents contacted the Justice Department and were able to validate the warrant before facilitating access to the estate, the person said.
The Justice Department has been investigating the potential mishandling of classified information since the National Archives and Records Administration said it had received from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, earlier this year. The National Archives said Trump should have turned over that material upon leaving office, and it asked the Justice Department to investigate.
Christina Bobb, a lawyer for Trump, said in an interview that aired on Real America’s Voice on Tuesday that investigators said they were “looking for classified information that they think should not have been removed from the White House, as well as presidential records.”
There are multiple federal laws governing the handling of classified records and sensitive government documents, including statutes that make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorized location. Though a search warrant does not necessarily mean criminal charges are near or even expected, federal officials looking to obtain one must first demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause that a crime occurred.
Two people familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the search Monday was related to the records probe. Agents were also looking to see if Trump had additional presidential records or any classified documents at the estate.
Trump has previously maintained that presidential records were turned over “in an ordinary and routine process.” His son Eric said on Fox News on Monday night that he had spent the day with his father and that the search happened because “the National Archives wanted to corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession.”
Trump himself, in a social media post Monday night, called the search a “weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”
Trump took a different stance during the 2016 presidential campaign, frequently pointing to an FBI investigation into his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, over whether she mishandled classified information via a private email server she used as secretary of state. Then-FBI Director James Comey concluded that Clinton had sent and received classified information, but the FBI did not recommend criminal charges.
Trump lambasted that decision and then stepped up his criticism of the FBI as agents began investigating whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election. He fired Comey during that probe, and though he appointed Wray months later, he repeatedly criticized him, too, as president.
The probe is hardly the only legal headache confronting Trump. A separate investigation related to efforts by him and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election — which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol — has also been intensifying in Washington. Several former White House officials have received grand jury subpoenas.
And a district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, is investigating whether Trump and his close associates sought to interfere in that state’s election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden.
___
Associated Press writers Terry Spencer, Meg Kinnard, Michelle L. Price, Lisa Mascaro, Alan Fram, Darlene Superville and Will Weissert contributed to this report.
Good morning.
Federal investigators searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday bearing a warrant that broadly sought presidential and classified records that the justice department believed the former president unlawfully retained, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The criminal nature of the search warrant executed by FBI agents, as described by the sources, suggested the investigation surrounding Trump is firmly a criminal inquiry that comes with potentially far-reaching political and legal ramifications for the former president.
And the extraordinary search, the sources said, came after the justice department grew concerned – as a result of discussions with Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks – that presidential and classified materials were being unlawfully and improperly kept at the Mar-a-Lago resort.
Meanwhile, Republican and rightwing groups have swiftly used the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago to raise money from their supporters by bombarding them with fundraising emails and appeals for donations.
Could the Mar-a-Lago raid benefit Trump politically? Trump is widely believed to be pursuing a presidential run in 2024. Some suggested that it would fuel his supporters’ suspicion of federal law enforcement officials, whom Trump and his allies have long disparaged as corrupt and biased.
Why didn’t the FBI just use a subpoena? The fact that the FBI sought a search warrant rather than a subpoena implies it did not trust Trump to hand over or preserve official documents in his possession.
What else have to FBI done? Federal investigators seized the cellphone of the Republican congressman Scott Perry on Tuesday, his office said. Perry is a close ally of Trump.
Biden administration ends Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy
A US border patrol looks on as people wait to have their identities checked and taken to a processing center in Yuma, Arizona, in June. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPAThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that it had ended a Trump-era policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in US immigration court, hours after a judge lifted an order, in effect since December, that the so-called Remain in Mexico rule be reinstated.
The timing had been in doubt since the US supreme court ruled on 30 June that the Biden administration could end the policy.
Homeland security officials had been largely silent, saying they had to wait for the court to certify the ruling and for a Trump-appointed judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, in Amarillo, Texas, to then lift his injunction.
The supreme court certified its ruling last week and critics of the policy had been increasingly outspoken about the Biden administration’s reticence on Remain in Mexico, calling for an immediate end to it.
What will happen now? The program now will be unwound in a “quick, and orderly manner”, DHS said in a statement. No more people are being enrolled and those who appear in court will not be returned to Mexico when they appear in the US for their next hearings.
Why did the Biden administration decide to end the policy? The policy “has endemic flaws, imposes unjustifiable human costs, and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border”, the department said.
‘This is about striking fear’: China’s Taiwan drills the new normal, analysts say
Chinese People’s Liberation Army warplanes conduct what it described as a combat training exercise around Taiwan on Sunday. Photograph: Wang Xinchao/APChina’s military drills targeting Taiwan have set a new normal, and are likely to “regularise” similar armed exercises off the coast or even more aggressive action much closer to the island, analysts have said.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been conducting live-fire exercises and other drills in the seas around Taiwan’s main island for almost a week, in a purported response to the controversial visit to Taipei by the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
Beijing claims Taiwan as a province. It has not ruled out taking it by force and objects to any and all foreign shows of support for its sovereignty. Taiwan has accused Beijing of using Pelosi’s visit as an excuse to prepare for an invasion.
While some drills are continuing, the big show put on last week has ended, and observers are now trying to assess how the dynamics of the region have changed, and what the future holds for cross-strait relations.
What does Taiwan think? Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said yesterday there was concern the PLA would “routinise” crossing the median line. He urged the international community to push back, saying Beijing clearly aimed to control the strait.
In other news …
In an article for Vogue, Serena Williams explained her intention to further expand her family was one of the main reasons she was retiring. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianSerena Williams, one of the greatest athletes of all time and a 23-time grand slam singles champion, has announced that she is retiring from professional tennis, indicating she could step away after the upcoming US Open. Here’s how how Serena Williams became a rare legend.
Elon Musk has sold $6.9bn (£5.7bn) worth of shares in Tesla after admitting that he could need the funds if he is forced to buy the social media platform. The Tesla chief executive walked away from a $44bn deal to buy Twitter in July but the company has launched a lawsuit demanding that he complete the deal.
China is racing to stamp out Covid-19 outbreaks in the tourist hubs of Tibet and Hainan, with the authorities launching more rounds of mass testing and closing venues to contain the highly transmissible Omicron variant as Beijing presses ahead with its Covid zero strategy.
A former Twitter employee has been found guilty of spying on Saudi dissidents using the social media platform and passing their personal information to a close aide of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A jury found Ahmad Abouammo had acted as an unregistered agent of the Saudi government.
Don’t miss this: A rebel fighter who risked his life for love was murdered, and part of me died too
Naxalite fighters in the forests of Chhattisgarh in 2007: Korsa Joga had been a member of the revolutionary group for many years. Photograph: Mustafa Quraishi/AP“As a journalist in a conflict zone I was used to covering deaths. But then a young insurgent who had laid down his weapons and become a friend was killed,” writes Ashutosh Bhardwaj. “I was sent photographs on WhatsApp, of his corpse lying on a road in a puddle of blood. In that moment a man deep inside me, who loves, who yearns for love, a part of that man was also murdered. A journalist often lives in bewildering haste, in a frenzied endeavour to locate news in every element around … Imperceptibly, but profoundly, reporting begins to mutate your being. You find yourself ineligible for writing on topics that don’t involve blood or sorrow.”
Climate check: Can citizen scientists turn the tide against America’s toxic algal blooms?
An aerial view of red tide off Florida’s south-west coast. Photograph: Mote Marine Laboratory’s Manatee Research ProgramAs climate change heats the oceans, predictions of a dangerous phenomenon known as “red tides” are on the rise. Red tides occur a type of rust-colored alga known as Karenia brevis grows, which produces toxic compounds that are harmful to humans as well as dolphins, manatees and other sea life. In an effort to address the threat, the Red Tide Respiratory Forecast was launched. It’s an online map that shows the presence and severity of red tide at select locations, which community of citizen science volunteers contribute to.
Last Thing: The transatlantic battle over a 7ft Frankenstein figure
Schoolchildren get up close with Frankenstein’s monster. Photograph: GettyMeasuring almost 7ft tall, a Frankenstein’s monster mannequin and costume is one of the largest – and strangest – costumes owned by the V&A museum in London. The only problem? The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) thinks it owns it too. The NHM said it was given the monster, and the costume, by Universal Studios in 1935. It in turn lent it to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, where it was reported as being destroyed in 1967. So the NHM was a bit surprised when it showed up in London.
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The post FBI and Trump News Review at 10 a.m. [Inoreader digest] first appeared on The News Links - news-links.org.Capitol Riot News Review at 10.a.m. created by Michael Novakhov • Aug 09 2022 Capitol Riot of 1.6.21 News Review at 10 a.m. EST Daily Capitol Riot Current News: https://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1006407045/tag/Capitol%20Riot%20of%201.6.21/view/html?cs=m&sb=y Selected Articles Review From The News And Times – https://thenewsandtimes.blogspot.com/ Current Selected Articles: https://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1006407045/tag/user-favorites/view/html All Current Articles: https://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1006407045/tag/all-articles/view/html The 55 worst things Trump did during his […]
The post Capitol Riot News Review at 10.a.m. [Inoreader digest] first appeared on The News Links - news-links.org.Michael_Novakhov shared this story . SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Former FBI agent Mark Rossini, who was indicted in a corruption case against a former Puerto Rico governor, turned himself into federal authorities Tuesday in the U.S. territory and declared himself not guilty, according to officials. The U.S. Attorney’s Office told The Associated Press […]
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-#Putin wages the #HybridWar against the #US, including mass & school shootings (GS), various Performance Acts, staged accidents; aiming to terrorize, to intimidate, to confuse, to force to submit.
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 3, 2022
A Special PsyOp. Does FBI pursue these HYPOTHESIS & LEADS?https://t.co/c7ZVC9WHIS
-Capitol Riot of January 6 2021, Russia, Putin, Russian Intelligence, GRU - Google Search https://t.co/lcCFXyyuVK https://t.co/mGb98f4SQt
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 3, 2022
-Capitol Riot of January 6 2021, Russia, Putin, Russian Intelligence, GRU - Google Search https://t.co/30HrI8zMpj https://t.co/f26euQVV5G
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 3, 2022
including mass & school shootings (GS),
various Performance Crimes,
staged accidents; aiming to terrorize, to intimidate, to confuse, to force to submit.
The Special PsyOps.
Does FBI pursue these HYPOTHESIS & LEADS?
Capitol Riot of January 6 2021, Russia, Putin, Russian Intelligence, GRU
"Mr. Bausman attended a 2015 conference hosted by RT, a news channel tied to the Kremlin." | Look into his eyes. Do you see the big Three Letters there? I do: K-G-B.
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Charles Bausman, a former financial executive who runs websites that promote far-right views, recorded footage in the Capitol for a Russian television producer. Soon after, he fled to Moscow as a “political refugee.”
In security footage from Jan. 6, it is easy to overlook the thin man wearing a red Trump hat who filters into the U.S. Capitol Building to record the mayhem with his phone.
He blends in with the mob, seemingly unexceptional by the chaotic standards of that day. But what he did afterward was far from routine.
Within 24 hours, the man, Charles Bausman, gave his recordings and commentary to a Russian television producer for a propaganda video. He then decamped to Moscow, where, appearing on a far-right television network owned by a sanctioned oligarch, he recently accused American media of covering up for neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
“We must understand that in the West,” Mr. Bausman told Russian viewers, “we are already in a situation of total lies.”
For Mr. Bausman — an American alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy and Wesleyan University who speaks fluent Russian — it was the latest chapter in a strange odyssey. Once a financial executive who voted for President Barack Obama, he emerged in 2014 as a public critic of the left and of the United States, boosted by Russian state-sponsored organizations through speaking invitations, TV appearances and awards.
Central to his transformation was a series of websites he created pushing anti-America, pro-Russia themes, as well as racist and homophobic messaging. Some of his posts have racked up millions of views, and his 5,000-word screed on “the Jewish problem” has been hailed by antisemites around the world and translated into multiple languages.
Mr. Bausman’s path in some ways tracks a broader shift on the political right that embraces misinformation and sympathy toward Russia while tolerating an increasingly emboldened white nationalism. For its part, the Kremlin has sought to court conservatives in the United States and sow discord through a network of expats, collaborators and spies.
People who have written for Mr. Bausman’s websites or promoted his work have come under scrutiny by American intelligence, and the founder of a pro-Russia forum that hosted him and others was charged in March with being an unregistered agent of Moscow.
Mr. Bausman initially gained some prominence as a Russia apologist, but he has lowered his profile in recent years as he has espoused more extreme views. Yet he has been Zelig-like in exploiting cultural and political flash points, racing from cause to cause.
After surfacing as a voluble defender of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, Mr. Bausman became an outspoken Trump supporter. With white nationalism on the rise, he threw himself into promoting it, relocating to rural Pennsylvania and hosting neo-Nazis at his property. He joined Republican protests against coronavirus restrictions and the 2020 election and most recently has reappeared in Russian media to criticize the West’s response to the war in Ukraine.
Konstantin Malofeev, an influential oligarch indicted by the United States over alleged sanctions violations, said he had asked Mr. Bausman to appear on his television network because Mr. Bausman was one of the few Russian-speaking Americans willing to do it.
“Who else is there to invite?” Mr. Malofeev asked.
Mr. Bausman, 58, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. No charges have been brought against him related to the events of Jan. 6, though he appears inside the Capitol in video clips introduced in court cases against others. When a Russian TV host referred to him as “a participant” in storming the Capitol, Mr. Bausman interrupted to say that the description could get him into trouble, and that he was a journalist.
But, on other occasions, he has described himself differently. Speaking on a white nationalist podcast in April, in which he attacked critics of Russia as “evil pedophile globalists” who control the “enslaved West,” he explained why he was back in Moscow:
“I’m a political refugee here.”
President Vladimir V. Putin had just invaded Crimea in 2014 when Mr. Bausman said he had an idea. He would create an alternative news source to counter what he called Western media’s “inaccurate, incomplete and unrealistically negative picture of Russia.”
The website, Russia Insider, was directed at an English-speaking audience and offered stories like, “Putin to Obama: You’re Turning the U.S.A. Into a Godless Sewer,” and “Anti-Christian Pogrom Underway in Ukraine.” Content was often aggregated from other pro-Russia sources, including RT, the Kremlin-funded television network.
The role of online agitator was not an obvious one for Mr. Bausman, who grew up in the wealthy suburb of Greenwich, Conn., attended prep school and went on to earn a history degree from Wesleyan and study business at Columbia. His experience with Russia dates to his childhood, when his father served as the Moscow bureau chief for The Associated Press.
As a college graduate in the late 1980s, he returned to Russia, and, with help from his father’s connections, worked briefly for NBC News. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, Mr. Bausman found a new role: as a multilingual fixer for entrepreneurs scrambling to cash in on the emerging economy.
A. Craig Copetas, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent who wrote a book about the post-Soviet business era, said Mr. Bausman worked with Russians who “were the forerunners of the oligarchs.”
“Charlie speaks excellent Russian,” he said, “so he was a valuable asset — he was like the young American prince of Moscow.”
Mr. Bausman’s early success was not to last. There are gaps in his résumé, and U.S. court records show that he filed for bankruptcy in 1999.
A former business associate recalled Mr. Bausman’s father beseeching people to “help my son” with his career. This person — one of several who did not want to be identified because of Mr. Bausman’s ties to extremists — described him as “just this lost guy” who seemed to struggle professionally despite impressive qualifications. He worked a succession of Russian private equity jobs, never staying in any position longer than a few years.
Mr. Bausman’s last role was with the agribusiness investor AVG Capital Partners. A 2012 company presentation, which listed him as director of investor relations, boasted of “strong partnerships” with Russian authorities and included a photo of Mr. Putin.
The exact timing of Mr. Bausman’s switch to propagandist is murky, but two profiles on the Russian social media platform VK offer a clue. The first, from 2011, is a sparse page featuring a wan Mr. Bausman in a suit and a link to a group interested in tennis.
In the second profile, from two years later, he looks tan and confident in an open-collared shirt. The VK groups he joined were strikingly radical, including a militant Russian Orthodox sect and another called the Internet Militia, whose goal echoed what would soon become Mr. Bausman’s focus: “to protect and defend our native information field” against American attack.
Publicly, Mr. Bausman turned to crowd funding to pay for Russia Insider. Behind the scenes, however, he was in contact with Mr. Malofeev, a promoter of Orthodox nationalist propaganda.
Leaked emails made public in 2014 revealed Mr. Bausman corresponding with a Malofeev associate, saying “we published your Serbia info” and asking for money. In an email to Mr. Malofeev, the associate praised Mr. Bausman’s site as “pro-Russian” and noted that he “wants to cooperate.”
Mr. Malofeev was backing another media project at the time with a similar agenda: Tsargrad TV, which he created with a former Fox News employee, John Hanick. Both Mr. Hanick and Mr. Malofeev were charged by the United States this year with violating sanctions imposed in 2014.
In an interview, Mr. Malofeev said he believed Mr. Bausman “has done a great job and that he is a very brave person,” but he denied they had “a financial relationship.”
Mr. Bausman has always said he did not receive support from Russian authorities. But there is little doubt that his emergence as an American salesman of pro-Kremlin views was aided greatly by entities controlled by or tied to the Russian state.
After Russia Insider went live, Mr. Bausman began appearing on RT and other Russian media, and a news crew from a major state-owned TV channel traveled to his parents’ home in Connecticut to film him discussing his new website. On Facebook, he boasted that “our traffic exploded after this aired.”
He was invited to join panel discussions at another state-owned outlet, received an award in 2016 named after a pro-Russia journalist killed in Ukraine, and spoke at a Kremlin-sponsored youth conference in newly captured Crimea. He gave interviews to Russian Orthodox figures, speaking approvingly of Mr. Malofeev.
In April 2016, Mr. Bausman’s work was promoted by a Russian website, RIA FAN, that has been linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch indicted by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller. The website initially shared an address with the Internet Research Agency, the Russian government “troll factory” accused of using fake social media accounts and online propaganda to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Russia analysts who have followed Mr. Bausman’s work say it has the hallmarks of a disinformation project. Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who researches Russian propaganda campaigns, said his messaging merged seamlessly with that of Mr. Putin’s government.
“The initial purpose of his outlet was to muddle the truth in American circles about Crimea,” she said. “And then you see his outlet and others repurposed to support the Kremlin narrative about Syria, and then the 2016 U.S. elections.
“It appears,” she said, “to be a classic Russian influence operation.”
With Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, Mr. Bausman’s media outlet began to promote more extreme views. In a celebratory post after the election, he struck a militant chord that shocked old friends.
“Trump’s election is perhaps akin to Luther nailing his theses to the door, but now the demons are wakened, and they know they must fight or be killed, and as in the 16th century, they will not go quietly,” he wrote. “And there will be blood. Let us hope that it is the figurative, digital kind, and not the real, red, hot, sticky stuff.”
A turning point came in January 2018, when Mr. Bausman posted a lengthy polemic, “It’s Time to Drop the Jew Taboo,” that was both an antisemitic manifesto and a call to action for the alt-right.
“The evidence suggests that much of human enterprise dominated and shaped by Jews is a bottomless pit of trouble with a peculiar penchant for mendacity and cynicism, hostility to Christianity and Christian values, and in geopolitics, a clear bloodlust,” he wrote.
It was welcomed by white nationalist figures like Richard Spencer, who called it “a major event.”
Outside the far right, Mr. Bausman’s embrace of antisemitism was widely condemned. The U.S. State Department flagged it in a report on human-rights concerns in Russia, and the diatribe prompted a disavowal from RT.
After the death in August 2018 of his mother, who left an estate valued at about $2.6 million, Mr. Bausman bought two properties in Lancaster, Pa., where his family had roots.
His older sister, Mary-Fred Bausman-Watkins, said last year that her brother “was always short on money” and that their parents frequently helped him out, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has compiled several reports on his activities. Ms. Bausman-Watkins died in May.
“They funded his whole life,” she told the center, “and then he inherited their money when they died, and they’re still funding his life.”
While living in Lancaster with his Russian wife and two young daughters, Mr. Bausman turned his attention to two new websites devoted largely to white nationalist content. Headlines included: “Out of Control Black Violence” and “Jewish Intellectuals Call on Gays to Perform Sex Acts in Front of Children.”
Mr. Bausman concealed his ownership of one of these sites, National Justice, through a private registration, which The New York Times confirmed by reviewing data leaked last year from Epik, a web-hosting service favored by the far right. The site has the same name as a white nationalist organization and featured posts by one of its leaders, though it is not the group’s official site, according to its chairman, Michael Peinovich.
In an interview, Mr. Peinovich said Mr. Bausman had hosted party members at his farmstead for an inaugural meeting in 2020 (a large event first reported by a local news outlet, LancasterOnline). But afterward, he said, his group “went our own way” because it did not agree with Mr. Bausman’s preoccupation with supporting Mr. Trump.
Three days before Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Bausman allowed Rod of Iron Ministries, a gun-themed religious sect led by a son of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, to meet at his property, according to photos on social media. Members of the sect had been active in “Stop the Steal” rallies, some of which Mr. Bausman had also attended, and were at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
On Facebook, Mr. Bausman posted an appeal for people to go to Washington “to support Trump.” At various points during the riot, Mr. Bausman can be seen inside the Capitol, often using his phone to record the chaos.
Afterward, he returned to Lancaster and gave a lengthy interview for a video about the insurrection produced by Arkady Mamontov, a Russian television host known for splashy pro-Kremlin propaganda pieces. The video also included footage of Mr. Bausman outside his home that appears to have been filmed months earlier. Mr. Mamontov did not respond to a request for comment.
In the video, Mr. Bausman suggested, without evidence, that federal agents had instigated the violence at the Capitol to “discredit Trump,” and he painted a dystopian, conspiratorial picture of American society. It is a theme that he has carried forward to more recent appearances on Mr. Malofeev’s television network, in which he has accused Western media of lying about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is not clear when Mr. Bausman left the U.S., but he was in Moscow for a TV appearance on the day of President Biden’s inauguration, two weeks after the insurrection at the Capitol. In the white nationalist podcast interview he gave in April from Russia, he said he had not been back home since.
When asked by the host if he was still a Trump fan, Mr. Bausman said he was not, before adding with a laugh that there was one thing that could restore his loyalty.
“When he pardons me for Jan. 6,” he said.
Anton Troianovski contributed reporting.
A woman who ran a Russia propaganda center in New York City was charged on Tuesday for acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the Russian government.
Elena Branson, 61, who has both US and Russian citizenship, ran the Russian Center New York, which she founded in 2012, receiving thousands of dollars from the Russian government.
Branson received a total of $173,000 between August 2013 to November 2019 in connection to her work at the center, reported Sky News.
The center reportedly coordinated activities such as an “I love Russia” campaign aimed at American young people that promoted Russian history and culture.
Branson also serves as chairperson of the Russian Community Council of the USA, an organization with the goal of “[supporting] organizations of Russian compatriots, to preserve and popularize the Russian language and cultural and historical heritage in the United States”, according to group’s website.
Branson reportedly even invited Donald Trump or one of his children to a “Russia Forum New York” in 2016, though there is no evidence that Trump or any family members attended.
Prosecutors said that Branson, who left the US for Russia in 2020 and still remains at large, corresponded with high-ranking Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin, about her campaign as Russia increased their propaganda efforts in the US.
Russian Center New York also lobbied officials in Hawaii not to change the name of a formerly Russian fort, Fort Elizabeth, on the island of Kauai, organizing a trip for Hawaiian officials to meet with Russian delegates in Moscow.
Branson has been charged with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the US attorney general as well as taking part in a visa fraud conspiracy, reported the Associated Press.
Branson is also being accused of helping others illegally avoid registering as foreign agents.
While none of Branson’s educational or diplomacy activities are illegal, all US agents for foreign governments must disclose their affiliation to the Department of Justice. “All the while, Branson knew she was supposed to register as an agent of the Russian government but chose not to do so and, instead, instructed others regarding how to illegally avoid the same,” said US attorney Damian Williams.
“Particularly given current global events, the need to detect and hinder attempts at foreign influence is of critical importance, and the southern district of New York is proud to do its part in the fight against tyranny,” said Williams.
During an interview with the FBI in September 2020, Branson said that she had never been asked by Russian officials to arrange meetings with US officials.
The following month, while speaking with a Russian-state controlled TV station, Branson said that she left the US because she thought she would most likely be arrested.
Declassified U.S. intelligence accuses Moscow of pushing propaganda through alternative websites as Russia refines techniques used in 2016.
By Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger
WASHINGTON — Russian intelligence services have been spreading disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, according to newly declassified intelligence, material that demonstrates how Moscow is continuing to try to influence Americans as the election draws closer.
Russian military intelligence, known as the G.R.U., has used its ties with a Russian government information center, InfoRos, and other websites to push out English-language disinformation and propaganda about the pandemic, such as amplifying false Chinese arguments that the virus was created by the United States military and articles that said Russia’s medical assistance could bring a new détente with Washington.
The disinformation efforts are a refinement of what Russia tried to do in 2016. The fake social media accounts and bots used by the Internet Research Agency and other Russia-backed groups to amplify false articles have proved relatively easy to stamp out. But it is far more difficult to stop the dissemination of such articles that appear on websites that seem legitimate, according to outside experts.
“Russian intelligence agencies are taking a more central role in disinformation efforts that Russia is pushing now,” said Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “It is not the blunt force” of the operations mounted by the Internet Research Agency.
Two American officials described the newly declassified intelligence but would not provide the underlying reports about the activities of the G.R.U. and the S.V.R., Moscow’s equivalent of the C.I.A. They discussed the information on the condition of anonymity.
Last week, intelligence officials warned about Russian, Chinese and Iranian efforts to interfere with the election. While Democrats criticized the warning for a lack of specifics, officials promised to release more information.
While the disinformation efforts outlined on Tuesday by American officials were focused on the pandemic, security researchers said Russia continued to push disinformation on a variety of topics.
The government’s accusations came as Mandiant Threat Intelligence, part of the FireEye cybersecurity firm, reported that it had detected a parallel influence campaign in Eastern Europe intended to discredit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including disinformation about the coronavirus. While the Mandiant report did not specifically name Russia and its intelligence agencies, it noted that the campaign was “aligned with Russian security interests” in an effort to undermine NATO activities.
Facebook has begun labeling stories that appear on state-sponsored news sites like RT and Sputnik. But it is harder for the social media companies to identify and label news articles that are posted on conspiracy-minded sites, according to experts.
Many of the pieces created by Russian intelligence were published on InfoRos, a site controlled by the Russian government, and OneWorld.Press, a nominally independent site that United States officials said had ties to the G.R.U. American officials said other sites, such as GlobalResearch.ca, regularly amplify G.R.U. propaganda, but officials have not directly linked it to Russian intelligence.
United States government officials mostly described disinformation focused on the pandemic, but they also outlined ties between Russian intelligence and a think tank that had published articles on politics.
The Strategic Culture Foundation is directed by another Russian intelligence agency, the S.V.R., according to two American officials. The foundation and its ties to Russian intelligence are also being investigated by the F.B.I., according to another official.
In May, the foundation published an article critical of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama administration official who lost a primary race in June in New York for a seat in Congress.
Dr. Farkas said the Russians were continuing to repeat their efforts from 2016 to try to influence the election.
“They want to sow dissent and reduce confidence among Americans in our democracy and make democracy look bad worldwide,” she said. “They want to prevent people who are tough on Russia from coming into power.”
Michael Averko, a contributor to the foundation, did not return a request for comment, but he said in a recent mass email to reporters that he had been visited by the F.B.I. Mr. Averko said he told the F.B.I. that he did not know about any ties between the foundation and Russian intelligence, but that he doubted they existed.
After the publication of this article, OneWorld.Press issued a statement saying any accusation that it worked for Russian intelligence was “categorically false.” “To the best of our knowledge,” its contributors have not been charged with crimes for cooperating with any foreign intelligence agency, the statement said.
Without evidence, OneWorld.Press claimed that the accusations about Russian intelligence’s propaganda efforts were being spread by officials who aimed to hurt President Trump’s re-election chances. “Everybody across the world knows that some members of the ‘deep state’ have their daggers out for Trump, and the president himself has even said as much on countless occasions,” it said.
American intelligence officials said the G.R.U.’s psychological warfare unit, known as Unit 54777 or the 72nd Special Service Center, was behind the propaganda campaigns that were often devised to obscure Moscow’s role in creating them. A 2018 report in The Washington Post linked InfoRos to the G.R.U.’s Unit 54777.
United States intelligence reports have identified two Russians, Denis V. Tyurin and Aleksandr G. Starunskiy, with ties to the G.R.U. and who make sure the messaging and disinformation drafted by the intelligence officials are pushed by InfoRos and on InfoBrics.org and OneWorld.Press.
Russian officials did not immediately return a request for comment.
Mr. Tyurin and Mr. Starunskiy, the American officials said, were in essence involved in a kind of information laundering, akin to money laundering. They take the messages from Russian intelligence and spread them on InfoRos, OnePress or another website.
The material created by the G.R.U. is then picked up by other websites that further spread it. Those websites are often on the fringes of the web, while some, like Global Research, have a significant following, American officials said.
The stories pushed by Russian intelligence appear to be written by native English speakers and do not stand out as products of a foreign influence campaign, American officials said.
From late May to early July, about 150 articles on the pandemic were published by the Russian intelligence-backed effort, American officials said.
OneWorld published pieces about how the pandemic was an experiment in manipulating the world. InfoRos, as well as the Tass news agency, published an article that said the United States was using the pandemic to impose its view of the world, according to American officials. InfoBrics.org published reports about Beijing’s contention that the coronavirus was originally an American biological weapon.
While the specific sites may not receive much traffic, American officials believe the disinformation written by Russian military intelligence is amplified, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly.
Tracking the influence of Russian disinformation is difficult. While documents stolen and published by Russian intelligence agencies had an important effect on the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, the social media posts do not seem to have been as consequential.
But propaganda and disinformation published on alternative news sites, like OneWorld or Global Research, may have more traction, some researchers believe.
“What we have seen from G.R.U. operations is oftentimes the social media component is a flop, but the narrative content that they write is shared more broadly through the niche media ecosystem,” said Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who has studied the G.R.U. and InfoRos ties and propaganda work.
The EU DisinfoLab, an independent nonprofit organization, has previously linked OneWorld, InfoRos and a French-language site to Russian propaganda efforts. Some of that disinformation centered on allied troops spreading the coronavirus, allegations similar to those in the new Mandiant report.
Mandiant called the threat group it found “Ghostwriter,” since it relied on false news articles or made-up letters and quotations that appeared to originate with local politicians or military officials. It relied on articles written by what it called “at least 14 inauthentic personas,” meaning reporters or blog writers who were invented by the creators of the influence campaign. The articles were published by pro-Russian sites like TheDuran.com, which American intelligence officials have also been examining.
In one example, a fabricated letter presented as being written by the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, perpetuated the false claim that the alliance was planning to leave Lithuania as the pandemic spread. Another episode involved a local Lithuanian news site that was hacked, and attackers posted an article that falsely claimed German troops had desecrated a Jewish cemetery in Kaunas, a city in central Lithuania.
Глава Минобороны РФ Сергей Шойгу доложил президенту Владимиру Путину об освобождении Луганской Народной Республики (ЛНР), сообщает Минобороны РФ.
Министр рассказал главе государства об успешных боевых действиях ВС РФ и подразделений Народной милиции ЛНР. В результате был установлен полный контроль над Лисичанском и ближайшими населенными пунктами, такими, как Белогоровка, Новодружеск, Малорязанцево и Белая гора.
За сутки военные освободили 182 квадратных километра территорий.
Ранее Минобороны сообщило, что российские войска замкнули кольцо вокруг Лисичанска и заблокировали в «котле» группировку украинской армии. В плен сдались 38 человек.
Утром 3 июля глава Чеченской республики Рамзан Кадыров сообщил об освобождении Лисичанска и знаменах Победы на улицах города.
In the early days of the war in Ukraine, drones emerged as an unexpected source of victory against Russian forces.
Stories of the success dominated the news cycle, played out on multiple video clips widely distributed on social media, and showed Ukraine's drones decimating the chaotic Russian advances.
Ukraine's ad-hoc drone airforce, from small consumer drones typically used for surveillance to the famed Turkish-designed Bayraktar TB2 drones, were credited with eviscerating Putin's tanks and armor.
But Russia has learned from the humiliation by drones in the first months of the invasion. Experts told Insider that the drone wonder weapons are becoming increasingly ineffective because Russia has improved its defense systems and is downing and jamming many of Ukraine's drones.
"What's happening now is that Russia's electronic warfare and air defenses have become better organized and fielded when compared to the earlier months of the war," Samuel Bendett, an analyst and expert in unmanned and robotic military systems, said at the Center for Naval Analysis.
Russian forces are using early warning radars to identify the drones and electronic warfare systems to jam and disrupt their communication, Bendett said.
They also use various weapons like machine guns and air defense systems, such as the Tor missile system, to shoot the drones down.
Recent footage from the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to show a Krasukha-S4 electronic warfare system in action, taking out a Ukrainian drone.
According to Mark Cancian, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ukraine was previously able to use drones so effectively because Russia had not organized its defense systems.
"Drones were able to play such a role because the Russians were slow to set up an air defense system. They were slow to establish the combined arms operation (armor, infantry, artillery, recon, engineers, air defense) that their doctrine called for," he said.
Russia has better organized and positioned its ground-based air defense in the Donbas region, where the focus of the war has shifted.
Ukrainian forces are now limiting their use of drones because Russian troops are more easily thwarting them, and losing drones can be costly.
While single-use drones such as the Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost cost several thousand dollars each, the TB2 drones can cost somewhere between $1-2 million each.
Ukraine has received about 50 TB2 drones from Turkish arms company Baykar since the Russian invasion began.
Ruthlessly effective in the first days of the war, the TB2s have begun to be shot down by Russia, and the Ukrainian army is scaling back their use.
Reports have recently emerged that the US is planning on selling Ukraine US-made General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle armed drones, which have greater capabilities than the TB2s.
However, two unnamed Ukrainian Air Force pilots told The War Zone that they are not advocating for the drones due to their hefty price tag of $10 million each, as they are likely to get shot down on their first mission.
According to Cancian, Russia's air defenses are almost entirely short, and medium-range missiles and drones are especially vulnerable because they fly low and slow.
"Ukrainian pilots I have talked with say the role of drones is now limited as a result," he said.
Instead, Ukrainian forces have advocated for modern fighter jets from its Western allies.
While Ukraine's drones are becoming less effective in this new phase of the war, Russia is flying just as many if not more of their drones, especially for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, CNA expert Bendett said.
The Ukrainians lack the weaponry to shoot them down, and one soldier told The Sunday Times: "We can't see the Russian drones, but they can see us. The only thing we can do is hide."
Bendett said the next few weeks will likely involve the Russian military seeking to better organize and continue to push forward in its offensive.
"It's trying to trap Ukrainians in pockets around certain cities and towns and just trying to push and grind the Ukrainian defenses in general. Drones are playing a key part in providing intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities back to the Russians so that they can conduct strikes from the ground and the air," Bendett said.
"So we're going to see drones on the Russian side, assuming probably even more important going forward, assuming that the war continues as it is right now."
Об этом сообщает Минобороны РФ.
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Selected Articles – Michael Novakhov’s favorite articles on Inoreader – The News And Times ‘A black day’ Putin humiliated as Russian navy sinks its OWN ship in latest calamity The Russian Navy has failed to cover itself in glory during the course of the war in Ukraine. The Black Sea Fleet suffered a major […]
The post ‘A black day’: Putin humiliated. | Audio Posts In Russian: Путин, лучше не связывайся, – командующий ВВС Германии предостерег диктатора от нападения на НАТО first appeared on The News And Times Information Network.
FBI-#FBI: People do not trust you, and you do not deserve their trust.
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 4, 2022
And you cannot buy it with money wasted on lying and manipulative informants.
You just breed PSYCHOPATHS by rewarding treachery and deceit.
You drive America crazy with Cointelpro. https://t.co/RRKfQ8CFNe
#FBI:
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 4, 2022
A Society in which one half spies on another is a #SickSociety. Stop the #Spying, often unneeded.
The FBI Crisis & Incompetence (+ Hansen-s) exposed by 911, had deepened. Lawmakers have to clarify & codify the concepts & precepts of efficient & healthy #DomesticSecurity. pic.twitter.com/9yMJMMKqra
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