XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.atheism

Russia: Trump & His Team’s Ties
Despite Russia's harmful national interests against the U.S., and its
human rights violations around the world, President Trump and his team
are directly and indirectly tied to Russia.

Throughout the 2016 presidential election, President Trump not only
refused to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin, but was even
friendly and accommodating in his remarks. In his own words, President
Trump called President Putin "highly respected
." More recently, President Trump put the U.S. on equal moral footing
with Russia

when responding to Bill O'Reilly's question about Putin being a
"killer," saying "We've got a lot of killers... you think our country's
so innocent?" This is absolutely false moral equivalence, and unheard of
for the President of the United States to insult and demean the country
he leads.

President Trump has harshly criticized NATO, and exclaimed
that only the NATO allies that paid equally to the alliance deserved
protection from the United States. Though these remarks were softened by

British Prime Minister Theresa May, who claims that President Trump fully supports the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it's still
unclear how supportive he will be of NATO allies like the Baltic states
in light of his relationship with Russia.

President Trump has also surrounded himself with people who do business
with and are sympathetic to Russia. The New York Times reported that
members of Trump's 2016 campaign and other Trump associates had frequent contact

with senior Russian intelligence officials throughout the campaign. In
addition to these questionable communications, here are a few other
associates with ties to Moscow:

d Trump: Not only does his past and current team have ties to Russia,
but the President himself also does. He has traveled to Russia
extensively, done business there often, and has ties to Russian
interests. For example, in 2008 he made a real estate sale to Russian billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev. Trump bought a Palm Beach mansion in 2004 during a bankruptcy sale for $41 million, and less than four years later, without ever having moved in, Trump sold the mansion to Rybolovlev for
$95 million. In a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office, he revealed highly classified information to the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and
foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. US media was banned from this meeting,
but a Russian photographer was allowed in the session, later releasing
these photos on the Russian state-owned news.

Flynn and Putin
Michael Flynn: Flynn, President Trump's former National Security Advisor,
was asked to resign
just weeks after he was sworn in. His resignation came after it leaked
that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with
Russian officials, specifically Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey
Kislyak, before President Trump's inauguration. In these communications,
Flynn discussed sanctions imposed by the Obama administration on Russia –
while President Obama was still in office. Earlier last year, he stated
that the U.S. needs to respect that "Russia has its own national security strategy, and we have to try to figure out: How do we combine the United States' national security strategy along with Russia's national security strategy," raising troubling questions. In 2015, Flynn delivered remarks
at a Moscow gala honoring RT, Russia's propaganda arm, where he was
seated next to Putin. Flynn accepted $33,750 for this speech by RT, and
did not correctly report the payment, thus concealing payment from a
foreign government, and possibly violating the law in the meantime. Flynn continued to appear on RT as a foreign policy analyst. Altogether, Flynn
was paid
more than $67,000 by Russian companies before the 2016 presidential
election.
Jeff Sessions: Sessions, President Trump's Attorney General, had two conversations with Ambassador Kislyak during the 2016 presidential
election. However, during later confirmation hearings, he claimed that he
"did not have communications with the Russians
" when prompted by Senator Al Franken. Once reports of his meetings with Kislyak surfaced, Sessions recused himself from any investigation into
Russia's interference in our 2016 presidential election. Many officials
are continuing to call for his resignation.

Rex Tillerson: Tillerson, President Trump's former Secretary of State,
worked on energy projects in Russia for two decades during his career at
Exxon. He has publicly described his "very close relationship
" with President Putin and was awarded Russia's Order of Friendship in
2013, the highest state honor possible for a foreigner.
Jared Kushner: Kushner is President Trump's son-in-law and current Senior Advisor. Along with Michael Flynn, Kushner met with Ambassador Kislyak
during the Presidential transition. The White House later acknowledged
that following that meeting, Ambassador Kislyak requested a second
meeting, which Kushner had a deputy attend. However, at Kislyak's
request, Kushner did later meet with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Russia's state-owned development bank, who has close ties to President Putin. The
U.S. placed this bank on its sanctions list following Russia's annexation
of Crimea. The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to question Kushner
about his meetings with Russian officials. The New York Times recently
reported
that Kusher failed to disclose dozens of contacts with foreign leaders on
his application for top-secret security clearance -- one of those
contacts being Ambassador Kislyak.
Donald Trump, Jr.: Trump, Jr., President Trump's son, met with Fabien
Baussart, a leader of a Syrian opposition group backed by the Russian government, and others about how the U.S. could work with Russia on the
Syrian conflict weeks before Donald Trump was elected President. He has
also been quoted saying that his father's businesses "see a lot of money pouring in from Russia"
, and that he had visited Russia on business over a half-dozen times. In
June 2016, he met
with a Russian billionaire, Emin Agalarov, under the premise that Emin
had "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary
and her dealings with Russia" from the Crown prosecutor of Russia, and
that this was part of "Russia and its government's support for Mr.
Trump."
Paul Manafort: Manafort, who has business connections to Russia and
Ukraine, was hired as Trump's campaign manager in March 2016. He then
resigned in August of the same year, after reports surfaced that
suggested he had received $12.7 million
from Victor Yanukovych, Ukraine's pro-Russia former president. It was
recently revealed by AP that Manafort proposed in a strategy plan from as
early as June 2005 that he would work to influence politics, business
deals, and media inside the U.S. and Europe to benefit Putin. This plan
was pitched to Oleg Deripaska, a "Russian aluminum magnate" with close
ties to Putin. Manafort eventually signed
a $10 million contract with Deripaska in early 2006. The Trump
Administration and Manafort have both said that Manafort never worked for Russian interests. Since the FBI confirmed in a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on March 20 that investigators are
examining whether the Trump campaign and its associates coordinated with
Russia to interfere in the 2016 election, the White House has made
attempts to distance itself from Manafort, claiming that he played "a
very limited role" in the campaign, despite his clear leadership role as campaign chairman leading up to the Republican National Convention. On
October 27, 2017, Manafort was indicted by a federal grand jury for
conspiracy against the United States, among other charges.
Carter Page: Page, hired as a foreign policy advisor to Trump's 2016
campaign, was known to have deep ties
to Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas company. In July 2016, a month after Russia's DNC meddling was reveled in the press, Page traveled to Moscow
to make a speech. The Trump campaign approved this trip, saying he would
not be traveling as an official representative of the campaign. In the
speech he delivered in Moscow, he criticized American foreign policy as
being hypocritical – remarks which ultimately led to his resignation from Trump's campaign. Before joining the campaign, he was a businessman "of
no particular renown" working in the Moscow branch of Merrill Lynch
before creating his own consulting agency. Previously, Trump identified
Page as one of a small group of advisors helping to craft his foreign
policy platform during the campaign. However, President Trump's staff now claims that "Carter Page is an individual who the [then] president-elect
does not know." Page met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in 2016. Buzzfeed recently reported that
Page had met with a Russian intelligence agent named Victor Podobnyy in
2013, who was reportedly trying to recruit Page. Podobnyy was later
charged
by the U.S. for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.
Tevfik Arif: Arif, who founded Bayrock
, a real estate group known to have many deals with Trump, had a 17-year
career in the Soviet Ministry of Commerce and Trade
.
Roger Stone: Stone, a former advisor to Trump, had back channel
conversations
with Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, which is the organization
that published the DNC leaks and Podesta emails during the 2016
elections. He also had exchanges with Guccifer 2.0 -- a hacker believed
to be linked to Russia involved in the 2016 hacking of Democratic
National Committee emails -- in August 2016. Also in August, he tweeted
"it will soon [be] Podesta's time in the barrell." About two months
later, Wikileaks began posting John Podesta's emails.
Felix Sater: Sater, formerly a senior advisor to the Trump Organization,
is a Russian-born Bayrock associate
with extensive involvement in organized crime. In 2015, he wrote
an email to Trump's lawyer, Cohen, referencing then-candidate Trump
saying: "Our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it.
I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this
process."
Alex Shnaider: Born in Russia, Shnaider co-financed
a real estate project with Trump. Shnaider's father-in-law, Boris J.
Birshtein, was a close business associate of Sergei Mikhaylov, the head
of one of the largest branches of the Russian mob.
JD Gordon: Gordon, a national security advisor for the Trump campaign met
with
Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the Republican
National Convention in Cleveland in July, who he told he would like to
improve US - Russia relations. He advocated
for a change to the GOP national platform to make their policies more pro-Russian and less pro-Ukraine, a change which Gordon said was directly supported by then-candidate Donald Trump.
Wilbur Ross: Ross, President Trump's Secretary of Commerce, was the top shareholder
in the Bank of Cyprus, an institution with deep Russian ties and
investors who made fortunes under Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to McClatchy, the banking system in Cyprus, because of its
dependence on Russian investors, is money-laundering concern for the US
State Department. Ross served as the vice chairman of the board of
directors for the Bank of Cyprus. The second largest investor in the Bank
of Cyprus was Viktor Vekselberg, who once served on the Russian state-
owned oil giant Rosneft, which is under partial sanction by the US
Treasury Department. Vekselberg is known to have a close relationship
with Vladimir Putin. In February, six senators sent a letter to Ross
inquiring about his relationship to Vekselberg. The senators also
inquired about Ross's relationship with Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, who is
also linked to
the Bank of Cyprus, was a former KGB agent, and is believed to be a Putin associate.
Erik Prince: Prince, who had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, had a secret meeting with a Russian close to President
Putin, arranged by the United Arab Emirates, the Washington Post recently reported.
The meeting reportedly took place around January 11, 2017 on the
Seychelles islands, and was allegedly part of an effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Russia and then President-
elect Trump. The UAE agreed to facilitate the meeting in order to explore Russia's willingness to curtail its relationship with Iran. Prince was a supporter of Trump, and has ties
to Steve Bannon and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who is his sister.
He was also seen in Trump transition offices in December.
Michael Cohen: Cohen is a longtime associate of President Trump's and is
his current personal lawyer. He has come under scrutiny for pursuing
a Trump Tower deal in Moscow while Trump was campaigning to be President,
and for alleged meetings with Russian officials in Prague. In January
2017, he met with a Ukrainian opposition politician and Felix Sater to
discuss a plan to give Russia long term control over Ukraine and lift
sanctions against Russia. They then put this plan in a sealed envelope
and left it in the office of then National Security Advisor Michael
Flynn.
George Papadopoulos: Papadopoulos was a foreign policy advisor for the
Trump Campaign. On October 27, 2017 it was revealed

that Papadopoulos had plead guilty to making a false statement to
federal investigators "about the timing, extent and nature of his
relationships and interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with senior Russian officials."
While working for the Trump Campaign, Papadopoulos met with an overseas professor who told him about the Russians possessing "dirt" on Hillary
Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." He repeatedly sought to use
his connections to arrange a meeting between the campaign and Russian government officials. On March 31, 2016, at a foreign policy meeting with
Trump and other campaign advisers, Papadopoulos shared that he could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin. He sent multiple emails to
other members of the campaign about his contact with "the Russians" and "outreach to Russia."

In addition to these ties, it appears that Trump and his team are
conscious of their guilt. In late February 2017, CNN reported
that "the FBI rejected a recent White House request to publicly knock
down media reports about communications between Donald Trump's associates
and Russians known to US intelligence during the 2016 presidential
campaign." This request

may be a violation of procedures that limits communications between the
White House and FBI on pending investigations.

Why is America's leader and his team so close to Russia? This is either
due to poor judgement or a deeper personal, financial, or political link between President Trump and Russia. It is not normal for the leader of
our country to be so extensively tied to a foreign government that has
sought to undermine democracies across the globe, and connections like
these should be concerning to American citizens everywhere.

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