Colbert defines 'no collusion' as Trump's aloha: 'It means both hello and I'm guilty'
July 31, 2018, 10:07 PM ET
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A European spy agency told the CIA it knew of a Ukraine special operations team plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipeline three months before explosions damaged the undersea system last year, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The newspaper cited US intelligence allegedly leaked earlier this year by a low-level US Air National Guard computer technician who had access to large amounts of highly classified materials.
The leaked documents indicated that an unnamed European intelligence body told the US spy agency in June 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, that Ukraine military divers reporting directly to the country's military commander-in-chief were planning the attack.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany, were rocked by underwater explosions on September 26, rendering them useless and cutting off a potential source of billions of dollars in earnings for Russia.
The apparent sabotage sparked a region-wide emergency as it cut off crucial supplies of energy for Europe just as the war had sent the price of oil skyrocketing.
Accusations were made against several countries including Russia, the United States and Ukraine, but all denied responsibility.
The Post, citing unnamed officials, said that after the Central Intelligence Agency learned of the alleged bombing plot, the United States told allies including Germany about it.
It said the original European intelligence on the plot made clear it was not a rogue operation, and that it was overseen by military chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi without the knowledge of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Post report is supported by information gathered by German investigators that a six-person team using false passports took a large sailboat from the German port of Rostock last September to undertake the operation.
The sailboat was rented by what appeared to be a front company.
According to German media reports last week, metadata from the emails used to rent a sailboat tie them to Ukraine, and the president of the front company also lives in Kyiv.
However, Danish media recently reported that a Russian navy vessel specialized in submarine operations was photographed near the location of the sabotage just before it happened.
© 2023 AFP
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Speaking to The New York Post this Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) claimed that an informant who allegedly has information about a $5 million bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden is afraid for their safety.
“The American people deserve to know if their sitting President sold out his country,” Mace told The Post. “The FBI originally would not confirm the existence of the document; then it magically appeared."
“Then the government told us the whistleblower wasn’t credible and the contents of the document couldn’t be verified,” she said. “Come to find out the Obama Administration thought the whistleblower was credible when they hired this individual."
“Now the FBI also has told us the whistleblower can’t come forward publicly because they fear for his safety," she continued. "If the FBI can’t verify information, investigate potential crimes, or keep people safe, what exactly are they good for?”
Mace became the second GOP lawmaker to make the claim after Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) said Monday that the FBI fears for the informant's safety, saying on Twitter that the FBI said the whistleblower could “be killed if unmasked, based on the info he has brought forward about the Biden family.”
On Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) announced that he plans to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress for not complying with the subpoena of an FBI document alleging the scheme.
“The claims made in the document are consistent with what we found and disclosed to you all in Romania. It suggests a pattern of bribery where payments would be made through shell accounts and multiple banks,” Comer said.
Read the full report at The New York Post.
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These Joe Manchin allies don't share David Axelrod’s view that he's a 'dead man walking' in 2024
June 06, 2023
During a Monday night, May 5 appearance on CNN, Democratic strategist and former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod wasn't optimistic about Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-West Virginia) chances of being reelected in 2024.
Referencing a recent East Carolina University poll that showed West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice — who is seeking the GOP nomination in West Virginia's 2024 U.S. Senate race — ahead of Manchin by 22 percent in a hypothetical matchup, Axelrod described the centrist senator as a "dead man walking in West Virginia."
Axelrod told CNN, "There's nowhere for him to go. He's got a popular Republican governor in the state that Donald Trump carried by almost 40 points. He didn't win by very much last time. So, he knows that he can't win reelection in that state."
East Carolina University's poll, however, found that if the GOP nominee is far-right Rep. Alex Mooney (R-West Virginia), Manchin would have only a 1 percent disadvantage. So, Justice is clearly the possible nominee who worries Democrats the most.
But in an article published on June 6, The Hill's Alexander Bolton stresses that Democrats who have worked closely with Manchin don't share Axelrod's pessimism.
Democratic strategist and former Manchin aide Jonathan Kott told The Hill, "David Axelrod doesn't know a lot about West Virginia politics and is a brilliant strategist, but probably doesn't spend much time in West Virginia with Joe Manchin and should before he counts him out."
Kott and another Democratic strategist, Mike Plante, both stressed that Justice won't necessarily be the nominee. According to Bolton, Kott argues that pundits in Washington, D.C. don't realize how tough Justice's path to the nomination is. And Plante told The Hill that Axelrod "assumes Justice is going to be the nominee."
Justice is conservative, but some Republicans insist that he isn't far enough to the right. The anti-tax Club For Growth, Bolton notes, has donated "as much as $10 million" to Mooney's campaign.
Plante told The Hill, "The governor commands the bully pulpit here and has utilized that to his advantage, but there's still a lot of game left to play before we get to the primary. It's way early in the game to be prognosticating who's going to be the nominee for the Republicans."
Manchin's centrist voting record has been a frequent source of frustration to the liberal/progressive wing of his party. But in deep red West Virginia, he has a long history of winning statewide races.
Manchin, now 75, served as West Virginia secretary of state and later, governor, before winning his U.S. Senate seat via a special election in 2010. He was reelected in 2012 and 2018.
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