Idaho Republican Party’s rule changes have a precedent: The Soviet Politburo | Opinion
The Editorial Board – June 30, 2023
Ryan Suppe
Imagine Rep. Jane Smith voted against a bill to censor public libraries.
Returning home to her rural Idaho district, she is ordered to appear before the Central Committee, where Party officials pepper her with questions. Her answers are unimportant.
The Central Committee announces the decision it made weeks ago: Smith will be cast out, the fact that she won the support of 70% of voters in the last election notwithstanding.
Because the requirement for wielding power is not loyalty to the people who elected you, but loyalty to the party bosses.
This isn’t a scene from the Soviet bloc. It’s the Idaho Republican Party’s immediate plan for running politics in the Gem State under the guidance of Premier Dorothy Moon, a plan it moved at its summer meeting in Challis to begin implementing with a series of rules.
As Melissa Davlin of Idaho Public Television reported, the party passed resolutions that include allowing central committees to summon, censure and even revoke the right of lawmakers to run as Republicans; revoking the voting privileges of the Young Republicans, College Republicans and Republican Women; supporting a constitutional amendment to allow the party to control the primary; and issuing a vote of no confidence in Gov. Brad Little and a number of Republican House members for failing to support library censorship.
The organizing logic is simple: Whatever power there is, it ought to belong to the Party.
Whatever power these ideologically extreme and power-hungry Party bosses successfully take, it will come at the expense of Idaho voters.
Because policy positions favored by huge numbers of Republican voters in Idaho are formally verboten under the Idaho GOP’s official platform.
If a Republican lawmaker doesn’t sign on to a proposal to revoke your right to cast a ballot in U.S. Senate elections, they’ve violated the GOP platform, which requires support for revoking the 17th Amendment.
If they support the continued existence of some number of grizzly bears or wolves in Idaho, they’ve arguably violated it as well.
Or if they don’t support a return to the gold standard.
Or if they don’t support the repeal of Medicaid expansion.
Or if they don’t support nullifying the U.S. Supreme Court decision recognizing marriage equality.
Or if they support the right of a child who was raped by a family member to have an abortion, or if they think that such an abortion should be handled in some way other than with a murder charge.
For these and countless other examples of crimethink, the people’s elected officials could be hauled in and stripped of their right to call themselves Republicans by a bunch of people that most Idaho Republican voters have never heard of, much less voted for.
With Idaho’s most powerful party fully hijacked, the open primary initiative seems to be the best bet for keeping the political process under popular control, precisely because it would diminish the political relevance of parties. It would allow everyone to weigh in on which candidates will face off in the general election, regardless of party, and it would allow voters to rank general election candidates in order of preference, so they wouldn’t have to worry they’re throwing their votes away if a third-party candidate is their first choice.
None of this would help people the extremist Party has termed RINOs or secret liberals or any of that nonsense. Conservatives would do well with an open primary and ranked-choice voting system because Idaho is full of conservative voters.
Those elected under such a system would know that it was the people, not the Party bosses, who put them in office. They would know it is the people, not the Party bosses, to whom they answer for their record.
Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser, and community member Mary Rohlfing.
Liz Cheney on what’s wrong with politics: ‘We’re electing idiots’
John Wagner – June 27, 2023
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) arrives in Jackson Hole, Wyo., to speak after losing her Republican primary election on Aug. 16. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Ex-congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) offered a blunt assessment of her former profession Monday night: “What we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
Cheney, who lost her Republican primary last year to a candidate backed by former president Donald Trump, shared her view at an event that was billed as a conversation on the future of the two-party political system in the United States.
Cheney, who co-chaired the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, has emerged as a leading critic of Trump, repeatedly calling him “unfit for office.” In the conversation Monday at the 92nd Street Y in New York, guided by moderator David Rubenstein, Cheney said ensuring Trump doesn’t return to the White House is her top priority.
That prompted Rubenstein to ask whether Cheney would run for president as an independent next year if presented with polling data showing such a bid would damage Trump.
“Look, I think that the country right now faces hugely challenging and fundamentally important issues,” Cheney responded. “And what we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
After laughter from the audience subsided, she continued: “And so, I don’t look at it through the lens of, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do. I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”
“You know, because of the situation that we’re in,” Cheney continued, “where we have a major-party candidate who’s trying to unravel our democracy — and I don’t say that lightly — we have to think about, all right, what kinds of alliances are necessary to defeat him, and those are the alliances we’ve got to build across party lines.”
The conversation moved on without Cheney directly answering whether she might move forward with a presidential bid if it could damage Trump.
Earlier, she suggested she wouldn’t run for president if she thought doing so could help Trump, who has continued to lead in Republican primary polling despite state and federal indictments.
“I am not going to do anything that would help Donald Trump,” Cheney said.
North Carolina GOP bars promotion of certain beliefs in state government, 1 of 6 veto overrides
Gary D. Robertson – June 27, 2023
FILE – Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper speaks to The Associated Press in a year-end interview at the Executive Mansion in Raleigh, N.C., Dec. 14, 2022. On Friday, June 16, 2023, Cooper vetoed GOP legislation that would ban the promotion of certain beliefs that some lawmakers have likened to critical race theory in state government workplaces. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature swept six bills into law Tuesday with veto overrides, including one barring promotion of certain beliefs in state government workplaces that some lawmakers liken to critical race theory and another placing new limits on wetlands protection rules.
The measures, which also address green investing in state government, consumer loans and local government finances, became law after a succession of votes with margins large enough to overcome Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s formal vetoed objections earlier this month.
Five of the veto overrides were completed Tuesday with House votes, which followed several similar Senate votes over the past week. A sixth veto override effort cleared both the House and Senate on Tuesday.
The state constitution deems an override successful if at least three-fifths of the members in each chamber present and voting agree to enact the bill anyway despite the governor’s objections.
The overrides exemplify the expanded political muscle of Republicans after electoral seat gains last fall and a House Democrat’s party switch in April gave them exact veto-proof majorities in each chamber for the first time since late 2018. Cooper had been able to block several dozen GOP measures over the previous four years with vetoes because there were enough Democrats supporting his efforts.
Several of Tuesday’s override votes in the House included support from a few Democrats. Still, Republicans needed to ensure that enough of their party colleagues were in attendance to complete overrides.
Among the bills enacted Tuesday is the legislature’s annual farm bill, which contains more than 30 provisions such as penalties for cutting down timber, waiting periods for regulators to inspect veterinarians’ offices and the establishment of an official “Farmers Appreciation Day” in November.
Cooper’s farm bill veto came Friday. He said the measure would weaken the regulation of wetlands that help control flooding and pollution. His administration and environmental groups have said the bill’s language, when combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, would leave about half of the state’s wetlands unprotected.
Republicans and their allies blunted the impact of the bill’s language on wetlands, saying it would affect largely affect isolated terrain that rarely floods and align standards with federal law.
Another now-enacted law that takes effect in December bans trainers of state employees from advancing concepts to workers such as that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,” or to believe they should feel guilty for past actions committed by people of the same race or sex. It also would prohibit hiring managers for state agencies, community colleges and the University of North Carolina system from compelling applicants for policy-making jobs to reveal their personal or political beliefs as a condition of employment.
In his veto message, Cooper said the bill attempts to suppress workplace discussions related to diversity, equity and inclusion that can reveal “unconscious bias we all bring to our work and our communities.” But supporters of the bill said it actually encourages a diverse set of beliefs within public agencies.
Both the House and Senate voted Tuesday to override the veto of a measure that now ban state agencies from using “environmental, social and governance” standards to screen potential investments, award contracts or hire and fire employees.
On state investments like those in pension funds, the bill says the state treasurer could solely consider factors expected to have a material effect on the financial risk or financial return of an investment.
At least two other states have already enacted laws banning such criteria. Republicans nationwide has raised questions about big business focusing upon environmental sustainability and workplace diversity so much that it harms shareholders and pensioners.
Cooper said in his veto message late week that the measure would needlessly limit the treasurer’s ability to make investment decisions that are in the best interests of the state retirement fund.
Other bills enacted over Cooper’s vetoes in part would raise interest rates and late fees on certain amounts of personal consumer finance loans as well as on consumer credit sales, such as when someone buys a car and pays for it in installments or with a finance charge. Cooper said the higher costs, which would take effect in October on new, renewed or modified loans, would harm residents who already are faced with rising costs of living.
Another bill with a veto now overridden would permit the state’s Local Government Commission to order withheld a portion of sales tax revenues the state collects for cities and counties that fail to complete annual audits of their accounts. Bill supporters said the measure will promote government accountability. Cooper said it was well-intentioned but would likely hurt the state’s smallest communities.
A Wagner ex-convict returned from war and a Russian village lived in fear. Then he killed again
Dasha Litvinovau – June 27, 2023
In this image taken from video and released on Saturday, May 20, 2023, by the press service of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner private military contractor, his forces wave Russian and Wagner flags atop a damaged building in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Some convicts recruited by Wagner to fight in in Ukraine are coming home to Russia and committing new crimes. That has raised fears in communities where the now-freed convicts are returning, and reports of killings, robberies and sexual assaults by some of them are emerging in Russian media. (Prigozhin Press Service via AP, File)In this image taken from video and released by the press service of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner private military contractor, on Saturday, May 20, 2023, he speaks while holding a Russian flag in front of his forces in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Some convicts recruited by Wagner to fight in Ukraine are coming home to Russia and committing new crimes. That has raised fears in communities where the now-freed convicts are returning, and reports of killings, robberies and sexual assaults by some of them are emerging in Russian media. (Prigozhin Press Service via AP, File)
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When Ivan Rossomakhin returned home from the war in Ukraine three months ago, his neighbors in the village east of Moscow were terrified.
Three years ago, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to a long prison term but was freed after volunteering to fight with the Wagner private military contractor.
Back in Novy Burets, Rossomakhin drunkenly wandered the streets of the hamlet 800 kilometers (about 500 miles) east of Moscow, carrying a pitchfork and threatening to kill everyone, residents said.
Despite police promises to keep an eye on the 28-year-old former inmate, he was arrested in a nearby town on charges of stabbing to death an elderly woman from whom he once rented a room. He reportedly confessed to committing the crime, less than 10 days after his return.
Rossomakhin’s case is not isolated. The Associated Press found at least seven other instances in recent months in which Wagner-recruited convicts were identified as being involved in violent crimes, either by Russian media reports or in interviews with relatives of victims in locations from Kaliningrad in the west to Siberia in the east.
Russia has gone to extraordinary lengths to replenish its troops in Ukraine, including deploying Wagner’s mercenaries there. That has had far-reaching consequences, as was evident this weekend when the group’s leader sent his private army to march on Moscow in a short-lived rebellion. Another has been the use of convicts in battle.
The British Defense Ministry warned of the fallout in March, saying “the sudden influx of often violent offenders with recent and often traumatic combat experience will likely present a significant challenge for Russia’s wartime society” as their service ends.
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said he had recruited 50,000 convicts for Ukraine, an estimate also made by Olga Romanova, director of the prisoner rights group Russia Behind Bars. Western military officials say convicts formed the bulk of Wagner’s force there.
About 32,000 have returned from Ukraine, Prigozhin said last week, before his abortive rebellion against the Defense Ministry. Romanova estimated it to be about 15,000 as of early June.
Those prisoners agreeing to join Wagner were promised freedom after their service, and President Vladimir Putin recently confirmed that he was “signing pardon decrees” for convicts fighting in Ukraine. Those decrees have not been made public.
Putin recently said recidivism rates among those freed from prison through serving in Ukraine are much lower than those on average in Russia. But rights advocates say fears about those rates rising as more convicts return from war are not necessarily unfounded.
“People form a complete absence of a link between crime and punishment, an act and its consequences,” Romanova said. “And not just convicts see it. Free people see it, too -– that you can do something terrible, sign up for the war and come out as a hero.”
Rossomakhin wasn’t seen as valorous when he returned from fighting in Ukraine but rather as an “extremely restless, problematic person,” police said at a meeting with fearful Novy Burets residents that was filmed by a local broadcaster before 85-year-old Yulia Buyskikh was slain. At one point, he even was arrested for breaking into a car and held for five days before police released him March 27.
Two days later, Buyskikh was killed.
“She knew him and opened the door, when he came to kill her,” her granddaughter, Anna Pekareva, wrote on Facebook. “Every family in Russia must be afraid of such visitors.”
Other incidents included the robbery of a shop in which a man held a saleswoman at knifepoint; a car theft by three former convicts in which the owner of the vehicle was beaten and forced to sign it over to them; the sexual assault of two schoolgirls; and two other killings besides the one in Novy Burets.
In Kaliningrad, a man was arrested in the sexual assault of an 8-year-old girl after taking her from her mother, according to a local media report and one of the girl’s relatives.
The man had approached the mother and bragged about his prison time and his Wagner service in Ukraine, according to the relative, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity out of safety concerns. The relative asked: “How many more of them will return soon?”
In its recruiting, Wagner usually offered convicts six-month contracts, according to media reports and rights groups. Then they can return home, unlike regular soldiers, who can’t terminate their contracts and leave service as long as Putin’s mobilization decree remains in effect. It wasn’t immediately clear, however, whether these terms will be honored after Prigozhin’s unsuccessful mutiny.
Prigozhin, himself a former convict, recently acknowledged that some repeat offenders were Wagner fighters -– including Rossomakhin in Novy Burets and a man arrested in Novosibirsk for sexually assaulting two girls.
Putin recently said the recidivism rate “is 10 times lower” among the convicts that went to Ukraine than for those in general. ”The negative consequences are minimal,” he added.
There isn’t enough data yet to assess the consequences, according to a Russian criminology expert who spoke on condition of anonymity out of safety concerns.
Incidents this year “fit the pattern of recidivist behavior,” and there’s a chance that those convicts would have committed crimes again upon release, even if they hadn’t been recruited by Wagner, the expert said. But there’s no reason to expect an explosive spike in crime because a significant number of the ex-convicts probably can refrain from breaking the law for some time, especially if they were well-paid by Wagner, the expert said.
He expects crime rates to rise after the war, but not necessarily due to the use of convicts. It’s something that usually happens following conflicts, he said.
The Soviet Union sent 1.2 million convicts to fight in World War II, according to a 2020 research paper by Russia’s state penitentiary service. It did not say how many returned, but the criminology expert told AP a “significant number” ended up behind bars again after committing new crimes for years afterward.
Romanova from Russia Behind Bars says there have been many troubling episodes involving convicts returning to civilian life after a stint in Ukraine.
Law enforcement and justice officials who spent time and resources to prosecute these criminals can feel humiliated by seeing many of them walk free without serving their sentences, she said.
“They see that their work is not needed,” Romanova added.
Some convicts who are caught committing crimes after returning home sometimes try to turn the tables on police by accusing them of discrediting those who fought in Ukraine — now a serious crime in Russia, she said.
Asked if that deters those in law enforcement, Romanova said: “You bet. A prosecutor doesn’t want to go to prison for 15 years.”
Yana Gelmel, lawyer and rights advocate who also works with convicts, said in an interview that those returning from Ukraine often act with bravado and bluster, demanding special treatment for having “defended the motherland.”
She paints a grim life in Russia’s prisons, with rampant and incessant violence, extreme isolation, constant submission to guards and a strict hierarchy among inmates. For prisoners in those conditions, “what would his mental state be?” Gelmel asked.
Add in the trauma of being thrown into battle — especially in places like Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the longest and bloodiest of the conflict, where Wagner forces died by the thousands,
“Imagine -– he went to war. If he survived … he witnessed so much there. In what state will he return?” she added.
Meanwhile, prison recruiting for duty in Ukraine apparently continues — just not by Wagner, rights groups say. The Defense Ministry is now seeking volunteers there instead and offering them contracts.
Romanova said the ministry had recruited nearly 15,000 convicts as of June, although officials there did not respond to a request for comment.
Unlike Wagner, the Defense Ministry soon will have legal grounds -– laws allowing for enlisting convicts into contractual service have been swiftly approved by the parliament and signed by Putin last week.
And unlike Wagner, the ministry is offering 18-month contracts, but many recruits haven’t been given anything to sign, ending up in a precarious position, Romanova said.
Enthusiasm among inmates to serve hasn’t waned, she said, even after thousands were killed on the battlefield.
The proposal was unveiled June 14 by U.S. House conservatives, Bloomberg reported. One of its main features is to raise the full retirement age (FRA) at which seniors are entitled to the full benefits they are due.
The 176-member House Republican Study Committee (RSC) approved a fiscal blueprint that would gradually increase the FRA to 69 years old for seniors who turn 62 in 2033. The current full retirement age is 66 or 67, depending on your birth year. For all Americans born in 1960 or later, the FRA is 67.
As Bloomberg noted, workers expecting an earlier retirement benefit will see lifetime payouts reduced if the full retirement age is raised. Those payouts could be drastically reduced for seniors who claim benefits at age 62, when you are first eligible.
Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have been working to come up with a fix for Social Security before the program’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund runs out of money. That could happen within the next decade or so. When it does, Social Security will be solely reliant on payroll taxes for funding — and those taxes only cover about 77% of current benefits.
While most Democrats want to boost Social Security through higher payroll taxes or reductions to benefits for wealthy Americans, the GOP has largely focused on paring down or privatizing the program.
As previously reported by GOBankingRates, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) recently told Fox News that this month’s debt limit bill was only “the first step” in a broader Republican agenda that includes further cuts.
“This isn’t the end,” McCarthy said. “This doesn’t solve all the problems. We only got to look at 11% of the budget to find these cuts. We have to look at the entire budget. … The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It’s Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt.”
As Bloomberg noted, Republicans argue that failing to change Social Security could lead to a 23% benefit cut once the trust fund is depleted. Raising the retirement age is a way to soften the immediate impact. The RSC said its proposal would balance the federal budget in seven years by cutting some $16 trillion in spending and $5 trillion in taxes.
“The RSC budget would implement common-sense policies to prevent the impending debt disaster, tame inflation, grow the economy, protect our national security, and defund [President Joe] Biden’s woke priorities,” U.S. Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), chairman of the group’s Budget and Spending Task Force, told Roll Call.
Democrats were quick to push back against the proposal.
“Budget Committee Democrats will make sure every American family knows that House Republicans want to force Americans to work longer for less, raise families’ costs, weaken our nation, and shrink our economy — all while wasting billions of dollars on more favors to special interests and handouts to the ultra-wealthy,” U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, (D-Pa.), the Budget Committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement saying the RSC budget “amounts to a devastating attack on Medicare, Social Security, and Americans’ access to health coverage and prescription drugs.”
Although the proposal might make it through the GOP-led House, it’s unlikely to become law – at least while Biden is still president. Even if a bill somehow got approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate, Biden would almost certainly veto it.
Trump Melts Down as DOJ Turns Over Evidence It Plans to Use Against Him
Ryan Bort – June 22, 2023
Donald Trump fired off a series of desperate pleas on Truth Social, including multiple appeals to Congress to bail him out, hours after news broke that the Justice Department had turned over the first batch of evidence it plans to use against him. The former president was indicted earlier this month on charges related to his handling of classified material after leaving the White House.
“CONGRESS, PLEASE INVESTIGATE THE POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS AGAINST ME CURRENTLY BEING BROUGHT BY THE CORRUPT DOJ AND FBI, WHO ARE TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL,” Trump wrote Thursday morning.
The former president also dusted off the idea that the DOJ framed him by planting the classified material at Mar-a-Lago — despite the fact that he’s claimed repeatedly that he somehow declassified the material before bringing it to Florida himself. “Congress will hopefully now look at the ever continuing Witch Hunts and ELECTION INTERFERENCE against me on perfectly legal Boxes, where I have no doubt that information is being secretly ‘planted’ by the scoundrels in charge,” he wrote in another post before griping about his other legal woes.
Trump’s indictment is damning, with the DOJ alleging that the former president knowingly took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, stored them in unsecure locations, and then conspired to lie to authorities about what he was hoarding while suggesting the material should be destroyed. The indictment also outlines a recording it obtained featuring Trump bragging about having a “secret” plan against Iran.
The evidence the DOJ turned over on Wednesday includes more recordings of the former president, described as “interviews” recorded with his consent. It’s unclear what is on the additional tapes. The evidence also includes grand-jury witness testimony — which means Trump now knows who testified against him and what they said — as well as material obtained through subpoenas.
Trump, understandably, seems pretty nervous. “THIS CONTINUING SAGA IS RETRIBUTION AGAINST ME FOR WINNING AND, EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY TO THEM, ELECTION INTERFERENCE REGARDING THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” he added on Thursday morning. “IT WILL BE THERE UPDATED FORM OF RIGGING OUR MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION. LOOK AT THE POLLS – THEY CAN’T BEAT ME (MAGA!) AT THE BALLOT BOX, THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN WIN IS TO CHEAT. STOP THEM NOW!”
Trump pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him. The DOJ has asked for a speedy trial, and Judge Aileen Cannon earlier this week told both sides to file all pretrial motions by July 24 while slating the trial to begin on Aug. 14. Trump’s team will almost certainly move to delay the start date as long as possible — maybe even until he can retake the White House and appoint an attorney general who will drop the case.
Ronen Bergman, Adam Goldman and Julian E. Barnes – June 19, 2023
Photographs of Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence service who was convicted in 2006 for selling secrets to British intelligence, in Moscow, Aug. 28, 2018. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)
As President Vladimir Putin of Russia has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil.
The clandestine operation, seeking to eliminate a CIA informant in Miami who had been a high-ranking Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, represented a brazen expansion of Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations. It also signaled a dangerous low point even between intelligence services that have long had a strained history.
“The red lines are long gone for Putin,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia. “He wants all these guys dead.”
The assassination failed, but the aftermath in part spiraled into tit-for-tat retaliation by the United States and Russia, according to three former senior U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss aspects of a plot meant to be secret and its consequences. Sanctions and expulsions, including of top intelligence officials in Moscow and Washington, followed.
The target was Aleksandr Poteyev, a former Russian intelligence officer who disclosed information that led to a yearslong FBI investigation that in 2010 ensnared 11 spies living under deep cover in suburbs and cities along the East Coast. They had assumed false names and worked ordinary jobs as part of an ambitious attempt by the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, to gather information and recruit more agents.
In keeping with an Obama administration effort to reset relations, a deal was reached that sought to ease tensions: Ten of the 11 spies were arrested and expelled to Russia. In exchange, Moscow released four Russian prisoners, including Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in the military intelligence service who was convicted in 2006 for selling secrets to Britain.
The bid to assassinate Poteyev is revealed in the British edition of the book “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West,” to be published by an imprint of Little, Brown on June 29. The book is by Calder Walton, a scholar of national security and intelligence at Harvard. The New York Times independently confirmed his work and is reporting for the first time on the bitter fallout from the operation, including the retaliatory measures that ensued once it came to light.
According to Walton’s book, a Kremlin official asserted that a hit man, or a Mercader, would almost certainly hunt down Poteyev. Ramón Mercader, an agent of Josef Stalin’s, slipped into Leon Trotsky’s study in Mexico City in 1940 and sank an ice ax into his head. Based on interviews with two U.S. intelligence officials, Walton concluded the operation was the beginning of “a modern-day Mercader” sent to assassinate Poteyev.
The Russians have long used assassins to silence perceived enemies. One of the most celebrated at SVR headquarters in Moscow is Col. Grigory Mairanovsky, a biochemist who experimented with lethal poisons, according to a former intelligence official.
Putin, a former KGB officer, has made no secret of his deep disdain for defectors among the intelligence ranks, particularly those who aid the West. The poisoning of Skripal at the hands of Russian operatives in Salisbury, Britain, in 2018 signaled an escalation in Moscow’s tactics and intensified fears that it would not hesitate to do the same on American shores.
The attack, which used a nerve agent to sicken Skripal and his daughter, prompted a wave of diplomatic expulsions across the world as Britain marshaled the support of its allies in a bid to issue a robust response.
The incident set off alarm bells inside the CIA, where officials worried that former spies who had relocated to the United States, like Poteyev, would soon be targets.
Putin had long vowed to punish Poteyev. But before he could be arrested, Poteyev fled to the United States, where the CIA resettled him under a highly secretive program meant to protect former spies. In 2011, a Moscow court sentenced him in absentia to decades in prison.
Poteyev had seemed to vanish, but at one point, Russian intelligence sent operatives to the United States to find him, though its intentions remained unclear. In 2016, the Russian news media reported that he was dead, which some intelligence experts believed might be a ploy to flush him out. Indeed, Poteyev was very much alive, living in the Miami area.
That year, he obtained a fishing license and registered as a Republican so he could vote, all under his real name, according to state records. In 2018, a news outlet reported Poteyev’s whereabouts.
The CIA’s concerns were not unwarranted. In 2019, the Russians undertook an elaborate operation to find Poteyev, forcing a scientist from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help.
The scientist, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, was an unlikely spy. He studied microbiology in Kazan, Russia, and later earned a doctorate in the subject from the University of Giessen in Germany. He was a source of pride for his family, with a history of charitable work and no criminal past.
But the Russians used Fuentes’ partner as leverage. He had two wives: a Russian living in Germany and another in Mexico. In 2019, the Russian wife and her two daughters were not allowed to leave Russia as they tried to return to Germany, court documents say.
That May, when Fuentes traveled to visit them, a Russian official contacted him and asked to see him in Moscow. At one meeting, the official reminded Fuentes that his family was stuck in Russia and that maybe, according to court documents, “we can help each other.”
A few months later, the Russian official asked Fuentes to secure a condo just north of Miami Beach, where Poteyev lived. Instructed not to rent the apartment in his name, Fuentes gave an associate $20,000 to do so.
In February 2020, Fuentes traveled to Moscow, where he again met with the Russian official, who provided a description of Poteyev’s vehicle. Fuentes, the Russian said, should find the car, obtain its license plate number and take note of its physical location. He advised Fuentes to refrain from taking pictures, presumably to eliminate any incriminating evidence.
But Fuentes botched the operation. Driving into the complex, he tried to bypass its entry gate by tailgating another vehicle, attracting the attention of security. When he was questioned, his wife walked away to photograph Poteyev’s license plate.
Fuentes and his wife were told to leave, but security cameras captured the incident. Two days later, he tried to fly to Mexico, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped him and searched his phone, discovering the picture of Poteyev’s vehicle.
After he was arrested, Fuentes provided details of the plan to American investigators. He believed the Russian official he had been meeting worked for the FSB, Russia’s internal security service. But covert operations overseas are usually run by the SVR, which succeeded the KGB, or the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
One of the former officials said Fuentes, unaware of the target’s significance, was merely gathering information for the Russians to use later.
Fuentes’ lawyer, Ronald Gainor, declined to comment.
The plot, along with other Russian activities, elicited a harsh response from the U.S. government. In April 2021, the United States imposed sanctions and expelled 10 Russian diplomats, including the chief of station for the SVR, who was based in Washington and had two years left on his tour, two former U.S. officials said. Throwing out the chief of station can be incredibly disruptive to intelligence operations, and agency officials suspected that Russia was likely to seek reprisal on its American counterpart in Moscow, who had only weeks left in that role, the officials said.
“We cannot allow a foreign power to interfere in our democratic process with impunity,” President Joe Biden said at the White House in announcing the penalties. He made no mention of the plot involving Fuentes.
Sure enough, Russia banished 10 American diplomats, including the CIA’s chief of station in Moscow.
Three things to watch as US intelligence prepares for Covid ‘lab leak’ reveal
Samuel Lovett – June 16, 2023
A security man moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – Ng Han Guan/AP
It’s showtime – and both lab leak enthusiasts and those who believe in natural origins (the ‘zoonati’) are nervous.
No later than Sunday, and perhaps sooner, America’s director of National Intelligence must, by law, “declassify” and make public all “information relating to the origins of Covid-19”.
It could be a huge moment, or a terrible anticlimax.
By the time the deadline is reached, it will have been 1,265 days since news of a “mystery pneumonia” first emerged from Wuhan – and for much of that time a small group of US intelligence officials have anonymously been briefing that the virus came from a lab.
It would not be the first time a pandemic had been caused by a laboratory-related accident: the 1977-1979 Russian Flu pandemic is widely thought to have been sparked by the accidental release of a virus used in a US flu vaccine that had not been fully deactivated.
Yet the off-the-record intelligence briefings have been characterised as unprofessional and unscientific by many, and in March this year, the US Congress unanimously passed a law demanding that all secret material the US holds on Covid’s origin be made public.
The P4 laboratory on the WIV campus. Opened in 2018, the P4 lab conducts research on the world’s most dangerous diseases – HECTOR RETAMAL/AP
Public Law Number 118-2, which was passed on March 20, is short at just 418 words but is to the point and gives the intelligence officials little, if any, wriggle room to hold things back.
It is one of the few things that those on either side of the Covid origins debate have come together to agree on, albeit for very different reasons.
Those who think the virus emerged naturally have dubbed it a “put up or shut up” law. Lab leakers, on the other hand, see it as a means to lift the lid on an episode they believe the US government itself is partly responsible for as it part-funded the high security lab in Wuhan.
As the deadline for the release of the US intelligence looms, we list the three key areas on which Law Number 118-2 demands full disclosure.
“Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of National Intelligence shall declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19), including:
1. “…activities performed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with or on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army.”
Issue: The background briefings have alleged that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was involved with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in creating a virus that leaked. As the Sunday Times reported, US intelligence sources believe the lab has engaged in “secret projects … on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017”.
Lab leakers rightly say this would be explosive if proven. In addition to the anonymous briefings, they point to already leaked – but heavily redacted – US cables, seemingly compiled by US analysts in Taiwan.
These make mention of “cyber evidence” of Chinese military involvement and “shadow labs” at the WIV. They also suggest China’s central government in Beijing knew of the outbreak of Covid-19 “earlier than they admit”.
The trouble with the cables is that they are so heavily redacted that only a few words and phrases are visible. Lab leakers will be hoping the full text bangs this virtual nail home.
The Zoonati say military links should not come as a surprise given there is hardly a high security lab anywhere in the world, including Porton Down in England, where the military do not have some involvement. They suspect the anonymous briefers have been “happily blurring shades of grey” in this respect and hope the unredacted evidence will bear this out.
2. Declassify any intelligence which shows “…coronavirus research or other related activities performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak of Covid-19.”
Issue: The background briefings would suggest there is intelligence to show scientists at the WIV were conducting undeclared “gain-of-function” research in 2019 that sought to combine different coronaviruses and make them more infectious in humans. According to The Sunday Times, US spies also say there is evidence the lab was working on a vaccine before the pandemic started.
Lab leakers will alight on any hard evidence of any undeclared work on coronaviruses in China as a smoking gun. Some hypothesise that WIV scientists, working hand-in-hand with the military, created a mutant virus as part of a covert weapons programme which was highly effective at infecting people. That virus, now known as Sars-CoV-2, was then accidentally leaked and started spreading in Wuhan in the autumn of 2019, they say.
The Zoonati remain sceptical. They say a wrap-up of all the work the WIV conducted on coronaviruses, including a list of viruses, was submitted to Nature in October 2019 and that there was nothing unusual about the research. Further, they say, nothing “obviously nefarious or weird” happened during the submission and review process, which ran to August 2020, to suggest the Chinese were hiding secret projects.
Others say that even if declassification were to prove that WIV scientists were conducting dangerous undeclared research, this would not explain the outbreak itself. “I’d be very surprised if it was all true, but let’s pretend that it is – I think it’s still going to be really complicated trying to understand how that fits into this body of evidence that does point towards zoonotic origin,” argues Dr Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, in Canada.
3. Declassify any intelligence which shows “…researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in autumn 2019, including for any such researcher: the researcher’s name; the researcher’s symptoms; the date of the onset of the researcher’s symptoms.”
Issue: Reports have long persisted that a group of scientists at the Wuhan lab fell with coronavirus-like symptoms and were hospitalised more than a month before the virus started to spread widely throughout Wuhan, the implication being they had become infected through a lab accident.
Lab leakers point to three scientists from the WIV who they say US intelligence believe fell ill and were hospitalised in October or November 2019. They are Yu Ping, Ben Hu and Yan Zhu, all of whom worked at the lab at the time. If US intelligence proves these researchers were struck down by a Covid-like disease and hospitalised in the October-November period it would provide compelling evidence of a lab accident, the leakers say.
The Zoonati don’t dispute that the trio worked at the lab but say they don’t believe they fell ill or were hospitalised. They say they know this because, among other things, they were working with them over the period in question and have talked to them since.
Dr Danielle Anderson, an Australian scientist, was on secondment at the Wuhan lab until November 2019, when Covid is thought to have started spreading in the city. At the time, none of her colleagues displayed any coronavirus-like symptoms, she says.
“We went to dinners together, lunches, we saw each other outside of the lab,” Dr Anderson told Bloomberg in an interview from 2021.
The virologist also confirmed to The Telegraph that she had attended a conference on the Nipah virus in Singapore, in December 2019, alongside Dr Zhengli Shi, the senior scientist at the Wuhan lab and “many other” researchers from the WIV. Colleagues say if there had been a leak and three of her juniors were ill she would not have been there.
“There was no chatter,” Dr Anderson said. “Scientists are gossipy and excited. There was nothing strange from my point of view going on at that point that would make you think something is going on here.”
The Nipah Virus International Conference 2019 – SingHealth
As Trump is indicted again, Republican primary foes must answer: Will you pardon him?
Rex Huppke, USA TODAY – June 14, 2023
As Donald Trump was arraigned in a federal courthouse in Miami, his Republican presidential primary opponents were placed in a metaphorical box. From now until the first votes are cast, the GOP contest revolves around one question: If elected, will you pardon former President Trump?
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden will have a simple response: “C’mon, man. Heck no!” But for Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence or any of the other Republican presidential candidates, there’s no good answer.
A “yes” may help in the primary, but it will be an anchor in the general election. Voters nationally have demonstrated – in the last presidential election and the most recent midterm elections – they’ve had it with Trump, and by 2024, we will have seen both additional evidence of his alleged crimes and, quite possibly, additional indictments.
Of course Trump may eventually be found not guilty and have no need for a pardon. But until that’s clear, the pardon question will be asked.
To pardon Trump or not to pardon Trump? That will be the question
A “no,” on the other hand, will enrage both Trump and his rabid base of supporters, likely dooming any candidate unwilling to pledge allegiance to the MAGA king.
And in case you think only reporters will be asking it, here’s what GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Tuesday outside the Miami courthouse: “This is my commitment, on Jan. 20, 2025, if I’m elected the next U.S. president, to pardon Donald J. Trump for these offenses in this federal case. And I have challenged, I have demanded, that every other candidate in this race, either sign this commitment to pardon on Jan. 20, 2025, or else to explain why they are not.”
Good luck with that, everyone!
Promising a pardon when other Trump indictments might be coming seems … unwise?
The first and most obvious peril of signing such a commitment or even answering the pardon question is that Trump will give any candidate who says “no” a devastatingly mean nickname, hammer them with scurrilous accusations that are either hyperbolic or simply fabricated, and sic his MAGA horde on the candidate, the candidate’s family and friends, and anyone the candidate has ever loved or cared about.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at the federal courthouse in Miami on June 13, 2023.
But there are other risks. Trump already carries the distinction of MOST INDICTED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE EVER. He has been indicted twice as many times as he has been elected president. The first involves 34 New York state court counts of falsifying business records.
The second, the one that took center stage Tuesday, involves 37 federal charges ranging from willful retention of national defense information to conspiracy to obstruct justice, all stemming from classified documents he removed from the White House and refused to give back.
GOP presidential hopefuls promising Trump a pardon may well be blindsided by evidence
As Trump was heading to court Tuesday, NBC News reported that “Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald, a close Trump political ally, as well as Jim DeGraffenreid, the state party’s vice chair, were spotted” at a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., entering the room where the grand jury for the Jan. 6 investigation meets. So those wheels are turning.
Candidates can follow Ramaswamy’s lead and promise Trump a pardon right now, but they’ll be doing so knowing two more rounds of indictments could be waiting in the wings.
And even if nothing comes from the other investigations, pledging to pardon Trump before seeing what evidence the prosecution has – in other words, waiting for the trial to unfold – is not just putting the wagon in front of the horse. It’s putting the wagon in front of the horse, giving the horse a powerful laxative then standing behind the horse.
Nobody will want to hear answers to the pardon question more than Trump
I imagine Trump himself will lean into the pardon demand, because why not? He’ll want to hear all the possible Trump replacements answer: Will you pardon the man who degrades you?
This is the bed Republicans made for themselves when they wrapped their arms around a con artist whose moral compass always points toward Trump. Supplicate, or be destroyed.
Trump Demands GOP Rivals Pledge to Pardon Him … or Else
Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng – June 15, 2023
In the days since Donald Trump was indicted, his allies have had a unified demand of his GOP primary rivals: promise to pardon the Donald — or else.
It’s not an accident: In the days leading up to his arraignment, the former president worked the phones to vent about the case to his allies and discuss the way forward. According to a person familiar with the matter and another source briefed on it, Trump had one repeated request for his supporters: go on TV and social media and trash Ron DeSantis for refusing to commit to pardoning Trump.
Trump’s demand advances two goals: The first is to protect himself from legal consequences if he loses both the GOP primary and his federal court case. But given that Trump is telling allies he’ll trounce DeSantis and all other primary challengers, the demand for a pardon pledge appears to be more a political move. The question itself offers a trap for any Republican who tries to engage with it: either side with Trump and use the occasion to keep him in the campaign spotlight or share some uncomfortable real estate on the side of Joe Biden and the Justice Department.
“If you’re Ron, you find yourself really in a really tough situation, because if you blast the DOJ and you blast Jack Smith and Biden, you’re essentially defending Trump and admitting Trump was right,” one MAGA-aligned Republican strategist tells Rolling Stone. “If you condemn him, there’s no lane for you running on that. And then silence is an equally bad option because folks notice you not saying anything.”
The DeSantis campaign did not respond to Rolling Stone’s questions about the governor’s position on a potential pardon.
Reached for comment, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung sent a lengthy statement accusing DeSantis of “hiding in a hole” during Trump’s Tuesday indictment and of running a campaign driven by consultants.
So far, DeSantis has tried to mix condemnation of the Justice Department with silence on the subject of a pardon. On the day news of the indictment broke, he blasted the Justice Department and pledged that a DeSantis administration would “bring accountability to the DOJ, excise political bias, and end weaponization once and for all.”
Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with 37 counts of retaining classified information and obstruction of justice in keeping at least 31 classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence and attempting to hide them from federal law enforcement. The indictment includes damning evidence, including the transcript of what appears to be a confession from Trump that he took war plans he could’ve declassified as president but didn’t.
That hasn’t stopped Trump’s allies from demanding he be pardoned. On Fox News, former George W. Bush spokesman turned Trumpist Ari Fleischer pressed the talking point, arguing that “Every wise Republican should make a pledge they would pardon Donald Trump.” Pro-Trump legal scholar Jonathan Turley also suggested Trump could “run on pardoning himself” and that “If any of these Republicans [running for president] were elected, they could pardon Trump.”
So far, however, Trump-friendly GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has been the loudest voice in the media pressing both DeSantis and the rest of the Republican field on legal absolution for the former president. On Tuesday, the former biotech and finance executive, who Trump has privately praised and joked about hiring in a second administration, held an impromptu press conference demanding every 2024 presidential candidate commit to pardoning Trump if elected.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ramaswamy says he’s not focused on DeSantis and has broadly “called on candidates in both parties, regardless of our political interests, to either stand against what I see as a politicized prosecution and say so and commit to a pardon or else explain why.”
But he said he found DeSantis’s attempts to hedge on Trump’s legal fate distasteful.
“I don’t think it’s good when politicians try to hide, try to talk out of both sides of their mouth,” Ramaswamy said. “It’s possible he’ll come out adopting my position later. I think that’s a trend we’ve seen throughout this campaign. If the last six months are any indication, my prediction is he’ll come around to my position.”
The pardon issue also put other Republican candidates who have flirted with criticism of Trump in an awkward position as they try to navigate a middle course.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley initially hedged on the issue of Trump’s guilt. In a Fox News appearance, she said both that the Justice Department has “lost all credibility” but also that, if the event its allegations were true, Trump would have been “incredibly reckless with our national security.” In the days since, Haley has shifted further, saying that she would be “inclined in favor” of a pardon.
Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence tried to walk a similarly narrow path during an appearance on the conservative Clay Travis & Buck Sexton show. Pence said Trump faces “serious charges” and that he “can’t defend what’s been alleged” but wouldn’t allow himself to be pinned down on the subject of pardons. “I just think it’s premature to have any conversations about that right now,” Pence said.
But those kinds of answers aren’t sitting well with Republicans, as the response from Travis to Pence’s hedging showed: “If you know that these are political charges, and you do, this is not a difficult decision.”
