2017 JUSSIE SMOLLETT MUSIC VIDEO FEATURED A FAKE TRUMP, A NOOSE AND ‘ALTERNATIVE FACTS’
Smollett’s video, titled “F.U.W.” for “F**ked Up World,” explored themes of perceived racial bias and human rights abuses from Dakota Access Pipeline and Standing Rock to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan
“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett released a music video in 2017 that featured a fake President Donald Trump, a noose and the words “alternative facts.”
WATCH:
Smollett’s video, titled “F.U.W.” for “F**ked Up World,” explored themes of perceived racial bias and human rights abuses from Dakota Access Pipeline and Standing Rock to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. (RELATED: Dueling Protests Over Jussie Smollett Case Rock Chicago)
The lyrics were clearly aimed at the fake Trump, who made an appearance early on:
Build a wall. You won’t keep us from loving each other.
Rewrite the law. You won’t keep us from loving each other.
Resist. Resist. Resist. Resist. Resist. Resist …
The actor, who claimed he was attacked in Chicago in late January, alleged that his attackers yelled, “This is MAGA country!” as they poured bleach on him and wrapped a noose around his neck. He later said on “Good Morning America” that he believed he had been targeted because of his activism “against 45.”
Police offered a different story, however, saying instead that there was evidence indicating that Smollett had possibly staged the attack himself. Investigators detailed a timeline of events and a series of communications between Smollett and the two Nigerian brothers who admitted to attacking him — but said that he had directed them to do so.
The charges against Smollett were dropped last week after he forfeited his $10,000 bond and agreed to do community service, but many were quick to voice displeasure with the decision. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel went so far as to call it “a whitewashing of justice.”
#MeToo founder Alyssa Milano defends ‘creepy’ Joe Biden from harassment allegations
Actress, #MeToo advocate, and all round woke feminist Alyssa MIlano has stepped in to defend her “friend” Joe Biden, after accusations of inappropriate touching and groping have mounted against the former vice president.
“I am proud to call Joe Biden a friend. He has been a leader and a champion on fighting violence against women,”Milano tweeted on Monday, adding “that’s who Joe Biden is – a warm, generous individual who believes its on all of us to pay attention to women’s stories and experiences.”
As vice president, Biden spearheaded the ‘It’s On Us’ campaign against sexual assault on college campuses. However, the 76-year-old has also built up quite the highlight reel of his own inappropriate moments; becoming far too familiar and handsy with women and children at Washington events.
Most recently, Biden was accused of unwanted kissing by former Nevada legislator Lucy Flores, who said the former VP planted a “big slow kiss” on the back of her head at a rally in Las Vegas; and Connecticut woman Amy Lappos, who alleges Biden “put his hand around my neck and pulled me in to rub noses with me.”
Biden denies any wrongdoing, saying it was “never” his intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable. Milano, who reinvented herself in recent years as a vocal feminist and founder of the #MeToo movement, agrees.
“I respect Lucy Flores’ decision to share her story and agree with Biden that we all must pay attention to it,” she tweeted. “But, just as we must believe women that decide to come forward, we cannot assume all women’s experiences are the same.”
“Believe women, but…” is certainly a change of tune for Milano, who led the crusade against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, last year. Milano said that his confirmation in the face of uncorroborated sexual assault allegations served to “institutionalize sexual violence,” and hashtagged her anti-Kavanaugh tweets“#BelieveWomen.”
Biden has not yet announced a run for the presidency in 2020, but is considered a likely candidate and a frontrunner among a crowded field of Democrats. Although progressive godfather Bernie Sanders remains a favorite among young voters, Biden topped a recent Quinnipiac University poll, with 29 percent of Democrats rating him as their first choice.
With Sanders dangerously close in the polls, a certain few journalists in the mainstream media have stepped in to downplay the accusations against Biden.
“Is is okay to bring up this could be politically motivated?” MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski asked on Monday. “Are we allowed to bring up that Lucy Flores is a huge Bernie person? And she has political connections that might be counter to Biden’s goals?”
Brzezinski then laughed off Biden’s wandering hands, describing her “friend” as “extremely affectionate, extremely flirtatious in a completely safe way.”
Still, others are more puzzled. Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked former Clinton Adviser Richard Goodstein “have you ever sniffed a stranger’s hair? What is that?” Even liberal late-night comedian Stephen Colbert piled on Biden. “Generally, the only people who come up from behind, put their arms around you, smell your hair and kiss your head are dead husbands teaching you pottery,” he jibed.
(NO, IT’S NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE.) – Facebook plans to curate ‘high quality’ news for its users from ‘trusted outlets’
Mark Zuckerberg is considering hiring human “editors” to hand-pick “high-quality news” to show Facebook users in an effort to combat fake news — and no, it’s not an April Fool’s joke.
In his ongoing quest to satisfy the political censorship demands of Western governments, Zuckerberg told German publishing house Axel Springer that he is considering the introduction of a dedicated news section for the social media platform, which would potentially use humans to curate the news from “broadly trusted” outlets. Zuckerberg said Facebook might also start paying news publishers to include their articles in this dedicated news section in an effort to reward “high-quality, trustworthy content.”
With social media censorship already at worryingly high levels, who will decide which outlets are “broadly trusted” and which are untrustworthy? What qualifies one outlet as more “trusted” than another? Will Zuckerberg make the criteria public?
Collective punishment? Zuckerberg’s call for internet regulation is aimed at competitors – analyst
Fresh from the anti-climactic Russiagate saga and long-awaited Mueller report, will Facebook penalize all the outlets that incessantly pushed the Trump/Russia “collusion” narrative and hyped fake “bombshells” for more than two years sans evidence, or will the likes of MSNBC and Rachel Maddow automatically earn “trusted” status? The answer to that question is blindingly obvious.
Facebook’s efforts to combat fake news are reminiscent of other recent efforts from apps like NewsGuard, the US government-linked app which “rates” news websites according to their “trustworthiness” and, unsurprisingly, targets alternative media sites which do not strictly adhere to establishment narratives. If recent history is any indicator, Facebook’s own efforts to rate news will also fall directly in line with US government objectives.
The social media giant has been rightly accused of blatant censorship on multiple occasions in recent memory — and there doesn’t seem a way that a group of Facebook-hired editors could be trusted to curate the news for anyone, unless it took some serious steps to address its various biases. In fact, even if it did that, isn’t hiring human editors with their own political biases and preferences to sift through all the available news and select the stories deemed fit for public consumption just an Orwellian idea in the first place?
Facebook should probably already be aware of the pitfalls when it comes to hiring human editors for such purposes. During the 2016 US presidential election, the company’s solution to political bias in its trending news section was to fire the human editors responsible for it. Maybe Zuckerberg thinks this time it will be different? Or maybe, and more likely, this is just another PR effort to placate the pro-censorship crowd on Capitol Hill.
There is no shortage of examples of Facebook censorship at this point. Last year, the platform inexplicably took down the English-language page belonging to left-leaning, Venezuela-based news network Telesur — and deleted the page belonging to Venezuela Analysis, another left-leaning outlet offering commentary critical of Washington’s foreign policy in Latin America. The pages were later restored, but Facebook was not forthcoming with an explanation.
Changes made to Facebook algorithms to combat “fake news” in 2017, saw traffic to multiple socialist and government accountability websites plummeting — including Police the Police (a page exposing US police brutality) and the Free Thought Project (which promotes government transparency). Alternative news websites like Truth-out.org, Democracy Now and Alternet also suffered as a result of those algorithm changes.
More recently, Facebook suspended popular pages run by Maffick Media, which is 51 percent owned by RT’s video agency Ruptly. Coincidentally, the content on those pages is also highly critical of the US government. Funnily enough, Facebook isn’t often caught censoring popular pages whose content is Washington-friendly. The Maffick pages were later restored, but Facebook forced them to include more explicit information about their funding, which in itself is no big deal, but it is a requirement curiously not demanded of US government-funded or linked pages.
ALSO ON RT.COMZuckerberg asks governments for more internet regulation in self-flagellation exercise
Not only has Facebook been accused of censorship, however, it has also been found to be working at the behest of certain governments — but again, only Washington-friendly ones, of course.
The Intercept reported last year that Facebook met with Israeli government officials and complied with orders to delete the accounts belonging to certain Palestinian activists. Facebook quickly bowed to Israel’s demands after threats that it would be forced into complying with the deletion orders by law if it failed to do so voluntarily.
But things don’t look to be getting any better on the Facebook censorship front since then. A journalist for Israeli news outlet +972 Magazine tweeted on Monday that Facebook was now punishing news sites (in the form of lower views) for publishing content that “could be a negative experience” for users — whatever that means. The content in question was an article by the magazine about Gaza’s Great Return march and the casualties inflicted on protesters by the Israeli army.
With such a terrible track record when it comes to political bias and willingness to censor news and information, don’t be surprised if Facebook’s planned “dedicated news section” of “high-quality” information turns out to be a failure.
Danielle Ryan
Big League Politics Editor Patrick Howley: Obama and Brennan’s Crime of the Century Included Coercing A Supreme Court Justice
By
Big League Politics Editor-in-Chief Patrick Howley joined host Matt Locke on the syndicated Conservative Cartel radio show (12-3 PM on Mojo 5-0 Radio) to discuss his landmark piece on the “Crime of the Century” carried out by Barack Obama and Deep State conspirators against President Donald Trump.
It turns out the Russia Collusion Hoax even included the attempted coercion of a Supreme Court justice by two Obama administration intel officials.
READ THE FULL REPORT: HOW OBAMA, HILLARY, AND BRENNAN CARRIED OUT THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY
CNN didn’t get ‘anything’ wrong in Russiagate reporting, host claims. It didn’t?
The host of CNN’s State of the Union, Jake Tapper, tried to defend the network’s coverage of Russiagate, claiming it actually got nothing wrong. The bold claim, however, was challenged by other journalists.
Tapper made the controversial remark while talking to acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Sunday.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying the media got wrong. The media reported the investigation was going on. Other than the people in the media on the left, not on this network, I don’t know anybody that got anything wrong,” Tapper stated.
Mulvaney shot back at what he called Tapper’s personal “recollection of history.”
“Face it, the media got this wrong. It’s okay. People get stuff wrong all the time, just not at this level,” he said.
Tapper’s defense of the ‘balanced’ CNN coverage raised a few eyebrows among the journalist community, as some took to Twitter to challenge the claim and bring up embarrassing retractions of the stories on ‘collusion’ the network had to make.
Others pointed out previous statements by Tapper himself.
And even accused him of reporting fake news.
Many users took issue with the overall tone of the coverage, as well as opinions expressed by CNN guests who pushed the conspiracy theory really hard.
Some joked that Tapper’s remark was proof that he was among those viewers who stopped watching CNN as it obsessed over the disproven ‘Trump-Russia collusion’.
Twitter reinstates anti-abortion movie account after sparking outrage with unexplained suspension
An anti-abortion box office movie has had its Twitter account restored after a temporary and unexplained suspension, which sparked outrage and fresh cries of ‘censorship’ online.
The movie titled ‘Unplanned’ follows the true story of a Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist, and was produced by Christian production company Pure Flix. It bills itself as “exposing the truth” about the family-planning organization, which it claims is only interested in money.
Trying to figure out why the @UnplannedMovie account has been suspended. 🤔 We need answers. #unplannedmovie https://t.co/rTIXVzHwI5—
Ashley Bratcher (@_AshleyBratcher) March 30, 2019
Twitter suspended the movie’s account seemingly without explanation last week, one day after its official premiere, but the backlash on the social media platform was swift, with pro-life and conservative commentators publicizing the suspension and demanding answers on the blackout. After the outcry, Twitter lifted the suspension, having decided that “after further review,” the account did not actually violate any rules.
It appears the suspension could have been the result of pro-choice users repeatedly “maliciously and falsely” reporting Unplanned’s account to Twitter — but the entire thing seems to have backfired, as the movie’s follower count shot up dramatically to over 100,000 soon after its account was restored.
But the saga continued, as Twitter users then suddenly began reporting that they had mysteriously been unfollowed from the movie’s account — and some claimed that they were not able to follow it at all. However, the account now has more than 200,000 followers.
The movie has been lauded by conservative media and panned by liberal media as pro-life “propaganda.” Twitter’s action against the movie didn’t seem to bother mainstream media though, with few major outlets reporting on the weekend-long Twitter drama.
READ MORE: Censorship crackdown? Top 10 alt-media pages newly banned by Facebook & Twitter
Major television networks in the US, including the Hallmark Channel and the USA Network, also refused to run the movie’s ads — and it was given an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) due to some graphic abortion scenes. The movie producers called the decision “deeply flawed” given that films featuring “graphic sex, violence, degradation, murder and mayhem” have been given PG-13 ratings.
Despite the pushback, the movie had a surprisingly strong opening weekend, pulling in $6.1 million and landing in fifth place.
The movie has enjoyed support from conservative politicians, with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee encouraging his Twitter followers to see it and calling Planned Parenthood a “money-making baby killing machine,” while former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called Unplanned a “great movie full of shocking truth” about the “anti-child movement.”
Here’s The Full Story of How Obama, Hillary and Brennan Carried Out The Crime of the Century
By
The “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot against President Donald Trump is now exposed for the world to see, with special counsel Robert Mueller coming up empty in his quest to pin Trump with Russian collusion or obstruction of justice.
We have explosive information about this scheme, including the involvement of former president Barack Obama, Obama intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper, failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, the Fusion GPS set-up agent Natalia Veselnitskaya, and even foreign leaders including Angela Merkel.
This article will firmly demonstrate the following:
- Hillary Clinton’s campaign used the Christopher Steele dossier before their involvement was covered up
- Senior Obama administration officials secretly plotted to involve senators in the “Russia” conspiracy
- James Clapper tried to use the “Russia” narrative to get the Supreme Court to invalidate Trump’s presidency
- Natalia Veselnitskaya was a Fusion GPS set-up agent who worked out of an Obama official’s office in D.C.
- Peter Strzok ran point on destroying General Flynn and covering up for Hillary Clinton
- Barack Obama used foreign powers to keep the scheme going, even after he left the Oval Office to President Trump
HILLARY Used The Dossier During Her Campaign
The Hillary Clinton campaign issued a press release on September 24, 2016 promoting information from the Christopher Steele dossier.
That press release has almost completely been scrubbed from the Internet, but is preserved in at least one tweet and in an Internet archive sponsored by The American Presidency Project.
The Clinton campaign, which funded the debunked dossier in an effort to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil Trump Tower, actively promoted a “Bombshell Report About Trump Aide’s Chilling Ties To Kremlin.” The Trump aide with the purported Kremlin ties was Carter Page. The “bombshell report” was a Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff headlined “U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin.”
Rep. Devin Nunes’ intelligence memo makes clear that Isikoff’s article, which was promoted by the Clinton campaign, used Christopher Steele as its source and was used to help obtain the FISA warrant. The FISA warrant application falsely states that Steele did not leak information to Yahoo News.
“We’ve never seen anything like this in American politics,” Hillary for America says in its statement, which called the information in Isikoff’s article “chilling.”
Clinton adviser Adam Parkhomenko tweeted out the statement:
OBAMA Officials Plotted To Get Senators Involved In The Plot In The Hours Before President Trump Took Office
Newly released emails show the Obama administration scrambling to create the “Russia” scandal within 24 hours of President Donald Trump taking the oath of office in January 2017. The desperation of the Obama administration is evident in the emails, in which the Obama team tries to involve Democratic senators Warner and Cardin and Republican senator Corker in the plot.
Close observers know that the Operation Crossfire Hurricane strategy surfaced during the 2016 presidential election and continued well into Trump’s presidency, with General Michael Flynn getting snared in a Peter Strzok/Sally Yates ambush play in the early days of the Trump White House. Now, Team Obama’s documented effort to cook up the Russia story before Trump’s inauguration emboldens a narrative already proved by text messages (presented below) involving Obama official James Clapper: the Obama people actually thought they could stop Trump from getting sworn in.
Judicial Watch, which obtained the emails in a Freedom of Information Act case, reports:
“In a Thursday, January 5, 2017, email chain then-State Department Congressional Advisor Hera Abassi indicates that then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland’s bureau was attempting to get Russian investigation related documents to the office of Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) office as quickly as possible. (In June 2016 Nuland permitted a meeting between Steele and the FBI’s legal attaché in Rome. Nuland told CBS News that the State Department knew about the Steele dossier by July 2016.)
In the email, with the subject line “For Immediate Review – Call Sheet for S Call with Senator Warner,” Abassi writes:
“I told Cardin’s folks … that the process is long. Can we ensure that there are no holdups on our end?”
Minutes later, Abassi confirms that Nuland was fully aware of the information that the State Department was providing to members of Congress alleging Russia interference information:
“This is definitely on EUR A/S radar!”
- Leaving no doubt that the State Department officials knew they were transmitting classified information, in a Wednesday, January 18, 2017, email with the subject line “Cables/M,” Former Foreign Service Officer Kerem Bilge writes to State Department Congressional advisor Hilary Johnson and others: “Highest class is SECRET/NOFORN.”
Johnson replies:
“FYI – so we can keep the SECRET/NOFORN header, and should declassify it 25 years from tomorrow.
“I forwarded the fully cleared version to the two of you on the high side [Editor’s Note: “high side” is State Department term for high security classification system], but let me know if there’s anything else you need from me on this.
“Note: we’ll need to make sure there is someone in Senate security tomorrow who can accept these.”
- On Wednesday, January 18, 2017, Johnson confirms that classified documents were sent to Senator Corker in addition to Senator Cardin. “Flagging that I sent you a high side request for clearance of the draft transmittal letter to send documents to Senators Corker and Cardin.”
Additionally, involved in providing classified information to members of the Senate was Naz Durakoglu, Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. In an email dated Thursday, January 19, 2017, with the subject line “Signed, sealed, delivered” Durakoglu apparently confirms that Obama State Department officials were eager to provide the classified material before Trump was sworn into office: “We made the deadline!” Durakoglu states [Emphasis added] “Thank you everyone for what was truly a Department-wide effort!”
President Trump was inaugurated less than 24 hours later.
- In a Wednesday, January 18, 2017 email, Naz Durakoglu signed off on the document transmittal letter on behalf of her bureau. This letter accompanied “the documents to Senator Corker and Cardin”
- In a Thursday, January 19, 2017 email, Durakoglu appears to confirm that she is who carried the documents from the State Department to Capitol Hill. She states, “I will be carrying over the cables to the Hill.’”
Judicial Watch passage ends
Multiple elements of the Obama machine were working overtime on their Russian cooking in the immediate lead-up to President Donald Trump’s historic inauguration.
Obama — who also gave a stand-down order on stopping alleged Russian hacking — was personally implicated in the plot according to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s texts. Obama’s director of national intelligence James Clapper confirms the obvious.
“If it weren’t for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place,” Clapper said in his Anderson Cooper interview.
CLAPPER Plotted With BRENNAN At Dinner
Catherine Herridge reported Tuesday for Fox News: “In a Dec. 12, 2016, text reviewed by Fox News, Page wrote to McCabe: “Btw, [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper told Pete that he was meeting with [CIA Director John] Brennan and Cohen for dinner tonight. Just FYSA [for your situational awareness].” Within a minute, McCabe replied, “OK.’”
CLAPPER Tried To Use ‘Russia’ To Get The Supreme Court To Block Trump’s Presidency
Obama administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper held a meeting in his last days in office to discuss the idea of going to a Supreme Court justice to block President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a high-level member of the intelligence community who spoke with a Big League Politics source.
Clapper discussed blocking the inauguration on the grounds that Trump was an illegitimate president due to alleged Russian interference in the election, according to the sources. It is not known whether Clapper ever actually convened a meeting with a Supreme Court justice to discuss the Russia case, or whether he simply discussed the idea of doing so. By the time Trump entered office on January 20, the Russia narrative was already underway.
A high-level member of the intelligence community who witnessed the meeting said that Clapper discussed going to one of three female Supreme Court justices to make the case that alleged Russian interference could invalidate Trump’s claim to the presidency.
Here’s a text the witness sent to BLP’s source:
Another text the witness sent to BLP’s source around the same time described how the Deep State was making General Michael Flynn a “rising target” for his alleged involvement with Russians, and stated that House Speaker Paul Ryan is a “wild card” in the Deep State wars.
Big League Politics recently reported on an audiotape in which Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh admitted that slain DNC staffer Seth Rich was the source for Wikileaks’ release of DNC emails in 2016, not a Russian hack. Hersh also said that Clapper and Obama administration CIA director John Brennan helped to create the Russia narrative against Trump.
So, how did the conspirators do it? They used a set-up agent named Natalia Veselnitskaya, the fabled “Russian lawyer.”
NATALIA: The Conspirators Got Her In, Then Locked Her Out, of The Country
The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, then led by anti-President Trump activist Preet Bharara, played a key role in getting Natalia Veselnitskaya into the country in 2015-2016 on special Obama administration passes.
Now, fired U.S. Attorney Bharara’s former office has charged Veselnitskaya with obstruction of justice in an unrelated case. They did this to force Natalia to remain in Russia and not come back to the United States to testify, according to high-level FBI sources. Why? Because Natalia has made it clear that she knows Glenn Simpson — the Fusion GPS head she had dinner with the night before and and the night after her Trump Tower set-up meeting — and she has said that her Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr. had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton.
Robert Mueller, Bharara, and the anti-Trump conspirators want to focus on Michael Cohen as a witness and block out any witnesses that would unravel their entire invented narrative — like Natalia, the spy who was used to set up the phony meeting that led to the fraudulent FISA warrants on the Trump team.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Veseltnitskaya gained parole into the United States during the Obama administration due to a DHS decision made “in concurrence with the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Southern District of New York,” then headed by Preet Bharara.
But the very people who wanted to get Natalia in now very much want to keep her out.
Natalia Veselnitskaya was charged with obstruction of justice Tuesday to prevent her from coming back to the United States to testify in the Robert Mueller-related cases because her statements have already contradicted Mueller’s narrative, according to high-level FBI sources.
Veselnitskaya, who is now in Russia, was charged for making a “misleading declaration” in a civil money-laundering case. Veselnitskaya’s indictment was filedin federal court in Manhattan and unsealed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, formerly led by anti-Trump activist Preet Bharara and still dominated by his underlings.
Now Veselnitskaya can’t return to the United States to contradict the Michael Cohen-focused case, because she would be arrested upon her arrival in this country. So what could Veselnitskaya spill if she testified? For one thing, Fusion GPS has tried to claimno knowledge of Veselnitskaya’s Trump Tower meeting, despite the fact that Veselnitskaya had dinner with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson the night before the meeting and also the night after the meeting.
Veselnitskaya’s appearance on Fox News, in which she discussed her relationship with Glenn Simpson, did not sit well with the Operation Crossfire Hurricane conspirators. Particularly her quote, “But my meeting was not at all connected with Mrs. Hillary Clinton.”
Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney who signed the Veselnitskaya indictment, was recused from the Michael Cohen case by Department of Justice officials working under Rod Rosenstein. Berman is identified in the press as a Trump appointee but he is actually a Jeff Sessions appointee.
Here is what an FBI insider recently told us, prior to Mueller officially coming up empty-handed:
“Mueller’s team of partisans has a problem. They want to get Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner so they are working hard to prove that Jr and Kushner lied about the June 9th 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The Special Counsel has their version (Fusion GPS’ version) of what happened in the meeting but Veselnitskaya and Manafort’s versions don’t support their version. They tried to squeeze Manafort into reciting their version but in the end he resisted. So they claimed to the Judge that Manafort lied in his proffer to them. Veselnitskaya already met with Senate investigators and gave testimony about the meeting. This testimony doesn’t fall in line with the Special Counsel’s version so they have to discredit her and keep her from coming to the U.S. for any future hearings hence the strange indictment today by holdovers of Preet Bharara.
The Trump Tower meeting, facilitated by Fusion GPS and debriefed by Fusion GPS, was an original attempt to get candidate Trump to make commitments to Russia regarding the subversion of the Magnitsky Act. This was the original purpose of the entrapment but candidate Trump didn’t fall for it. So they didn’t want a good set-up to go to waste.
Veselnitskaya only mentioned dirt on Hillary as a rouse to get the Trump campaign to meet with her regarding the Magnitsky scheme. Fusion GPS, Brennan and Comey were trying to set Trump up to commit a serious crime related to Russia but they were unsuccessful. After Trump was elected they dug through all of their attempts to find something useful and realized they could spin several setup meetings with Trump Campaign officials as somehow being related to hacked emails. This is proven by the fact that all the meetings were conducted by people associated with the CIA (Halper and Mifsud) and the FBI (Fusion GPS and Henry Greenburg). It is also proven by the fact that the FISA warrants obtained by the FBI never had any mention of Hacked emails.”
FBI source’s statement concludes
Roger Stone was also targeted by one of these set-up plays.
Stone’s lawyer Grant Smith wrote the following in a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes: “By way of example, as you know, back in June I sent this Committee a letter regarding a longtime FBI informant named Gennadiy Vasilievich Vostretsov who, under the alias “Henry Greenberg”, was sent to approach my client in May 2016 with claims of having access to information that could impact the election. Mr. Stone not only immediately and forcefully declined to participate in anything this FBI informant was proposing, but never saw or spoke to the informant again. Mr. Stone believes it highly likely that Mr. Vostretsov/Greenberg’s status as an FBI informant was not “former”, and that Vostretsov/Greenberg was, in fact, actively working on behalf of the FBI at the time of their meeting, acting upon a calculated effort to entrap Mr. Stone and, further, to infiltrate and compromise the Trump effort. Notably, Vostretsov was admitted to the country nine separate times on an FBI Informant’s visa.”
The Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who set up Don Trump Jr. for a meeting in Trump Tower as part of a Fusion GPS plot was operating out of the Washington offices of Cozen O’Connor, a law firm run by an anti-Trump former Obama administration official whose super PAC donated to Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential election.
Veselnitskaya’s work from the Cozen O’Connor office provides more evidence of a Democrat and establishment Republican effort to set up the Trump campaign for a future Russian collusion case. Veselnitskaya was allowed into the United States by the Obama Department of Justice while the former Obama official who runs Cozen O’Connor publicly warned then-candidate Trump that if he became president he would be investigated by the DOJ for contacts with foreign leaders. Veselnitskaya reportedly had dinner meetings with Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson the day before she met in Trump Tower and also the day after she went inside Trump Tower.
Big League Politics has confirmed that a Cozen O’Connor partner who lives in the same apartment building as James Comey’s friend Daniel Richman — who leaked classified information to the press on Comey’s behalf — spoke with Richman during the period that Comey and the Fusion GPS team were trying to obtain FISA warrants on Trump Tower.
Let’s break down the facts of an Obama administration official’s involvement in the Trump Tower plot:
Russian and U.S. citizen Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military veteran, was present at Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower after leading a lobbying push supposedly to repeal the Magnitsky Act. Akhmestshin is believed by insiders to be linked to Russian government intelligence, a fact that the Washington Post seized on when reporting that he met with Don Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower. A nonprofit group focused on promoting Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya’s cause to lawmakers actually hired Cozen O’Connor, which the law firm confirms.
The Washington Post reported (emphasis added):
“In the spring of 2016, as the presidential race was heating up, Akhmetshin and lobbyists he hired sought meetings on Capitol Hill to make their case against the sanctions law. Akhmetshin hired former Democratic congressman Ron Dellums, along with a team of lobbyists from the law firm of Cozen O’Connor.
Steve Pruitt, a business colleague speaking on Dellums’s behalf, said his involvement was brief and ended when he determined that Congress was unlikely to change the law.
In June, after visiting Trump Tower in New York, Veselnitskaya came to Washington to lend a hand in the lobbying effort.
She attended a meeting of the team at the downtown offices of Cozen O’Connor, where she spoke at length in Russian about the issues but confused many in the room, who had not been told previously about her involvement, according to several participants.”
Washington Post passage ends
Cozen O’Connor managing partner Howard Schweitzer is listed here on a DOJ form from an investigation into the breaking of lobbying laws by Russians trying to repeal the Magnitsky Act — which was just a front to get Russians in the room with Don Jr. We know now that Natalia Veselnitskaya was actually operating out of the Cozen O’Connor offices.
Schweitzer worked as general counsel for the Export-Import Bank under George W. Bush and was chief operating officer of the TARP bailout program under both Bush and Obama from 2008-2009.
“In October 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson appointed Howard as the first COO of TARP. In this position, Howard led program execution and built the TARP infrastructure. He served as a key point person regarding the financial crisis through the presidential transition and continued to serve as TARP COO under Secretary Timothy Geithner until August 2009,” reads Schweitzer’s Cozen O’Connor bio.
“He served as chief operating officer of the TARP in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations,” reads Schweitzer’s bio for a Politico piece he wrote in August 2016 headlined “7 Reasons Why Trump Would Hate Being President.”
Schweitzer’s virulently anti-Trump piece for Politico tries to make the case that Trump was “sabotaging his own bid for the White House.” Schweitzer said that if Trump became president then “He’ll be investigated to death” by Congress and the Justice Department for his business dealings and “relationships with foreign leaders.”
The narrative was being set.
The Philadelphia-based Cozen O’Connor law firm also has a political action committee that donated to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, in addition to Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Martin O’Malley. In the 2018 election cycle, the Cozen O’Connor PAC donated more money to Hillary Clinton’s dormant campaign.
The Philadelphia-based Cozen O’Connor law firm also has a political action committee that donated to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, in addition to Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Martin O’Malley. In the 2018 election cycle, the Cozen O’Connor PAC donated more money to Hillary Clinton’s dormant campaign.
Patrick Howley@howleyreportsI found the Obama Officials Office That SPY Natalia Worked Out of https://www.pscp.tv/w/bup7HTFXTEVSWXh6eURCamJ8MU95S0F5bmdiWWFLYseEE7ZJeQ7TQA3sQaGgM6dwJdBx2U8oXbhmiUEFCy12 …
Big League Politics @bigleagpolitics
I found the Obama Officials Office That SPY Natalia Worked Out of
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Here is Veselnitskaya seated behind Obama ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul at a June 2016 congressional hearing focused on Russia.
Cozen O’Connor’s connections to the anti-Trump “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot are wide-ranging, and show up in unexpected places.
James Comey’s friend, Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, leaked classified information that Comey gave him. During this leaking period, Richman was apartment-building neighbors with a partner at the Cozen O’Connor law firm that strategized with Fusion GPS operative Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian plant who set up Don Jr. in Trump Tower.
Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, led by Glenn Simpson, were part of John Brennan and Peter Strzok’s CIA-led “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot aimed at President Donald Trump and the Trump campaign.
“Yes, he is my neighbor,” Amy Wenzel, a partner at Cozen O’Connor, confirmed in a phone conversation with Big League Politics, confirming that they spoke. They live near each other in a Brooklyn high-rise.
The Washington Post’s release of Trump Tower documents shows the crowd surrounding non-sexual honeypot Natalia Veselnitskaya. The crowd of conspirators knew they were damaging Trump by setting up the meeting.
The Post confirms British-citizen music promoter Rob Goldstone’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which he described the conspirators’ push to get the meeting despite the fact that they knew it would create trouble for the Trump campaign.
“Rob Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between President Trump’s son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material on Clinton, overriding Goldstone’s own warnings that the meeting would be a bad idea.
“He said, ‘it doesn’t matter. You just have to get the meeting,’ ” Goldstone, a British citizen, testified.
The intensity with which Agalarov and his father, the billionaire Aras Agalarov, sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for congressional inquiries and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was revealed in more than 2,500 pages of congressional testimony and exhibits released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.”
Washington Post passage ends
Natalia Veselnitskaya is also inextricably linked to the case against Paul Manafort.
The Russian attorney partner of Paul Manafort who was named as a defendant in Robert Mueller charges is also linked to the Russian spy Natalia Vesenilskaya, who attended a meeting with Don Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower.
According to Mueller’s charges, Manafort’s Russian partner Konstantin Kilimnik tried to intimidate or coerce witnesses in Manafort’s upcoming money laundering trial. That put Konstantin Kilimnik at the center of the Mueller effort to find obstruction of justice in Trump-World.
So who is Konstantine Kilimnik? It turns out that Kilimnik is linked to Veselnitskaya, the Fusion GPS agent, according to Senate documents.
Here is how ProPublica described Kilimnik: “Konstantin Kilimnik: Manafort, who worked for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine before running Trump’s campaign, had an employee in Kiev named Konstantin Kilimnik who U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence, according to Politico. Kilimnik served in the Russian army and learned English at a school that experts say often trains spies. Kilimnik denied being a spy to The Washington Post. Manafort had dinner with Kilimnik last August in New York, just before he was forced out of the Trump campaign amid growing questions about his work in the Ukraine, the Post reported.”
Documents reveal Kilimnik’s ties to Veselniskaya. Let’s take a look at United States Senate Judiciary Committee documents questioning Veselniskaya in October. Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Veselniskaya if she knew a handful of characters believed to be conspirators in the case.
Grassley and Feinstein specifically asked Veselnitskaya if she knew Konstantin Kilimnik.
Here is page 4 of the documents, naming Kilimnik:
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee as senator from Alabama.
Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Don Jr. in Trump Tower provided some of the basis for warrants to surveil Trump Tower and for other FBI surveillance measures on the Trump campaign.
The fact that Veselnitskaya, a lawyer herself, was in the meeting with Trump Jr. and Kushner opened the president’s son and son-in-law up to being qualified as “target associations” for law enforcement under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed during the Bush administration.
Veselniskaya’s link to suspected conspirator Kilimnik is now coming under scrutiny.
Peter Strzok, meanwhile, is firmly established as the go-to guy who ran point on the entire operation.
PETER STRZOK, POINT MAN
Both John Brennan and James Comey used Peter Strzok to damage President Donald Trump. Strzok is the disgraced FBI agent and fired Robert Mueller team member whose text messages with mistress Lisa Page form the biggest scandal in FBI history. The lovers conspired to illegally bring down Trump, all while the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign.
Strzok interviewed Hillary Clinton without putting her under oath, and granted immunity to Cheryl Mills and Clinton’s other associates right before he flew to London to meet with Christopher Steele to work on the anti-Trump dossier, which was sponsored by the Clinton-funded firm Fusion GPS. That dossier was used to fraudulently obtain FISA warrants to surveil Trump Tower. Barack Obama read bits of the dossier in his daily presidential briefings, courtesy of Brennan. Fusion GPS, meanwhile, sent operatives into Trump Tower to entrap Don Jr. and Jared Kushner in a meeting with planted Russians.
When it was time for the conspirators to focus on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, Strzok was there to run information about the adviser to the Australians. When it was time to take out Trump’s national security adviser General Michael Flynn, Strzok was there to stage an “ambush” interrogation of Flynn without Flynn’s lawyer present.
Let’s walk through Strzok’s amazing Zelig-like role in every facet of Operation Crossfire Hurricane:
Brennan hired Strzok to write the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January 2017.
This was an official document used to spur on the Robert Mueller investigation. But the document did not actually find any evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, it merely said that Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump and that Russia “developed a clear preference for Trump.” The Christopher Steele dossier was added as an “appendix” to the ICA report, even though Brennan lied and told Congress that it was never used.
Comey Sent Strzok To London To Meet With The Australians About George Papadopoulos
George Papadopoulos was surveilled in real time by the FBI. Who set him up? Peter Strzok, whose meeting with the Australian ambassador in London provided key basis for the creation of Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to none other than the New York Times.
- “The FBI sent counterintelligence agents, one of whom was Peter Strzok, to London in the summer of 2016 to meet with Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, to describe his meeting with Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos.
- The meeting with Downer was described as “highly unusual,” and “helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation.”
- The FBI kept details of the operation secret from most of the DOJ – with “only about five Justice Department officials” aware of the full scope of the case.”
Strzok Cleared Hillary Clinton Right Before He Left For London
Big League Politics called attention in July 2017 to the fact that Strzok was serving on the Mueller team after personally overseeing the Hillary Clinton email investigation at the FBI and personally conducting the interview with Hillary Clinton that was not under oath and which led to no incarceration for the Democrat candidate.
Strzok also withheld information about the Hillary case from Congress according to this text:
With the pressure on, Strzok’s wife Melissa Hodgman, Associate Director of the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is scrubbing herObama and Clinton links. Hodgman was promoted by Obama just two weeks before FBI director James Comey re-opened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in 2016, leading political insiders to suspect that Hodgman might have been involved in the federal government’s cover-up.
Some of the Liked pages on her Facebook account on December 3 included “Thank You Obama” and “We Voted For Hillary.”
Strzok Sets Up Flynn
On January 24, 2017, Peter Strzok interviewed General Michael Flynn inside the White House alongside another agent. Flynn’s lawyer was not present. Flynn apparently did not tell the White House about his meeting. Guess who did? Sally Yates, the anti-Trump deputy attorney general whose underling told the FBI to shut down the Clinton Foundation case. Yates informed the White House on January 26 that Flynn met with the FBI.
That was the beginning of the end for the original Trump White House.
Strzok was close personal friends with the foreign intelligence judge Rudolph Contreras who accepted General Flynn’s guilty plea. Contreras recused himself after he already accepted Flynn’s guilty plea.
Strzok and Page detailed their plan to meet with Contreras in a July 25, 2016 series of texts:
PAGE: “Rudy is on the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]! Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.”
STRZOK: “I did. I need to get together with him.”
PAGE: “said he’d gotten on a month or two ago at a graduation party we were both at.”
Strzok and Page’s Texts Revealed Their Anti-Trump Plot
It is well known that Strzok and Page discussed their anti-Trump conspiracy many thousands of times over text messages that have been mostly released. The lovers’ repeated references to “CF” refer to “Crossfire.” Here are Hot Air’s favorites:
“Strzok: God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.
Strzok: Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support…
Strzok: I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.”
Brennan Plotted For Years To Get Trump, Starting with a Fly-By-Night Operation in Reno
A whistleblower case currently in federal court in Washington, D.C. stands to bring out incredible allegations of John Brennan and James Clapper’s moves against Trump, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, and the former presiding judge of the FISA court Reggie Walton.
Real estate mogul Timothy Blixseth admitted that he saw records from CIA and NSA whistleblower Dennis Montgomery proving that Clapper and Obama CIA director John Brennan oversaw repeated spying on the phone calls of President Donald Trump and millions of other private American citizens, including Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and FISA court judge Reggie Walton. Fired former FBI director James Comey received evidence from the whistleblower’s lawyer but sat on it.
LISTEN TO THE BLIXSETH TAPE RIGHT HERE
In an audiotaped interview — conducted before Trump ever ran for president — Blixseth spoke to former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and detective Mike Zullo. The audio was released in connection with a civil contempt case that the Department of Justice filed against Arpaio. The audio of this conversation appears to only be preserved in one location on the Internet, on a whistleblower Soundcloud page.
“This guy showed me 900 million phone calls. And I see myself in there. I see people I know. I see Donald Trump in there a zillion times, and Bloomberg is in there,” Blixseth said on the tape, referring to information that Montgomery allegedly showed him.
“He’s a very genius computer guy,” Blixseth said of Montgomery. “What they did is, they were actually working for the CIA. And they mask it as — I’m sure you’ll remember this — the contracts with the CIA, of which I had many copies, said that they were decoding Al-Jazeera television, said that there was broadcast embedded, remember that? Owned by Gore? Al Gore’s got part of it now. But it was all bullshit. That was bullshit. That was a front by the CIA. And this guy [Montgomery] worked for Brennan and Clapper. Those were the two guys running it,” Timothy Blixseth told Arpaio and Zullo on the tape.
“He started out in 2004 with another partner in Reno, Nevada, called eTreppid. They collected about $40 million from the CIA. Top security clearance. All kinds of letters…In 2006 they started a new company that [my ex-wife] owns, and they started doing the same business for the government. What it really turns out they were doing is they were hacking into all of America.
Big League Politics called the listed number for eTreppid Technologies, but we were told that Montgomery no longer works there. “That company closed down years ago, sir,” a representative said of eTreppid Technologies. When asked what the company is called now, the representative said, “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss any more with you.”
Blixseth claimed in his conversation with Zullo and Arpaio that Brennan and Clapper were running the operation.
“Everything they said they didn’t do, that Brennan said recently, mainly Clapper. It’s all bullshit. And I’ve got it right here,” Blixseth said.
On the explosive tapes, Blixseth walks Arpaio and Zullo through the details of the program on a computer screen. At one point, the three begin pulling up specific names of targeted individuals.
“You know who that guy is? That’s the head of the FISA court they hacked into, Reggie Walton,” Blixseth tells the investigators.
“John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, was hacked,” Blixseth tells Arpaio and Zullo.
Insiders have always been skeptical of Roberts’ motives for siding with President Obama on Obamacare.
On August 4, 2005, Matt Drudge reported: “The NEW YORK TIMES is looking into the adoption records of the children of Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. The TIMES has investigative reporter Glen Justice hot on the case to investigate the status of adoption records of Judge Roberts’ two young children, Josie age 5 and Jack age 4, a top source reveals. Judge Roberts and his wife Jane adopted the children when they each were infants. Both children were adopted from Latin America. A TIMES insider claims the look into the adoption papers are part of the paper’s “standard background check.” Bill Borders, NYT senior editor, explains: “Our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions, as they did about many other aspects of his background. They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue.”
OBAMA Kept The Scheme Going Overseas
House lawmakers are zeroing in on a meeting that German chancellor Angela Merkel held with President Obama at a key moment as one of the FISA warrants against Trump was set to expire. Lawmakers are aware of the role of foreign governments in collaborating with U.S. intelligence agencies in the Trump investigation as recently as 2017.
Germany provided information beginning in 2015 to aide British spies and the Obama administration in compiling the Christopher Steele “dossier.”
Obama had been called out by the Drudge Report for visiting foreign leaders in Europe in the spring of 2017 right before President Trump visited those leaders in Europe. It turns out that one of those Obama meetings is now under scrutiny on Capitol Hill.
Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein gave a redacted document to Rep. Devin Nunes, showing two major redactions about the creation of the Trump “Dossier” and the launch of FISA warrants and Robert Mueller’s investigation during the 2016 campaign. The redactions were: “the name of a country and the name of a foreign agent who supplied information.”
Now we know: the country is Germany and the foreign agent was either Angela Merkel or someone who worked for Angela Merkel in foreign intelligence.
The redacted sections will be referencing one of the European countries and agents that share SIGINT (signal intelligence) to US Intelligence,” says Chuck Marler, a longtime agent of the FBI Special Surveillance Group under Robert Mueller, who is an official whistleblower in this case.
SIGINT countries were involved in sharing information that helped the Christopher Steele dossier to come together. The Guardian reported in an amazingly under-covered article: “Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said.”
So Germany helped build the dossier. When does Merkel re-emerge in this picture?
“Fast forward to April/May 2017, roughly the same time the fourth and final FISA warrant was running out (because the Carter Page story was determined false). Rosenstein and McCabe were in desperate need of renewed help from intelligence to keep the Russian Collusion narrative alive,” Marler reports.
“Well they weren’t going to get help from the CIA because Pompeo was now CIA Director and wouldn’t help with a faux collusion narrative. In comes Obama to the rescue. He meets with Merkel in private (the US no longer monitored her communications because of the previous mishap) to beg for some more Sigint information to keep the collusion narrative alive. Conveniently he meets her hours prior to Trump’s meeting and his stay in her heavily monitored territory.”
“Barack Obama is to visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on his first trip to Europe since leaving office.
The former US President will travel to Germany for the launch of a summer of special events to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant church.
He will arrive in Germany on the same day as his successor Donald Trump is due in Brussels for a meeting with other NATO leaders – the first scheduled foreign visit for the President since taking office.
Mr Obama is due to give a speech in the German capital and take part in a discussion on democracy with Ms Merkel, who he once called his “closest ally.’”
Brunei’s law mandating STONING TO DEATH of gays & adulterers to come into force next week
A harsher version of penal code, which includes sharia-based punishments for things like adultery and same-sex relations, is to come into force next week in Brunei. The ‘human rights defenders’ in Washington, however, are silent.
Brunei, a tiny Muslim-majority absolute monarchy located in Southeastern Asia is about to put into force the last amendment to its criminal code as part of a reform initiated back in 2014. The renewed code, which is aimed at reflecting Islam’s tenets of morality and punishment for those who break them, will include caning and even stoning to death of Muslims, who are found guilty of adultery, sodomy and rape.
ALSO ON RT.COMBrunei’s plan to stone gays riles UN
The government wanted to roll in the new laws in stages, but put the process on pause after international public outcry over the milder phase one, which included fines and jail terms for offenders, but not corporal punishment. Last week a rights group reported that Brunei quietly announced earlier this year the date, when the harsher version of the code would come into force: April 3.
“We are trying to get pressure placed on the government of Brunei but realise there is a very short time frame until the laws take effect,” Matthew Woolfe an Australia-based founder of the group, the Brunei Project, told Reuters. “It took us by surprise that the government has now given a date and is rushing through implementation.”
Homosexuality was outlawed in Brunei even before the 2014 reform and in fact since colonial times, with jail sentences of up to 10 years possible. If its government goes ahead with the plan, the nation will become the first in Asia to allow punishing gay people by death. At the moment only a handful of nations like Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have such provisions in their law.
The news has horrified some international rights groups. Amnesty International, in particular, decried the introduction of “cruel and inhuman penalties” and called on the world to “urgently condemn Brunei’s move to put these cruel penalties into practice.”
ALSO ON RT.COMIndonesia: 140+ arrested in ‘gay party’ raid, critics say people harassed afterwards
However, the US has so far stayed conspicuously silent on the issue. Washington, which actively develops economic ties with the oil-rich nation while regularly holding annual naval drills with a particular focus on maritime security in the South China Sea, has not yet issued a single statement on the latest developments in Brunei.
And neither did London, which also enjoys “close ties” with its former protectorate. Although, one could hardly expect any damning statements from the US aimed at the Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. The man, who recently described the amendment of the penal code as “a great achievement,” has traditionally enjoyed warm relations with the White House, which were sometimes marked by some extraordinary gifts like jewelry worth $71,468 presented to the former first lady, Michelle Obama, by the Queen of Brunei back in 2013.
However, such a situation would probably surprise no one. The fact that another of Washington’s major allies – Saudi Arabia – also punishes same-sex relations by death – alongside adultery, apostasy and blasphemy – never stopped the US from striking billions-worth of deals with Riyadh.
ALSO ON RT.COMPentagon says Riyadh is too important to whip, rolls out $15bn THAAD arms deal insteadThe recent scandal over the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which resulted in global fallout for the Saudis, failed to change the attitude of the White House and the Pentagon to Riyadh.
In theory, Iran-style crippling sanctions of its exports would swiftly change the mind of the Brunei government on whether stoning gays is a good idea. But considering how selective Western powers are in using this tool against nations accused of human right violations, one shouldn’t expect such a development anytime soon.
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