The United States is planning for a potential summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Wall Street Journal reports.
U.S. ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has been in Washington, D.C., to coordinate a possible meeting.
McClatchy: “A new Russian influence operation has surfaced that mirrors some of the activity of an internet firm that the FBI says was deeply involved in efforts to sway the 2016 U.S. elections, a cybersecurity firm says.”
“A website called usareally.com appeared on the internet May 17 and called on Americans to rally in front of the White House June 14 to celebrate President Trump’s birthday, which is also Flag Day… The website’s operators once worked out of the same office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency had its headquarters.”
Arkady Babchenko, the prominent Russian journalist and Kremlin critic whose apparent assassination yesterday sparked an international outcry has appeared at a news conference today, Axios reports.
The BBC reports that Ukrainian authorities reported an assassination in order to “expose Russian agents.”
“The FBI warned four years ago that a foundation controlled by the Russian oligarch who allegedly reimbursed Donald Trump’s personal lawyer might have been acting on behalf of Russia’s intelligence services,” NPR reports.
“FBI Special Agent in Charge Lucia Ziobro wrote an unusual column in the Boston Business Journal in April of 2014 to warn that a foundation controlled by Russian energy baron Viktor Vekselberg might be part of a Moscow spying campaign that sought to siphon up American science and technology.”
Susan Glasser: “This coming Monday, Putin, already Russia’s longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin, will be inaugurated to a new six-year term. In March, Trump defied his own advisers to congratulate Putin in a post-election phone call, then surprised them again by inviting Putin to Washington for a summit meeting. It seems implausible and politically insane to imagine that Trump would even consider a chummy one-on-one with Putin now, especially when the risks to Trump from the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s Russia ties appear so significant. And yet the invitation, I’m told, was real, and reflects the President’s strongly expressed personal preference.”
“Will Trump follow through with it—and add yet another high-drama plotline to the already oversubscribed Trump show?”
“The House Intelligence Committee released on Friday a roughly 250-page report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, laying out Republicans’ conclusion after a yearlong investigation that they had found no evidence that the Trump campaign aided Moscow’s efforts,” the New York Times reports.
“Their conclusions are certain to be attacked by Democrats on the committee, who have accused the Republicans of prematurely closing the investigation and failing to conduct it with the rigor that the subject called for out of a desire to protect President Trump. The committee also released dissenting views from the Democrats.”
“In battleground states in the middle of the country, some Democrats watched with frustration as their party grabbed headlines last week with a splashy new lawsuit alleging a vast conspiracy between President Trump and Russia,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“The DNC’s drumbeat of messaging on Trump and his relationship with Russia is wearing thin with some Democrats in purple states — particularly in the Midwest, where people on the ground say voters are uninterested and even turned off by the issue. The suit exposes a gap, they say, between the party’s strategy nationally and what Midwest Democrats believe will win elections in their state.”
A Russian news agency says President Trump invited his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to the United States during a phone call, “and said he would be glad to see Putin in the White House,” Reuters reports.
“Rolling out a welcome for Putin in the White House could anger Trump’s domestic critics, who accuse Russia of hostile acts against Western countries, including the United States.”
The Federal News Agency, a pro-Russian website linked to the Internet Research Agency, has been recruiting “English-speaking journalists” to work on its “Wake Up, America!” campaign, according to Shooting the Messenger.
From the announcement:
Due to the growing political censorship imposed by the United States, there remains less and less of information sources that are not under control of the U.S. authorities. In this regard, U.S. citizens cannot receive objective and independent information about events occurring on the territory of America and throughout the world.
Sputnik, a news service established by the Russian government, features a video of a nuclear explosion in Washington, D.C.
The White House put further daylight between President Trump and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley as chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow said she had gotten “ahead of the curve” in announcing new sanctions against Russia, the New York Times reports.
Said Kudlow: “She got ahead of the curve. She’s done a great job. She’s a very effective ambassador, but there might have been some momentary confusion about that.”
Bloomberg reports that Haley fired back at the criticism: “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”
President Trump “put the brakes on a preliminary plan to impose additional economic sanctions on Russia, walking back a Sunday announcement by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley that the Kremlin had swiftly denounced as ‘international economic raiding,'” the Washington Post reports.
“The Trump team decided to publicly characterize Haley’s announcement as a misstatement.”
The Washington Post has an incredible anecdote that captures President Trump’s reluctance to punish Russian president Vladimir Putin, noting that the president “erupted” after learning the United States had ousted 60 Russians in response to the poisoning of a former spy, while France and Germany each expelled only five diplomats.
“The president, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia. His briefers tried to reassure him that the sum total of European expulsions was roughly the same as the U.S. number.”
Screamed Trump: “I don’t care about the total!”
President Trump appeared to taunt Russian president Vladimir Putin on Twitter:
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
Clare Malone: “While Americans are well-acquainted with Russian online trolls’ 2016 disinformation campaign, there’s a more insidious threat of Russian interference in the coming midterms. The Russians could hack our very election infrastructure, disenfranchising Americans and even altering the vote outcome in key states or districts. Election security experts have warned of it, but state election officials have largely played it down for fear of spooking the public. We still might not know the extent to which state election infrastructure was compromised in 2016, nor how compromised it will be in 2018.”
“The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on seven of Russia’s richest men and 17 top government officials on Friday in the latest effort to punish President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle for interference in the 2016 election and other Russian aggressions,” the New York Times reports.
“The sanctions are designed to penalize some of Russia’s richest industrialists, who are seen in the West as enriching themselves from Mr. Putin’s increasingly authoritarian administration.”
Washington Post: “The move is likely to provoke a strong response from Moscow, which has expressed increasing exasperation with Washington.”
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has taken the unusual step of questioning Russian oligarchs who traveled into the US, stopping at least one and searching his electronic devices when his private jet landed at a New York area airport,” CNN reports.
“The situations have one thing in common: Investigators are asking whether wealthy Russians illegally funneled cash donations directly or indirectly into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and inauguration.”
“One area under scrutiny… is investments Russians made in companies or think tanks that have political action committees that donated to the campaign.”
“Another theory Mueller’s office is pursuing… is whether wealthy Russians used straw donors — Americans with citizenship — as a vessel through which they could pump money into the campaign and inauguration fund.”
Jeffrey Toobin: “Is collusion a crime? That is one of the central questions of the investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections. Even if it could be proved that Donald Trump and his supporters worked with the Russian government, or with Russian citizens, to win the Presidential race, would that activity have violated United States law? It’s long been an article of faith for Trump supporters, and for Trump himself, that collusion is not illegal. As the President told the Times in an interview last December, ‘There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.'”
“Now, it appears, Trump’s own Justice Department may have a different view. That conclusion appears in a document released earlier this week, in the course of pre-trial litigation in the case of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, on charges including money laundering.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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