- Former spooks told Business Insider that Rudy Giuliani's role in a widely discredited New York Post story and President Donald Trump's willingness to seize on it highlights how vulnerable they are to being duped by Russian intelligence.
- Giuliani's access to Trump, the two men's personality traits, their eagerness to obtain dirt on the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and unwillingness to acknowledge Russian interference makes them a goldmine for foreign intelligence services, former spies said.
- They are "grotesquely vulnerable, exploitable targets" and "any foreign intelligence service would be derelict if they did not try to exploit this," said a former CIA covert operative.
- Steve Hall, the CIA's former chief of Russia operations, also said Trump and Giuliani's tendency to traffic in conspiracies and the rise of misinformation in right-wing media mean "we're doing a lot of [Russia's] work for them."
WASHINGTON — A New York tabloid’s puzzling account about how it acquired emails purportedly from Joe Biden’s son has raised some red flags. One of the biggest involves the source of the emails: Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani has traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens, developing relationships with shadowy figures, including a Ukrainian lawmaker who U.S. officials have described as a Russian agent and part of a broader Russian effort to denigrate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Yet Giuliani says foreign sources didn’t provide the Hunter Biden emails. He says a laptop containing the emails and intimate photos was simply abandoned in a Delaware repair shop and the shop owner reached out to Giuliani’s lawyer.
That hasn’t stopped the FBI from investigating whether the emails are part of a foreign influence operation. The emails have surfaced as U.S. officials have been warning that Russia, which backed Trump’s 2016 campaign through hacking of Democratic emails and a covert social media campaign, is interfering again this year. The latest episode with Giuliani underscores the risk he poses to a White House that spent years confronted by a federal investigation into whether Trump associates had coordinated with Russia.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that intelligence agencies had warned the White House last year that Giuliani was the target of a Russian influence operation. The newspaper, citing four former officials, said that assessment was based on information including intercepted communications showing Giuliani had been in contact with people tied to Russian intelligence.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nati...krtm6ngamze-story.html#nt=interstitial-manual
First of all, former President Barack Obama didn’t give “150 billion in cash” to Iran.
The nuclear agreement included China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, so Obama didn’t carry out any part of it on his own. The deal did lift some sanctions, which lifted a freeze on Iran’s assets that were held largely in foreign, not U.S., banks. And, to be clear, the money that was unfrozen belonged to Iran. It had only been made inaccessible by sanctions aimed at crippling the country’s nuclear program.
Secondly, $150 billion is a high-end estimate of the total that was freed up after some sanctions were lifted. U.S. Treasury Department estimates put the number at about $50 billion in “usable liquid assets,” according to 2015 testimony from Adam Szubin, acting under secretary of treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The part that the meme gets right, though, is that the deal didn’t get congressional approval. The Obama administration had maintained that the agreement wasn’t a treaty, which would have required approval by the Senate. Republicans did try to block the deal, but they weren’t able to get enough support to pass the legislation in the Senate.
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/obama-didnt-give-iran-150-billion-in-cash/
Obama said Iran could have its money back if it agreed to his demands. Iran complied with his demands and so got their money back.
March 2015
WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) - The United States declared Venezuela a national security threat on Monday and ordered sanctions against seven officials from the oil-rich country in the worst bilateral diplomatic dispute since socialist President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013.
U.S. President Barack Obama signed and issued the executive order, which senior administration officials said did not target Venezuela’s energy sector or broader economy. But the move stokes tensions between Washington and Caracas just as U.S. relations with Cuba, a longtime U.S. foe in Latin America and key ally to Venezuela, are set to be normalized.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced the sanctions as an attempt to topple his government. At the end of a thundering two-hour speech, Maduro said he would seek decree powers to counter the “imperialist” threat, and appointed one of the sanctioned officials as the new interior minister.
Declaring any country a threat to national security is the first step in starting a U.S. sanctions program. The same process has been followed with countries such as Iran and Syria, U.S. officials said.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-venezuela_n_6831890
Actually, there were 122, almost all of them released by George W. Bush
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-prisoner-release/
You're way too trusting of people who lie to you.
