BY PHILIP WEISS | SEPTEMBER 8, 2020
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP TALKS WITH ISRAEL PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU AND JARED KUSHNER IN JERUSALEM, MAY 22, 2017. (PHOTO: KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
Quick show of hands. How many of you have heard of Guccifer 2.0? Good– all of you. Guccifer was of course the on-line identity of the hackers allegedly connected to Russian intelligence who shared emails from the Democratic National Committee with Wikileaks during the 2016 presidential campaign, embarrassing Hillary Clinton.
Now, how many of you know that Guccifer 2.0's phone was registered in Israel? Wait– I don't see any hands!
That juicy fact is in the Senate's Select Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference that came out last month. The committee says that Guccifer registered a twitter account to communicate to the media in June 2016 and the email address on the account "was connected to an Israeli phone number." Gosh!
Guccifer's phone is one of many Israel connections in the near-thousand-page Senate report that documents Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election.
The implication of these references is that Israelis with intelligence connections were facilitating links between Trump aides and Russian interferers.
But you never read about these efforts in our mainstream media, apart from coverage on investigative sites. Our media are not interested in the appearance that Israel also sought to interfere in the 2016 election.
This is especially remarkable because the most dramatic, and improper, case of Trump shifting actual foreign policy documented in the Senate report was his effort to thwart President Obama's decision to finally allow a UN Security Council resolution critical of Israeli settlements to pass in December 2016. The President-elect pulled out all the stops to try to get a foreign government including Russia to veto the resolution. Trump himself got Egyptian president al-Sisi to withdraw the resolution. Then when the resolution was re-entered by other countries, Trump's aides, led by Jared Kushner, who told the Senate committee the resolution was a "disaster," sought to get the Russians to veto it. The Russians refused.
Trump was intervening for Israel even before he was in office. Samantha Power, Obama's ambassador to the U.N. who allowed that resolution to pass 14-0 with a historical abstention, complained to the Senate committee: "It was very disconcerting and really as a citizen I urge it never to happen again that you put foreign governments in a position where they don't know-report they are forum-shopping between a current President and a future President, because that’s what started to happen."
What foreign government is doing the shopping in Power's warning there? Clearly the government of Israel. But in all the media coverage of Russiagate, no one has picked up that part.
Search the report for Israel, and you will find 52 references, many of which suggest that Israelis may have played the middle man for the Trump campaign to Russians with official connections. Sadly, the Senate committee never fully explores the Israelis' role. Russia is the bad guy here. And of course the media have never questioned that paradigm.
For instance, remember Maria Butina, the Russian spy who was deported after allegedly infiltrating the NRA and Republican causes? Her American collaborator and lover, the political operative Paul Erickson, who went to jail on related charges, met Butina– in Israel. The committee says:
Please go to Mondoweiss to read the entire article.
Now, how many of you know that Guccifer 2.0's phone was registered in Israel? Wait– I don't see any hands!
That juicy fact is in the Senate's Select Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference that came out last month. The committee says that Guccifer registered a twitter account to communicate to the media in June 2016 and the email address on the account "was connected to an Israeli phone number." Gosh!
Guccifer's phone is one of many Israel connections in the near-thousand-page Senate report that documents Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election.
The implication of these references is that Israelis with intelligence connections were facilitating links between Trump aides and Russian interferers.
But you never read about these efforts in our mainstream media, apart from coverage on investigative sites. Our media are not interested in the appearance that Israel also sought to interfere in the 2016 election.
This is especially remarkable because the most dramatic, and improper, case of Trump shifting actual foreign policy documented in the Senate report was his effort to thwart President Obama's decision to finally allow a UN Security Council resolution critical of Israeli settlements to pass in December 2016. The President-elect pulled out all the stops to try to get a foreign government including Russia to veto the resolution. Trump himself got Egyptian president al-Sisi to withdraw the resolution. Then when the resolution was re-entered by other countries, Trump's aides, led by Jared Kushner, who told the Senate committee the resolution was a "disaster," sought to get the Russians to veto it. The Russians refused.
Trump was intervening for Israel even before he was in office. Samantha Power, Obama's ambassador to the U.N. who allowed that resolution to pass 14-0 with a historical abstention, complained to the Senate committee: "It was very disconcerting and really as a citizen I urge it never to happen again that you put foreign governments in a position where they don't know-report they are forum-shopping between a current President and a future President, because that’s what started to happen."
What foreign government is doing the shopping in Power's warning there? Clearly the government of Israel. But in all the media coverage of Russiagate, no one has picked up that part.
Search the report for Israel, and you will find 52 references, many of which suggest that Israelis may have played the middle man for the Trump campaign to Russians with official connections. Sadly, the Senate committee never fully explores the Israelis' role. Russia is the bad guy here. And of course the media have never questioned that paradigm.
For instance, remember Maria Butina, the Russian spy who was deported after allegedly infiltrating the NRA and Republican causes? Her American collaborator and lover, the political operative Paul Erickson, who went to jail on related charges, met Butina– in Israel. The committee says:
MARIA BUTINA, MUGSHOT FROM ALEXANDRIA, VA., SHERIFF'S OFFICE, 2018.
On November 6, 2013, Erickson also began assisting Butina in applying for a visa to the United States to visit the NRA "for advice and guidance." This is the first instance that the Committee is aware of in which Butina used the NRA as a basis for travel to the United States. The Committee found no evidence that this trip occurred, but Butina and Erickson met in Israel in early 2014, when they first became romantically involved. Over time, Erickson became integral to Butina's activities and assisted her in developing relationships with individuals and organizations involved in U.S. politics…There is also a long section in the report about the effort of the Psy Group, an Israeli private intelligence outfit with a lot of former Mossad agents on board, to cut a deal with the Trump campaign to dig up stuff on Hillary Clinton. The project apparently fell apart before the election.
Please go to Mondoweiss to read the entire article.
________
Related:
Tells you who the back pocket Kamala Harris is in.
Israel's monopolization of technology is being done covertly. Here is an example:
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