Free Republic

A Republican and a Democratic senator have called on the Federal Reserve and the publisher of a foreign policy magazine to provide more details on 2015 meetings involving senior U.S. financial officials, a Russian central bank official, and Russian spy Maria Butina. Now, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley R-Iowa, and the top Democrat on that panel, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., want more information. The meetings involved Butina, now-former Russian Central Bank Deputy Governor Alexander Torshin, former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, and former Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs Nathan Sheets. They were reportedly arranged by the Center for...

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday it was unclear to him why a Russian woman, Maria Butina, had been detained in the United States and accused of being a Russian agent because his intelligence chiefs had told him they knew nothing about her. “...she risks 15 years in jail. For what?” asked Putin. “...I asked all the heads of our intelligence services what is going on. Nobody knows anything about her.”

The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday.

The FBI has obtained wiretapped conversations of a Kremlin-linked banker who later met with Donald Trump Jr. during the 2016 presidential election. Spanish national police provided the Bureau with tapes of Russian oligarch Alexander Torshin's phone calls with a convicted Russian money launderer, according to a special prosecutor from Spain's Attorney General's Office, Yahoo News reported. “Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” according to the special prosecutor, José Grinda Gonzalez, speaking at the Hudson Institute on Friday. Torshin, a close supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, briefly met with Donald...

The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday. Jose Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps,...

In November 2013, the president of the National Rifle Association, David Keene, was introduced as an honored guest at the conference of the Right to Bear Arms, a gun lobby in Moscow. "There are no peoples that are more alike than Americans and Russians," Keene said. "We're hunters. We're shooters. We value the same kinds of things." Keene underscored his friendship with Alexander Torshin, a top politician in the ruling party of Vladimir Putin; for the past three years, Keene said, "I've hosted your senator Alexander Torshin at the National Rifle Association's annual meetings." In words that now carry a...

Incoming national security adviser John Bolton defended himself Sunday after a Democratic senator questioned whether he would be able to obtain the necessary security clearance over a video speech Bolton gave to a Russian pro-gun rights group in 2013. Bolton video 3min 15 sec On Saturday, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., tweeted out a National Public Radio report about the group Bolton spoke to, known as The Right To Bear Arms. The NPR report described one of the group's founders, Alexander Torshin, as an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who served as the deputy speaker of Russia's parliament for more...