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https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-became-target-russian-disinformation-010008047.html

LONDON (Reuters) - The Russian group accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. election has posed as an independent news outlet to target right-wing social media users ahead of this year’s vote, two people familiar with an FBI probe into the activity told Reuters. The latest operation centred around a pseudo media organisation called the Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens (NAEBC), which was run by people associated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, the sources said. U.S. prosecutors say the agency played a key role in Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election in favour of President...

Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, Senate Republicans revealed in their report on the younger Biden’s work in Ukraine. Baturina is referenced in the 87-page report, which was released Wednesday, addressing her payment to Biden’s investment firm in early 2014. “Baturina became Russia’s only female billionaire when her plastics company, Inteko, received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor,” it said in providing background on the businesswoman. The report described her involvement with Biden as...

CIA Director Gina Haspel is personally blocking the declassification of documents detailing corruption at the highest levels of the intelligence community during the 2016 election, according to The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis. While new information about wrongdoing at the FBI has recently been declassified, including recent revelations about Hillary Clinton campaign’s collusion with Russia, Davis reported on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday that Haspel herself is standing in the way of the declassification of other relevant documents. ... Notably, Haspel was previously the London CIA station chief under former CIA director John Brennan during the 2016 election. “Recall it was London...

Former Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said President Donald Trump was “aiding and abetting” Vladimir Putin by not directly calling out Russia’s election interference on Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Live.” McMaster said, “This sustained campaign of disruption, disinformation, and denial, is aided by any leader who doesn’t acknowledge it. This is why, I think, the president has to be much stronger in condemning this effort to really reduce our confidence in who we are as Americans. You know, I don’t think the Russians really care, Hallie who wins the election, as long as we doubt the result, and as...

Russia's women's powerlifting and bench press world champion Anna Turaeva has told of her humiliation at being asked to prove she is a woman by airline employees while boarding an internal Russian flight recently. Turaeva is a six-time world champion in powerlifting, as well as a ten-time European champion and has held the world, European and Eurasian records in her discipline. She is also a bench press champion and record holder. The stocky, skin-headed Turaeva was flying from St. Petersburg in the very north west of Russia, to the southern town of Krasnodar through Moscow when she experienced an incident...

The New York Times article about Trump's tax returns included nuggets of truth, but in the end, it was nothing more than the paper's own version of 'truthful hyperbole.' The New York Times is drawing the attention it wants this week, claiming to have obtained a copy of the presidentÂ’s personal and business tax records prior to 2018 and publishing an analysis of the contents.In an article that ran dozens of pages, the newspaper of record outlines the litany of discoveries embedded within those coveted and until-now secret documents. It could have saved itself a lot of paper and ink,...

Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden flatly denied at Tuesday night’s debate that his lawyer son took huge sums of money from corrupt oligarchs and Chinese communists during his vice presidency, but Treasury Department reports show that Hunter Biden did receive the money. President Trump chose to make an issue of Hunter Biden’s cash haul from Russia, Ukraine and China with the implication that unsavory figures were trying to buy Vice President Biden and the Obama administration. “When somebody gets 3½ million dollars from the mayor of Moscow,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s is not true. That report is totally false,”...

**SNIP** “Madam Secretary, thank you again for being here. I almost hesitate to ask you your reaction to [Republicans] doing this, but I must,” Maddow asked. “Sure, why not, I mean, it is a sign of such desperation by the Republicans,” Clinton said. “It also is a reminder that Donald Trump knows that the Russians helped him win in 2016 and that is almost the biggest reason he wants to go back to it time and time again, because he can’t come to grips with the fact that there will always be an air of illegitimacy around the 2016 campaign.”...

Former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday sought to defend the bureau’s 2016 investigation into Russian election interference against Senate Republicans' allegations of bias against the Trump campaign. Comey testified before the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee, which is examining the origins of the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the presidential race and ties between the Kremlin and Trump. While Comey indicated he would’ve made some decisions differently had he known about the faults in applications for wiretaps on then-Trump campaign aide Carter Page, he defended the investigation as a whole. “I would say in the main it was done...

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Justice to publish information redacted from the Mueller report that had been designated as privileged. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said that the Trump administration had failed to justify certain redactions from the report on the special counsel's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The specific redactions he took issue with cover the decision-making process within Robert Mueller's team over whether to charge certain people with crimes during the probe. "Based on the Court’s review of the unredacted version of the Mueller Report, the Court concludes that the Department...

I’m watching Comey Senate Hearings. Comey says he still believes Trump is a Russian Agent (with no evidence) and the Republicans, some of who told fond Jim Comey stories of their time together, said they are “disappointed” in Comey! Disappointed! This is worse than a disaster, Graham is doing painfully bad acting, and this is just over the top bad.

U.S. intelligence officials submitted an investigative referral to the FBI in September 2016 regarding an alleged plan by Hillary Clinton to link Donald Trump to Russia’s election interference efforts, according to John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence. Ratcliffe noted in the letter, which he sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, that U.S. intelligence is not certain whether the allegation underlying the referral was based on fabrications from Russian intelligence agencies. Ratcliffe said in the letter that on Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded a referral for an investigation regarding Clinton to then-FBI Director James Comey and...

Today's top stories 29.09.20 Rival Palestinian factions reach an agreement that will see parliamentary and presidential elections held within six-months -- as part of a collective Palestinian effort to resist Israel's normalization with Arab and Muslim states.Damascus is reportedly seeking to revive direct-negotiations with Jerusalem.French president Emmanuel Macron accuses Hezbollah and its allies for the failure to attain much sought-after political breakthrough for Lebanon.

Fighting raged again between Armenia and Azerbaijan last night as the two ex-Soviet nations battle over a disputed region in a conflict which could erupt into a proxy war between Russia and Turkey. Azerbaijan aired footage of two Armenian tanks being blown up on the battlefield while Armenia claimed to have taken out 80 armoured vehicles, 49 drones and four Azerbaijani helicopters as of Monday night. Armenia warned today that it would deploy more destructive weapons in the conflict because of what it described as an Azerbaijani offensive, saying the fighting had been 'elevated to a new level'.

Not only were Russian officials aware of Hillary Clinton’s campaign plan to accuse Donald Trump of being a Russian asset, top U.S. intelligence authorities knew of Russia’s knowledge of Clinton’s plans, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe disclosed to congressional officials on Tuesday. Before they launched an investigation into whether Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia, intelligence agencies learned that Russia knew of Clinton’s plans to tarnish Trump with the collusion smear. At one point, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan personally briefed then-President Barack Obama and other top U.S. national security officials that Russia assessed Hillary Clinton...

A Su-25 jet of the Armenian Air Force was shot down by a Turkish F-16 fighter in the airspace of the Republic of Armenia, Spokesperson for the Armenian Defense Ministry Shushan Stepanyan informs. F-16 fighter jets belonging to the Air Force of the Republic of Turkey took off from Ganja Airport of the Republic of Azerbaijan at 10:30 am today and were assisting SU-25 fighters and Turkish-made Bayraktar UAVs in the missile strikes on Vardenis, Mets Masrik, Sotk regions of the Vardenis region of Armenia. During this period, the air defense units were performing fire support tasks for the air...

You know something’s up when the media bury a story that would have been a no-brainer for Page One if the subject was a Republican. A new Senate  exposes shocking corruption involving Hunter Biden, who made millions in Ukraine at the natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, when his father, Vice President Joe Biden, was President Obama’s Ukraine point man. We’ve long known some of this, but the sheer scope of the influence peddling and sums involved are stunning. The 87-page document also exposes Hunter’s Russian connections, including a $3.5 million payment from the wife of a former Moscow mayor embroiled in...

Former NSC official says some evidence cut against claim Russia was helping Trump. The Trump administration is preparing one of its biggest declassifications yet in the Russia case, a super-secret document that could flip the collusion theory on its head four years after the FBI first started its investigation. Multiple officials familiar with the planned declassification, which could happen as early as this week, told Just the News that the new evidence will raise the specter that Russian President Vladimir Putin was actually trying to hurt President Trump, not help his election in 2016, as the Obama administration claimed. The...