United Front, China’s Weapon Against the West/Allies

Posted on July 25, 2018July 25, 2018 by Denise Simon

“United Front Work is an important magic weapon for the victory of the party’s cause.”
– Xi Jinping, October 2017

A Weapon Without War: China’s United Front Strategy ... photo

Senators Cruz and Rubio have been sounding the alarms on the Confucius Institution that has found homes on U.S. college campuses. They have both done the same with regard to the Chinese Students Association.

Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Taiwan and New Zealand are sounding the same warnings.

Xi Jinping’s rule to date has been characterised by, among other things, a return to the basics of Party rule as established by Mao. These include a renewed emphasis on United Front 统战 work, which Mao called one of the ‘three secret weapons’ 三个大法宝 (along with the armed forces and Party-building) that helped the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to power in 1949. (For an overview of the United Front, see the China Story Yearbook 2014: Shared Destiny, pp.128–132.) The year 2015 was the most important one since 1990 for the United Front, a collection of strategies overseen by the United Front Work Department (UFWD) 统战部 by which the Party seeks to strengthen its authority and legitimacy, especially among the more marginalised, independent, and minority sectors of the Chinese population.

Explain the primary role of the United Front Work in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The United Front Work Department of the CCP is an integral part of the Party structure, down to sometimes the lowest levels and coordinated at the very top by a United Front Leading Small Group initiated by Xi Jinping. The Department works to reach out, represent, and guide key individuals and groups within both the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and greater China, including Chinese diasporas. The goals include to have all such groups accept CCP rule, endorse its legitimacy, and help achieve key Party aims. Because United Front Work has officially been extended to those who emigrated after 1979 as well as those Chinese studying abroad, some 50 million or more, United Front Work is now of direct relevance and sometimes concern to an increasing number of foreign governments, notably Australia, Zealand, Canada and the United States. United Front Work abroad is not limited to only these countries though.

How does the United Front Work fashion China’s image and influence overseas?

An important role of United Front Work since Xi Jinping became CCP general secretary in 2012 has been to help tell the CCP’s preferred “China story” by encouraging overseas Chinese of all sorts to become active promoters of the Party-state’s views in their own domiciles. This promotion includes using material from China in publications, forming associations to highlight positions on issues like Taiwan or more recently, the One Belt, One Road policy, meeting local politicians and winning them over, and using the status of voters in democracies to influence domestic policies in ways that promote CCP interests.

The promotion of Confucius Institutes to win greater influence over what and how Chinese is taught has been yet another success story, particularly in the developing world where this initiative allows Party-state views much more leeway.

Encouraging all of sorts of influential foreigners to visit China under supervision has also been a very successful tactic. Such visitors are treated lavishly and often come to modify their positions or end up airing official Chinese positions despite themselves. Even retired politicians are seen as valuable because of their institutional knowledge and the assumption, usually valid, that they can still wield significant influence in their party or more broadly.

Explain the function of CCP propaganda machinery in Chinese foreign policy.

The current CCP propaganda push abroad can be summed up as helping ‘make the international environment safe for achieving the Party-state’s goals’ and shifting the terms of discussion of China to ones that the CCP prefers. Even forcing or achieving small shifts in language can be very significant.

The recent attacks on Marriott Hotels and foreign airlines for using terms such as Taiwan and thus treating Taiwan as an independent country have been rewarded with immediate backtracking by the companies concerned. The result of these efforts is to help isolate and delegitimize Taiwan’s status in the eyes of foreign publics. Note that these effects are the opposite of how the CCP uses United Front Work and propaganda in regards to itself, but isolation and delegitimization or at least neutralization of real and perceived enemies are important goals of both. The success of these efforts would be to reduce the costs of other actions intended to bring Taiwan under PRC sovereignty, such as boycotts, blockades, or even invasion.

The CCP would emphasize any such actions as merely “internal” affairs. This “legitimacy” would be repeated by innumerable Chinese diaspora groups around the world, not least by the Associations for the Peaceful Reunification of China – run out of Beijing but now spread worldwide. Even the translation from Chinese of tongyi or “unification” as “reunification” is an effective almost subliminal technique of reframing the issue in the CCP’s favor. Another salient example of the success of these techniques is how foreign news organizations and broadcasters now often feel the need to add a rider to any discussions of Taiwan, adding, “which China regards as a renegade province.” It might be true at one level, but is deeply wrong and misleading at another.

Why are Chinese influence efforts increasingly under government scrutiny in Australia?

The CCP’s United Front Work and stepped up propaganda activities in Australia have been only belatedly recognized as potentially dangerous at a number of levels. These include the emergence of a new group of wealthy Chinese who, having made their fortunes in China, were seeking political access and influence in Australia. The major problem has been with the sometimes very strong United Front links of such people and hence the motives of their actions were called into question. The influence of some of these people on Chinese media in Australia, now almost overwhelmingly pro-Beijing, was another worry as it left only a few independent voices speaking directly to Chinese communities in Chinese and promoting values not in line with Beijing’s.

Another concern has been around fears of stepped up activities and surveillance of Chinese students on Australian campuses. This followed the formalization of PRC students abroad as a specific united front work target in 2015 and a number of well publicized incidents where Chinese students had confronted lecturers about, for example, treating Taiwan as a country.

While much of this work with students and post graduates is likely aimed at surveillance to ascertain whether students are being attracted to Western ideals and values, Christianity, or Falun Gong, the potential clearly exists to push universities or teachers to tone down or omit courses which teach things the CCP regards as dangerous or subversive. Similarly, there are recurrent concerns that the Confucius Institutes on university campuses may pose dangers to academic freedom and promote pro-Beijing lines.

Perhaps the latest and largely unspoken concern relates to a growing realization that the dramatic increases in Chinese emigration to places like Australia and New Zealand etc., particularly since the 2000s, have given rise to large groups of citizens with voting power and sometimes able to sway even general elections, who often remain largely under the sway of the PRC Party-state via its propaganda and United Front Work. Having left China as beneficiaries of the reform period, these groups have no reason to oppose it and many good reasons to support it even if they had no vote there. This is very different, for example, from those who migrated or fled in the wake of the brutal suppression of the student movement of 1989. Moreover, these new migrants are often highly educated and economically successful, unlike many of the generations of Chinese before them, and hence much more able and likely to demand commensurate influence more or less immediately. There is no need for a transitional generation to build up such social, political, and economic capital. This unforeseen consequence of business and student migration is only now becoming obvious to local politicians but how to respond is unclear.

About that Time Obama Gave an AQ Affiliate Grant Money

Posted on July 25, 2018July 25, 2018 by Denise Simon

There has been lots of chatter about removing the security clearance access of John Brennan and a few others. No one has asked about Hillary’s or…..Obama’s. There has been lots of chatter of impeachment, traitor and treason….but when it comes to aiding and supporting the enemy….check this out.

Grant money is a gift….by the way.

Islamic Relief Agency Admits Illegal Funds Transfer to ...

Islamic Relief Agency Admits Illegal Funds Transfer to ... story and photo, more detail here.

The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Sudan — a decade after the U.S. Treasury designated it as a terrorist-financing organization. More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization.

The story began in October 2004, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), as a terror-financing organization. It did so because of ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda.

According to the U.S. Treasury, in 1997 ISRA established formal cooperation with MK. By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.

The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches, including a U.S. office called the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA). Eventually it became known that this American branch had illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2010, the executive director of IARA-USA and a board member pled guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and several other charges.

ISRA’s influence also spread to Washington. Former U.S. congressman Mark Siljander (R., Mich.) pled guilty in 2010 to obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent after prosecutors found that IARA-USA had paid him $75,000 — using misappropriated USAID grant money — to lobby the government, in an attempt to remove the charity from the government’s terror list.

Despite this well-documented history, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2014 awarded $723,405 to World Vision Inc., an international evangelical charity, to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.” Of these funds, $200,000 was to be directed to a sub-grantee: ISRA.

Responding to a Middle East Forum (MEF) inquiry, a USAID official explains that World Vision had alerted it in November 2014 to the likelihood of ISRA being on the terror list. USAID instructed World Vision to “suspend all activities with ISRA” and informed the State Department, OFAC, and USAID’s Office of the Inspector General. USAID and World Vision then waited for OFAC to confirm whether ISRA was designated or not.

USAID emails obtained by the Middle East Forum reveal that in January 2015, World Vision was growing unhappy while waiting for OFAC’s assessment. Mark Smith, World Vision’s senior director of humanitarian and emergency affairs, wrote to USAID, stating that the Islamic Relief Agency “had performed excellent work” for World Vision in the past, and that “putting contractual relationships in limbo for such a long period is putting a significant strain” on World Vision’s relationship with the Sudanese regime. Smith also revealed that World Vision had submitted a notice to OFAC indicating its “intention to restart work with [ISRA] and to transact with [ISRA]” if OFAC did not respond within a week.

World Vision’s statement stunned USAID officials, who complained that World Vision’s behavior “doesn’t make sense.” USAID official Daniel Holmberg emailed a colleague: “If they actually said that they wanted to resume work with ISRA, while knowing that it was 99% likely that ISRA was on the list then I am concerned about our partnership with them, and whether it should continue.”

On January 23, OFAC confirmed that ISRA was a sanctioned entity and denied World Vision “a license to engage in transactions with [ISRA].” Mark Smith and World Vision’s country program director in Sudan expressed their disappointment, stating that they were in discussions with ISRA as well as the Sudanese regime’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, which regulates the activities of international charities in Sudan.

Despite OFAC’s ruling, in February, World Vision wrote to OFAC and Obama-administration official Jeremy Konyndyk (who then served as director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance) to apply to OFAC for a new license from USAID to pay ISRA “monies owed for work performed.” According to Larry Meserve, USAID’s mission director for Sudan, World Vision argued that if they did not pay ISRA, “their whole program will be jeopardized.”

While World Vision waited for a decision, on February 22, a pro-regime Sudanese newspaper, Intibaha, reported that the Sudanese political leaders had requested that World Vision be expelled from Sudan’s Blue Nile state. USAID disaster operations specialist Joseph Wilkes and World Vision’s Mark Smith speculated that this was “punishment” for the cancellation of the grant with ISRA, which a USAID official noted is “well connected with the [Sudanese] government.”

Then, incredibly, on May 7, 2015 — after “close collaboration and consultations with the Department of State” — OFAC issued a license to a World Vision affiliate, World Vision International, authorizing “a one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA,” of which “$115,000 was for services performed under the sub-award with USAID” and $10,000 was “for an unrelated funding arrangement between Irish Aid and World Vision.”

An unnamed World Vision official described the decision as a “great relief as ISRA had become restive and had threatened legal action, which would have damaged our reputation and standing in Sudan.” Senior USAID official Charles Wanjue wrote to colleagues: “Good news and a great relief, really!” In August 2015, USAID official Daniel Holmberg even told a State Department official that he had been approached by the executive director of ISRA, and requested guidance on helping ISRA remove itself from the U.S. government’s terror list.

Obama-administration officials knowingly approved the transfer of taxpayer dollars to an al-Qaeda affiliate, and not an obscure one but an enormous international network that was often in the headlines.

How was this prominent terror funder initially approved to receive American taxpayer funds ten years after it had been placed on the “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” terror list?

Existing measures to prevent the payment of government monies to designated terrorist organizations include: first, a requirement that all grantees and sub-grantees of U.S.-government grants register for a Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number; and second, a requirement that all government vendors register with the government’s System for Award Management (SAM) database. A designated organization should not be able to acquire a DUNS number, and any designation is explicitly recorded in the SAM database with a note that the designated organization is excluded from government grants.

However, ISRA was in fact assigned a DUNS number — as recorded at the government’s USAspending.gov website — which matched no organization in the government’s SAM database. The only listings for “Islamic Relief Agency” or “ISRA” in the SAM database are the designated Sudanese al-Qaeda affiliate and its branches.

Whoever approved this grant to ISRA either failed to check the government’s database of designated groups or did so and then chose to disregard it. Both explanations are alarming. And neither answer explains how ISRA acquired a DUNS number.

Most important: Now we know that the government deliberately chose to transfer at least $115,000 to ISRA after confirming that it was on the terror-designation list. In other words, an al-Qaeda front received taxpayers’ money with the apparent complicity of public officials.

It is no secret that the Obama administration sought to downplay the threat of Islamism, and even to coopt some Islamist movements to promote its agenda. In its foreign policy, the administration expressed support for Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, while domestically, the White House invited Islamists to design the government’s Countering Violent Extremism program. It is difficult to argue that these efforts were the product of anything but great naïveté and political dogma. Is it possible that this combination extended to deliberately funding an al-Qaeda affiliate?

Congress must investigate this question and, more broadly, where USAID is sending taxpayers’ money, for ISRA might not be the only example. The House’s Foreign Affairs, Oversight, and Financial Services Committees, along with the Senate Finance Committee, must examine how a designated group came to qualify for government monies, why OFAC and the State Department authorized the transfer of funds after learning of ISRA’s terror ties, and which bureaucrat or political appointee was responsible for this mess.

Asked to comment, current State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told National Review: “As this occurred under the prior Administration, the current Secretary of the State, Secretary of Treasury, and USAID Administrator had no involvement in decisions surrounding this award or subsequent license.”

The American people need to know how their dollars funded an al-Qaeda affiliate. They need to know how deep this problem runs.

*** Millions upon millions come to mind shrink-wrapped on pallets on un-marked airplanes to Tehran comes to mind actually.

Is John Brennan Exploiting his Security Clearance for Money?

Posted on July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 by Denise Simon

Did Brennan Start Russia Investigation Because of Liberal ...

Hat tip to Senator Rand Paul:

Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 23, 2018

Former Obama National Security Council advisor and Director of the CIA, John Brennan is constantly on CNN. When there is a commercial break, Brennan is tweeting:

Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) July 16, 2018

Mr. Trump: Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. Jim Clapper is a man of integrity, honesty, ethics, & morality. You are not. Jim Clapper served his country for over a half century, including in Vietnam. You did not. By your words & behavior, you diminish the Office of the Presidency. https://t.co/bYlmZInDoM

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) April 28, 2018

Why does Brennan still have security clearance?

Brennan spent 25 years at CIA. He was once the station chief in Saudi Arabia and worked as an Near East and South Asia analyst. Given his history and security clearance, Brennan is a paid national security and intelligence analyst for NBC, MSNBC and CNN. Sidebar reminder, in 1976, he voted for Gus Hall for president. Gus was the Communist Party USA candidate. Another sidebar, when he was CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, the Khobar Towers were bombed killing 19 U.S. servicemen. Oh yeah, he was quite critical of the intelligence community for missing the signs of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber….ahem….what about Crimea and Ukraine? Oh yeah….ISIS the JV team? How was it too that his own personal emails were hacked and posted on Wikileaks in 2015? A British hacker, Kane Gamble posed as Brennan and hacked into Brennan’s private email and iCloud accounts as well as Brennan’s wife’s iPad.

A little over the top isn’t it?

Well meanwhile:

Congressman Goodlatte has a subpoena for Brennan and Comey. This is due to the released FISA document. One of the FISA applications was signed by Brennan and others also included Comey’s signature. Seems Goodlatte is gonna bring in Loretta Lynch as well. Let’s see about all that impartiality shall we?

***

The Trump-Russia sleuthers have been back in the news, again giving Americans cause to doubt their claims of nonpartisanship. Last week it was Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Peter Strzok testifying to Congress that he harbored no bias against a president he still describes as “horrible” and “disgusting.” This week it was former FBI Director Jim Comey tweet-lecturing Americans on their duty to vote Democratic in November.

But the man who deserves a belated bit of scrutiny is former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan. He’s accused President Trump of “venality, moral turpitude and political corruption,” and berated GOP investigations of the FBI. This week he claimed on Twitter that Mr. Trump’s press conference in Helsinki was “nothing short of treasonous.” This is rough stuff, even for an Obama partisan.

That’s what Mr. Brennan is—a partisan—and it is why his role in the 2016 scandal is in some ways more concerning than the FBI’s. Mr. Comey stands accused of flouting the rules, breaking the chain of command, abusing investigatory powers. Yet it seems far likelier that the FBI’s Trump investigation was a function of arrogance and overconfidence than some partisan plot. No such case can be made for Mr. Brennan. Before his nomination as CIA director, he served as a close Obama adviser. And the record shows he went on to use his position—as head of the most powerful spy agency in the world—to assist Hillary Clinton’s campaign (and keep his job).

Mr. Brennan has taken credit for launching the Trump investigation. At a House Intelligence Committee hearing in May 2017, he explained that he became “aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons.” The CIA can’t investigate U.S. citizens, but he made sure that “every information and bit of intelligence” was “shared with the bureau,” meaning the FBI. This information, he said, “served as the basis for the FBI investigation.” My sources suggest Mr. Brennan was overstating his initial role, but either way, by his own testimony, he as an Obama-Clinton partisan was pushing information to the FBI and pressuring it to act.

Keep reading Kimberley Strassel’s column in the Wall Street Journal.

Elections’ Voter Registration System and the Russian Investor

Posted on July 19, 2018July 19, 2018 by Denise Simon

Remember the outrage when sites all over the internet published items that Soros owned the voting machines? Remember that same outrage when Soros invested heavily in the State’s secretaries that were responsible for the respective elections process?

Remember the outrage that a Russian investor was able to buy American uranium in a deal concocted by Hillary? We learned then about the Committee for United States Foreign Investment.

Remember the outrage when Obama deferred the ‘red-line’ chemical weapons removal in Syria to Moscow that killed thousands? Anyone remember the anger when Russia shot down MH17, a civilian airliner, killing everyone on board?

Remember that we have lost regard for the top ranks of the FBI due to the Russian investigation and the Hillary investigation?

Remember

Remember the horror and voting rigging reported across various states in the recent elections?

Our votes are the most sacrosanct privilege Americans have. Okay so how about the very under reported matter in Maryland?

See, it was not until AFTER the Justice Department announced the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers for computer hacking that Maryland officials reached out to Rod Rosenstein. FBI officials in the Maryland office held a briefing with the Maryland officials and did not want to make the information public….that is due to a wider investigation on the matter. What matter is that?

Well….

In part:

Four FBI agents informed state officials Thursday that a vendor Maryland has contracted with — ByteGrid LLC — to host data for statewide elections has ties to a Russian oligarch, Miller and Busch said.

Vladimir Potanin

Potanin acquired his wealth notably through the controversial loans-for-shares program in Russia in the early to mid-1990s.

He is one of the wealthiest men in Russia, with an estimated net worth of $15.9 billion, ranking 83rd on the 2018 Forbes The World’s Billionaires list, and 6th in Russia. His long-term business partner was Mikhail Prokhorov until they decided to split in 2007. Subsequently, they put their mutual assets in a holding company, Folletina Trading, until their asset division was agreed upon.

In January 2018, Potanin appeared on the US Treasury’s “Putin list” of 210 individuals closely associated with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

ByteGrid LLC owns the servers that hold the data for voter registration, candidacy, election management, and election night results, state elections officials said. An ownership stake in the company was purchased by AltPoint Capital Partners, whose largest investor is a Russian oligarch named Vladimir Potanin, the election officials said.

Busch said that Potanin is “very close” to Russian Pesident Vladimir Putin and that Altpoint’s managing partner is Gerald T. Banks, a Russian millionaire who changed his name from Guerman Aliev.

But Busch said the state has no evidence that Potanin or Banks had done anything untoward.

“We don’t have any idea whether they meddled in any elections at all,” Busch said.

Attempts to reach the companies were unsuccessful.

The Maryland officials also said they had no indication the Russian-linked firm had anything to do with the problems that arose shortly before June’s primary election in which more than 80,000 voters’ change of address and party affiliation requests were never forwarded from the Motor Vehicle Administration to election officials.

The Maryland news came hours after the Department of Justice indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers, charging that they hacked the computer networks of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.The 11-count indictment alleges that the Russian agents infiltrated the networks, implanting malicious computer code and stealing documents on field operations, opposition research and campaign analytics as a way of interfering with the election.

The charges include conspiracy to commit an offense against the U.S., aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

According to the indictment, the Russians posted stolen documents online and worked with an organization — unnamed but believed to be WikiLeaks — to spread them further, and take advantage of continuing tensions between supporters of Clinton and primary opponent Bernie Sanders.

The federal indictment charging 12 Russian includes an allegation that a Twitter account, @BaltimoreIsWhr, was set up to invite people to join a “flash mob” and to post images using the hashtag “#BlacksAgainstHillary.”

It is the latest revelation of how social media were used locally and nationally in an attempt to influence the election. Cyber security analysts in September told The Baltimore Sun that a Facebook ad that referred to the Black Lives Matter movement and targeted Baltimore users in the months following the 2015 riots was likely part of a broader effort by Russia to sow discontent and deepen racial tension.

In response to such ads, the General Assembly in April passed a bill requiring social media platforms and websites with significant traffic to track all political ads and record which users are being targeted. In May, Hogan expressed reservations that the law could be found unconstitutional and allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

The @BaltimoreIsWhr account has been suspended. Read more here.

Election officials in Maryland along with Governor Hogan have asked the Department of Homeland Security for technical assistance to evaluate the network used by the State elections board. ByteGrid, interesting name, was bought by the Russian investor in 2015 without the knowledge of Maryland officials. ByteGrid hosts the entire state system including registration, online ballot delivery systems and unofficial election night results.

Oh yeah, one last item, Maryland was one of the states that had very suspicious online activity in the 2016 election according to DHS and the FBI. That suspicious activity was for online registration and in the ballot request system.

According to the ByteGrid website, they offer: With ByteGrid’s Compliant Hosting Solutions you get security, compliance and control over your business-critical data. Our CISA and CRISC certified experts have you covered. Industry sectors include: Life Sciences, Health IT, Financial and Government.

Russia’s Operations Against the US Explained at Aspen Security Forum

Posted on July 19, 2018July 19, 2018 by Denise Simon

Associated Press

Published on Jul 18, 2018

(19 Jul 2018) FBI Director Christopher Wray says Russia is trying to influence opinions and sow discord and divisiveness in the U.S. Wray spoke at the opening event of the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. (July 19)

Meanwhile, there has been substantial theories and responses due to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of the 13 Russians from February.

Add in the second round of 12 Russians that SC Mueller indicted just this month. So we are currently at 25. Now, consider Ms. Maria Butina who was arrested last Sunday.

Butina, 29, was indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on charges she served in the United States as an agent of the Russian government without notifying the Justice Department. In the court filing Wednesday, prosecutors said Butina maintained constant contact with Russian intelligence officials and “loyally” carried out a years-long conspiracy to advance the Kremlin’s interests. They described her plan as “calculated, patient” and directed by a Russian official believed to be Alexander Torshin, who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department earlier this year.

Perhaps, one should consider that Mueller is for sure simply trying to clean up a Russian mess left behind by the Obama administration. All of this happened during his administration. For an exceptional summary on the matter of Butina and what FBi Director is referring to at the Aspen Security Forum, click this link.

Security agency professionals are in attendance at the Aspen Security Forum to include DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Daniel Coats, Director of National lntelligence, Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General and Christopher Wray, Director of the FBl.

Further, there are real concerns that the Federal and State governments are not doing enough to protect whole election architecture and systems. That is a false assertion by the Democrats as there have been hearings on the Hill explaining the work/collaboration between DHS and individual states. Admittedly, there are issues at the State level where databases, computers, voter rolls and more all take place. The bell first rang on state vulnerabilities began in the 2016 general election, where the cyber professionals at the FBl were placed in states known to be under brute force cyber attacks. State officials were warned then and provided advice on how to harden their respective systems going forward.

Those discussions and activities continue today including at the Aspen Security Forum. A specific session is dedicated to this issue as noted:

Defending Democratic Institutions: Election 2018 and Beyond
Though the motivation and the effects are disputed, nearly everyone agrees that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and security experts agree that it is already interfering in this year’s mid-terms. Though efforts are underway to stop them, what more can be done to put an end to Russia’s interference in our elections and democratic institutions?

Monika Bickert, Head of Product Policy and Counterterrorism, Facebook
Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President for Customer Security and Trust , Microsoft
Michael Chertoff, Former Secretary of Homeland Security
Jeanette Manfra, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Cybersecurity and
Communications
Kim Wyman, Secretary of State, Washington State
Moderator: Michael Isikoff, Chief Investigative Correspondent, Yahoo News

Meanwhile, Senator Rubio introduced legislation last year to further add sanctions on Russia due to Russian interference. Due to the most recent political scandals, some noted above, Rubio’s bill is getting renewed attention and support in Congress.

Image result for rubio deter act photo

Briefly from the Miami Herald:

Rubio and Van Hollen’s bill, called the Defending Elections from Threats by Establishing Redlines (DETER) Act, is the first bill since the 2016 presidential election that sets specific punishments for the Russian government and other countries that interfere in U.S. political campaigns.

“Congress has already taken various steps when it comes to Russia and its interference in 2016, this will just be one moving forward that hopefully would deter future attacks, which I believe is the real threat here ultimately,” Rubio said on Tuesday. “It’s not what happened, but what could happen in the future. Hopefully we’ll get to a critical mass and momentum that we can get going on it and get it passed.”

Rubio’s bill, if passed, codifies specific penalties for the Russians that must be implemented within 10 days if the Director of National Intelligence determines that interference took place.

The penalties include “sanctions on major sectors of the Russian economy, including finance, energy, defense, and metals and mining” and blacklisting every senior Russian political figure or oligarch identified in the Russian sanctions bill that became law in 2017 over the initial objections of Trump after a supermajority in Congress approved it.

The bill lays out specific acts by foreign governments that constitute election interference. Foreign governments are forbidden from purchasing advertisements to influence elections, using social and traditional media to spread “significant amounts” of false information, hacking election or campaign infrastructure such as voter registration databases and campaign emails, and blocking access to elections infrastructure such as websites that provide information on polling locations. Read more here.