Anthony Weiner Pled Guilty, Wont Appeal Sentence

Posted on May 19, 2017May 19, 2017 by Denise Simon

It could be Anthony Weiner, the now estranged husband of Huma Abedin, Hillary’s long time aid, will serve at least 21 months. He will likely have to register as a sex offender.

Weiner stood in a suit in federal court in Manhattan, sobbing as he described how he met a stranger online he “knew to be 15 years old.” Weiner is set to be sentenced Sept. 8. Weiner’s lawyers negotiated with federal prosecutors to avoid child pornography charges.

The charge file is here.

Image result for anthony weiner in court DailyBeast

Anthony Weiner Pleads Guilty In Manhattan Federal Court To Transferring Obscene Material To A Minor

Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) announced that ANTHONY WEINER was charged with, and pled guilty to, transferring obscene material to a minor. WEINER surrendered to the FBI in New York this morning, pled guilty before United States District Judge Loretta A. Preska, and was released on bail pending sentencing. Sentencing has been scheduled for September 8, 2017, at 11 a.m.

Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said: “Today, former Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted and pled guilty to sending sexually explicit images and directions to engage in sexual conduct to a girl he knew to be 15 years old. Weiner’s conduct was not only reprehensible, but a federal crime, one for which he is now convicted and will be sentenced. We thank the FBI and the NYPD for their work in this investigation.”

FBI Assistant Director in Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said: “We work every day in the FBI and law enforcement to stop adults from preying on vulnerable children. Our partnership with the NYPD cannot be stressed enough in this case, and we would like to thank the Special Victims Unit for all the work and effort they put into this investigation.”

According to the Information filed in Manhattan federal court today and statements made in Court during today’s plea proceeding, between in or about January and March 2016, WEINER used online messaging and video chat applications to communicate with a minor girl he knew to be 15 years old (the “Minor Victim”). In the course of those communications, WEINER transferred obscene material to the Minor Victim, including directions to engage in sexual conduct and sexually explicit images.

* * *

WEINER, 52, of New York, New York, has pled guilty to one count of transferring obscenity to a minor, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The maximum potential sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the Judge.

Mr. Kim praised the investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Victims Division of the New York City Police Department.

The case is being handled by the Office’s General Crimes unit. Assistant United States Attorneys Amanda Kramer and Stephanie Lake are in charge of the prosecution.

Cyber-code, Oilrig, Iran hires Russian Hackers

Posted on May 18, 2017May 18, 2017 by Denise Simon

Update and unrelated to OilRig and reported May 18: Russia tried to take over Pentagon Twitter accounts: report

SCMedia: Attacks believed to be Iranian in origin were fended off for more than two weeks in April, but security experts examining the code detected snippets of code from an underground Russian marketplace.

Iranian hackers targeting critical infrastructure

Attacks believed to be Iranian in origin were fended off for more than two weeks in April, but security experts examining the code detected something they’d never seen before: snippets of code baring similarities to a known Russian toolkit available on the underground Russian marketplace.

The code had previously been used in a damaging cyber-attack on the Ukraine’s infrastructure in 2015.

Carl Wright, general manager and executive vice president of worldwide sales at TrapX Security, the San Mateo, California-based security firm that blocked the hackers last month, told an interviewer it was the first time his firm had detected an attack where hackers based in Iran were collaborating with Russian hackers-for-hire, according to an article in the New York Times.

Wright could not reveal the target of the attack owing to a confidentiality arrangement. But other security experts said the attackers could have purchased the Russian toolkit from an online forum and customised it for their campaign.

This hypothesis is countered by TrapX researchers, however, who noted that a number of “web domains used in the attack had been registered to a Russian alias, and that three email addresses continue to be used by a hacker in Russian hacking forums and in the underground web.”

The Iranian attackers behind the latest campaign, dubbed OilRig for their previous attacks on oil companies in Saudi Arabia and Israel, have been expanding their geographical range with hundreds of new attacks targeting a number of military, financial and energy companies in Europe as well as the United States, the Times reported.

Nearly three-quarters of the code employed in the latest campaign was previously used by OilRig in hundreds of attacks on other enterprises, including government agencies and oil companies.

But, as the defences of the newest target became more robust and the attackers evolved their tactics, the security researchers noted new weapons in their arsenal: a typical hacker’s kit, used to siphon out data, such as to steal usernames and passwords; but, more revealing, a tool never before detected in an OilRig campaign.

This was obfuscated with encryption to evade security investigators. After weeks spent decrypting the code, the researchers at TrapX determined that besides code similar to that used by OilRig in prior attacks, the bad actors were employing malware called BlackEnergy, also used previously, specifically by the Russian hackers who attacked the Ukraine power grid. Further, data was being transferred from the target to a server also used in the Ukraine attack.

TrapX lured the miscreants to inject their malware onto a server, which was then analysed by the TrapX team who were able to then shut the attackers out of their client’s system.

Forbes

*** There is more:

Iranian hackers which previously targeted organizations in Saudi Arabia are now targeting organizations in other countries, including the US, as part of a campaign identified as OilRig campaign.

In addition to expanding its reach, the group has been enhancing its malware tools.

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have been monitoring the group for some time and have

reported observing attacks launched by a threat actor against financial institutions and technology companies in Saudi Arabia and on the Saudi defense industry. This campaign referred to as “ OilRig,” by Palo Alto Networks, entails weaponized Microsoft Excel spreadsheets tracked as

“Clayslide” and a backdoor called “Helminth.” More here.

More: Last month

The Israeli Cyber Defense Authority yesterday announced that it believes Iran was behind the a series of targeted attacks against some 250 individuals between April 19 and 24 in government agencies, high-tech companies, medical organizations, and educational institutions including the renowned Ben-Gurion University. The attackers – whom security experts say are members of the so-called OilRig aka Helix Kitten aka NewsBeef nation-state hacking group in Iran — used stolen email accounts from Ben-Gurion to send their payload to victims.

“This is the largest and most sophisticated attack they’ve [OilRig] ever performed,” says Michael Gorelik, vice president of R&D for Morphisec, who studied the attacks and confirms that the final stage was thwarted for the most part. “It was a major information-gathering [operation],” he says.

OilRig has been rapidly maturing since it kicked off operations around 2015. The attack campaign against Israeli targets employed the just-patched Microsoft CVE-2017-0199 remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) application programming interface. This flaw had been weaponized in attacks prior to the patch, including Dridex banking Trojan and botnet attacks, and in at least one other cyber espionage campaign.

Forbes has more on corporate and individual hack operations in the United States by OilRig including other countries.

The Left Loves those Terrorists

Posted on May 18, 2017May 18, 2017 by Denise Simon

Let’s begin with the Palestinian Authority:

Palestinian Authority schools named after terrorists and Nazi collaborators

 28 PA schools named after terrorists

 3 PA schools named after Nazi collaborators

by Itamar Marcus

The PA Ministry of Education has named at least 28 schools after terrorists and an additional 3 schools after Nazi collaborators. Significantly, the PA Ministry of Education is directly and solely responsible for the naming of schools:

“The naming of schools and changes are the responsibility of the Minister of Education, by a direct decision of the Ministry or the Name Committee.” [Ma’an, independent news agency, Aug. 26, 2015, see also WAFA, official Palestinian Authority news agency Aug. 25, 2015]

By naming schools after terrorists, the Palestinian Authority is telling its children most emphatically that terrorists who have murdered Israeli civilians are role models and heroes. PMW has found evidence that in practice, students who attend such schools refer to terrorists as personal heroes whom they look up to and aspire to emulate.

The following are schools the Palestinian Authority has named after terrorists

Terrorist Dalal Mughrabi led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history, known as the Coastal Road massacre, in 1978, when she and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel’s Coastal Highway, killing 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70.

The PA has named three schools after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.

1. The Dalal Mughrabi High School for Girls – Gaza

2. The Dalal Mughrabi High School for Girls – Al-Shuyoukh, Hebron

3. The Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School for Girls – near Hebron

The PA has named two schools after terrorist Shadia Abu Ghazaleh.

4. The Shadia Abu Ghazaleh School for Girls – Gaza

5. The Shadia Abu Ghazalah High School for Boys – Jabaliya (Read the full report here)

***

How about this cat that Obama released? Image result for oscar rivera faln New York Daily News

Convicted Puerto Rican Terrorist, Whose Prison Sentence Obama Commuted, to Enjoy Hero’s Welcome

Oscar Lopez Rivera, the convicted domestic terrorist whose prison sentence Obama commuted, will be released Wednesday and return to New York City. He will also be given a hero’s welcome during the city’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade next month.

Rivera was serving a decades-long sentence for his role in terrorist attacks while serving as a member of the violent, far-left militia known as the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN. The group sought to gain Puerto Rican independence by using violence and Marxist tactics, so naturally, Obama took a shine to Rivera.

The Free Beacon summarizes: Lopez Rivera was originally convicted of crimes committed while he was a member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, known by its Spanish acronym FALN, a leftist, violent separatist group that sought complete independence for Puerto Rico.

During the 1970s, FALN claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings across New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. One of the bombings, at the Fraunces Tavern in New York in 1975, killed four people and injured more than 60 others.

For his crimes, Lopez Rivera was sentenced in 1981 to 55 years in prison for “seditious conspiracy” and other felonies, and an additional 15 years in 1988 “for conspiracy to escape; to transport explosives with intent to kill and injure people; and to destroy government buildings and property,” according to CNN.

Lopez Rivera was not charged directly for involvement in FALN attacks, but rather for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government. His prison sentence would have expired in 2051 had it not been commuted by more than 30 years.

[…] Upon Lopez Rivera’s release, many will welcome him as a beloved son. He will be celebrated across Puerto Rico and Chicago this week, and on June 11, he will be recognized as Procer de la Libertad–National Freedom Hero–during New York City’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade.

Many Puerto Ricans also celebrated Lopez Rivera. But victims of FALN’s bombings feel differently.

“I’ve had long hours in the middle of the night trying to figure out what I am missing, why he has all this support,” Diane Berger Ettenson said of Lopez Rivera. Ettenson was six months pregnant when her husband was killed at Fraunces Tavern.

“Every time I have to defend my father’s life, it takes a little more of my life away,” said Joseph Connor, who was 9 when his father was killed, also at Fraunces Tavern.

“My kids never met my dad, but they certainly had to deal with this. We never asked for it.”

Pillar of tolerance and compassion (and also creator of the Broadway musical, Hamilton), Lin-Manuel Miranda, said of Rivera: “One can disagree or agree with him politically, but he is a symbol of resolve and conviction.” He also claimed to have sobbed “with gratitude” after Obama commuted the terrorist’s sentence. The Left’s hypocrisy is particularly ripe in this instance, and we can expect more adulation for the terrorist to be heaped on him during the festivities next month.

Meanwhile back on a college campus:

How about this commencement speaker?

Taxpayer-Funded College Hosts Sharia-Loving Commencement Speaker With Ties To Terror Group

Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour will be this year’s commencement speaker at the taxpayer-funded City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

“I am delighted to confirm that Linda Sarsour will indeed speak at our June 1 commencement at the Apollo Theater,” said Barbara Aaron, chief of staff to CUNY Graduate School of Public Health dean Ayman El-Mohandes, in a statement sent to The Daily Caller.

Sarsour, one of the main organizers behind January’s Women’s March on Washington, is the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York.

Linda Sarsour via Facebook

The FBI has alleged that Salah Sarsour, who resides in Milwaukee, raised money for Hamas

In December 2016, Sarsour spoke at the 15th annual convention of the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America. More detail here from DailyCaller.

Where is the Outrage on Erdogan’s Visit to DC?

Posted on May 18, 2017May 18, 2017 by Denise Simon

Notice in the video the men dressed in black suits, further notice the capitol police, they look like Keystone cops. What is also curious, all foreign dignitaries are protected while in country by our diplomatic security staff….see any? As an aside, 2 Secret Service agents were injured however.

Image result for turkey protests dc

In fairness, John McCain expressed outrage:

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) on Thursday morning called for throwing the Turkish ambassador out of the United States in response to Turkish officials beating a crowd of protesters in Washington this week.

McCain started his interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” with his call to remove the Turkish diplomat.

“I’m still outraged at this Turkish beating,” McCain said. “We should throw their ambassador the hell out of the United States of America.”

“This is the United States of America, this isn’t Turkey, this isn’t a third-world country, and this kind of thing cannot go un-responded to diplomatically and maybe in other ways,” McCain continued.

Host Joe Scarborough asked what the United States could do in response to the attack on protesters by Turkish security officials.

McCain again advocated throwing out the Turkish ambassador and said the guards had orders from someone to attack the protesters. The senator called for charges against those involved.

“You cannot have that happen in the United States of America,” McCain said. “People have the right in our country to peacefully demonstrate and they were peacefully demonstrating.”

More detail and background…..

IPT: The man with the bullhorn already had been knocked to the ground, repeatedly kicked and beaten. Then the man with a mustache, wearing a sharp suit and a handgun on his hip, raced up and launched a fierce kick, hitting the man with the bullhorn square in the face.

The man with the bullhorn was protesting visiting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The man with the mustache is an Erdogan bodyguard. This beat-down, captured on video by the Voice of America, took place Tuesday, just 1.4 miles from the White House, where Erdogan met with President Trump.

Nine people were injured, including two who required hospitalization. A similar, but smaller brawl broke out last year when Erdogan was greeted by protesters outside a speech at the Brookings Institution.

The State Department issued a statement Wednesday saying it would tell the Turkish government that it is “concerned by the violent incidents …. Violence is never an appropriate response to free speech, and we support the rights of people everywhere to free expression and peaceful protest.”

It’s difficult these days for stories outside the White House’s struggle to contain the Russia investigation to gain much traction.

But events in and near the White House Tuesday should not get lost in the shuffle. Even without the violence by Erdogan’s goon squad, his White House visit should concern those who expected the Trump administration to follow through on its tough talk about confronting radical Islam.

For all the talk about naming radical Islamic terrorism where it exists, there appears to have been no mention of Turkey’s ongoing support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist offshoot Hamas. Rather, President Trump publicly lauded Erdogan, saying it was an honor to host him and that he looked forward to working together to create Middle East peace.

Erdogan is a favorite of U.S.-based Islamists, especially those with Muslim Brotherhood links, like Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad. That may be due, at least in part, to his view that Hamas is not a terrorist group, but a national liberation movement.

Erdogan provided a safe haven for Hamas operative Salah Arouri even after Arouri was implicated in the deadly kidnapping of three Israeli teens that led to the summer 2014 war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In that conflict, Erdogan predicted that Israel would “drown in the blood that they shed,” and likened the Jewish state to Adolph Hitler: “Just like Hitler tried to create a pure Aryan race in Germany, the State of Israel is pursuing the same goals right now.”

Arouri was asked to leave Turkey only last year, as part of an effort to restore diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey – relations Erdogan severed in 2010.

But that doesn’t mean Erdogan has turned a corner. In February, Turkey hosted a meeting of Hamas officials and affiliates. Last week, Erdogan repeated the baseless claim that Israel is an apartheid state, asking, “What’s the difference in Israel’s current practices from the racist and discriminatory policies implemented towards the blacks in America in the past, and in South Africa more recently?”

The ignorant talking point ignores the equal voting rights enjoyed by Israeli Arabs. The International Committee of the Red Cross rejected Erdogan’s rhetoric outright: “There isn’t a regime here that is based on the superiority of one race over another; there is no disenfranchisement of basic human rights based on so-called racial inferiority.”

In addition, Erdogan was slow to stem the tide of foreign fighters crossing his border in order to join ISIS in Syria. When he does act, he often targets U.S.-backed Kurdish forces fighting ISIS – a stateless minority Turkey oppresses.

While Erdogan and Trump praised each other publicly, ABC reports that “they made little progress to deal with their sharp differences on issues like terrorism and Syria.”

Erdogan, meanwhile, has purged tens of thousands of government employees, teachers and jailed scores of journalists in a clamp-down on any potential opposition. His crackdown is not limited to his own borders, as European critics have been targeted for arrest and surveillance.

Under his rule, Turkey’s secular education system has been weakened as religious training schools known as imam hatipgrew more than 15 times in enrollment since 2003. His radical Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) wants Turkey to be governed by an Islamist authority that demands adherence to strict religious tenets.

The White House meeting lasted about 20 minutes, McClatchy reports. Beforehand, 81 members of Congress issued a statement urging the president to raise Erdogan’s human rights abuses in the meeting.

“Erdogan and his allies have mounted an assault on the rule of law, particularly using sweeping state of emergency authorities to stifle fundamental rights including free speech, undermine the independence of the judiciary, and quash any opposition to their undemocratic actions,” they wrote.

There is no indication whether that topic was discussed. After the meeting, Erdogan expressed appreciation for the president’s hospitality. That’s fine, but the failure to openly challenge Erdogan’s increasingly Islamist, authoritarian direction is disappointing. Turkey’s help is needed in the fight against ISIS. But if the United States intends to confront radical Islam, it missed a golden opportunity on Tuesday.

President Trump did ask that Turkey release jailed American pastor Andrew Brunson, the White House readout of the meeting said. The two leaders also plan to meet again next week during the president’s first official international trip.

Unless he challenges Erdogan then, the lasting images of this will be the unprovoked violence Erdogan’s armed bodyguards inflicted on peaceful demonstrators in the heart of the nation’s capital instead of a direct and honest challenge to Erdogan’s ongoing and egregious support for Islamist terrorists.

Will Mueller’s Russian Probe Include Viktor Medvedchuk?

Posted on May 18, 2017May 18, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer: Remember the media told us and the polls told us Hillary would win. When Trump prevailed, the left went into action in earnest and that is being aided by television and print media. All things Russia will be in our daily lives for a long while and there is good cause for that. There are truths that are being omitted, frankly we need complete truth, wherever it leads. For the sake of the country and gaining any kind of confidence in political leaders, the double edged sword will draw blood.

So, here we go and will Robert Mueller and his team perform and provide a final report that is honest, complete and true? America needs President Trump to succeed, of this there is no question. There is a legislative agenda that must advance.

Read on.

Image result for viktor medvedchuk

When it comes to Moscow’s long term operation to bring Ukraine under Russian influence, Medbedchuk is Putin’s man. Viktor Medvedchuk continues to work diligently to keep Ukraine from any membership into the European Union or NATO. As an aside, Viktor is also the god-father to Putin’s daughter Darina.

With historical targets by the Kremlin to hold power over Ukraine, Medvedchuk was trusted by the KGB/FSB using all the normal KGB tactics.

Viktor is a Russian oligarch with extravagant taste and is said to be worth $800 million.

yacht Royal Romance

Superyacht Royal Romance, owned by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk

P4-GEM Viktor Medvedchuk

Medvedchuk’s private jet with registration P4-GEM

So, why is Medvedchuk important? He has some nasty history inside Ukraine. Further, those members of the Trump campaign and transition team had communications with Medvedchuk. Would one of those on the Trump team be Paul Manafort? Yes, glad you asked. Manafort was tapped to aid Yanukovych’s victory as Prime Minister of Ukraine until matters fell apart and he fled Ukraine for Russia. Manafort was in country when this occurred and stayed in Ukraine to rally old supporters and create a new party that would oppose pro-Westerner Poroshenko and alter the parliament. That black ledger discovered by a Ukraine government investigations shows that Manafort was paid $12.7 million for his work.

A side note, the law firm Wilmer Hale, is where Reginald Brown is representing Paul Manafort, happens to be the same law firm that now independent counsel for the Russian probe, Robert Mueller worked. So, is this new independent investigation a ploy due to history and conflicts of cases and legal representation? Humm, let’s continue.

***

Exclusive: Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians: Sources

Michael Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the exchanges told Reuters.

The previously undisclosed interactions form part of the record now being reviewed by FBI and congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election and contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Six of the previously undisclosed contacts described to Reuters were phone calls between Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and Trump advisers, including Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, three current and former officials said.

Conversations between Flynn and Kislyak accelerated after the Nov. 8 vote as the two discussed establishing a back channel for communication between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could bypass the U.S. national security

bureaucracy, which both sides considered hostile to improved relations, four current U.S. officials said.

In January, the Trump White House initially denied any contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. The White House and advisers to the campaign have since confirmed four meetings between Kislyak and Trump advisers during that time.

The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far. But the disclosure could increase the pressure on Trump and his aides to provide the FBI and Congress with a full account of interactions with Russian officials and others with links to the Kremlin during and immediately after the 2016 election.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Flynn’s lawyer declined to comment. In Moscow, a Russian foreign ministry official declined to comment on the contacts and referred Reuters to the Trump administration.

Separately, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington said: “We do not comment on our daily contacts with the local interlocutors.”

The 18 calls and electronic messages took place between April and November 2016 as hackers engaged in what U.S. intelligence concluded in January was part of a Kremlin campaign to discredit the vote and influence the outcome of the election in favor of Trump over his Democratic challenger, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Those discussions focused on mending U.S.-Russian economic relations strained by sanctions imposed on Moscow, cooperating in fighting Islamic State in Syria and containing a more assertive China, the sources said.

Members of the Senate and House intelligence committees have gone to the CIA and the National Security Agency to review transcripts and other documents related to contacts between Trump campaign advisers and associates and Russian officials and others with links to Putin, people with knowledge of those investigations told Reuters.

The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it had appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential campaign and possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Mueller will now take charge of the FBI investigation that began last July. Trump and his aides have repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia.

‘IT’S RARE’

In addition to the six phone calls involving Kislyak, the communications described to Reuters involved another 12 calls, emails or text messages between Russian officials or people considered to be close to Putin and Trump campaign advisers.

One of those contacts was by Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch and politician, according to one person with detailed knowledge of the exchange and two others familiar with the issue.

It was not clear with whom Medvedchuk was in contact within the Trump campaign but the themes included U.S.-Russia cooperation, the sources said. Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Medvedchuk denied having any contact with anyone in the Trump campaign.

“I am not acquainted with any of Donald Trump’s close associates, therefore no such conversation could have taken place,” he said in an email to Reuters.

In the conversations during the campaign, Russian officials emphasized a pragmatic, business-style approach and stressed to Trump associates that they could make deals by focusing on common economic and other interests and leaving contentious issues aside, the sources said.

Veterans of previous election campaigns said some contact with foreign officials during a campaign was not unusual, but the number of interactions between Trump aides and Russian officials and others with links to Putin was exceptional.

“It’s rare to have that many phone calls to foreign officials, especially to a country we consider an adversary or a hostile power,” Richard Armitage, a Republican and former deputy secretary of state, told Reuters.

FLYNN FIRED

Beyond Medvedchuk and Kislyak, the identities of the other Putin-linked participants in the contacts remain classified and the names of Trump advisers other than Flynn have been “masked” in intelligence reports on the contacts because of legal protections on their privacy as American citizens. However, officials can request that they be revealed for intelligence purposes.

U.S. and allied intelligence and law enforcement agencies routinely monitor communications and movements of Russian officials.

After Vice President Mike Pence and others had denied in January that Trump campaign representatives had any contact with Russian officials, the White House later confirmed that Kislyak had met twice with then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who later became attorney general.

Kislyak also attended an event in April where Trump said he would seek better relations with Russia. Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, also attended that event in Washington. In addition, Kislyak met with two other Trump campaign advisers in July on the sidelines of the Republican convention.

Trump fired Flynn in February after it became clear that he had falsely characterized the nature of phone conversations with Kislyak in late December – after the Nov. 8 election and just after the Obama administration announced new sanctions on Russia. Flynn offered to testify to Congress in return for immunity from prosecution but his offer was turned down by the House intelligence committee.