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Russian Banker and Spy Infiltrated the NRA With the Kremlin’s Blessing: Report

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A Russian bank official kept the Kremlin updated on efforts to cultivate ties to the NRA in hopes of influencing U.S. politics, according to an intelligence report.

Alexander Torshin, who was then deputy governor of Russia’s central bank, and his protegée Maria Butina aggressively courted NRA leaders, and they kept senior Russian government officials updated on their efforts, reported The Daily Beast.

The website reviewed a U.S. intelligence report showing that Torshin briefed Kremlin officials and recommended they participate in his influence operation.

“This reporting indicates that Alexander Torshin was working with the blessing of the Kremlin, at a minimum,” one European intelligence official told the website. “The NRA is quite powerful, so when you look to influence U.S. politics, you should consider them as a convenient target.”

The 30-year-old Butina pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to act as a foreign agent under the direction of a Russian official identified as Torshin, who recently retired from the Central Bank of Russia.

The newly revealed intelligence report is based on conversations from 2015, before NRA leaders visited Moscow on a trip organized by Torshin and Butina.

The report shows Torshin suggested Russian officials reach out to American political figures through the NRA due to its strong influence, and the banker urged someone from President Vladimir Putin’s executive office to meet with the group.

“My assessment of what was happening with Torshin and Butina and the NRA was that the Russians decided, a good period of time before 2016, to run an influence operation here in the U.S. with a couple of different goals,” said Steve Hall, who oversaw the CIA’s Russia operations. “The obvious goal was the one the intelligence community assessed back in 2016, which was to help Donald Trump win and increase the likelihood that Hillary Clinton would lose. In addition, they wanted to create as much chaos in our democracy as possible.”

 

Image: Russian Central Bank Deputy Gov. Alexander Torshin, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), Maria Butina. (American Bridge website)

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News

Trump’s Wild 24 Hour Truth Social Frenzy

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Over a single 24-hour stretch, from Tuesday to Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump unleashed 48 Truth Social posts, from debunked election fraud conspiracy theories to posts including him among the “three Greatest Presidents,” to praise of what a great grandfather he is.

“Trump is an incredible grandfather,” wrote @TONYxTWO on the social media site X, which was screenshotted and posted by Trump to his Truth Social page at 7:04 AM Wednesday, along with a TikTok video of Trump with his grandchildren.

“Vote for grandpa,” one of his grandchildren told campaign rallygoers.

“That’s Barron,” Trump also said in the video, holding an infant in an old clip. “He’s strong, he’s smart, he’s tough, he’s vicious, he’s violent — all of the ingredients you need.”

READ MORE: ‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

In another post, at 6:34 AM Wednesday, Trump screenshot a social media user who wrote: “PASS THE SAVE ACT.!!!” That post included a video with footage from 1996, lambasting now-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. In it, Schumer was advocating for legislation that was an apparent effort to stop fraud related to illegal immigration.

Just one minute earlier, Trump shared a video promoting debunked election fraud claims, including saying that 2.7 million “Trump votes” appeared to have been deleted in the 2020 election.

BBC News debunked that claim in November 2020.

At 6:05 AM, Trump posted a screenshot of a social media user’s baseless election fraud claim: Michigan had over 100 percent turnout. BBC News also debunked that claim in November 2020.

At 10:58 PM on Tuesday, Trump posted a link to a right-wing website with an article titled, “Key political voice in Georgia urges state to take over Fulton County elections after FBI raid.”

One minute earlier, he wrote in a different post: “Crooked Elections cannot be allowed in the U.S.A. President DJT.”

That post also included a screenshot of a post by a social media user who wrote: “Dan Bongino had John Solomon on his show today and Solomon made an interesting prediction: That Trump will soon unveil evidence that foreign powers meddled in the 2020 election, which will result in John Thune ultimately caving on the filibuster and the Save America act will get passed.”

READ MORE: ‘Insulting’: Fox News Panel Implodes as Host Clashes With Liberal Guest Over Voter ID

It also included a video alleging that China sent fake drivers’ licenses to help Joe Biden.

At 7:43 PM, Trump posted a video of himself, speaking from the Oval Office, honoring the fifth anniversary of the passing of right-wing pundit Rush Limbaugh.

Trump described him as a “great man, a great conservative,” who was a friend of his. Trump went on to say that Limbaugh endorsed Trump just after his 2015 presidential run announcement from Trump Tower, where he had famously said that Mexico was not sending their best.

In six separate posts on Wednesday afternoon, Trump posted graphs that appeared to show Republican primary polling in Indiana, and how his endorsements would push a candidate from low numbers into the top position. One chart claimed that a Trump endorsement would put a candidate polling at 12 percent all the way to 54 percent.

Minutes earlier, Trump twice posted: “The Great Economist, Stephen Moore: ‘In the past Century, the three Greatest Presidents were Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, and Donald J. Trump!'”

Trump posted twelve photos of himself with the late Reverend Jesse Jackson, who passed away on Tuesday. Earlier on Tuesday, Trump had used Jackson’s death as an opportunity to argue that he is not a racist.

Earlier on Tuesday afternoon, Trump posted a screenshot of a post by Fox News host Mark Levin, who wrote: “Now, finally stop the b — — trying to link POTUS to Epstein. The Woke Reich grifters, congressional Democrat hacks, and the media thugs continue to libel POTUS, from Russia to Epstein. We’ve a country to save from these reprobates and others.”

READ MORE: Trump Administration Hit With Lawsuit for Removing Pride Flag

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

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Trump Administration Hit With Lawsuit for Removing Pride Flag

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The Trump administration is facing a lawsuit accusing it of breaking federal law by taking down the LGBTQ+ Pride flag at New York City’s Stonewall National Monument, the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ civil rights movement.

The U.S. Department of the Interior and Secretary Doug Burgum, as well as the National Park Service and Acting Director Jessica Bowron, are named in the lawsuit filed by attorneys for the Gilbert Baker Foundation and others. Gilbert Baker is the artist who created the rainbow Pride flag.

“In the lawsuit,” The New York Times reported, “the Gilbert Baker Foundation argued that the original Pride flag fell under one of the allowed exceptions: to provide historical context at national monuments. This is the exception that allows Confederate flags to be flown at properties managed by the Park Service, including Gettysburg National Military Park.”

READ MORE: ‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

“This was no careless mistake,” the lawsuit reads, according to a screenshot posted by New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman. “The government has not removed other historical flags at other national monuments, most notably Confederate flags.”

The suit alleges that the “assault on Stonewall is the latest example in a long line of efforts by the Trump Administration to target the LGBTQ+ community for discrimination and opprobrium.”

“In February 2025, for instance, the administration removed the word ‘transgender’ from prominent sections of the Stonewall monument’s website, as part of its wider campaign to demean and erase the transgender community,” it states.

“The Trump Administration has deleted numerous NPS websites discussing LGBTQ+ history,” it continues, “fired at least one federal employee for displaying a pride flag in his office; banned the use of pronouns in email signatures; renamed a John Lewis-class replenishment oiler named after Harvey Milk, a pioneering gay rights leader who served as a Navy officer and one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States.”

READ MORE: ‘Insulting’: Fox News Panel Implodes as Host Clashes With Liberal Guest Over Voter ID

It also cites what it calls “a particularly absurd example,” in which images of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay — the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb — were flagged for deletion, apparently because the images included the word “Gay.”

The lawsuit alleges a “pattern of systemic targeting of the LGBTQ+ community—combined with the starkly disparate treatment of the Pride flag,” which it claims “demonstrates that the decision to alter the Stonewall monument was not just a mistake. It was based on an impermissible animus.”

Numerous New York elected leaders at all levels, including U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, denounced the administration’s removal of the flag.

The removal became a national flashpoint, drawing hundreds of locals to protest and prompting elected leaders to vow to raise it again.

Activists and officials gathered for multiple demonstrations at the Stonewall National Monument, where they raised a new Pride flag — an act that the Trump administration condemned as a “political stunt.”

READ MORE: Massie Warns of Growing GOP ‘Defections’

 

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Massie Warns of Growing GOP ‘Defections’

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A prominent House Republican who successfully advanced bipartisan legislation to release the Epstein files is predicting there will be more GOP “defections” once the primaries are over.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Politico that because Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority is so thin, “on any given day, I would just need one or two of my own co-conspirators to get something done” that goes against the Trump administration’s agenda.

He said that “what’s happening is that the retirement caucus is growing and primary days are coming up and passing. Once we get past March, April and May, which contain a large portion of their Republican primaries, I think you’re going to see more defections.”

Massie added that “quietly and privately, people are telling me they agree with me.”

In a surprising revelation, Massie said that House Republicans “are being told every week to stand down, bite their tongue, sit on their hands, do what they’re told, be part of the team and put their brain in neutral.”

READ MORE: ‘Insulting’: Fox News Panel Implodes as Host Clashes With Liberal Guest Over Voter ID

Massie also offered several other pointed remarks.

He noted that after President Trump called him a “moron” at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, pastors were “not impressed and I don’t think anybody was impressed by his performance at the prayer breakfast. It was completely political.”

The Kentucky Republican further directed strong criticism toward Attorney General Pam Bondi after being the only member of his party to, as Politico reported, “spar” with her at last week’s contentious congressional hearing.

“When the attorney general is reduced to a stack of pre-prepared insults to deliver, and when the DOJ is responding to my every tweet with additional unredactions, I don’t think I’m going to change what I’m doing just yet,” he said.

Massie described Bondi as looking “weak and frustrated” at the hearing “when she started talking about the Dow Jones, which has literally nothing to do with her job.”

“I thought that looked bad,” he said. He also pointed to her “stack of insults that were pre-prepared — in politics you might call it oppo research — and you could see her shuffling through them to try and find which one matched the person who was trying to ask her a question at the time. She found my card like right at the end, as you can see she was looking for it.”

READ MORE: ‘Republicans Have to Lose’: Far Right Extremist Leader Puts Trump on Notice

 

Image via Reuters

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