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MAGA Is a ‘Russian Intel Op’: Experts Respond to Allegation GOP Using Kremlin Propaganda

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Legal and political experts are responding to Special Counsel David Weiss’ allegations that a former top FBI informant, now under federal indictment, had, as one reporter explained, “high-level contact with Russian intelligence operatives,” and fed Republicans falsehoods from the Kremlin which they used to attack the Biden family and to try to build a case to impeach President Joe Biden.

“How many intel and legal findings and counter-espionage cases before people are willing to accept that the entire MAGA movement is a Russian intel op?” asks David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and author.

The bombshell allegations from the Special Counsel, a U.S. Attorney nominated by then-President Donald Trump, were published in his legal memo asking a judge to detain Alexander Smirnov, the defendant and former FBI confidential human source.

“Russia has fully infiltrated the Republican party. Nice going traitors,” alleged Richard Signorelli, a former Asst. U.S. Attorney at the Southern District of New York office. He added: “Trump & @SpeakerJohnson et al are Putin’s ‘useful idiots.'”

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U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), an attorney who served as the lead counsel for the first Trump impeachment, wrote: “The Comer/Jordan impeachment sham appears to have been a Russian intelligence operation from the start. The only remaining question is whether Rs were witting or unwitting agents of Putin in their desperate quest to get Trump reelected. Will the GOP continue to work for Putin?”

Former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman, a frequent MSNBC commentator, points to a passage from the DOJ’s memo: “More from DOJ motion re Smirnov: ‘the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020 …He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in Nov.'”

“This guy made be the sole reason for R’s Burisma obsessions,” Litman says.

Litman continues: “DOJ to court: ‘Smirnov transformed his routine & unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden] and [Hunter Biden], after expressing bias against Joe Biden.’ Was the entire R Burisma obsession based on phony intel?”

He adds: “And the big plot point to the Smirnov revelations from [Special Counsel David Weiss] is that the misinformation that Republicans have gone running — in fact galloping with –originates with, you guessed it, Russian intelligence. i.e part of overall Putin misinformation campaign that so distorted 2016.”

Attorney Blake Rutherford, in a social media post “retweeted” by attorney George Conway, wrote: “At what point will the broader American press, and I mean producers, editors, and publishers, wake up to very real fact that Russian propaganda is being normalized in today’s @GOP. They are all useful idiots. Putin knows it.”

Republican turned independent Tim Miller, a political strategist and author at The Bulwark, takes a look at recent events:

“To sum up: RUS/Putin have invaded their neighbor, assassinated the biggest domestic political threat, coopted one of the right’s biggest media stars, and seeded a fabricated story about the US President that was echoed by GOP congressional leadership & rightwing media en masse.”

But even before the Special Counsel’s allegations against the indicted former FBI informant, some were growning increasingly aware of Russia’s alleged penetration into the GOP.

RELATED: Kremlin Infiltration of Congress Alleged by Ex-Trump Prosecutor: Republicans ‘Duped or in on It’

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View,” last week wrote: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that Russia is winning the information war within the US. GOP politicians – who know better – are amplifying Kremlin garbage. We are in deep, deep trouble.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

Image via Mike Johnson/X

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‘On Day One’: Trump Vows to End Protections for LGBTQ Students

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Donald Trump says the day he enters the Oval Office for a second term he will end anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students implemented by the Biden administration.

Serving up a scattershot series of complaints with the hosts from the Philadelphia-based right-wing talk radio show “Kayal and Company” on Friday, Trump compared LGBTQ+ protections to a “cuckoo’s nest.”

“A lot of things don’t make sense, having to do with what they’re doing, from the border to all of the men playing in women’s sports. I mean, the world is like a cuckoo’s nest right now with what they do,” Trump declared.

One of the hosts alleged President Joe Biden has engaged in “manipulation” of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. She claimed parents now have to “pinch some pennies” to be able to afford private Christian schools for their children, to remove them from the enhancements that go into effect this summer.

“Many schools are grappling with what they’re going to do,” she said, “because as of August 1, as you know, because of Biden’s manipulation of Title IX, these kids, the school boards, have no choice, they’re meeting right now they, many of them perplexed, and they don’t know what to do, Mr. President, because they’re so upset over this that at August 1 a biological boy can change in a locker room.”

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Trump replied, “It’s crazy. Crazy.”

“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump vowed. “We’re going to change it on day one. It’s going to be changed. We’re going to end it. That’s right.”

“The whole thing is crazy. Look, it’s like men playing in women’s sports. It’s like open borders for the world to come in. Send all their prisoners. We’ll take as many as you can give us. Send all their people from mental institutions.”

“We’ll get that changed. Tell your people not to worry about it. It’ll be signed on day one. It will be terminated,” Trump promised, vowing to end the LGBTQ+ protections which include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

On his first day in office, President Biden implemented “the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet” for LGBTQ+ people, according to NPR.

In an explainer on the new expanded rules, Ms. Magazine reports “The 2024 regulations prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

According to GLAAD, which is tracking “the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights,” President Biden has made 337 “moves” in 1206 days.

Listen to a short clip below or at this link.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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Ari Fleischer Offers Donald Trump Advice Attorney Says ‘Effectively’ Violates Gag Order

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A Fox News panel discussing the Trump New York criminal trial debated whether or not the indicted ex-president could attack the judge’s daughter, with former Bush 43 press secretary Ari Fleischer insisting he should, and claiming doing so would not violate the terms of the gag order.

“President Trump needs to stop calling the judge ‘conflicted.’ He needs to explain why he’s conflicted,” Fleischer said Friday to a panel that included former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Every day of the trial he goes in there, he says, ‘the judge is conflicted, conflicted bigger than I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life.’ He doesn’t explain how or why. He needs to say that the judge’s daughter works for a Democratic political consulting firm that does anti-Trump business. He needs to explain it. Otherwise, it’s just an assertion with no proof. And the President if he’s going to say it, back it up. Explain.”

“I think that’s a violation of the gag order, is it not?” a Fox panelist replied.

“No, he can criticize the judge,” McEnany responded.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

“Not the judge but the family,” the panelist added.

“But when he says the judge is conflicted, you can still explain how and why, and I think comply with a gag,” Fleischer insisted.

The panelists then agreed Donald Trump has been “measured” in his remarks.

National security attorney Brad Moss weighed in on social media, posting the relevant portion of the gag order and writing that Fleischer “effectively recommends Trump violate the terms of the gag order.”

The gag order in part reads: “Defendant is directed to refrain from” … “Making or directing others to make public statements about (1) counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, (2) members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or (3) the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.”

Despite Trump’s repeated attacks, an ethics panel last year cleared Judge Juan Merchan of any issues surrounding his daughter’s work.

On Monday, Judge Merchan warned Trump he may throw him in jail if he violates the gag order again.

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

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Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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A federal appeals court panel of three judges has upheld the criminal contempt of Congress conviction of Steve Bannon, the far-right provocateur and former Trump chief strategist and senior White House advisor. Legal experts say he can appeal but ultimately he will he headed to prison.

Bannon had refused to comply with a subpoena lawfully-issued by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

“Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail in 2022 by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols after a jury convicted him of two counts of contempt of Congress,” Politico reports Friday. “But Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed to postpone the jail term while Bannon appealed the decision, agreeing that the complex mix of laws that govern executive privilege and testimonial immunity for White House aides could be overturned by higher courts.”

The appeals court panel includes judges appointed by President Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, according to CNN’s Zachary Cohen.

In their ruling the judges wrote: “Public accounts indicated that Bannon had predicted on a January 5, 2021 podcast that ‘all hell [wa]s going to break loose’ the next day,” and noted, “In addition to the podcast prediction, Bannon had reportedly participated in discussions in late 2020 and early 2021 about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”

READ MORE: House Ethics Committee Extends Investigation Into ‘Ultra MAGA’ Congressman

Politico noted the “three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bannon’s argument, saying the former aide and prominent podcaster had no legal rationale for his blanket refusal to appeal before the Jan. 6 committee — and that long-standing case law.”

Bannon is a peddler of conspiracy theories whose podcast “was crowned the top peddler of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among political podcasts,” according to The New York Times, citing a Brookings study.

“Bannon is unlikely to have to report to prison immediately,” NBC News reports.

Legal experts weighed in on the question of prison for Bannon.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

“And now it’s time for Bannon to be given a date to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his sentence,” remarked MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor.

“Bannon is effectively out of appeals,” observed professor of law and MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney. “He can delay a little bit longer, asking for the full court to review the decision en banc & asking SCOTUS to hear his case on cert, but neither one of those things will happen. Bannon is going to prison.”

Professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter remarked, “it’s slammer time.”

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