Dimitri Simes defected to the U.S. in the seventies and was a proud American for five decades, until he was criminally charged with a Soviet-style offense: being a journalist
And then all the FBI agents involved in the case were fired, charged with violating the first amendment, breaking and entering, and were summarily sent to 10 years in prison each, right?
Agreed. What part of "crack down on Russia's attempts to influence American politics" is legal? By the First Amendment, ANYONE should be allowed to attempt to influence Americans -- even, and often *especially*, a government-declared enemy. Of course, the vast majority of the public is today unable to understand the point here, and TPTB have taken full advantage of that. Sickening.
Even if non-citizens didn't have those rights (to be clear, I do think they should have them on US soil), my point is that citizens themselves have the right to *receive* speech, not just *give* it. The government interfering with that exchange is clearly prohibited by First Amendment,
I'm sure America tries to influence elections in foreign countries, enemies and friends. If foreign citizens have access to the internet, they can be exposed to opinions and ideology from every corner of the globe. Maybe those massive NGO's which pour US money into those "poor" countries to aid the population (after the corrupt officials take their cuts) were set up to influence the opinions of those people to see the US as kind charitable friends. "See what democracy can do for you."
"I'm sure America tries to influence elections in foreign countries"
True. And many times they will trumpet this influence for all to see: For example, in the famous Time mag cover feature on how we propped up Yeltsin back in 1996.
The outrage here, however, is this idea that *Americans* can legally be prevented from *receiving* information/opinions/anything that the current government doesn't like. First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" PERIOD.
I would say, Americans have a right to learn what people in foreign countries and their governments think and are planning to do. What we learn is going to affect how we think, but it does not mean we are being brainwashed by foreign governments. We can weigh what they say against other evidence.
Less cowardice, more seditious in my view. If feels less like they are cowed into this silence and more like they are actively picking a “side.”
I doubt they feel fear about these things, more like they are the vanguard of some important force to save what they are in actuality destroying, the American media environment.
Thank you for this. I well remember Dmitri Simes as the go to pundit during the fall of the Soviet Union and subsequent events.
This is a perfect example of perhaps the greatest injury that Progressive World has inflicted on our political culture - the preference to defame the motives of your adversary rather than addressing their argument. Defamation has become the common currency of our political conversations. Sad to see Simes persecuted like this for not obeying the dominant narrative.
Matt we need a list and timeframe of all the people, like yourself, that got the 'knock' on the door. Rodger Stone got the full CNN bright lights in your face, and James O'Keefe, that somehow ended up with Biden's daughters 'diary', home was raided and somehow lost his Project Veritas company. How many more are on the list? Trump cannot come to the aid of this poor gentleman, because it will be spun as another 'Trump Russia' story. Biden's speech in front of the Independance Hall in Philly, will/should go down as a very dark time in U.S. history.
Compelling interview. This personal account is a sliver of light through a prism--a slice of real human life--from the incomprehensibly complex modern history of Obama-Biden, Hillary, Trump, Ukraine, and Russia. To coin a phrase, it's a global riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The darkness runs the gamut, from Uranium One and Hillary's Reset Button gift to Lavrov all the way through to Russians' intel targeting the US for Iran. It's impossible for an average American to fully grasp since the history is mostly classified and chock full of lies, propaganda, Fusion GPS style black ops, and corrupt US intelligence, law enforcement and diplomatic operations under Obama-Biden.
Did you know that they screwed up even the reset button? Because it didn't say "reset", it said "overload". Перезагрузка vs. перегрузка. Hillary took it soooo seriously she didn't bother to get a major in Russian to check.
Much of that global riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma in fact is the result of complete ignorance of history in general and Russian history in particular.
Was Churchill ignorant of history in general and Russian history in particular? He coined the phrase.
Obviously, Lenin, the Cheka, Stalin, the KGB, Putin, and the FSB have always promoted full disclosure and absolute transparency over the last century of Russian history. So, no excuse for mystery or, as you say, ignorance.
I am surprised that Jared Kushner is not pushing Trump to drop the charges. I am not surprised that a U.S. judge is allowing this farce - but that sort of thing OUGHT to surprise us all. A good judge would dismiss this case as frivolous.
What has happened to the treasures that the FBI removed from his home? It’s a reminder of the Nazis, taking Jewish possessions and just keeping them for themselves. This is wrong in a whole lot of different ways.
Matt, you’re up to your old tricks. You’d think Dmitri Simes was the second coming of I. F. Stone.
Say what you will about the U.S. case against Simes. You can argue about its merits. But it’s very misleading to claim this is a First Amendment case. The government didn’t say he was being investigated for his opinions or controversial views. As you yourself noted, Americans weren't even consuming his content. The allegations concern foreign influence, financial arrangements, and whether he was working on behalf of the Russian government.
According to prosecutors, Simes was paid around $1 million for work connected to Channel One Russia, a state controlled network, with payments structured to evade U.S. sanctions. He also reportedly ran an organization with ten employees and even had a private chauffeur, which hardly fits the image of a persecuted dissident journalist. He now appears to be living quite comfortably in Moscow. He might even be a neighbor of Konstantin Kilimnik in Moscow. Remember him? The lowly “translator” who somehow became Paul Manafort’s right hand man during the Trump campaign? Kilimnik reportedly now lives in a $2 million mansion next to a GRU compound.
The indictment explicitly lays out that it was his speech - the work he did hosting a news program - that triggered prosecutors. He was viewed as a Trump supporter who opposed U.S. aid to Ukraine, and would therefore persuade Americans in a certain direction. Even if he were spewing government propaganda, which he isn't - I didn't always agree with Simes but he's saying a lot of the things he always has - that would be legal, not just under the First Amendment but under this specific law, which has a legislative carve-out exempting all "informational materials" from these sanctions (look it up). More importantly, the whole thing is absurd. A Russian-born person hosts a TV show in Russia and we threaten him with forty years in jail for doing the job? Can you imagine what the world would look like if other countries began enforcing laws like this against us?
You know better than anyone how Russia works, Matt. Margarita Simonyan, the head of the Russian state media bragged that Russia had built “an enormous network… of covert projects.” A $1 million investment comes with strings in a ‘media company’, and Simes would know and accept this. Lesser men than him have been tossed out of windows for not complying. Struggling reporters can only dream of such budgets. And again, you don’t have access to the government’s evidence. You are on firmer ground saying the US has also planted phony news agencies abroad, which makes them uniquely qualified to recognize this for what it is. Be that as it may, your excluding this context makes your article deceptive at best.
Wait, do you know something you're not sharing? Pray tell. Has he crossed his handlers? Is he about to be defenestrated, now that would be quite a scoop.
Russia evil, fine for the FBI to raid someone’s house and take everything, for what? Hosting a show in Russian for Russian speakers. Sure. Simes treatment and indictment is a speech issue, just another sign of the deep, incurable corruption of the US government. The fact that the Trump admin continues this is proof that Pam Bondi and his administration generally is just as bad.
I hate to ruin a good narrative, but as a business owner, I can tell you, a million dollars doesn't buy nearly as much as you seem to imagine it does when you have ten employees. How many years of operations did that million dollars cover? I mean if that is for a single year, then that's a decent budget. If that's for two years, with ten employees, then that's hardly slam dunk proof of someone selling out everything they believe in for what, maybe $200,000 in their actual pocket? If that's a three year deal, then yeah, that is in fact a struggling independent media organization, on a shoestring budget. Have you ever tried to pay ten people on $330,000 a year?
Yes, and let's not forget the chauffeur. How many bloggers and small businessmen get driven around by a chauffeur? Which only raises more questions. Which is all to say there is probably much more than meet's Matt Taibbi's eye.
During the Cold War I remember Simes speaking with his heavy Russian accent on American TV and sounding very reasonable, which pleasantly surprised me. That is the problem.
The DoJ is controlled, not by Trump, but by people who hate Russia. That is why Pam Bondi has done nothing and will do nothing about the Russia Hoax. The anti-Russia hatred must not be allowed to subside. Simes is an easy target for the Russia haters.
If he was an above-board messaging stooge for Russia, Iran, China or ten other noxious regimes, AND broadcasting directly to an Amercan audience about election issues (none of which seems to be at issue here), then I still should have a First Amendment right to hear what he has to say. Free speech is about the recipients of the message as much as the speaker.
This is about all 340 million of us as much as it is about an immigrant voice we should respect. I am a g-damn American and an adult. I can make up my own mind.
Interesting Matt. Hey, how about you and Walter get together for the book section only? You guys discussing literature is / was awesome and was an uplifting and not to be missed part of my week.
Listening to this interview is just another reminder of the incompetent failure of the united states as it relates to Russia. Starting with the Clinton administration and going forward, we should have truly helped Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. instead we disrespected them, ignored their plight. As a result, we got Vladimir Putin. Russia should have been put into the EU and NATO. Instead the woke youngsters in the Obama and Biden Administrations taunted them and allowed the demented old fool to talk. Simes is correct when he said the American government does not understand the consequences of bad decisions. Who do the Russian people have more in common with china or the western countries? We cannot afford to keep electing ideologically incompetent leaders any longer, they have miserably failed us.
Slimes most chilling comment for me was that the current generation of political experts know nothing of history and the world. How many more uninformed mistakes await us from these amateurs?
These are the same people who think Jews were not present in Israel until the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and just like that they started the "colonization" of Palestine.
Including Russia into the EU or NATO is anathema to the aims of the arms industries, pulling one leg out from under the triad of global enemies of the military/industrial complex. Way too much $$$ at stake.
Incompetent failure? Partly insofar as our NGO/consulting invasion had little appreciation and less respect for Russia as a nation and a culture. But also "corrupt" failure insofar as all our little helpers made a killing while trying to turn Russia into a facsimile of our market-based society. Putin is sort of a monster of our own making. Yegor Gaidar nailed this in real time.
It is so outrageous what the Administration under Joe Biden did to ruin America. To destroy our very foundation with their spying and persecution of their perceived political enemies, brought us to the brink of falling over the cliff into tyranny. I pray every day that we will never again elect such a cabal of evil monsters!
"In August, 2024, the FBI raided the Virginia home of Simes, who defected to the United States in 1973 after being expelled for protesting Soviet involvement in the Vietnam War."
then
"Well, let me say first, I was not a Russian citizen for a very long time. I became a Russian citizen in October 2022, when I moved to Moscow full-time. Before that, since 1980, I was strictly a proud American citizen."
Is it unreasonable to assume that had he not pursued and obtained Russian citizenship, he wouldn't have been targeted? He became a Russian citizen also. Questioning his allegiances is fair game.
And I say that well aware that all the Russia Russia Russia stuff was fabricated political poison.
He was a Soviet citizen before defecting--I mean fucking Komsomol. It's hardly a surprise that a native Russian Trump sympathizer would flee Biden's American Stasi and the New McCarthyism.
"Uncle Joe" Biden's 1934 Nuremberg-style rant literally designated every MAGA supporter as an enemy of the state--all he lacked was Leni Riefenstahl.
I feel similarly about dual-Israeli American citizens. But instead of hosting dumb TV shows in Russia they work in US politics, government, military, finance, media, and intelligence. The last two examples I admit are a bit redundant.
Do you not realize that every country in the world has wide spread intelligence gathering operations? Yes, Mossad is really good at it. That does not mean that Israel is not only a strong ally, but, until recently, the only the US has in the Mid East.
Sure. The difference is that he was a dissident who left, then went back and regained citizenship so that he was no longer "strictly a US citizen."
I'm against using the state security apparatus to demonize your opponents and advance your political narratives--a tactic heavily and egregiously employed by the last administration.
But people don't have to make it easy or give the security state a reason to target them.
The Biden Stasi only had one reason for everything--Get Trump. If you sympathized with MAGA you were marked out. They could make up everything from there. Getting a Russian born "enemy" was just gravy for Biden's jackboots.
Even if you APPEARED to sympathize with Trump, indeed, even if you were overtly neutral you were marked out. J6 was effectively the Reichstag Fire, it’s the thought that matters, as Hallmark tells us.
Oh sir, much larger amounts can be shifted by USAID projects, with no accountability. Art was the old way. And this gentleman reported and paid taxes on his Russian income. That’s not money laundering.
And then all the FBI agents involved in the case were fired, charged with violating the first amendment, breaking and entering, and were summarily sent to 10 years in prison each, right?
Agreed. What part of "crack down on Russia's attempts to influence American politics" is legal? By the First Amendment, ANYONE should be allowed to attempt to influence Americans -- even, and often *especially*, a government-declared enemy. Of course, the vast majority of the public is today unable to understand the point here, and TPTB have taken full advantage of that. Sickening.
Didnt we just go through a January news cycle about non-citizens having a ton of the same rights on US soil and infrastructure as US citizens have?
Therefore if russian agents speak on US soil and infrastructure, they get those rights too.
Right, New York Times? Right?
Oh not on that one huh....
Even if non-citizens didn't have those rights (to be clear, I do think they should have them on US soil), my point is that citizens themselves have the right to *receive* speech, not just *give* it. The government interfering with that exchange is clearly prohibited by First Amendment,
I'm sure America tries to influence elections in foreign countries, enemies and friends. If foreign citizens have access to the internet, they can be exposed to opinions and ideology from every corner of the globe. Maybe those massive NGO's which pour US money into those "poor" countries to aid the population (after the corrupt officials take their cuts) were set up to influence the opinions of those people to see the US as kind charitable friends. "See what democracy can do for you."
"I'm sure America tries to influence elections in foreign countries"
True. And many times they will trumpet this influence for all to see: For example, in the famous Time mag cover feature on how we propped up Yeltsin back in 1996.
The outrage here, however, is this idea that *Americans* can legally be prevented from *receiving* information/opinions/anything that the current government doesn't like. First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" PERIOD.
“I'm sure America tries to influence elections in foreign countries"
Let’s see, Ukraine, Georgia…
Nah. we didn't try to influence elections. We were too busy trying to make their maps "gay".
Ha!
Soon it may be seen as illegal to vote.
I would say, Americans have a right to learn what people in foreign countries and their governments think and are planning to do. What we learn is going to affect how we think, but it does not mean we are being brainwashed by foreign governments. We can weigh what they say against other evidence.
Right?
Bad enough that governments do what they do, but true shame hangs on the NYT for failing to stand up for the 1A. Cowards.
Less cowardice, more seditious in my view. If feels less like they are cowed into this silence and more like they are actively picking a “side.”
I doubt they feel fear about these things, more like they are the vanguard of some important force to save what they are in actuality destroying, the American media environment.
Thank you for this. I well remember Dmitri Simes as the go to pundit during the fall of the Soviet Union and subsequent events.
This is a perfect example of perhaps the greatest injury that Progressive World has inflicted on our political culture - the preference to defame the motives of your adversary rather than addressing their argument. Defamation has become the common currency of our political conversations. Sad to see Simes persecuted like this for not obeying the dominant narrative.
Matt we need a list and timeframe of all the people, like yourself, that got the 'knock' on the door. Rodger Stone got the full CNN bright lights in your face, and James O'Keefe, that somehow ended up with Biden's daughters 'diary', home was raided and somehow lost his Project Veritas company. How many more are on the list? Trump cannot come to the aid of this poor gentleman, because it will be spun as another 'Trump Russia' story. Biden's speech in front of the Independance Hall in Philly, will/should go down as a very dark time in U.S. history.
Trump can certainly come to the aid of this gentleman. That’s why we supposedly elected somebody to change the status quo
Compelling interview. This personal account is a sliver of light through a prism--a slice of real human life--from the incomprehensibly complex modern history of Obama-Biden, Hillary, Trump, Ukraine, and Russia. To coin a phrase, it's a global riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The darkness runs the gamut, from Uranium One and Hillary's Reset Button gift to Lavrov all the way through to Russians' intel targeting the US for Iran. It's impossible for an average American to fully grasp since the history is mostly classified and chock full of lies, propaganda, Fusion GPS style black ops, and corrupt US intelligence, law enforcement and diplomatic operations under Obama-Biden.
Did you know that they screwed up even the reset button? Because it didn't say "reset", it said "overload". Перезагрузка vs. перегрузка. Hillary took it soooo seriously she didn't bother to get a major in Russian to check.
Much of that global riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma in fact is the result of complete ignorance of history in general and Russian history in particular.
Was Churchill ignorant of history in general and Russian history in particular? He coined the phrase.
Obviously, Lenin, the Cheka, Stalin, the KGB, Putin, and the FSB have always promoted full disclosure and absolute transparency over the last century of Russian history. So, no excuse for mystery or, as you say, ignorance.
Well summarized.
I am surprised that Jared Kushner is not pushing Trump to drop the charges. I am not surprised that a U.S. judge is allowing this farce - but that sort of thing OUGHT to surprise us all. A good judge would dismiss this case as frivolous.
A good judge in Washington D.C. would survive as well as an abolitionist on a cotton plantation.
The NY Times is mad because it wants to control the news. 😂
We need the entire MSM gone.
We need them continually challenged and forever hung out to dry. Otherwise, today's alts become tomorrow's MSM.
What has happened to the treasures that the FBI removed from his home? It’s a reminder of the Nazis, taking Jewish possessions and just keeping them for themselves. This is wrong in a whole lot of different ways.
Matt, you’re up to your old tricks. You’d think Dmitri Simes was the second coming of I. F. Stone.
Say what you will about the U.S. case against Simes. You can argue about its merits. But it’s very misleading to claim this is a First Amendment case. The government didn’t say he was being investigated for his opinions or controversial views. As you yourself noted, Americans weren't even consuming his content. The allegations concern foreign influence, financial arrangements, and whether he was working on behalf of the Russian government.
According to prosecutors, Simes was paid around $1 million for work connected to Channel One Russia, a state controlled network, with payments structured to evade U.S. sanctions. He also reportedly ran an organization with ten employees and even had a private chauffeur, which hardly fits the image of a persecuted dissident journalist. He now appears to be living quite comfortably in Moscow. He might even be a neighbor of Konstantin Kilimnik in Moscow. Remember him? The lowly “translator” who somehow became Paul Manafort’s right hand man during the Trump campaign? Kilimnik reportedly now lives in a $2 million mansion next to a GRU compound.
The indictment explicitly lays out that it was his speech - the work he did hosting a news program - that triggered prosecutors. He was viewed as a Trump supporter who opposed U.S. aid to Ukraine, and would therefore persuade Americans in a certain direction. Even if he were spewing government propaganda, which he isn't - I didn't always agree with Simes but he's saying a lot of the things he always has - that would be legal, not just under the First Amendment but under this specific law, which has a legislative carve-out exempting all "informational materials" from these sanctions (look it up). More importantly, the whole thing is absurd. A Russian-born person hosts a TV show in Russia and we threaten him with forty years in jail for doing the job? Can you imagine what the world would look like if other countries began enforcing laws like this against us?
You know better than anyone how Russia works, Matt. Margarita Simonyan, the head of the Russian state media bragged that Russia had built “an enormous network… of covert projects.” A $1 million investment comes with strings in a ‘media company’, and Simes would know and accept this. Lesser men than him have been tossed out of windows for not complying. Struggling reporters can only dream of such budgets. And again, you don’t have access to the government’s evidence. You are on firmer ground saying the US has also planted phony news agencies abroad, which makes them uniquely qualified to recognize this for what it is. Be that as it may, your excluding this context makes your article deceptive at best.
I don’t know Matt what’s this got to do with anything when the price of gas is skyrocketing , trump is president and Cubans are forming bread lines.
Regarding Kilimnik, you might want to wait a little bit before sounding off about him.
Wait, do you know something you're not sharing? Pray tell. Has he crossed his handlers? Is he about to be defenestrated, now that would be quite a scoop.
without the teacher, the class clown has no stage.
since Matt has been busy of late, Mr. Wright has been feeling quite sad.
Russia evil, fine for the FBI to raid someone’s house and take everything, for what? Hosting a show in Russian for Russian speakers. Sure. Simes treatment and indictment is a speech issue, just another sign of the deep, incurable corruption of the US government. The fact that the Trump admin continues this is proof that Pam Bondi and his administration generally is just as bad.
Jeremy Corbyn hosted a show on Press TV haha.
I hate to ruin a good narrative, but as a business owner, I can tell you, a million dollars doesn't buy nearly as much as you seem to imagine it does when you have ten employees. How many years of operations did that million dollars cover? I mean if that is for a single year, then that's a decent budget. If that's for two years, with ten employees, then that's hardly slam dunk proof of someone selling out everything they believe in for what, maybe $200,000 in their actual pocket? If that's a three year deal, then yeah, that is in fact a struggling independent media organization, on a shoestring budget. Have you ever tried to pay ten people on $330,000 a year?
Yes, and let's not forget the chauffeur. How many bloggers and small businessmen get driven around by a chauffeur? Which only raises more questions. Which is all to say there is probably much more than meet's Matt Taibbi's eye.
During the Cold War I remember Simes speaking with his heavy Russian accent on American TV and sounding very reasonable, which pleasantly surprised me. That is the problem.
The DoJ is controlled, not by Trump, but by people who hate Russia. That is why Pam Bondi has done nothing and will do nothing about the Russia Hoax. The anti-Russia hatred must not be allowed to subside. Simes is an easy target for the Russia haters.
I think your perspective is perhaps the closest to the central issue of WHY the US govt is going after Dmitri. Thank you!
If he was an above-board messaging stooge for Russia, Iran, China or ten other noxious regimes, AND broadcasting directly to an Amercan audience about election issues (none of which seems to be at issue here), then I still should have a First Amendment right to hear what he has to say. Free speech is about the recipients of the message as much as the speaker.
This is about all 340 million of us as much as it is about an immigrant voice we should respect. I am a g-damn American and an adult. I can make up my own mind.
Interesting Matt. Hey, how about you and Walter get together for the book section only? You guys discussing literature is / was awesome and was an uplifting and not to be missed part of my week.
Anything! I certainly do miss their show.
Listening to this interview is just another reminder of the incompetent failure of the united states as it relates to Russia. Starting with the Clinton administration and going forward, we should have truly helped Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. instead we disrespected them, ignored their plight. As a result, we got Vladimir Putin. Russia should have been put into the EU and NATO. Instead the woke youngsters in the Obama and Biden Administrations taunted them and allowed the demented old fool to talk. Simes is correct when he said the American government does not understand the consequences of bad decisions. Who do the Russian people have more in common with china or the western countries? We cannot afford to keep electing ideologically incompetent leaders any longer, they have miserably failed us.
Slimes most chilling comment for me was that the current generation of political experts know nothing of history and the world. How many more uninformed mistakes await us from these amateurs?
Indeed. And how many of the current crop of amateurs even are aware of the danger posed by their ignorance, or better yet, even care?
These are the same people who think Jews were not present in Israel until the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and just like that they started the "colonization" of Palestine.
I’ve never understood that lunacy. Jews were in the Levante long before Mohammad decapitated his first non believer victim.
Including Russia into the EU or NATO is anathema to the aims of the arms industries, pulling one leg out from under the triad of global enemies of the military/industrial complex. Way too much $$$ at stake.
Sadly true but that’s a big part of the problem.
Incompetent failure? Partly insofar as our NGO/consulting invasion had little appreciation and less respect for Russia as a nation and a culture. But also "corrupt" failure insofar as all our little helpers made a killing while trying to turn Russia into a facsimile of our market-based society. Putin is sort of a monster of our own making. Yegor Gaidar nailed this in real time.
It is so outrageous what the Administration under Joe Biden did to ruin America. To destroy our very foundation with their spying and persecution of their perceived political enemies, brought us to the brink of falling over the cliff into tyranny. I pray every day that we will never again elect such a cabal of evil monsters!
I was wondering what had become of Dmitri. Thanks for the interview, but it only feeds my growing concern about threat to free speech.
"In August, 2024, the FBI raided the Virginia home of Simes, who defected to the United States in 1973 after being expelled for protesting Soviet involvement in the Vietnam War."
then
"Well, let me say first, I was not a Russian citizen for a very long time. I became a Russian citizen in October 2022, when I moved to Moscow full-time. Before that, since 1980, I was strictly a proud American citizen."
Is it unreasonable to assume that had he not pursued and obtained Russian citizenship, he wouldn't have been targeted? He became a Russian citizen also. Questioning his allegiances is fair game.
And I say that well aware that all the Russia Russia Russia stuff was fabricated political poison.
He pursued Russian citizenship when they were our friends, ostensibly.
He was a Soviet citizen before defecting--I mean fucking Komsomol. It's hardly a surprise that a native Russian Trump sympathizer would flee Biden's American Stasi and the New McCarthyism.
"Uncle Joe" Biden's 1934 Nuremberg-style rant literally designated every MAGA supporter as an enemy of the state--all he lacked was Leni Riefenstahl.
I feel similarly about dual-Israeli American citizens. But instead of hosting dumb TV shows in Russia they work in US politics, government, military, finance, media, and intelligence. The last two examples I admit are a bit redundant.
Israel is an ally of the US. Russia is not.
You need to inform the Mossad of this distinction.
Do you not realize that every country in the world has wide spread intelligence gathering operations? Yes, Mossad is really good at it. That does not mean that Israel is not only a strong ally, but, until recently, the only the US has in the Mid East.
Sure. The difference is that he was a dissident who left, then went back and regained citizenship so that he was no longer "strictly a US citizen."
I'm against using the state security apparatus to demonize your opponents and advance your political narratives--a tactic heavily and egregiously employed by the last administration.
But people don't have to make it easy or give the security state a reason to target them.
The Biden Stasi only had one reason for everything--Get Trump. If you sympathized with MAGA you were marked out. They could make up everything from there. Getting a Russian born "enemy" was just gravy for Biden's jackboots.
Even if you APPEARED to sympathize with Trump, indeed, even if you were overtly neutral you were marked out. J6 was effectively the Reichstag Fire, it’s the thought that matters, as Hallmark tells us.
Additionally, high level ML is performed with paintings. I’ll have to sit my opinion on this one out until more information becomes available.
Oh sir, much larger amounts can be shifted by USAID projects, with no accountability. Art was the old way. And this gentleman reported and paid taxes on his Russian income. That’s not money laundering.