Hermitage Capital Founder Testifies That Fusion GPS (Trump Dossier Creator) Worked For Russian Government

A few weeks ago we wrote a post entitled "How Hermitage Capital, Ziff Brothers And The Clinton Global Initiative Prompted The Trump Jr. Meeting."  To make a long story short, there is a long-standing feud between the founder of Hermitage Capital, William Browder, and the now infamous Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump Jr. last summer.  Browder, on the one hand, lobbied in favor of the Magnitsky Act after being expelled from Russia under controversial circumstances while Veselnitskaya has made it her life"s mission to repeal the Magnitsky Act.

So, when Democrats decided to haul Browder before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, they likely expected the anti-Russian witness to confirm that Russian intelligence was behind the Summer 2016 meeting between Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr. and that the meeting really had nothing to do with the Magnitsky Act but rather was a carefully-plotted, nefarious attempt to collude with the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. 

Unfortunately, at least for the Dems, he failed to deliver.  In fact, Browder delivered the exact opposite message from what the Democrats had hoped for as he confirmed that the Trump Jr. meeting was entirely linked to Veselnitskaya"s life mission of repealing the Magnitsky Act. 

But, Browder offered up an even more interesting tidbit of information, a tidbit that has been completely ignored by the mainstream media, that served to undermine the left"s entire "Russian collusion" narrative when he confirmed that Fusion GPS, the now infamous firm behind the "Trump Dossier", was actually being paid by....wait for it....the Russians.

While we"re certainly not experts on the intricacies of international espionage, it does seem weird that if your sole mission in life is to "collude" with the Trump administration to defeat Hillary Clinton that you would simultaneously fund research intended to undermine the Trump campaign and then share that information with the FBI.

Here is the relevant exchange between Lindsey Graham and William Browder:

Graham: You believe that Fusion GPS should of registered under FARA, because they were acting on the behalf of the Russians?

Browder: That’s correct.

Graham: So, I just want to absorb that for a moment. The group that did the dossier on President Trump hired this British spy, wound up getting it to the FBI. You believe they were working for the Russians?

Browder: And in the Spring and Summer of 2016 they were receiving money indirectly from a senior Russian government official.

Graham: Okay. So, these are the people that were trying to undermine Donald Trump by showing the nefarious ties to Russia. Is that what you’re saying?

Browder: Well, what I’m saying with 100% certainty is that they were working to undermine the Magnitsky act and the timing of that.

Graham: But, the Fusion GPS products apparently as they hired a guy to look into Trump?

Browder: Yes.

Graham: Right.

Browder: Correct.

Ironically, as Sarah Sanders pointed out at yesterday"s White House press briefing, not a single reporter from the mainstream media, the folks that have reported on "Russian meddling" 24/7 for the past year, bothered to ask a question about this new evidence that the Russians conspired to undermine the U.S. election....wonder why?

“You guys love to talk about Russia. There’s been nonstop coverage, and the one day that there might have been a question on Russia, there wasn’t. 

“Today there was public testimony that further discredited the phony dossier that’s been the source of so much of the fake news and conspiracy theories, and we learned that the firm that produced it was also being paid by the Russians."

“This is yet the latest piece of evidence that vindicates what the president has said: that this is a witch hunt and a hoax. And it’s a shame that the president and the country have had to go through this charade continually. And hopefully this will help us move forward in that process."

Buchanan Asks "Is Putin The 'Preeminent Statesman' Of Our Times?"

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

“If we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the preeminent statesman of our time.

“On the world stage, who could vie with him?”

So asks Chris Caldwell of the Weekly Standard in a remarkable essay in Hillsdale College’s March issue of its magazine, Imprimis.

What elevates Putin above all other 21st-century leaders?

“When Putin took power in the winter of 1999-2000, his country was defenseless. It was bankrupt. It was being carved up by its new kleptocratic elites, in collusion with its old imperial rivals, the Americans. Putin changed that.

“In the first decade of this century, he did what Kemal Ataturk had done in Turkey in the 1920s. Out of a crumbling empire, he resurrected a national-state, and gave it coherence and purpose. He disciplined his country’s plutocrats. He restored its military strength. And he refused, with ever blunter rhetoric, to accept for Russia a subservient role in an American-run world system drawn up by foreign politicians and business leaders. His voters credit him with having saved his country.”

Putin’s approval rating, after 17 years in power, exceeds that of any rival Western leader. But while his impressive strides toward making Russia great again explain why he is revered at home and in the Russian diaspora, what explains Putin’s appeal in the West, despite a press that is every bit as savage as President Trump’s?

Answer: Putin stands against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be. Years ago, he aligned himself with traditionalists, nationalists and populists of the West, and against what they had come to despise in their own decadent civilization.

What they abhorred, Putin abhorred. He is a God-and-country Russian patriot. He rejects the New World Order established at the Cold War’s end by the United States. Putin puts Russia first.

And in defying the Americans he speaks for those millions of Europeans who wish to restore their national identities and recapture their lost sovereignty from the supranational European Union. Putin also stands against the progressive moral relativism of a Western elite that has cut its Christian roots to embrace secularism and hedonism.

The U.S. establishment loathes Putin because, they say, he is an aggressor, a tyrant, a “killer.” He invaded and occupies Ukraine. His old KGB comrades assassinate journalists, defectors and dissidents.

Yet while politics under both czars and commissars has often been a blood sport in Russia, what has Putin done to his domestic enemies to rival what our Arab ally Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has done to the Muslim Brotherhood he overthrew in a military coup in Egypt?

What has Putin done to rival what our NATO ally President Erdogan has done in Turkey, jailing 40,000 people since last July’s coup — or our Philippine ally Rodrigo Duterte, who has presided over the extrajudicial killing of thousands of drug dealers?

Does anyone think President Xi Jinping would have handled mass demonstrations against his regime in Tiananmen Square more gingerly than did President Putin this last week in Moscow?

Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West, when standing up for Russia’s interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.

He not only remains popular in his own country, but has admirers in nations whose political establishments are implacably hostile to him.

In December, one poll found 37 percent of all Republicans had a favorable view of the Russian leader, but only 17 percent were positive on President Barack Obama.

There is another reason Putin is viewed favorably. Millions of ethnonationalists who wish to see their nations secede from the EU see him as an ally. While Putin has openly welcomed many of these movements, America’s elite do not take even a neutral stance.

Putin has read the new century better than his rivals. While the 20th century saw the world divided between a Communist East and a free and democratic West, new and different struggles define the 21st.

The new dividing lines are between social conservatism and self-indulgent secularism, between tribalism and transnationalism, between the nation-state and the New World Order.

On the new dividing lines, Putin is on the side of the insurgents. Those who envision de Gaulle’s Europe of Nations replacing the vision of One Europe, toward which the EU is heading, see Putin as an ally.

So the old question arises: Who owns the future?

In the new struggles of the new century, it is not impossible that Russia — as was America in the Cold War — may be on the winning side. Secessionist parties across Europe already look to Moscow rather than across the Atlantic.

“Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism,” writes Caldwell. “That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that’s true even here.”

Watch Live: Navalny Arrested As Opposition Protests Sweep Russia

In a day of anti-corruption protests across Russia, thousands of people crowded into Moscow"s Pushkin Square on Sunday for an unsanctioned protest against the Russian government, part of a wave of demonstrations taking place throughout the country. For the Moscow demonstration, around 8,000 people took to the streets according to police. As the rally continued, police used loudspeakers to call on the protesters to disperse. A number of people were detained for disorderly conduct, among whom was the prominent leader of the anti-Putin opposition.

Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is leading the opposition to President Vladimir Putin, was arrested while walking from a nearby subway station to the demonstration, according to Associated Press journalists at the scene.

Opposition figure Aleksey Navalny waves as he sits inside a police van after
after being detained during a rally in Moscow, Russia, March 26, 2017

Navalny and his Foundation for Fighting Corruption had called for the protests, which attracted crowds of hundreds or thousands in most sizeable Russian cities, from the Far East port of Vladivostok to the European heartland. The protests were the largest coordinated outpourings of dissatisfaction in Russia since the massive 2011-12 demonstrations that followed a fraud-tainted parliamentary election.

There were no immediate figures on the demonstration size in Moscow, but the one-hectare Pushkin Square was densely crowded as were sidewalks on the adjacent Tverskaya Street, suggesting that more than 10,000 people had showed up. Law enforcement say that somebody sprayed “irritant gas” in the square, but rejected reports that it was part of a police action.

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— An Bo (@ann_bo_) March 26, 2017

Scuffles with police erupted sporadically and some demonstrators were arrested, including a gray-haired man whom police dragged along the pavement. "It"s scary, but if everyone is afraid, no one would come out onto the streets," said 19-year-old Yana Aksyonova, explaining why she attended.

According to AP, the protests Sunday focused on reports by Navalny"s group claiming that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has amassed a collection of mansions, yachts and vineyards. The alleged luxuries include a house for raising ducks, so many placards in Sunday"s protests showed mocking images of yellow duck toys.

"People are unhappy with the fact that there"s been no investigation" of the corruption allegations, said Moscow protester Ivan Gronstein.

Protests, some sanctioned and others in violation of a municipal ban, also took place in other Russian cities on Sunday, including Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, and Vladivostok.

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— Egor Sakhonenko (@EgorSakhonenko) March 26, 2017

In the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, police forcefully detained some demonstrators near the city"s railway terminal, in one case falling down a small grassy slope as they wrestled with a detainee.

In St. Petersburg, an unsanctioned opposition rally was held just next to another unconnected gathering of demonstrators who rallied for traditional values. Police estimated the number of participants in the opposition event at around 3,000 in St. Petersburg, and said that three individuals were facing administrative action for minor violations.

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— ??????? ?????? (@ars_ves) March 26, 2017

The rally in Novosibirsk, which was sanctioned by the local authorities after a court ordered them to overturn a ban, attracted around 1,500 people, according to the mayor’s office. At another sanctioned event in Tomsk, around 400 protesters showed up, according to local law enforcement.

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— d (@ltfitw) March 26, 2017

In Vladivostok, 25 activists have been detained by police for trying to violate a ban on public gatherings. Police released those detained shortly afterwards. The usual procedure for such cases of detention (which is not an actual "arrest") is to identify the individuals for potential administrative action and then release them.

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— ??????? ?????? (@ars_ves) March 26, 2017

Some demonstrators showed up with their faces painted green, a reference to a recent attack on Navalny when an assailant threw a green antiseptic liquid onto his face.

It is unlikely that anti-Putin sentiment will sweep Russia, however. As recently as last Devember, the approval rating of the Russian President hit a near-record high reaching 86.8%. according to the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VTSIOM). The share of respondents who said that they trusted the president was at 62.1 percent, a slight rise from 61.3 percent a week ago, trending upwards from the 59.2 percent recorded in early December.

Live from Moscow:

You Cannot Have The Attorney General Lying Under Oath

By EconMatters

We discuss the Jeff Sessions controversy in this video for the Trump Administration, and why it is obvious that Sessions needs to step down, as it is bad precedent for the Attorney General to be caught lying under oath at the confirmation hearings.

The problem for Sessions is that if nothing went on in the Russia Meetings, the fact that he at the very least, would lie or purposely mislead just to avoid the "Negative Russia Appearances Issue" which he knew full well what he was really being questioned about in the confirmation hearings, means Sessions routinely lies about trivial political issues when it serves his interests. This approach is just untenable for the Attorney General of the United States, he has damaged all positional credibility going forward in his role as attorney general.

The other possibility is that Sessions is lying under oath to cover up the obvious Russia Connection that both the Trump Campaign and the Russians benefited from digging up as much dirt on the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton and winning the Presidential Election. So both Russia`s interests were aligned with Trump`s interests in defeating the Democratic Party in the Election, and did they coordinate actions, intelligence, briefings and influence in any manner?

Just the fact that this is even up for debate given our history with Russia is a sad state of affairs. Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave giving all this praise and cozying up to Russia in any way. Putin is a rogue dictator, and Russia will ultimately be better off when Putin is out of office from a domestic standpoint over the long haul. Putin has destroyed Russia under his tenure, the sooner Russia citizens can get his regime out of office, the sooner that country can get some real much needed political and social reforms.

The bigger point is that Trump and his Lieutenants have no business having all these meetings with Russia period, quit giving them all this access to your cabinet and administration. Russia is not our friend, and never has been. And nothing that has occurred during the Putin regime indicates Russia is a good geo-political ally or friend in dealing with any geo-political issues that the United States faces going forward.

And I didn`t even get to the fact that Russia interfered with our Democratic Election process, and that is unacceptable for the most powerful nation in the world. They need to be punished severely for this behavior, otherwise they will just become emboldened to meddle in any issue here in the United States where it suits their needs. This is just a bad precedent, and a strong message will have to be sent!

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