Yes, Sidney Powell & Rudy Giuliani are "Legal Geniuses" (trademark pending) as they hold a press conference to utter and publish accusations that "The Elected Ones" of the politically stratified districts under John Conyers, Jr. were rift with public corruption.
I say we investigate!
Or, have we already?
I say Sidney and Rudy should go ask Rashida if there is still political corruption of criminal activities still going on in her congressional district.
Oh, Sidney and Rudy should go ask Rashida to call for an investigation into these alleged treasonous activities of Detroit by filing, first, with the U.S. Committee on Ethics.
Drats!
I forgot, that was already done, quite a few times, if I correctly recall.
Anyway, just watch them do the legal dilatory distraction dance, because we are already in Detroit, just watching the world realize, that the heavens are falling because this is about gerrymandering, or rather, stealin' the children, land & vote.
Watch Sidney and Rudy not say his name as they speak upon Detroit and Voting Rights, while demanding due process, but not for my Sweetie.
You know I know you know there are two other Horowitz IG Reports that have yet to see the light of day.
Actually, there is an entire slew of Horowitz IG Reports that have yet to see the light of day, being referred to DOJ, who then, deferred to the Districts, where, some of them have Grand Juries, but, hey, what do I know?
What about Michael Flynn?
He plead guilty, twice.
You do know Boo Boo Barr knows more than he is doing, right?
Hey, Lindesy,
How come Barb knows more about the Mueller investigation than you?
FBI lawyer charged with altering an email for Page FISA application clearly violated law, but consider what this is and is not. This does not change fact that DOJ IG found Russia investigation was properly opened 11 months BEFORE this conduct occurred. https://t.co/xQwRiu24Ro
Weissmann weighed in following reports Friday that Clinesmith intends to plead guilty to falsifying a document that was part of the FBI's justification for wiretapping former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as part of the 2016 investigation into Russian election interference.
"Question for [U.S. Attorney General William Barr]: how are [former national security adviser Michael Flynn's] confessed lies to the FBI (repeated to the VP) not a crime, but Clinesmith changing an email (the full version of which he also sent to DOJ) is?" Weissmann tweeted, referencing the Justice Department's controversial move to withdraw its case against Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Weissmann later asserted that there were "two systems of justice at play."
"Questions judge should ask before accepting Clinesmith guilty plea: What precisely is the falsity of the statement that Clinesmith made? What investigation was it material to?" he tweeted.
Questions judge should ask before accepting Clinesmith guilty plea:
What precisely is the falsity of the statement that Clinesmith made?
What investigation was it material to?
He gave DOJ accurate information for the Page FISA?
How does the Barr materiality std for Flynn apply?
Question for Barr: how are Flynn’s confessed lies to the FBI (repeated to the VP) not a crime, but Clinesmith changing an email (the full version of which he also sent to DOJ) is?
— Andrew Weissmann (@AWeissmann_) August 14, 2020
The charge against Clinesmith marks the first criminal case arising from the probe led by U.S. Attorney John Durham. The Justice Department alleges that the former FBI attorney altered an email to say that Page was not a source for the CIA, even though Page had had a relationship with the agency.
Georgia state trooper charged with murder after fatally shooting man...
Clinesmith’s lawyers on Friday said this was unintentional.
“Kevin deeply regrets having altered the email. It was never his intent to mislead the court or his colleagues as he believed the information he relayed was accurate. But Kevin understands what he did was wrong and accepts responsibility,” his lawyers told The Washington Post.
The DOJ's probe into Clinesmith came at Barr's behest after a report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI’s application to a court to obtain permission to monitor Page.
The Audit did not address the validity of elections, but the integrity of the Qualified Voter Files (QVF), effectiveness of access to controls of the QVF Refresh System, training of election officials, and compliance to Campaign Finance Act, Lobbyist, Lobbying Agents and Lobbying Activities Act (LLALAA) and Casino Interest Registration Act (CIRA).
The report did not address state meshed databases with th e Secretary of State and local property tax records, which are sold to third parties like Lexis Nexis, where the data are highly toxic, being really corrupt using maiden names and wrong property address descriptions.
Michigan’s Bureau of Elections failed to implement proper controls over the state’s file of 7.5 million qualified voters, a discrepancy that allowed an unauthorized user to access the file and increased the risk of an ineligible elector voting in Michigan, according to a recent report from the Office of Auditor General.
Elections officials lack proper training in more than 14% of counties, cities and townships, the audit found. And the bureau did not make timely reviews for a majority of campaign statements, lobby reports and campaign finance complaints.
The audit conducted between Oct. 1, 2016, and April 30, 2019, found in the qualified voter file “230 registered electors who had an age that was greater than 122 years, the oldest officially documented person to ever live,” according to the Friday report.
The reviewed information fell largely under the tenure of Republican former Secretary of State Ruth Johnson. Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson took office Jan. 1.
The audit did not review the implementation of Proposals 2 and 3, which were passed by voters in November 2018. The proposals change how political lines are drawn and allow no-reason absentee voting.
The bureau, which falls under the Secretary of State’s purview, had 35 employees at the end of fiscal year 2018 and spent $24.6 million that year.
The bureau has begun to address some of the areas in the report and will continue to make improvements through 2020, according to Jake Rollow, a spokesman for Benson.
Among those changes are adding the state's first election security specialists, expanded risk-limit audits and future implementation of recommendations from the election security advisory committee.
"Our elections are secure — the audit did not find any instances of illegal voting or improper modification of voter registration records — and the Bureau of Elections is continually updating its election security infrastructure," Rollow said in a statement.
Despite the reportable and material conditions it noted, the audit found the Bureau of Elections largely was "sufficient" when it came to maintaining the integrity of the voter file, training election officials and complying with the Campaign Finance Act, and was "moderately effective" in applying access controls over the qualified voter file system.
The bureau agreed to make changes to address the four conditions noted by the audit, one of which included incomplete election training among election officials in 12 counties, 38 cities and 290 townships.
The bureau noted that those numbers largely include those who have not completed continuing education, while participation in initial accreditation programs remains “extremely high.”
The bureau agreed to explore more controls over the qualified voter file but noted there wasn’t “a single verified case that an ineligible person voted” among the cases reviewed by the auditor.
Officials said further investigation was needed on the 230 individuals identified by the audit to confirm their birth dates, noting that the discrepancy might be a result of a system the bureau uses to identify information it needed to investigate further.
“Individuals with no recorded date of birth have been deliberately coded with an implausible birth date (such as 5/5/1850) to more clearly indicate records needing further follow-up,” the report said.
The unauthorized user was a former employee, the bureau said, but there was no modification or destruction of records in the qualified voter file in the period reviewed.
The bureau also agreed to work with local election officials to avoid clerical errors in voter history, but noted that since Michigan is a decentralized system “this is legally a local — note state — responsibility.”
The audit found the Bureau of Elections did not provide timely reviews of 79% of campaign statements, 42% of lobby reports and 67% of campaign finance complaints selected for the audit.
The bureau said it will continue to work to meet the five-day complaint response window and the 10-day lobby report window, but said it could not “realistically meet” the four-day window to review campaign statements.
The bureau “indicated that it will work to seek staffing increases that would allow for full review within the timeframes required, as well as a possible legislative change to lengthen the four-day review requirement,” the report said.
The nation's top intelligence official is illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint, possibly to protect President Donald Trump or senior White House officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff alleged Friday.
Schiff issued a subpoena for the complaint, accusing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of taking extraordinary steps to withhold the complaint from Congress, even after the intel community's inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of "urgent concern."
“A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the [inspector general] determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional intelligence committees. Never," Schiff said in a statement. "This raises serious concerns about whether White House, Department of Justice or other executive branch officials are trying to prevent a legitimate whistleblower complaint from reaching its intended recipient, the Congress, in order to cover up serious misconduct."
Schiff indicated that he learned the matter involved "potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community," raising the specter that it is "being withheld to protect the President or other Administration officials." In addition, Schiff slammed Maguire for consulting the Justice Department about the whistleblower complaint "even though the statute does not provide you discretion to review, appeal, reverse, or countermand in any way the [inspector general's] independent determination, let alone to involve another entity within the Executive Branch."
"The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials," Schiff wrote in a letter to Maguire on Friday.
The initial whistleblower complaint was filed last month, and Schiff indicated that it was required by law to be shared with Congress nearly two weeks ago. His subpoena requires the information to be turned over by Sept. 17 or else he intends to compel Maguire to appear before Congress in a public hearing on Sept. 19.
Schiff said Maguire declined to confirm or deny whether the whistleblower's complaint relates to anything the Intelligence Committee is currently investigating or whether White House lawyers were involved in the decision-making about the complaint.
Officials in Maguire’s office acknowledged Schiff’s subpoena late Friday.
“We received the HPSCI's subpoena this evening. We are reviewing the request and will respond appropriately,” said a senior intelligence official. “The ODNI and Acting DNI Maguire are committed to fully complying with the law and upholding whistleblower protections and have done so here.”
The Mueller testimony to House Judiciary has been rescheduled for July 24, 2019, the same date of the Detroit NAACP 2020 Presidential Campaign Kickoff.
The Detroit Democratic 2020 Presidential Candidates Debate seamlessly opens up right after the NAACP event.
Alas, Trump continues to obstruct justice by failing to remove the IG Report from his backpocket, for classified reasons, of course.
Putin has a similar backpocket obstruction dilemma with declassification.
But, what if everything was unsealed before the Flynn-Kian sentencing?
What if everything was unsealed during Mueller's testimony to Judiciary?
What if Mueller never gets a chance to testify to Judiciary due to the Detroit-Grand Rapids Grand Juries unsealings, but, hey, what do I know?
I know I have to make sure Hamtramck watches this one!
I also wonder what is Dawud Walid up to, now-a-days?
Oh, this is going to be champagne buffet-style worthy because he never went away.
DOJ is coming from all directions, even from the pension side.
We already know what he is going to find, because he already found it, which is why the real show is going to be the art of the inquiry, because you already know there are going to be #coloredrevolutions and #clownfests, for they have no clue of what is coming....but hey, what do I know?
I know why Trump is obstructing justice by keeping that IG Report in his back pocket.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut to examine the origins of the Russia investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter, a move that President Trump has long called for but that could anger law enforcement officials who insist that scrutiny of the Trump campaign was lawful.
John H. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, has a history of serving as a special prosecutor investigating potential wrongdoing among national security officials, including the F.B.I.’s ties to a crime boss in Boston and accusations of C.I.A. abuses of detainees.
His inquiry is the third known investigation focused on the opening of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation during the 2016 presidential campaign into possible ties between Russia’s election interference and Trump associates.
The department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is separately examining investigators’ use of wiretap applications and informants and whether any political bias against Mr. Trump influenced investigative decisions. And John W. Huber, the United States attorney in Utah, has been reviewing aspects of the Russia investigation. His findings have not been announced.
Additionally on Capitol Hill, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he, too, intends to review aspects of law enforcement’s work in the coming months. And Republicans conducted their own inquiries when they controlled the House, including publicizing details of the F.B.I.’s wiretap use.
Thomas Carson, a spokesman for Mr. Durham’s office, declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. “I do have people in the department helping me review the activities over the summer of 2016,” Mr. Barr said in congressional testimony on May 1, without elaborating.
Mr. Durham, who was nominated by Mr. Trump in 2017 and has been a Justice Department lawyer since 1982, has conducted special investigations under administrations of both parties. Attorney General Janet Reno asked Mr. Durham in 1999 to investigate the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious informant: the organized crime leader James (Whitey) Bulger.
In 2008, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey assigned Mr. Durham to investigate the C.I.A.’s destruction of videotapes in 2005 showing the torture of terrorism suspects. A year later, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. expanded Mr. Durham’s mandate to also examine whether the agency broke any laws in its abuses of detainees in its custody.
Mr. Barr has signaled his concerns about the Russia investigation during congressional testimony, particularly the surveillance of Trump associates. “I think spying did occur,” he said. “The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”
His use of the term “spying” to describe court-authorized surveillance aimed at understanding a foreign government’s interference in the election touched off criticism that he was echoing politically charged accusations by Mr. Trump and his Republican allies that the F.B.I. unfairly targeted the Trump campaign.
Last week, the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, defended the bureau, saying he was unaware of any illegal surveillance and refused to call agents’ work “spying.” Former F.B.I. and Justice Department officials have defended the genesis of the investigation, saying it was properly predicated.
Yet Mr. Durham’s role — essentially giving him a special assignment but no special powers — also appeared aimed at sidestepping the rare appointment of another special counsel like Robert S. Mueller III, a role that allows greater day-to-day independence.
Mr. Trump and House Republicans have long pushed senior Justice Department officials to appoint one to investigate the president’s perceived political enemies and why Mr. Trump’s associates were under surveillance.
Mr. Trump’s calls to investigate the investigators have grown after the findings from Mr. Mueller were revealed last month. Mr. Mueller’s investigators cited “insufficient evidence” to determine that the president or his advisers engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia.
The Mueller report reaffirmed that the F.B.I. opened its investigation based on legitimate factors, including revelations that a Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, had told a diplomat from Australia, a close American ally, that he was informed that the Russians had stolen Democratic emails.
“It would have been highly, highly inappropriate for us not to pursue it — and pursue it aggressively,” James Baker, who was the F.B.I.’s general counsel in 2016, said in an interview on Friday
As part of the early Russia inquiry, the F.B.I. investigated four Trump associates: Mr. Papadopoulos; Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman; Michael T. Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser; and Carter Page, another campaign foreign policy adviser.
Mr. Flynn and Mr. Papadopoulos later pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. as part of the inquiry; Mr. Manafort was also convicted of tax fraud and other charges brought by the special counsel, who took over the investigation in May 2017, and pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors also obtained approval from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page after he left the campaign. Mr. Trump’s allies have pointed to the warrant as major evidence that law enforcement officials were abusing their authority, but the investigation was opened based on separate information and the warrant was one small aspect in a sprawling inquiry that grew to include more than 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants and about 500 witness interviews.
Law enforcement officials have also drawn intense criticism for using an informant — a typical investigative step — to secretly report on Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos after they left the campaign and for relying on Democrat-funded opposition research compiled into a dossier by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who was also an F.B.I. informant.
Investigators cited the dossier in a lengthy footnote in its application for permission to wiretap Mr. Page, alerting the court that the person who commissioned Mr. Steele’s research was “likely looking for information to discredit” the Trump campaign.
The inspector general is said to be examining whether law enforcement officials intentionally misled the intelligence court, which also approved three renewals of the warrant. The last application in June 2017 was signed by Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who defended the decision last month in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Horowitz is also said to be scrutinizing how the F.B.I. handled Mr. Steele and another informant, Stefan A. Halper, an American academic who taught in Britain. Agents asked Mr. Halper to determine whether Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos were in contact with Russians. Mr. Barr has said the inspector general could finish his inquiry in May or June.
Mr. Durham is also investigating whether Mr. Baker made unauthorized disclosures to the news media, according to two House Republicans closely allied with Mr. Trump, Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who disclosed in a letter to Mr. Durham in January that they had learned of that inquiry.
While they implied that it was related to the Russia investigation, another witness in Mr. Durham’s inquiry into Mr. Baker, Robert Litt, the former general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, came forward to say that he had been interviewed and that the investigation has nothing to do with Russia. Mr. Baker said last week that he was confident he had done nothing wrong and would be exonerated.
Ah, the sweet smell of predictive modeling crap, a product of the "Legal Geniuses" (trademark pending), transposed to Detroit, in a really, really spectacular way.
It has dawned on me that I have been telling this tale, in real time, but just did not realize it.
I know LeAnn Kirrmann says this is fake news, but have no fear, I have provided her with direct contact information to the Detroit FBI and Detroit Free Press to correct the record.
If you have any information about this story, please, reach out to the Detroit FBI 313-965-2323 or phoward@freepress.com.
Detroit needs more cocktails & popcorn because we are just getting started.
Paul Whelan of Novi, imprisoned in a czarist-era Russian prison on spy charges, would attract the notice of any seasoned intelligence team, a former CIA covert operations officer told the Free Press on Thursday.
"As long as there are nation states, there will be espionage. It is a very real threat and even more so today," said retired agent Valerie Plame, now an author who was famously outed as a spy during the second Bush administration.
"The Cold War was a bipolar world. We had one big enemy. Now, with the rise of nuclear terrorism, rogue nation states and a very active Russia and China, in the espionage realm," said Plame, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Plame, who noted she was a little sore from hiking the Grand Canyon, described an unpredictable international landscape where anything is possible and everything must be considered.
Whelan, 48, an executive with the auto parts manufacturer BorgWarner in Auburn Hills, was picked up by Russian authorities on Dec. 28 on suspicion of spying. His twin brother said the ex-Marine, whose military record included a larceny conviction, was in Russia for a friend's wedding. The Russians indicted Whelan on Thursday.
Russian media said Friday he was arrested in a Moscow hotel after receiving a flash drive with the names of workers at a classified security agency.
"There do seem to be real question marks around this story, at least in the public domain," Plame said. "That he was discharged from the military, from the Marines, dishonorably. That he's got this big interest in Russia; he travels there a lot. Huh? He's an auto parts guy? Really? I don't know. He could be completely innocent. The Kremlin could be trying to be provocative. Or there could be something there."
As a career CIA agent who can't safely confirm publicly the length of her undercover career, Plame said international threats are real. And Americans must take them seriously.
"By and large, I am quite alarmed at the intensity and depth that Russia has gone to disrupt all of our systems," she said. "They have sown chaos and they have done it really well. They have sown doubt in our electoral system. I think that is very serious. It goes to the very heart of our belief in our democracy and our way of life."
Plame expressed concern about America's ability to navigate the geopolitical situation with so much transition in Washington, including the government shutdown. She said the U.S. State Department has "really atrophied and really suffered under this presidency."
"For all we know, the people that might be in that office might not be reporting to work because of the government shutdown," Plame said.
She hoped that State Department officials were communicating regularly with the Whelan family.
"They're probably best advised to say nothing right now. The situation is so muddy that I think adding to it would be detrimental to Mr. Whelan's eventual release from captivity."
Is it possible he could be a spy? "It is not inconceivable," Plame said.
She noted, "There are many Americans that seek to serve their country in various ways. That's probably all I should say."
History of spying
Spy agencies in America have a history of relying on global companies to assist with intelligence collection, say historians who specialize in espionage.
To date, no evidence has been made public that ties Whelan to the CIA or the National Security Agency. The American, who had a work history in law enforcement, faces up to 20 years behind bars if convicted of espionage.
He has been a security specialist for the automotive parts supplier BorgWarner since 2017.
Previously, he worked for Kelly Services, a temporary staffing agency that touts itself as a “global leader” with an ability to place workers “in top companies across a variety of industries” across the world since 1968.
While BorgWarner has customers all over the world and employs 29,000 people in the U.S., Europe and Asia, none of the company's international sites is in Russia, said company spokeswoman Kathy Graham.
International analysts have suggested that Whelan is being held hostage by Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes of negotiating the freedom of a Russian cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller in the ongoing investigation into U.S. election manipulation. Whelan is being held in Lefortovo detention center, built in the late 1800s and later used as a KGB prison.
Whelan was apprehended during a vacation trip, not work. Professionally, he is not responsible for cybersecurity nor was he in charge of industrial espionage duties as part of his job description.
He was responsible for the security of facilities, assets owned by the company and its people, Graham confirmed. Whelan did not work in information technology, Graham said.
In a 2013 deposition in an age discrimination suit against Kelly Services, he described his role this way: “Kelly Services is a global company, and we work with federal agencies all the time ... at the foreign embassies, or we work with HUD or DEA, FBI, ATF, whomever in the United States. We work with federal agencies in Canada, and what have you, all over the place. So we come in contact with federal agencies and officers all the time.”
'Whelan is being framed'
However, Chris Costa, executive director of the International Spy Museum, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., said, “My analysis suggests that this individual Paul Whelan is being framed” by Russia's Federal Security Service, known as FSB.
The spy museum collects and shares intelligence artifacts and stories to provide a global perspective on an all-but-invisible profession that has shaped history and continues to have a significant impact on world events.
“From a historical standpoint, whether we’re talking about the FSB or former KGB, our museum puts stories together that illustrate the cat-and-mouse game of counterintelligence,” he said. “The FSB is very, very pervasive and a solid security service. They’re very adept at dirty tricks."
Costa, like others nationally and internationally, including Plame, suggested that Putin could be "looking for leverage" in hopes of swapping the American for the Russian Maria Butina, who has pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of Russia.
“The Russians are going back to their playbook that they used throughout the Cold War. They’re very aggressive,” Costa said. “They’re taking shots at the United States.”
The claim that a businessman could actually work as a spy is not lost on fans of novelists John Le Carré or Robert Ludlum. History shows that the scenario is plausible.
Globally, corporations do passively work with intelligence services, Costa said. It may be a simple question during a crisis, and “of course, companies are going to cooperate in most cases.”
Not only have companies cooperated in the past, but they’ve been essential.
Finding people who can speak a foreign language fluently, cultivate cultural resources and develop social contacts was, and continues to be, important, said Professor Brian Hayashi, chairman of the Department of History at Kent State University in Ohio.
Whelan may be a logical target because he fits the profile, said Hayashi, author of an upcoming book being published by Oxford University Press about the little-known recruitment of Americans who were of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent who worked as U.S. spies during World War II.
The book documents corporate cooperation with the intelligence community, too.
“Western Union was heavily involved in the transmission of telegrams,” he said. “They were able to get different radio companies involved with American intelligence.”
The U.S. government would scan for coded messages in telegrams going abroad, particularly between Berlin and Tokyo, Hayashi said. “In some cases, they allowed for American intelligence to look at the telegrams.”
He continued, “American intelligence will go to various communications companies, in the past and even today, and try to get information.”
Missionaries as spies
Apart from formal cooperation, American intelligence can filter communications by capturing keyword searches and targets using technology.
“You never really know what’s going on,” Hayashi said. “We just don’t know.”
Top CIA agents have been journalists, religious missionaries and English teachers, he said. More and more, “sad to say,” nongovernmental organizations are included too — “the CIA may try to slip somebody in there.”
The automotive industry isn't immune, Hayashi said.
“It included one of the spies that the Office of Strategic Services — the predecessor to the CIA — used during World War II in China," he said. "One of the automotive executives went to China, and slipped in and was ostensibly working to re-establish the American car industry in China. In reality, he was there as an agent for the OSS.”
In that case, the agent double-crossed the U.S. to serve British interests. He was Canadian and his boss was an influential executive whose work led to the creation of the American International Group (AIG) in finance and insurance, Hayashi discovered.
More recently, the Daily Mail of Britain reported in August 2015 that "enemy spies" were attempting to recruit civil servants in a bid to steal Britain’s secrets by "befriending" them on LinkedIn, the social network site for hundreds of millions of professionals.
Secret agents working for countries including Russia and China created fake profiles on the site to lure unsuspecting victims, British intelligence warned.
News reports have noted that Whelan had an active Russian social media account and had connected with Russian soldiers.
These days, coverage of the Whelan case has inspired countless press calls to BorgWarner from throughout the U.S., England, Russia and France, Graham said.
News of the Russian police action didn’t actually surprise Hayashi, he said.
“I know something of the KGB — I had to deal with them in my book,” he said. “I can assure you, if the FSB is similar to its predecessor, the KGB, then the wider issue of Russian interference in American elections and politics is nothing new. The KGB had an entire section devoted to such activities. ... They got as high as the next prime minister of the Labour Party to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.”
Meanwhile, America hasn’t had a lot of trouble getting its own agents inside Russia because the new, younger generation opposes old-school KGB thinking that Putin, a former agent in the spy agency, represents, Hayashi said.
“I doubt Mr. Whelan was there to spy but, still, one does not know for sure without seeing any evidence," he said. "The likelihood is that he is innocent but happened to be in Russia at the wrong time. It is also possible he might have stumbled onto something accidentally and the Russians may want to cover that up.”
As it all unfolds, BorgWarner — which builds products that make vehicles move, from clutches and friction plates to transfer cases to turbochargers to electric motors and parts for combustion, hybrid and electric vehicles — is quietly awaiting the return of its executive.
Aaron Retish, a Wayne State University professor who has taught modern Russian and post-Soviet history for 16 years, is in England now, and watching the Whelan case.
It's unusual for the Russian government to arrest any American visiting the country on a tourist visa, Retish said.
Butina connection?
“Russia has arrested some people for coming in on a wrong visa or not registering. But this, the Russian media reports, was a spy sting," he said. "So something must have happened. Who knows? They’ve done this a couple of times with some U.S. diplomats and some British diplomats, but they were all eventually deported and not arrested.”
There is wide speculation that Whelan’s arrest in Russia could somehow be tied to Butina, who was trying to influence American political groups, including the National Rifle Association, but Retish said it’s too soon to make any such connection.
“I know that American news outlets have been trying to link the two, saying that this is some setup for a swap, but … there are so many other moving wheels,” Retish said, in the geopolitical landscape.
Butina, he noted, was not charged with espionage, which the Russian government alleges against Whelan.
“She was arrested for being a foreign agent," Retish said. "That makes it a lot different."
Comparisons are being made, he said, between Butina and the Russian spy Anna Chapman, who was arrested in the United States nearly a decade ago and pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges.
“She was a Russian woman who was married and living in the United States and was also kind of this classic spy. She was living the normal life, but she was also spying for Russia and then she was eventually caught,” Retish said. “Even her husband supposedly didn’t know about it. She was eventually released and came back to Russia for a while and became a celebrity. She was praised by Putin.
“That’s kind of where the similarities end between the two. Chapman was a spy. Butina was a foreign agent, an unregistered foreign agent. It could be eventually that Butina actually has more significance on the political field because of all the connections that she had, than Chapman. But that is the only other big swap that you had.
“This is just a weird case with Whelan because Putin just came out saying … he hoped to have neither conversation and a meeting with Trump. And you could see that there could be a potential upswing in U.S.-Russian relations, especially with the U.S. pulling out of Syria, which is also something that Putin praised.
“It’s an odd time to arrest someone, but you never know what is happening behind the scenes. This is also how Putin works. When you least expect it, something like this happens.”
Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: phoward@freepress.com or 313-222-6512. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid. Free Press staff writer Kristen Jordan Shamus contributed to this report.
Paul Whelan’s Kelly Service gives out a medieval sword to its outstanding employees. Can’t quite determine if that is a Knight Of Malta (a Blackwater Favorite) or some other vintage. pic.twitter.com/JidLUEyRbH
Looks like Whelan testified about his U of Michigan day’s against his colleagues at Kelly Services. Watch for Russian science students going to Michigan and Michigan State. pic.twitter.com/nqHM7g75W6
American Paul Whelan, detained in Moscow last week, was indicted Thursday on espionage charges, Russia's Interfax news agency.
The agency, citing what it called an informed source, said Whelan had denied claims in the indictment. Whelan, a former Marine, was arrested Dec. 28 "while on a spy mission," the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) says.
Russian lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov, who was appointed to represent Whelan, told the agency that Whelan will remain in custody in Moscow until at least Feb. 28.
The FSB has said the investigation was continuing but that Whelan could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of espionage. The US ambassador in Russia, Jon Huntsman, has visited Whelan at Lefortovo detention center in Moscow.
Whelan's family denies the charges and says Whelan was in Moscow for a wedding when he was arrested.
"We are deeply concerned for his safety and well-being. His innocence is undoubted and we trust that his rights will be respected," the family said in a statement after the arrest was announced.
Last month, Russian national Maria Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an agent for the Kremlin – and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. She has been in jail since her arrest in July. The Kremlin has denied that Butina is a spy.
U.S.-Russian relations have struggled in recent months despite Trump's frequent praise of President Vladimir Putin. Scores of Russian diplomats were expelled last year after the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in Britain that was linked to the Kremlin.
And Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election has brought scrutiny on communications between Trump's inner circle and Russian operatives.
