Report: Accused Russian Spy Met With Top Fed Reserve and Treasury Officials . . . In 2015
“Accused Russian agent Maria Butina had wider high-level contacts in Washington than previously known”
On Monday, the Department of Justice charged Russian national Maria Butina with conspiring to defraud the United States and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. The focus of the media’s attention has been on Butina’s ties to the NRA and to Republican politicians.
We are now learning, however, that Butina met with top officials from the Federal Reserve and from the U. S. Treasury Department during the Obama administration.
The focus of the media has been on the NRA and GOP politicians with attempts to tie her to President Trump.
Watch:
Accused agent of #Russia travelled to the US in 2015 with the Russian Central Bank deputy governor and they took part in separate meetings with US officials (during the @BarackObama administration) to discuss economic relations, reports @Reuters. https://t.co/mOFl7txuRV
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) July 22, 2018
Accused Russian agent Maria Butina had wider high-level contacts in Washington than previously known, taking part in 2015 meetings between a visiting Russian official and two senior officials at the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.
The meetings, revealed by several people familiar with the sessions and a report from a Washington think tank that arranged them, involved Stanley Fischer, Fed vice chairman at the time, and Nathan Sheets, then Treasury undersecretary for international affairs.
Butina travelled to the United States in April 2015 with Alexander Torshin, then the Russian Central Bank deputy governor, and they took part in separate meetings with Fischer and Sheets to discuss U.S.-Russian economic relations during Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration.
The two meetings, which have not been previously reported, reveal a wider circle of high-powered connections that Butina sought to cultivate with American political leaders and special interest groups.
The meetings were set up by a DC-based pro-Russia think tank and involved higher level officials than originally known.
Reuters continues:
The meetings with Fischer and Sheets were arranged by the Center for the National Interest, a Washington foreign policy think tank that often advocates pro-Russia views.
The meetings were documented in a Center for the National Interest report seen by Reuters that outlined its Russia-related activities from 2013 to 2015. The report described the meetings as helping bring together “leading figures from the financial institutions of the United States and Russia.”
Robert Driscoll, Butina’s attorney, said in an interview with NPR that Butina’s involvement with the NRA was related to a gun rights group she started in Russia. Driscoll also downplayed some of the evidence against Butina noting, “For starters, you’re reading Twitter direct messages which are unencrypted. I would imagine that Russian intelligence probably communicates in different ways than that.”
Meanwhile, the leftstream media and Democrats are seeing Russians everywhere.
MEDIA FAIL IN PROGRESS: Blue checks confuse NSC staffer for Russian Maria Butina https://t.co/QcJCjH4Wtp
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 17, 2018
Twitchy points out that this meme was quickly (and hilariously) picked up on Twitter.
I thought this was a photoshop, but it's not. Here's Maria Butina infiltrating our early air exploration efforts, posing as someone named "Amelia Earhart." pic.twitter.com/1jpUUe0spc
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) July 17, 2018
https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1019219167541592065?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
I thought this was a photoshop, but it’s not. This is Maria Butina — arrested for being a Russian spy — winning an Oscar. pic.twitter.com/TfnQPWEEa6
— CJ Ciaramella (@cjciaramella) July 17, 2018
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Comments
Sooo, how many Russian connections have the lefties blamed on President Trump that were directly linked to the Obama years? I’ve lost count, but just asking.
All of them.
So, I guess this proves the Kenyan anti-Christ was colluding with the Russians.
You mean the illegal alien??????
Gasp.
Odumbo finally admits he was born in kenya:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQcd41RO25k
Bad forgery. You can’t possibly have actually fallen for this, so you must be promoting it dishonestly.
Well, you certainly cannot deny the authenticity of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehYoIKTsiV0
When it comes to denial, Milhouse has an infinite supply.
Um, did you follow IrateNate’s link? It’s a joke, a bad “forgery” done openly for comedic effect. FineReport’s link is to a forgery almost as bad, but intended to seriously fool people.
John Solomon [to Lou Dobbs]:
I’ll tell you a little story I’ve never told before. In March of 2015 I observed her at several events and really cozying up to conservatives and making what I thought was a weak-handed case that she was this courageous gun rights activist going up against Putin and there would one day be a Second Amendment in Russia. There’s never going to be a Second Amendment in Russia. I became very perplexed by her behavior and her efforts of going up to presidential candidates and congressional candidates. So I started to do some reporting and I called FBI and US intelligence sources and very quickly I learned, “Yeah, we know that she’s somebody here as an agent of influence. She’s connecte to this guy Tortian(sp?) and we know what she’s trying to do.” And I thought, that’s really interesting. Are they going to tell the people she’s meeting with and it doesn’t appear they ever did. I thought the role of FBI counter-intelligence was to prevent contacts from occurring that are not in the interest of the United States. It sounds like they sat around and watched this for three or four years until it was convenient to create a headline.
So she was a spy for Obama’s Democrat Party………
The social compact is dead. It was mudered in the night by the Clinton and Obama. The people holding power just don’t care about anyone not of their tribe. I hold zero respect for people in power – especially federal judges, coastal lawyers/firmsand law enforcement placed above the local cops.
Most of these people were never moral, upstanding people to begin with. They just weren’t so openly corrupt.
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The US government is absolutely corrupt. Just ask Happy John Brennan.
Obama is foreign born. His entire life history is a complete contrivance. So his his fake wife’s. His allegiances are to forces hating the United States. And the malignant clown was elected president. Twice.
And we’re talking about some Russian prostitute?
Liar. It is as impossible to truly believe he was born in Kenya as it is to believe the earth is flat or the moon landings were faked.
Well, milhouse, there you go again. You might want to check with your grandmother upstairs in the kitchen….maybe she’ll bake some cookies for you before your nap-time. And no, that’s not a death threat.
You’re babbling incoherently.
What is entirely possible to believe is that under the Indonesian citizenship law of 1958, which was the operative law when Lolo Soetero married Obama’s mother Ann Dunham in 1965, Barack Obama is an Indonesian citizen. Per Indonesian law a child under 5 automatically acquires Indonesian citizenship when adopted by an Indonesian citizen. All the evidence indicates Lolo Soetero adopted Obama while in Hawaii as a variety of sources (friendly to Obama) refer to Barry Soetero as Lolo’s stepson when he and his mom rejoined his adoptive father in 1967 in Jakarta. Lolo returned to Indonesia in 1966, i.e. before Obama turned 5.
Moreover the reporters who wrote fawning articles about Obama had no clue as to how much information they were giving away.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/08/AR2010040805858.html?sid=ST2010040805888
“…What Madewa and other old friends want to remind Obama about won’t bring any joy to those in the United States who contend that the president is a closet Muslim. The truth, they say, is this: While Obama went to Besuki, a mostly Muslim school, for less than a year, he spent most of his four years in Indonesia studying at Santo Fransiskus Asisi, a Roman Catholic school run at the time by a stern Dutch priest. Classes began and ended each day with Christian prayers.
…Unlike Asisi, a private institution with a big church, Besuki is run by the state, has a mosque and, though also attended by Christians, it is more in line with the general orientation of a country with more than 200 million Muslims.
.. Obama moved to Indonesia in 1967 with his mother, American anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro. They lived in a single-story rented house in Menteng-Dalam.
…An old school registry at Asisi records how, under the name “Barry Soetoro,” he entered first grade at the start of the school year on Jan. 1, 1968. He was registered as a Muslim, based on his stepfather’s faith. ”
Working backward, if a child’s father is a Muslim then the child is born a Muslim. Barack Obama Sr. may well have considered himself a Communist and therefore an atheist but it doesn’t matter what he considered himself. Under every madhab of fiqh (under every school of Sharia jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shiite) since his father (Barack’s grandfather) was a practicing Muslim he was born a Muslim. Leaving Islam for another religion or no religion at all is apostasy. And since Barack Obama Sr. was a Muslim per Sharia so is Barack Obama Jr. In any case a Muslim child inherits his religion from his Muslim father. If Lolo Soetero was Barack Obama’s legal father, and the state of Hawaii recognized him as such when Lolo and Ann Dunham divorced in 1980…
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_C5VMt0Sqis0/SnR2dg6owII/AAAAAAAABek/6xiTK3oowpo/s1600-h/Obama%27s+mother%27s+divorce.JPG
…then Obama inherited his religion along with adoption. So since his father was a Muslim, that meant Barack Obama is a Muslim. The school registered Obama as a Muslim because that was now his religious faith.
If you doubt me search on the name Meriam Ibrahim. She was born in Sudan. Like Barack Obama’s Muslim father, her Muslim father abandoned the family. But Meriam’s abandoned the family after he got mom pregnant but before she was born. Per Sharia law Muslim men can marry Christian and Jewish women, but non-Muslim men can not marry Muslim women (it’s part of the punishment Muslims are supposed to mete out to the “People of the Book” because it along with other Jim Crow-type restrictions it keeps the non-Muslim communities in a constant state of decline). Meriam’s mother was a Christian and raised her as a Christian from birth. She never knew her father and may not even have known her father was Muslim. No matter; she had business interests in Sudan and on one of her trips a relative of her father recognized her and reported her to the authorities as an apostate. The court ruled that unless she renounced Christianity, return to the Islamic religion she was born in, and divorced her non-Muslim husband she was going to be stoned to death.
She wasn’t executed due to massive diplomatic pressure, but the exact same laws apply to Obama. I don’t believe he worships any god but himself, but per Sharia law he was also born a Muslim and theoretically could be sentenced to death if he doesn’t return to Islam.
Additionally, at some point in “Quran class” he would have been required to say the Shahada, La ilaha il Allah, wa’a Muhammad-ur-Rasool-Allah. That’s the Islamic profession of faith, there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah, and that’s all that’s required to make someone a Muslim.
I’m not now a Muslim and remain a Christian because you actually have to say it out loud in Arabic in front of at least one Muslim witness to become a Muslim, but writing it doesn’t make you a Muslim.
Second, this confirms that Obama must have become an Indonesian citizen undoubtedly through adoption. Because only Indonesian citizens could go to government operated public schools like Besuki. I don’t know if the law has changed since 1970 when Obama left the country, but so what if it has? When he was living in Indonesia he couldn’t have gone to a government run public school if he hadn’t been an Indonesian citizen. As a non-citizen he would have been obliged to continue to go to St. Francis Assisi or some other private school.
As I said, all the evidence points to the fact that Barack Obama is was adopted by Lolo Soetero and consequently became an Indonesian citizen. Under the law in effect at the time Obama would have been stripped of his American citizenship because Indonesia still doesn’t recognize dual citizenship. Under current law someone who acquires their citizenship through adoption as a child is no longer automatically stripped of their birth citizenship but they have to choose when they become adults. Between the ages of 18 and 21 they have to to write to the Indonesian government and either renounce their Indonesian citizenship in order to (in Obama’s case) in order to retain their U.S. citizenship or renounce their U.S. citizenship in order to retain their Indonesian citizenship.
That’s current law. Under the law at the time once he was adopted he was solely an Indonesian citizen. And the USG would not and could not interfere with Indonesian citizenship law.
So I’m curious if Barack Obama is still an Indonesian citizen. He was for three years, and I know of no way to reverse his status.
So what? Let’s suppose it is so, who cares? Let him have five foreign citizenships, or fifty, it wouldn’t affect his eligibility at all. The constitution does not bar foreign citizens from the presidency.
Under Moslem law every child is born a Moslem. But even if this were true, so what? Why would we care what Moslem law says?
By definition, religion, unlike nationality, cannot be inherited. There is no such thing as being born a Moslem, any more than there is such a thing as being born a Christian. (Jews are a nation, and nationality can be inherited, but belief in the Jewish religion cannot be; a newborn Jew cannot be said to have a religion.) All the evidence is that 0bama has never believed in any god except himself, and therefore has never been a Moslem.
No, it isn’t. It has to be said as a sincere statement of ones beliefs; merely mouthing the words has no effect.
BS. US citizenship cannot be lost involuntarily. It makes not the slightest difference what Indonesian law has to say on the subject.
More BS. A US citizen remains one unless he voluntarily renounces it and means it. Even if he were to write to the Indonesian government claiming to renounce his US citizenship in order to keep his Indonesian one, if he could show that he meant to keep his US citizenship, e.g. by putting that intention in writing or stating it in front of witnesses or informing the US embassy, then the renunciation is of no effect.
Nor would it have any reason to do so. But nor can Indonesia interfere with US citizenship law.
Sorry, not seeing a lot of real excitement here. Noise, diversion, razzle-dazzle, sure … but no real substance behind it.
The big crime expounded in the Criminal Complaint seems to be that some Russian woman came to the US with a Russian government banking guy, and they had a few more-or-less noncommittal chats with some Obama admin guys … and somebody is now shocked, shocked! to find that she’s some sort of Russian agent. Yes, I imagine she would be … most of us are agents of whoever is paying our salaries. But I can’t see how this woman is some sort of Ethel Rosenberg redux.
Now, I could understand the excitement if plots to commit some dastardly crimes were afoot. Was she plotting to steal America’s last supply of aludium phosdex, the shaving cream atom? Sabotage the Army’s zeppelin revival program? Dump a truckload of Fizzies in McMillan Reservoir? These would be a big deal. Talking to some people of no great geopolitical importance, well, not so much.
The FBI knows perfectly well who the criminals are. In fact, they already have a good start on their hunt for evidence, since so many of them already work for the FBI.
Yet all we get is another smokescreen. Typical.
FBI is not going to change its institutional culture voluntarily. But there’s no good reason for anyone else to jolly them along.
As far as I can see, the summary of this is the Left wants to run around with their hair on fire about a known Russian spy galloping around the Trump administration, so it is to our best interests to point out how she was also galloping around a few years *before* Trump took office too.
Ouch!!!
The Russkies are slipping. They used to have nice looking prostitute spies. Or, maybe this is the look the D party prefers in their Russian hookers.
Gag.
The headline of this post is wrong. She is not accused of being a spy. The body of the post correctly says she’s accused of being a foreign agent, which is completely legal so long as one files the appropriate form, which she didn’t do, probably because she had no idea she was supposed to. She certainly didn’t hide the fact that she unofficially represented the Russian government.
milhouse, you “forgot” to mention the charge of “defrauding the U.S. Government.” I can’t wait for your excuse for her, “probably because she had no idea” that fraud wasn’t something she shouldn’t do, either.
Apparently, granny’s cookies and a nap were insufficient for you.
The “fraud” was failing to file the form, which she had no idea she was supposed to do.
Methinks a spy is an unregistered foreign agent.
But nobody thinks an unregistered foreign agent is a spy.
“The Ginger Deception.” Digital and paperback, Summer 2018.