NATO'S OPPORTUNISTIC ALLY
Turkey's foreign minister says sanctioned Russian oligarchs are welcome as tourists and investors
Sam Tabahriti
Sun, March 27, 2022,

From left: Roman Abramovich, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Alexei Mordashov.

Turkish minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Russian oligarchs are welcome in the country, per CNBC.


It comes amid Russian billionaires being sanctioned by Western countries during the war.


Superyachts should remain outside the territorial waters of sanctioning countries, Turkey said.

Sanctioned Russian oligarchs are welcome in Turkey as tourists and investors, according to the country's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu.

CNBC reported the story first.

The politician said in an interview with CNBC at the Doha Forum: "We implement UN-approved sanctions, so if any Russian citizens want to visit Turkey, of course, they can visit Turkey. Now Russians are coming to visit Turkey, that's no problem."

"If you mean that these oligarchs can do any business in Turkey, then of course if it is legal and it is not against international law, I will consider," he added when pushed on whether sanctioned oligarchs can do business in the country.

He said: "If it is against international law, then that's another story."

The Turkish foreign minister's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal working hours.

Several Russian billionaires have had some of their assets seized amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Roman Abramovich, who owns Chelsea FC, had his two multimillion-dollar superyachts reportedly spotted in Turkey's coastal waters. Italy seized a superyacht belonging to one of Russia's richest men, Alexei Mordashov, last week.

Per CNBC's report, Turkey said that allowing Russian oligarchs into the country is legitimate – so long as the yachts remain outside the territorial waters of sanctioning countries, which extend 12 nautical miles from the coastline.

Cavusoglu also told reporters that he traveled to Russia and Ukraine for talks with his respective counterparts.

Meanwhile, Turkey, alongside France and Greece, intends to take part in a mission to evacuate Mariupol's remaining inhabitants. The countries are all NATO members.

Turkey says world cannot 'burn bridges' with Moscow


FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin is pictured during an interview in Istanbul

Sun, March 27, 2022, 4

DOHA (Reuters) - Turkey and other nations must still talk to Russia to help end the war in Ukraine, Turkey's presidential spokesman said on Sunday, adding that Kyiv needed more support to defend itself.

NATO member Turkey has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine and has sought to mediate in the month-long conflict.

"If everybody burns bridges with Russia then who is going to talk to them at the end of the day," Ibrahim Kalin told the Doha international forum.

"Ukrainians need to be supported by every means possible so they can defend themselves ... but the Russian case must be heard, one way or the other," so that its grievances could be understood if not justified, Kalin added.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the West to give his country tanks, planes and missiles to fend off Russian forces. The West has responded to Russia's invasion by slapping sweeping economic sanctions on Moscow.

Ankara says Russia's invasion is unacceptable but opposes the Western sanctions on principle and has not joined them.

Turkey's economy, already strained by a December currency crisis, relies heavily on Russian energy, trade and tourism, and since the war began on Feb. 24 thousands of Russians have arrived in Turkey, seeing it as a safe haven from the sanctions.

Ahmet Burak Daglioglu, head of Turkey's investment office, told the forum separately that some Russian companies were relocating operations to Turkey.

Asked on a panel about Turkey doing business with any people which could be of benefit to President Vladimir Putin, he said: "We are not targeting, we are not chasing, we are not pursuing any investment or capital that has a question mark on it."

Two superyachts linked to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich have docked in Turkish resorts.

Western governments have targeted Abramovich and several other Russian oligarchs with sanctions as they seek to isolate Putin and his allies over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Ghaida Ghantous, Andrew Mills and Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Edmund Blair and Gareth Jones)

US IMPERIALISM CALLS FOR REGIME CHANGE, AGAIN
Putin must be weakened, Biden says in speech urging global unity on Ukraine

With the war in Ukraine at a critical juncture, President Biden on Saturday used the capital of a country once dominated by the Soviet Union to demand an end to Russian President Vladimir Putin's vast power and to exhort U.S. allies to stand up to Russia's brutal invasion of its neighbor.

 President Biden speaks in Warsaw on Saturday. 

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Patrick J. McDonnell, Tracy Wilkinson 

 LA Times

"The test of this moment is a test of all time," Biden said in what was designed as a rousing speech for unity uttered at a Polish castle destroyed by Nazis in World War II — and later rebuilt.

"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said of Putin — a dramatic final flourish to what the White House called a major speech and what appeared to be a call to unseat the man he has branded a killer and a war criminal.

The White House later clarified that Biden was not urging regime change, which would have been a major shift in U.S. policy. “The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region," a spokesman told reporters traveling with the president and speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with White House protocol. "He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

Still, the comments reverberated in Poland, Ukraine, Russia and beyond.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was not up to Biden to choose who leads Russia. "The president of Russia is elected by Russians," he said, according to Reuters.

Biden, in his speech, also reached out to the Russian people, saying the United States and the West do not have grievances with them but with their leaders. And he called for worldwide unity, something the administration has not been able to galvanize, with numerous countries sitting on the sidelines of the conflict.

"All of us must do the hard work of democracy each and every day," Biden said, "in Europe and in my country as well."

He opened his remarks by invoking the late Pope John Paul II, a Pole, whose "Be not afraid" speech in Warsaw in 1979 inspired Poland to eventually break away from Communist rule.

Throughout his visit to Europe, Biden has emphasized the "sacred obligation" the U.S. and its NATO allies have to protect Poland and other member states if Russia spreads its attacks into the eastern flanks of NATO territory. He told Polish President Andrzej Duda in a meeting that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will defend "every inch" of its territory "for your freedom and ours."

As Biden visited Warsaw, a fresh volley of explosions was heard on the outskirts of Lviv, in western Ukraine and just miles from the border with Poland. Black smoke billowed on the horizon. Ukrainian authorities said a Russian missile attack hit a fuel storage facility. Though the third attack in the vicinity of once-quiet Lviv, it was the first one close to the city's population.

Russia on Friday announced that the "first phase" of its military assault had ended successfully, saying its forces would now concentrate on its main goal: consolidating control of occupied parts of eastern Ukraine. This might represent a scaling down of operations in the face of a failure to advance on key cities — or it may be another feint by Putin to confuse his adversaries.

Saturday's Lviv attacks seemed to suggest the latter. Biden, asked what he thought of Putin's shift in strategy, said he was not sure there had been any shift.

Initially, several U.S. officials embraced the analysis that Putin was scaling back because it fits with their narrative that Ukraine is prevailing in the conflict, even as Washington and European capitals are willing to send supplies and weapons to Ukraine but not troops or fighter jets.

While in Warsaw, Biden also got a firsthand glimpse of the war's toll on Poland. Meeting with Ukrainian refugees near the train station in Warsaw, he said he admired their spirit and resilience and branded Putin a "butcher." Millions of Ukrainians have fled across Europe or been displaced inside their country since Putin launched the invasion Feb. 24.

Earlier, Biden joined U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III at a session in a Warsaw hotel with top Ukrainian officials —Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, and Oleksii Reznikov, the country’s defense minister.

Poland, a NATO ally of the United States, shares a lengthy border with Ukraine and has been both the major destination of Ukrainian refugees and an essential corridor for aid — including military assistance — headed into Ukraine.

There is deep anxiety in Poland, seat of the Warsaw Pact during Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, that the war could spread into its territory.

But Washington, wary of a wider war with Russia, has not embraced Polish suggestions that an international peacekeeping force be deployed to Ukraine. And the Biden administration has also rejected outright a Polish proposal that Polish MiG-29 fighters be transferred to Ukraine via a U.S. airbase in Germany.

Poland has also urged that Washington expedite procedures to accept refugees from Ukraine with families in the United States. The Biden administration now says it will open doors to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.

Biden and Duda and their delegations met for several hours, discussing the war and the refugee crisis, which has seen some 3.7 million Ukrainians flee the country, an exodus that continues daily and is considered the largest refugee influx in Europe since World War II.

The trip to the Polish capital came a day after Biden visited U.S. forces in the eastern Polish city of Rzeszow, some 45 miles west of the Ukrainian border. Washington has bolstered its forces in Eastern Europe in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In his comments to troops, Biden talked of a global struggle between democracies and autocratic forces.

“You’re in the midst of a fight between democracies and oligarchs,” the president told members of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division. "Is democracy going to prevail and the values we share, or are autocracies going to prevail?"

During a later briefing on the refugee response, Biden said, “the single most important thing that we can do from the outset" to force Putin to stop the war "is keep the democracies united in our opposition.”

Before going to Poland, Biden conferred with U.S. allies in Brussels, unveiling new sanctions against Russian officials, among other moves.

The president’s arrival to Poland comes at a crucial juncture in the Ukrainian conflict, now in its second month. Russian troops blitzed into Ukrainian territory Feb. 24.

Since then, the war has evolved into a grinding and costly conflict in which opposing forces on many fronts appear deadlocked — and, in some cases, Ukrainian troops are pushing back their Russian adversaries.

Questions remain about whether Russia will now ramp up its offensive throughout Ukraine or will concentrate its efforts on the east and south, where Russia has had some military success.

In comments Friday, Sergei Rudskoi, a top Russian defense ministry official, said that with the "first stage" completed, Moscow will concentrate on the “liberation” of the Donbas, a large stretch of eastern Ukraine where Russia-backed separatists have expanded control since the war began. Russian proxies in the Donbas have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014.

“The combat potential of the armed forces of Ukraine has been significantly reduced," Rudskoi said.

That assertion came as a Russian assault on the capital, Kyiv, appears to have stalled amid fierce Ukrainian resistance.

But Russia depicted the attack on Kyiv not as an attempt to take the capital, but an effort to tie down Ukrainian forces while Russia concentrates on the east.

Western observers see the comments as a face-saving maneuver for Moscow as its forces have bogged down in the field because of military missteps and greater-than-expected Ukrainian resistance. However, many also caution that Putin has repeatedly lied about his intentions and operations, and the new comments must be viewed with skepticism.

Putin has denied from the outset that Russia had aims to occupy Ukrainian territory, saying strikes were meant to cripple Ukrainian military infrastructure. But his government’s assault on Ukrainian cities — including Kyiv and the eastern city of Mariupol, scene of vast devastation — seemed to undercut Putin’s assertions.

Putin has called the war a “special operation” meant both to bolster Russian security against NATO encroachment and to protect Russian speakers in the east subjected to “abuse and genocide.” The Ukrainian government denies any systemic abuse of Russian speakers in the east or elsewhere in Ukraine.

In recent days, Russian shelling has continued in various areas, including the outskirts of Kyiv and the northern cities of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second most populous, and Chernihiv.

Authorities in Kyiv have announced a new 35-hour curfew.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the curfew will run from 8 p.m. local time Saturday to 7 a.m. Monday, with local residents allowed to leave their homes only to get to bomb shelters.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky again called on other nations to step up humanitarian and military aid to his beleaguered nation.

“They are destroying our ports,” Zelensky said in a video address Saturday to Qatar’s Doha Forum, noting that the war had curtailed grain and other exports from Ukraine. “The absence of exports from Ukraine will deal a blow to countries worldwide.”

McDonnell reported from Lviv and Wilkinson from Washington.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Ukraine: Rockets strike Lviv as Biden castigates Putin — live updates

US President Joe Biden lashed at Vladimir Putin while delivering a speech in Warsaw, calling the Russian leader "a butcher." Meanwhile, Zelenskyy urged Poland once again to send fighter jets and tanks. DW has the latest.

The back-to-back airstrikes on Saturday shook Lviv, which had been largely spared since the Russian invasion began

Biden says Putin 'cannot remain in power'

Zelenskyy again calls for tanks and fighter jets from Poland

Ukraine says 12 journalists have died since the invasion began

The article was last updated at 05:45 UTC/GMT

Russia relying on munitions launched from its airspace: UK intelligence

The latest intelligence update from the UK's Defense Ministry says Moscow is trying to limit its aircrafts' exposure to Ukrainian air defense forces by relying on "stand-off" munitions launched from within Russian airspace.

A US report has cited a 60% failure rate among these Russian munitions.

The UK briefing said this failure rate would "compound Russia's problem of increasingly limited stocks forcing them to revert to less sophisticated missiles or accepting more risk to their aircraft."

The report also said that Russia's air and missile forces were continuing to target densley populated civilian areas across Ukraine.

Ukraine says 12 journalists have died since Russia invasion began

Ukrainian Attorney General Iryna Venediktova said on her Facebook page Saturday that 12 journalists have died since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Ten more journalists were injured during the war, she added, noting that citizens of Ireland, Russia and the United States were among the foreign reporters killed in the conflict. Venediktova alleged that the reporters were killed by the Russian army.

Zelenskyy calls on Poland to send fighter jets

In a video conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Poland once again to send fighter jets and tanks to fight off Russia's invasion.

Zelenskyy warned that, if Ukraine cannot repel Russia's attack, neighbors, including NATO countries, are vulnerable.

According to a readout provided by the Ukrainian president's official website, Zelenskyy said: "There is a high risk that the Russian army will pose a missile threat not only to the territories of our neighbors — Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Baltic States — but also a direct general military threat."

Despite Ukraine's request for fighter jets and a Polish plan to provide them via the Ramstein air force base in Germany, the US objected, and the plan was dropped.

Biden: 'For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power'

US President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met Saturday with Ukraine's foreign and defense ministers at the Marriott Hotel in central Warsaw. Biden and Austin promised US support to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.

In a speech from Warsaw's Royal Castle during the visit to Poland, Biden told the world to prepare for a "long fight ahead." He castigated Russian President Vladimir Putin and ended his speech by saying: "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power." The White House later said Biden was not calling for regime change in Russia.

Biden: 'Putin has the gall to say he is denazifying Ukraine'

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the US intends to send $100 million (€91 million) to Ukraine in civilian security assistance. This money is earmarked for the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs to "provide essential border security, sustain civil law enforcement functions, and safeguard critical governmental infrastructure."

Vladyslav Atroshenko, the mayor of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv that lies close to the border with Russia and Belarus, said that the city "has been completely devastated."

Atroshenko warned that the city has been surrounded by Russian troops and it is no longer possible to set up escape corridors for civilians. The city is also without power and the major bridge connecting Chernihiv with Kyiv has been destroyed, the mayor said.

Ukrainian officials reported that airstrikes had hit the western city of Lviv on Saturday afternoon after explosions were heard earlier outside the city, leaving at least five wounded.

Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko announced an extended curfew will go into force until Monday morning. However, it was later canceled.

ar/sri (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)

AMERICAN EMPIRE IS THE MOST DANGEROUS

Joe Biden ready to use nuclear weapons first in ‘extreme circumstances’

Nick Allen
Fri, March 25, 2022,

Joe Biden shared a selfie with US soldiers during a visit to Poland on Friday - Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Joe Biden is prepared to use nuclear weapons first in “extreme circumstances” after he abandoned plans to drastically water down US policy.

The US president’s U-turn came after pressure from allies and the Pentagon, amid fears that Vladimir Putin may resort to deploying weapons of mass destruction in the coming months.

The US currently allows itself to use nuclear weapons to “defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies and partners”, as well as in response to “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks”.

However, for years Mr Biden has sought to rein that back, arguing that the “sole purpose” of the US nuclear arsenal should be as a deterrent only against a nuclear attack.

Stating his position in 2017, the president said: “The sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal is to deter and, if necessary, retaliate, for a nuclear attack against the United States and its allies.”

Mr Biden included his desire to minimise the role of nuclear weapons in his 2020 presidential campaign.

He was considering announcing the move earlier this year but the decision was delayed amid the Russian build-up on the Ukraine border, The Telegraph understands.

“In the current situation, it’s very challenging to make the case for ‘sole purpose’,” said an arms control expert who consulted with Mr Biden’s nuclear policy officials.

“The optics are extremely bad when Russia is being as threatening as it is. You don’t want to look weak. It was on the president’s desk awaiting his decision, then Ukraine happened.

“Pre-Ukraine, there was a chance the president would have gone ahead and made a ‘sole purpose’ declaration. He wanted to do that, but he didn’t have a lot of support in the Pentagon.”

Mr Biden’s decision came as he was under pressure to set a “red line” for how to respond to any use of chemical weapons by Putin in Ukraine.

Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, he said that the West would respond “in kind”, but declined to say whether it would lead to military intervention.

Responding to Russian nuclear threat

In 2020, Russia published a doctrine outlining its possible use of nuclear weapons.

It detailed four justifications: a ballistic missile attack against Russia or an ally, use of a nuclear weapon by an enemy, an attack on a Russian nuclear weapons site, or any attack threatening the existence of Russia.

Last month, Putin ordered his nuclear forces to be put on high alert.

As president, Mr Biden has the only authority to launch the US’s nuclear weapons. His new policy will say that the “fundamental role” of America’s nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks, US officials told The Wall Street Journal.

However, that will still allow them to be used in “extreme circumstances” as a deterrent against chemical, biological, massive conventional and even potentially cyber attacks, officials told the newspaper.

Allies in Europe had been concerned that Mr Biden’s original plan would weaken deterrence against a massive conventional, or chemical and biological, attack by Russia on Nato.

Japan feared that the US explicitly limiting itself to retaliation against a nuclear strike could one day leave it open to an overwhelming conventional attack by China.

Supporters of Mr Biden’s original, more limited “sole purpose” campaign pledge will be disappointed.

“With ‘sole purpose’, you’re still safe. You’re still saying ‘If you want to nuke, us you’re going to die’. That’s the essence of deterrence,” said one member of the nuclear policy community who backed it.

“Even Putin would know if he does one or two nukes in Ukraine, he can’t get away with it.”

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has delayed the completion of Mr Biden’s overall defence strategy, of which the nuclear review is part.

The defence strategy was determined to be too focused on China, and is being amended to acknowledge the increased Russian threat.

‘Ukraine invasion is Tiananmen Square, squared’

Smoke Russian shelling Kyiv - (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda

As he travelled to within 50 miles of Ukraine’s border on Friday, the US president compared Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to China’s massacre of the Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989.

He described the devastation being unleashed on Ukraine as “like something out of a science fiction movie”.

However, the US president added: “The Ukrainian people have a lot of backbone. They have a lot of guts.”

He gave the example of a 30-year-old woman standing in front of a tank with a rifle, which recalled the famous “Tank Man” photo, of a man standing defiantly before tanks after the crushing protests in Tiananmen Square.

“This is Tiananmen Square, squared,” Mr Biden said.

Earlier on Friday, he had addressed US troops in the Polish city of Rzeszow, about 50 miles from the Ukraine border.

Speaking to the soldiers, he said: “You’re in the midst of a fight between democracies and autocrats. What you’re doing is consequential, really consequential.”

The president said he was “disappointed” not to be able to see the humanitarian crisis caused by the conflict “first hand”.

“They will not let me, understandably I guess, cross the border and take a look at what’s going on in Ukraine,” he said.

Joe Biden and Andrzej Duda, the US and Polish presidents - Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

More than 3.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country, roughly half to Poland.

Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, joined Mr Biden for his event and thanked him for his support.

He said that the Poles see the Ukrainians they are receiving as their “guests”, adding: “This is the name we want to apply to them. We do not want to call them refugees. They are our guests, our brothers, our neighbours from Ukraine, who today are in a very difficult situation.”

Mr Biden is due to wrap up his European visit on Saturday with a “major address” from Poland, according to Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser.

He will meet with Ukrainian refugees and American humanitarian groups in Warsaw before delivering an address “that will speak to the stakes of this moment”, Mr Sullivan added.

“He’ll also talk about the context and history of this conflict and where he sees it going from here.”

Zurich Insurance removes Z symbol after letter used to show support for Ukraine war


The logo of Zurich Insurance is seen in Zurich

Sat, March 26, 2022

ZURICH (Reuters) - Zurich Insurance has removed its Z logo from social media after the letter became a symbol of support in Russia for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The company said it was removing the logo - a white Z on a blue background - because it did not want to be misinterpreted as supporting Russia in the conflict.

"We are temporarily removing the use of the letter 'Z' from social channels where it appears in isolation and could be misinterpreted," the company told Reuters in a statement.

"We're monitoring the situation closely and will take further actions if and when required," the company said, following a report by The Telegraph newspaper in England.

The letter Z has been used as a marking on Russian military vehicles taking part in the conflict and has been adopted by Russians supporting the war, with it being prominent on flags and at pro-Kremlin rallies.

Moscow has described its actions in Ukraine as a "special military operation."

Zurich Insurance said earlier this month that it was no longer taking on new domestic customers in Russia and will not renew existing local business.

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Google employee wows 

TikTok with tour of her everyday 

office perks: ‘Do you actually do any work?’

Dillon Thompson

Fri, March 25, 2022, 

A Google employee is sharing the everyday perks she enjoys at the tech company’s offices.

This jealousy-inducing insight comes courtesy of a TikToker named Sophie (@sophielawlor5), who appears to work at Google’s offices in Dublin, Ireland. Her clip, which now has over 7 million views, shows an apparently regular workday — and all the food, relaxation and office perks that are included.

Her video is just the latest popular TikTok that gives a behind-the-scenes look at interesting work lives. Earlier this month, a former “HQ Trivia” host went viral sharing how much money she made per episode. Before that, a former pro football player explained what NFL waterboys “actually do.”

Google employees in particular have consistently sparked interest on the app. Last year, a former employee shared what it was like to work at the company’s Bay Area office.

Sophie’s tour of the Dublin office drew a similar reaction. Her tour started in the morning with a trip to the breakfast buffet.

Then, she showed off a fancy-looking coffee machine, followed by some time working from a remote-controlled massage chair.

Next, she had lunch at a vast buffet line. Then she got some “fresh air,” on a rooftop patio featuring some colorful swing sets.

Finally, Sophie shared clips of her desk area and a stationery cubby.

TikTokers had strong reactions to the clip. Many expressed their jealousy over Sophie’s job.

Republicans are backing Ukraine in the war. So why is there support for Russia on America's far right?

LONG READ

Will Carless and Jessica Guynn
Sat, March 26, 2022

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there has been near unanimous denunciation of President Vladimir Putin, from President Joe Biden calling Putin a "war criminal," to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell describing him as a "ruthless thug."

But the Ukraine invasion has found a significant pocket of support from prominent figures on the far right including white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who regularly gushes about Putin on his Telegram channel. The war is also a hot topic in QAnon chatrooms where Putin is often portrayed as a hero.

Conservative pundits have also voiced support for Russia. Candace Owens has pushed the Putin talking point that Russia created Ukraine. She also tweeted "Russian lives matter." She was retweeted by the Russian embassy in the U.S.

UKRAINE VOLUNTEER ONLINE ARMY: Meet the ‘cyber elves’ fighting Russian trolls on Facebook

WHITE SUPREMACISTS BATTLE FOR UKRAINE: A regiment in Ukraine's military was founded by white supremacists. Now it's battling Russia on the front lines.

Why is there support for Russia on the far right?

Putin has a long history of cultivating and providing material support to far-right leaders in Europe and the United States, according to Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In exchange, those leaders parrot Kremlin talking points, Weiss said.

America's far right shares a common enemy with Putin and Russia: the West's liberal values and the cabal of elites they say controls the economy and the media.

“It helped for Russian purposes to act like all of these other people agree with them,” Weiss said. “It was a way of creating an echo chamber where there isn’t one.”

Like Putin, former president Donald Trump has frequently professed his personal admiration for the Russian president and capitalized on the disdain for western liberal values among some conservatives, said Jared Holt, a fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab who researches extremism.

With Trump out of office, many of his supporters are now looking to Putin to take on their enemies, Holt said.

"Some of these far-right cliques within the broader pro-Trump movement came to view Trump as an avatar, fighting against the ills of society they perceive," he said. "I think they view Putin, also, as an avatar standing up against similar forces."

Why are Kremlin talking points in Americans' news feeds?

Unfounded claims to gin up support for the war – including claims that the US is funding bioweapon labs in Ukraine or crisis actors are faking events in the war – have gained traction on social media throughout the conflict, according to Zignal Labs, a software company that tracks and analyzes trends in online narratives.

The far right has echoed many of these claims. On his Telegram channel, Joseph Jordan, a white nationalist podcaster who goes by the name Eric Striker, claimed a pregnant woman injured in the bombing of a Ukrainian maternity hospital was an Instagram celebrity. QAnon-affiliated Twitter and Telegram accounts also spread the pro-Kremlin conspiracy theory which was quickly debunked.

New conspiracies pop up daily. They are manufactured for a domestic audience in Russia and pro-Moscow Ukrainians but also push buttons in the US. The latest spreading on social media is an unfounded report from Russian state media outlet Sputnik that Hunter Biden and George Soros are funding biolabs in Ukraine.

The danger? That Russian propaganda will find a receptive audience beyond extremist channels, said Stephanie Foggett, director of global communications at intelligence and security firm The Soufan Group.

"The far right used the pandemic to creep into the mainstream and broaden their appeal to followers of QAnon and anti-vaxxers," Foggett said. “Now there is a really, really ripe ecosystem for conspiracy theories.”

Ukraine as extension of culture wars

Fueling support for Putin and his Russian offensive is the perception that he alone can save the world from identity politics and western globalization, extremism experts say.

Putin has long fomented aggression towards the LGBTQ+ community. He has passed stringent laws against "gay propaganda," and recently blasted gender nonconformity as a "pandemic" equal to Covid-19.

"Putin ain't woke," former Trump advisor-turned-far-right podcaster Steve Bannon declared on his show shortly before the Russian invasion. "He's anti-woke."

In Putin, the far right sees a strongman capable of remaking the world order and rejecting liberal values such as gay rights, said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University.

"This is similar to the way that we saw some far-right support for the Taliban last August," Miller-Idriss said. "There's the appeal of a 'strong man' or the idea of a strong resistor against the West and all that's gone with that in both of those cases – anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ, authoritarian hyper-masculine, all of that kind of tough-guy stuff."

Putin doubled down on this rhetoric in a speech Friday, in which he accused the West of trying to "cancel" Russia. The Russian president invoked author J.K. Rowling, who has been criticized for her anti-trans comments.

“Not so long ago, they canceled children’s author Joan Rowling whose books were spread all over the world in the hundreds of millions of copies, because she did not please fans of so-called gender freedoms,” Putin said in a televised speech.

For some, the conflict in Ukraine is about the same stuff of the culture wars in the US and that's dangerous, Foggett says.

“What really concerns me is that the right especially, they are projecting their own social anxieties into the Ukraine-Russia conflict,” she said.
Not everyone on the far right supports Putin

Not everyone on the far right is siding with Russia in the war. Some Neo-Nazis and white supremacists oppose Putin because of his vow to "de-Nazify" Ukraine.

One U.S.-based neo-Nazi website declared support for Ukraine based solely on the claim that Russian military success would undermine a region that has previously been welcoming to white supremacist organizing.

Kesa White, a researcher at PERIL who tracks white supremacists and other groups, said she's also seen another narrative gain traction online.

"They're saying that Putin is enabling the 'white genocide,'" White said, referring to the longstanding racist trope that white people are being disproportionately killed across the world by people of color in order to undermine global white supremacy. "They feel that their white brothers and sisters are being killed, and having to fight for something that doesn't necessarily pertain to them."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine, Trump and QAnon: Why the far right is backing Russia, Putin

FOX NEWS

Ingraham Guest Says ‘No Reason Whatsoever’ For Ukrainian Refugees To Come To U.S.

Lee Moran
Sat, March 26, 2022, 2:06 AM·2 min read

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and a guest pushed back on Friday against President Joe Biden’s pledge to accept 100,000 refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Obviously, our hearts break for the people in Ukraine. It is absolutely horrific what has happened to them,” said Ingraham, before asking guest Todd Bensman: “But is bringing them all the way to the United States in their best interest? And what about the U.S. taxpayers?”

Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies ― a far-right anti-immigrant group that’s known for its ties to white nationalists ― suggested the refugees would be better off staying in Europe where they have been offered three-year residencies with associated health care, rights to work and housing.

“So there’s really no reason whatsoever for Ukrainians to be coming to our border or for us to be bringing in huge swells, numbers of Ukrainians here,” he argued. “They’re doing great for a group of war refugees.”

“The issue is that they are not asylum-seekers,” Bensman added. “They have asylum, right in their own neighborhood, so it’s a little bit disingenuous.”

“Then that makes more sense. OK,” Ingraham agreed.

More than 3.5 million refugees have now fled Russia’s invasion. More than half of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children have been displaced by the conflict.

The Biden White House, announcing its pledge on Thursday, acknowledged in a fact sheet that it expected “many Ukrainians will choose to remain in Europe close to family and their homes in Ukraine.”

But its raft of measures aimed to “help relieve some of the pressure on the European host countries that are currently shouldering so much of the responsibility,” reported CNN, citing a senior official.

VIDEO Ingraham Guest Says ‘No Reason Whatsoever’ For Ukrainian Refugees To Come To U.S. (yahoo.com)

Marie Yovanovitch says it will take a 'concentrated effort over a number of years' to undo the 'damage' that Mike Pompeo did to the State Department

Sonam Sheth,Nicole Gaudiano

Fri, March 25, 2022

Mike Pompeo in 2017.REUTERS/Carlos Barria

• Yovanovitch told Insider it'd take "years" to undo the "damage" Pompeo did to the State Department.

• The former ambassador said Pompeo "presided over the hollowing out of a great institution."

• She wondered in her memoir whether the department would "survive the betrayals of the Pompeo years."

Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, told Insider in a wide-ranging interview that it would take "years" to reverse the damage that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did to the State Department.

Pompeo "presided over the hollowing out of a great institution," Yovanovitch told Insider. She added that Donald Trump's first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, "started it and Pompeo continued it, so there's is lasting damage."

When he took the helm at the department, President Joe Biden's secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made a commitment to following the rule of law, protecting diplomats and foreign service officers, and promoting US policy abroad.

But "it takes a concentrated effort over a number of years not only to knit the fabric of the State Department back together again, but to give it the kinds of resources that are necessary for our diplomacy," Yovanovitch told Insider.

The former ambassador didn't mince words about her view of Pompeo in her new memoir, "Lessons from the Edge." She was blunt when she said Pompeo's "hypocrisy was galling" and wondered whether the State Department would "survive the betrayals of the Pompeo years."

Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post in Ukraine in April 2019 following a smear campaign by Trump's allies, led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. In her book, Yovanovitch discussed her pleas for the State Department, and Pompeo himself, to publicly support her against Giuliani's efforts to discredit her work in Ukraine and against bogus allegations that she was a partisan Obama holdover.

But Yovanovitch later testified to Congress that Pompeo failed to protect her from the White House. She was one of more than a dozen witnesses to testify at Trump's first impeachment inquiry in late 2019; it centered on his efforts to strongarm the Ukrainian government into launching bogus political investigations into the Biden family while Trump withheld vital security assistance and a White House meeting.

Yovanovitch said that when congressional staffers began contacting her in mid-August 2019 — shortly before the impeachment inquiry was launched — to discuss "Ukraine-related" matters, she started thinking about hiring a lawyer.

"Although the department lawyers usually tried to watch out for State personnel, their job was to protect State's interests, not mine," she wrote. "I was a team player, but the past six months had shown me that I could no longer trust the coach."

She also wrote that it was ironic that Pompeo pledged to work with "uncompromising personal and professional integrity" after being unable to guard her against Giuliani and Trump's attacks. She recalled the day that she flew back to Washington, DC, from Kyiv after being abruptly fired without cause.

That day, Pompeo unveiled an "ethos statement" at the State Department "with great fanfare," the memoir says. In addition to the promise to work with "uncompromising personal and professional integrity," the statement promised to "show 'unstinting respect in word and deed for my colleagues,'" Yovanovitch writes.

"Every Foreign Service officer I knew agreed with these points, but coming from Pompeo, the irony was too much to handle," the book says. "We were all tired of Pompeo's talk. We just wanted him to walk the walk. He didn't need to swagger."

Looking forward, the former ambassador told Insider that the way the US conducts diplomacy needs to be overhauled, in the same way the US military reformed after the Vietnam War and intelligence services did after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Diplomacy in 2022 needs to "meet the challenges of the 21st century in a way that reflects many of the tools that we've got now that we didn't have back in the day," she said. One example she highlighted is the advent of social media and how journalists, activists, and governments use it to spread awareness about issues.

"When we respond on social media, we don't have to have it approved by, you know, 20 different people in Washington, but we can be more nimble and more effective," Yovanovitch said.

Ginni Thomas Texts Expose Rift in House Jan. 6 Panel


Luke Broadwater, Jo Becker, Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer
Sat, March 26, 2022


Peter Navarro, former trade advisor to the White House, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 30, 2020. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times).

WASHINGTON — Buried in the thousands of documents that Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s final White House chief of staff, turned over late last year to the House committee examining the Jan. 6 attack were text messages that presented the panel with a political land mine: what to do about Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.

The messages showed that Thomas, who goes by Ginni, relentlessly urged Meadows to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which she called a “heist,” and indicated that she reached out to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, about Trump’s legal efforts to keep power. She even suggested the lawyer who should be put in charge of that effort.

The public disclosure of the messages Thursday focused new attention on one avenue of the investigation and risked creating a rare rift within the committee about how aggressively to pursue it, including whether to seek testimony from Ginni Thomas.

In the Thomases, the committee is up against a couple that has deep networks of support across the conservative movement and Washington, including inside the committee. The panel’s Republican vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, has led the charge in holding Trump to account for his efforts to overturn the election but has wanted to avoid any aggressive effort that, in her view, could unfairly tarnish Justice Thomas, the senior member of the Supreme Court and an icon among the Republican base.

So although a debate has broken out inside the committee about summoning Ginni Thomas to testify, the panel at this point has no plans to do so, leaving some Democrats frustrated. That could change, however: On Friday, despite the potential for political backlash, Cheney indicated she has no objection to the panel asking Ginni Thomas for a voluntary interview.

A New York Times Magazine investigation last month examined the political and personal history of Ginni Thomas and her husband. That included her role in efforts to overturn the election from her perch on the nine-member board of CNP Action, a conservative group that helped advance the “Stop the Steal” movement, and in mediating between feuding factions of organizers “so that there wouldn’t be any division around Jan. 6,” as one organizer put it.

During that period, the Supreme Court was considering a number of cases related to the election, with Justice Thomas taking positions at times sympathetic to Trump’s efforts to challenge the outcome.

This month, Ginni Thomas acknowledged attending the rally that preceded the violence in an interview with a conservative news outlet, but otherwise downplayed her role. Then came disclosure of the texts to Meadows, the contents of which were earlier reported by The Washington Post and CBS News.

If the committee does not summon Ginni Thomas, some legal analysts said, it runs the risk of appearing to have a double standard. The panel has taken an aggressive posture toward many other potential witnesses, issuing subpoenas for bank and phone records of both high-ranking allies of the former president and low-level aides with only a tangential connection to the events of Jan. 6.

“I think it would be a dereliction not to bring her in and talk to her,” said Kimberly Wehle, a University of Baltimore law professor who has closely tracked the committee’s work. “It certainly is inconsistent with their neutral, ‘find the facts where they go’ type of approach to this.”

The committee’s light touch with Ginni Thomas to date reflects a number of considerations by both members and investigators, according to people familiar with the inquiry. Some saw the pursuit of Ginni Thomas as a distraction from more important targets. Others worried that pursuing Ginni Thomas could by implication sully Justice Thomas’ reputation. Still others argued that the panel could not know the full extent of her role without further questioning. And some members of the committee saw the text messages for the first time Thursday.

The lack of consensus also underscores the extent to which Justice Thomas’ shadow, including his network of supporters and former clerks, looms over various aspects of the investigation. Three of Justice Thomas’ former clerks — a federal judge, a top committee investigator and a key adviser to Trump — have major roles in the matter.

A main strategist in the effort to try to overturn the election, lawyer John Eastman, was a former clerk of Justice Thomas’. John Wood, one of the Jan. 6 committee’s top investigators and another former Thomas clerk, is leading the so-called gold team examining Trump’s inner circle. And a federal judge, Carl J. Nichols, who is hearing cases related to the Capitol riot, is also a former clerk of Justice Thomas’.

This dynamic was on display during a deposition in December of Eastman, who was subpoenaed by the committee to talk about his role in helping Trump try to overturn the election. Wood began the questioning by noting that Eastman had once served as a clerk to Justice Thomas.

“Like you, John,” Eastman shot back.

For at least several weeks, the committee’s senior level has discussed whether to call Ginni Thomas to testify, as well as whether to issue subpoenas for any other communications she may have had with the White House or the president’s legal team about the election, including a message she told Meadows she sent to Kushner, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

There are plenty of leads to pursue. The committee could recall Dustin Stockton, a rally organizer who told the Times about a conversation he had with Caroline Wren, a Republican who helped raise money for the Jan. 6 “March for America,” in which she described Ginni Thomas’ peacemaking role. They could also recall Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin, two rally organizers close to Ginni Thomas, to ask about her post-election communications with them.

It could subpoena records from not only Ginni Thomas, but also CNP Action, which was deeply involved in the effort to spread falsehoods about the election. Investigators could ask her the name of the friend she was referring to when she wrote back to thank Meadows, saying: “Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now…I will try to keep holding on.” (Ginni Thomas and her husband have publicly referred to each other as their best friends.) Ultimately, they could ask her whether she had discussed Trump’s fight to overturn the election with her husband.

Justice Thomas has declined to comment on the matter, through a representative. A lawyer for Ginni Thomas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Privately, some Republicans conceded that Ginni Thomas’ texts to Meadows were a mistake — particularly ones in which she urged Meadows to make Sidney Powell, a lawyer who had advocated conspiracy theories about voting machines being hacked, the face of the legal team. Yet the Republicans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they worried about being seen as critical of Ginni Thomas, predicted that if Democrats increased pressure on the Thomases, the right would counter with more calls for investigations of Democrats if Republicans win back the House in the November elections.

Conservatives have long viewed criticism of his Ginni Thomas as an attack on Justice Thomas. Her supporters include lawyer Mark Paoletta, who was Justice Thomas’ “sherpa,” introducing him to senators for his confirmation hearings.

The news media “seeks to portray Ginni Thomas’s public policy work as a threat to the Supreme Court in order to pressure Thomas to recuse himself from any case that Ginni, or any of the groups she has worked with, has even commented on,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Examiner.

Justice Thomas could in the coming months consider a long list of important legal issues surrounding Jan. 6. He may be called upon to rule on questions involving the prosecution for contempt of Congress of Steve Bannon, a onetime aide to Trump, or concerning the House committee’s efforts to obtain emails from Eastman.

Nichols is overseeing the criminal prosecution of Bannon, who was charged with contempt of Congress in November after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the committee.

Nichols is also handling the high-profile defamation lawsuits that Dominion Voting Systems filed last year against two lawyers closely associated with Trump: Rudy Giuliani and Powell.

Perhaps most important, Nichols is the only federal jurist in Washington so far to have thrown out the key obstruction of Congress charge that the Justice Department has used against hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants to describe the political results of a pro-Trump mob storming into the Capitol. Differing from 12 other federal judges, Nichols wrote in a ruling this month that prosecutors had stretched the statute beyond its original intent.

The ruling could prove important to the House committee as it weighs whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of Trump.

Cheney has indicated that she believes Trump may have violated the obstruction of Congress law, going so far as to read from the text of the statute on the House floor. If prosecutors ultimately use the law to charge Trump, it could face scrutiny from Nichols — or from another district judge who could consider his opinion.

Such a case, too, could eventually be considered by the Supreme Court and Justice Thomas.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Text messages reveal leading role of Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife in facilitating Trump coup plot


Jacob Crosse
wsws.org

On Thursday, the Washington Post and CBS News reported that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of arch-conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, texted former President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows repeatedly after the November 2020 election in support of Trump’s dictatorial efforts. In her messages to Meadows, Thomas endorsed fascistic QAnon conspiracy theories, calling for Trump’s political enemies to be “arrested & detained” and face “military tribunals, for sedition.”

Virginia "Ginni" Lamp Thomas (Wikimedia Commons)The messages confirm that Virginia Thomas, a lifelong Republican Party operative who married her “best friend” Clarence Thomas four years prior to his accession to the Supreme Court in 1991, coordinated with the White House chief of staff and Republican lawmakers to overturn the election of Biden and with it, American democracy.

The texts, which regurgitate verbatim arguments advanced on the fascist InfoWars program hosted by Alex Jones, follow an admission by Thomas earlier this month that she participated in the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally held outside the White House. The rally coincided with the attack on Congress by far-right militia elements, white supremacists and pro-Trump sycophants who were summoned by the aspiring-dictator and his Republican allies to occupy the Capitol, take politicians hostage and block the Electoral College certification.

The text messages were part of a tranche of material turned over by Meadows last year to the January 6 House Select Committee charged with investigating Trump’s failed coup. Before Meadows ceased cooperating with the committee, he volunteered some 9,000 pages of documents, which included 2,320 texts, at least 29 of which were shared between Thomas and Meadows. While Meadows was held in contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with the committee in December 2021, he has yet to be arraigned over four months later.

In their report, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa write that the texts “show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results—and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice.” Woodward and Costa noted that the text messages have been independently verified by five sources who have seen the original documents, as well as Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger III, who told the Post that “nothing about the text messages present any legal issues.”

The first of the 29 messages between Thomas and Meadows was sent by Thomas on November 5, 2020, two days after the election. In the text, Thomas included a link to a YouTube video named “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN.”

Pieczenik was a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration and worked under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance and James Baker in the US State Department.

A former member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Pieczenik has made multiple appearances on InfoWars in the last decade. While on the program, Pieczenik has echoed the disgusting lies of its host, Jones, that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a “false flag” operation engineered by the “deep state” as a pretext to abolish the Second Amendment. He also appears to have been the originator of the QAnon claim that alleged “legitimate ballots” had a special encryption code printed on them to distinguish them from fraudulent, i.e., Biden, ballots.

Commenting on Pieczenik’s video, Thomas wrote to Meadows, “I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible???”

“Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” she added.

Throughout his presidency Trump embraced the QAnon movement, which posits that Trump will lead a military coup, dubbed “The Storm,” that will end in a purge of his political opponents. Trump, and other Republican politicians, frequently share QAnon talking points on social media accounts and most recently in Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Trump co-conspirators and sitting Republican representatives Lauren Boebert (Colorado) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) are known adherents to the far-right movement.

In the same November 5 message to Meadows, Thomas shared a right-wing meme proliferating on “Stop the Steal” social media pages at the time which read: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO [Guantanamo Bay Prison] to face military tribunals for sedition.”

The day before Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, on November 6, Thomas sent another message to Meadows imploring him not to “… concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.” The Post notes that it is “unclear” if Meadows responded, however, Trump continued to take Thomas’ advice, refusing to concede the election while vowing to take his dictatorial ambitions to the Supreme Court.

“We’ll be going to the US Supreme Court—we want all voting to stop,” Trump declared on November 4.

On November 10 Thomas texted Meadows again, telling him he was “in my prayers!!” and urged him to continue supporting Trump’s coup plotting. “Help This Great President stand firm” against “the greatest Heist of our History.” Since his 2016 campaign, Trump claimed that the only way he could lose an election is due to “fraud.” Since his defeat to Biden, Trump has repeatedly referred to the 2020 election, in which he lost the Electoral College vote 306–232 and the popular vote by over 7 million, as the “Crime of the Century.”

Meadows replied: “I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do,” to which Thomas replied some nine minutes later, “Tearing up and praying for you guys!!!!! So proud to know you!!”

Later that same night, Thomas wrote to Meadows expressing her frustration that more Republicans in Congress were not rallying enough far-right lumpen elements in furtherance of the coup, “House and Senate guys are pathetic too… only 4 GOP House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots… [Texas Rep. Louie] Gohmert, [Ohio Rep. Jim] Jordan, [Arizona Rep. Paul] Gosar and [Texas Rep. Chip] Roy.”

In addition to coordinating with Meadows and Republican lawmakers, the texts revealed that Thomas was also in communication with senior White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. On November 13, the Post report claims she texted Meadows, “Just forwarded to [your] gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved.”

A November 19 text from Thomas to Meadows reveals her avid support for the far-right lawyer Powell. Urging Meadows to make Powell the “lead and the face” of their efforts to overturn the election, Thomas wrote, “Mark (don’t want to wake you)… Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

In the same thread, Thomas, revealing her knowledge of inner-workings within the White House, something she no doubt shared with her Supreme Court justice husband, advised Meadows on managing White House personnel.

“Suggestion: You need to buck up your team on the inside, Mark. The lower level insiders are scared, fearful or sending out signals of hopelessness vs an awareness of the existential threat to America right now. You can buck them up, strengthen their spirits.”

Thomas wrote, “You guys fold, the evil just moves fast down underneath you all. Lots of intensifying threats coming to ACB [Justice Amy Coney Barrett] and others.” Meadows replied to the text later that same day, “Thanks so much.”

The same day that Thomas texted Meadows to “Release the Kraken,” Trump coup lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell held a press conference where they alleged “communists” in China, Cuba and Venezuela, along with “antifa” elements and billionaire Holocaust survivor George Soros were part of a wide ranging plot to block the election of Trump through electoral fraud.

“Globalists, dictators, corporations, you name it—everybody’s against us except President Trump,” Powell declared in a fascist tirade.

The phrase “Release the Kraken” was popularized by Powell during an appearance she made on the Fox Business Network with Lou Dobbs on November 13. In her appearance Powell spewed election conspiracies and ended the interview claiming she was going “to release the Kraken.” However within three days of the deranged November 19 press conference, Trump, Giuliani and Ellis had soured on Powell, with Giuliani releasing a statement on November 22 saying she was not a member of the Trump legal team.

The same day as the statement, Thomas reached out to Meadows, expressing disappointment that Powell was no longer part of the inner coup circle. “Trying to understand the Sidney Powell distancing,” wrote Thomas.

Two days later, on November 24, Thomas wrote to Meadows: “I can’t see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences… the whole coup and now this… we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us can’t continue the GOP charade.” Meadows, agreeing with Thomas’ delusions, wrote, “You’re preaching to the choir. Very demoralizing.”

Meadows, adopting overt Christian themes, added that their joint efforts to overturn the election was “a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”

The Post writes that Thomas replied: “Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!” While Virginia never directly refers to her husband in the texts, the couple have frequently referred to each other as their respective “best friends.”

While Ginni Thomas was urging Trump’s chief of staff to overturn the election in early December, her husband argued that a Texas lawsuit advanced by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other pro-Trump lawyers seeking to invalidate millions of voters in the “battleground” states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin should be heard by the Supreme Court. At the time, Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito wrote a joint statement saying they did not believe the court has “discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls without our original jurisdiction.”

After November 24, 2020, the Post report notes that there is “an unexplained gap in correspondence. The committee received one additional message sent by Thomas to Meadows, on Jan. 10, four days after the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally Thomas said she attended and the deadly attack on the Capitol.”

In that January 10 message, Thomas, echoing the sentiments of the fascist mob that broke into the Capitol, expressed her revulsion at Vice President Mike Pence’s unwillingness to unconstitutionally reject the electoral college vote of states Trump lost.

“We are living through what feels like the end of America,” Thomas bemoaned to Trump’s chief of staff. “Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in listening mode to see where to fight with our teams.” In what could be a reference to the poor performance of the fascist militias who stormed the Capitol on Trump’s behalf, Thomas claimed that those “who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!!”

In addition to disproving Thomas’ lying claims that she “played no role with those who were planning and leading the January 6 events,” as she claimed in an interview earlier this month, the texts illuminate the obvious conflict of interest between Justice Thomas and any future court hearings pertaining to Trump’s failed coup.

In addition to supporting a hearing on the previously mentioned Texas lawsuit, earlier this year Clarence Thomas was the only justice to vote against allowing the release of records from the Trump White House pertaining to the attack. In a functioning democratic society, the justice would already have been impeached and removed from the bench, however, as of this writing, it is not even clear if he, recently discharged after being hospitalized this week, would even recuse himself from any future hearing related to January 6. Currently there is no legal mechanism that would force him to do so.

If Clarence Thomas does choose to recuse himself it will not be due to any pressure imposed on him by the Democratic Party. In a pathetic statement issued Friday morning, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden meekly suggested that Thomas, “at the bare minimum … recuse himself from any case released to the January 6th investigation, and should Donald Trump run again, any case related to the 2024 election.”

That Wyden accepts that Trump will be free to “run again” in 2024 shows that there will be no accountability for Trump or any of his high-level co-conspirators if it is left to the Democratic Party and the courts, riddled with reactionaries like Thomas, to decide. That Trump and his far-right conspirators in the Republican Party and on the Supreme Court remain free to plot their next coup underscores that the only social force capable of defeating dictatorship and the rise of fascism is the international working class armed with a socialist program.