Whistleblowing Warriors Continue Their Vital Civic Leadership

As the U.S Congress recovenes after the Labor Day Holiday, the courage and sacrifice of the nation’s whistleblowers deserve recognition, especially because the breakdown of normal civil rights protections endangers the national interest.

One way to assess this process was to review here highlights of the 13th Annual Whisteblowers Summit and Film Festival, which this year was held in its traditional venue of Washington, DC as well as in several locations in Arkansas, with substantial amounts of the programming available also online.

The contribitions of three of the award-winners are especially noteworthy because their courageous actions continue to reveal serious shortcomings in the nation’s national security and democratic institutions, including the U.S. Departments of Defense, State and Justice.

This column explores the work and implications of these awardees, who were honored at a ceremony and dinner organized by the Summit leadership at the National Press Club in Washington, DC:  

• Lev Parnas, right, host of the high-rated “Lev Remembers” podcast, a onetime confidante of and fixer for President Trump and the president’s counsel, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he authored a powerful columni about the Summit, excerpted below,  Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride; 
• Wayne Madsen, editor of the Wayne Madsen Report, author of 24 books, a onetime commentator on virtually all major U.S TV network and cable news networks.
• Erez Reuveni is the former Acting Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation (OIL), where he served nearly 15 years defending federal immigration policies across multiple administrations. 

The Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival was primarily from July 30 to Aug. 1, 2025, with hybrid events from July 25 to Aug. 3. Its purpose was to celebrate those who speak truth to power and help build a more transparent, accountable world.

As noted, winners of “Pillar” awards signifying pillars of civic life were: 

Lev Parnas, host of the high-rated Lev Remembers podcast and co-author (with Jerry Langton) of the memoir, Shadow Diplomacy: Lev Parnas’ Wild Ride From Brooklyn to Donald Trump’s Inner Circle, adapted to a documentary last fall produced by Rachel Maddow. Parnas describes how he erred in becoming close associate of President Trump’s counsel Rudy Giuliani, and others in the president’s inner circle (as well as with President Trump himself) in efforts to obtain evidence to be used against Democrats to hurt them and Ukraine politically. These days, Parnas speaks out forcefully gainst what he regards as dangerous threats to the U.S. justice system and other democratic safeguards.

Wayne Madsen, below,  editor of the Wayne Madsen Report, author of 24 books, a commentator on virtually all major U.S. TV network and cable news networks, plus the BBC and other prominent global networks. The former Navy intelligence officer, author of op-eds appearing in more than 150 U.S. newspapers, has been a Press Club member for 25 years. He discussed his books, which include three about the Trump family, including The Rise of the Fascist Fourth Reich: The Era of Trumpism and the New Far-Right, and other reports about current threats to democracy and American institutions.  

At the Justice Department, Emil Bove III played an outsize role in the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to take control of the agency it argues has been “weaponized” against President Trump and other conservatives.

Erez Reuveni, the former Acting Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation (OIL), came forward this summer to assert that federal judicial nominee Emile Bove III had told subordinates at the Justice Department that he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill the president’s aggressive deportation promises. The Senate confirmed Bove nonetheless on a 50-49 vote. Reuveni served nearly 15 years defending federal immigration policies across multiple administrations. He received multiple awards and promotions during his tenure at OIL from both Democratic and Republican administrations, and was recently promoted by the Trump Administration in March of 2025.

In April 2025, Reuveni was abruptly and publicly placed on administrative leave and later terminated after he acknowledged in federal court that the government had deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia in error and refused to sign a brief misrepresenting facts about  Abrego on appeal. Administration officials and President Trump all quickly criticized Reuveni’s candor to the court. Following his termination, on June 24, 2025, Reuveni filed a whistleblower complaint alleging retaliation for his internal whistleblowing and a pattern of internal DOJ misconduct, including ignoring or evading court orders, systematically prioritizing enforcement outcomes overdue process obligations, and pressuring attorneys to make misrepresentations to courts. Lawmakers and legal ethics scholars have described Reuveni’s case as a watershed moment in the fight to restore judicial accountability and protect the independence of government lawyers.

Those awardees were particularly important because of ongoing toll of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the damage to Western alliances and elective democracy via related disruptions, and the stresses to the U.S. justice system heightened by Trump Administration violation of immigration laws.

The Parnas column cited above is excerpted here, with his brief bio:

Lev Parnas, above, being interviewed by cable television host Rachel Maddow on Jan. 15, 2020 for a documentary she produced about his life.

Lev Remembers, Yesterday Changed Me Forever: From Brooklyn to the National Press Club—A Whistleblower’s Journey and a Father’s Pride, Lev Parnas,Aug. 1, 2025. Yesterday was one of those rare days that I’ll never forget.

The kind of day that reaches deep into your soul and reminds you of why you’re still standing. The kind of day that humbles you—because it isn’t just about what you’ve been through, it’s about who you’ve become because of it.

I was in Washington, D.C., standing inside the hallowed halls of the National Press Club—the beating heart of free speech in this country—where I was presented with the 13th Annual Whistleblower Pillar Award.

Now, I know how strange that may sound. Me, a kid from Brooklyn, standing in front of a room full of journalists, federal officials, and freedom fighters, being honored as a whistleblower. It still doesn’t fully register. Because where I come from, being a whistleblower wasn’t seen as courageous. It was seen as betrayal. As weakness. As turning your back.

But I’ve lived long enough to learn that’s one of the biggest lies ever told.

The truth is, whistleblowers are some of the most courageous and selfless individuals in American history. They’re not traitors—they’re truth tellers. They’re the ones who risk it all to stop the machine. And in that room yesterday, I was reminded that when you speak truth to power, even if it costs you everything, you stand taller in the end. Because you stood for something bigger than yourself.

Walking through the Press Club before the ceremony, I found myself slowly absorbing the history embedded in its walls. Photos of reporters who changed the world. Articles that exposed corruption. Headlines that saved lives. It’s a place that’s seen the best and the worst of our democracy—wars, cover-ups, scandal, triumph. But something was different this time.

It wasn’t just the memory of the old press that filled those rooms—it was the presence of a new one. And I saw it clearly in my son, Aaron Parnas, right.

When I looked out and saw him sitting there as I received my award, something happened in me. Yes, I was proud to be honored. But more than anything, I was proud to be his father.

Aaron is one of the most committed and fearless independent journalists of his generation. At a time when democracy is on life support—when lies are trending and truth is buried—he chose the hard path. He chose to fight. To dig. To publish. To tell it straight, without fear, without apology.

And yesterday, in that room, it felt like the baton was being passed—not in ceremony, but in spirit.

The National Press Club once echoed with the voices of newspaper giants. Today, it echoes with the courage of independent journalists like Aaron. The ones who don’t have corporate machines behind them. Who aren’t protected by PR firms or billionaire donors. Just a laptop, a Wi-Fi connection, and a promise to tell the truth no matter what.

It was surreal to witness. The walls once filled with Pulitzer-winning editors now watched as a new generation stepped in. The old guard may have built the foundation, but it’s the independent press that’s carrying the torch now. And I couldn’t be more proud that my son is at the front of that line.

But I also need to say this, and say it clearly: that award wasn’t just for me.

I accepted it on behalf of every single one of you. My readers. My supporters. My subscribers. My community. You’ve been with me through the fire. You’ve supported me when the doors were slammed shut. You’ve kept my voice alive when Trump and his cronies tried to bury it.

This award belongs to us. To this movement. To this fight.

Because make no mistake: we are living through one of the most dangerous times in American history. Donald Trump and his allies are not just campaigning—they are executing a slow, strategic, deliberate assault on our democracy. They are silencing whistleblowers. Shuttering the truth. Weaponizing fear. They want to rewrite history while intimidating anyone who dares to challenge their lies.

And that’s exactly why what we’re doing here matters.

This is a resistance.

Yesterday reminded me why I keep going. Why I write. Why I speak. Why I fight. Because we can’t afford to lose. Because I don’t want my children—or yours—to grow up in a country where telling the truth is considered a crime. Because history doesn’t change unless we force it to.

I also had some promising meetings in D.C.—real conversations with people ready to act. And I’ll be sharing those details soon. But this next chapter? I can’t do it alone.

If you haven’t yet subscribed, now is the time. Become a paid subscriber today. It makes all the difference. Share this message. Re-stack it. Tell your friends. Because what’s coming will require all of us.

And if you believe in this work, please consider contributing directly at Venmo: @lev-parnas.

Also, if you haven’t yet, go to LevRemembers.com and pick up your copy of Shadow Diplomacy. That book lays out everything they tried to hide. The backchannels. The real deals. The playbook of how Trump operates behind the scenes—and how it all connects to what’s unfolding today.

This movement is not funded by corporations or political parties. It’s fueled by truth, and powered by you.

They may mock us. They may try to silence us. But we will not forget. We will not look away. And with your help, we will not be ignored.

Now more than ever, I need you to be my megaphone. Share this message far and wide. Subscribe. Contribute. Spread the word. Because what we’re fighting for is bigger than me. It’s bigger than you. It’s our democracy. It’s our future.

With gratitude, truth, and fire. 

Lev Parnas, right, is an entrepreneur, political activist, and author. Born in Odessa, Ukraine under the Soviet Union, heemigrated with his family to the United States in 1976 to escape antisemitic persecution. When Lev and his sister won a green card lottery, the family went firstto Detroit and then settled in Brooklyn. Though Lev studied briefly at Brooklyn College and Baruch College, life led him to more unconventional routes. He worked in real estate and on Wall Street before moving to Florida in 1995 to start his own brokerage firm.

In Fall 2019, Lev became an internationally-recognized figure when he was arrested for participating in the Ukraine scandal orchestrated by Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. A father of seven, Lev currently lives in Florida with his wife Svetlana, shown with him above, and five of his children. Lev testified in front of Congress on March 20th, 2024 as a witness for the Democratic Oversight Committee in the Impeachment of Joe Biden. Lev is an author of the book “Shadow Diplomacy” about his time in as a Trump insider.

Among other award-winners was: 

Dr. Robert Kroutil, a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contractor who came to Government Accountability Project in the wake of the 2023 Norfolk Southern trail derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Dr. Kroutil is a nationally recognized expert in the field of passive infrared chemical detection, helping to develop EPA’s Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology (ASPECT) airplane to detect harmful chemicals in the 1980s.

Following the 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment, the ASPECT plane was set to deploy, but Dr. Kroutil discovered inconsistencies in the emergency response that prevented ASPECT from protecting the public. EPA chose not to fly the plane until four days after the derailment, turned off sensors over the town’s creeks, and then falsified records to cover up the mission breakdown. Dr. Kroutil bravely reported these problems but was retaliated against and forced into retirement.

Helping start the speaking program at the U.S. House Rayburn Building was John Barbour, age 92, a high school dropout in Canada who later won five Emmys in Los Angeles for news reporting and then creating, producing and co-hosting the hit show “Real People,” with a file photo from the show at right.

In 1992, he produced “The Garrison Tapes” documentary New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation ofa 1963 assassination plot to killPresident John F. Kennedy. Barbour followed up with “American Media & The Second Assassination of John F. Kennedy” in 2017. It challenges the mainstream media for failing to report fairly on Garrison’s investigation and the Warren Commission.

Barbour, born in 1933 and essentially abandoned by his parents, snuck into the United States at age 17 and became of successful comic. He became LA’s most popular talk show host beginning in 1970 KABC in Los Angeles, winning his first Emmys, and starting a path that would make him the performer to win for both News & Entertainment.

He made his name interviewing controversial anti-war guests like Mohammed Ali, Jane Fonda, and Cesar Chavez — and was then fired for booking Garrison to talk about JFK’s assassination.

He became a film critic at KNBC and LA Magazine, and was Frank Sinatra’s private writer for four years. In 1979, he helped launch the hit show “Real People,” earning him accolades later as “The Godfather Of Reality TV.” He has authored numerous books, including his rags to riches memoir, “Your Mother’s Not A Virgin!”

The event this year was split into two overlapping segments. One, based as usual in Washington, DC, was led by Summit Co-Founder Marcel

Reid, shown at right, with assistance by the Justice Integrity Project. The main conference featured whistleblowers sharing their stories at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill July 29. Those featured on that program included panels lead by Goverrnment Accountability Project (GAP) Director Tom Devine that provided a guide to effective advocacy to engage elected representatives. 

The other locale, under the leadership of Summit Co-Founder Michael McCray, was at venues in Arkansas that included the Clinton Presidential Library Center, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, and the Martha Mitchell House & Museum, with extended hybrid programming featuring documentary films running from July 25 to Aug. 3. McCray is also shown at right and is co-author with Reid of a book on their whistleblowing about ACORN, a once-prominent national community organizing group. 

Highlights of the progamming, including the films, are available via the Summit and Festival website here. 

Contact the author Andrew Kreig

Notable Recent Russia-Ukraine Invasion News 

September

Sept. 1 

 Politico, Ukrainian police say Russia linked to murder of former parliament speaker, Veronika Melkozerova, Sept. 1, 2025. Authorities have arrested a suspect in the killing of Andriy Parubiy, a prominent politician who played a major role in Ukraine’s pro-WesternEuromaidan Revolution.

Ukrainian authorities have detained a suspect in the murder of Andriy Parubiy, below left, a senior politician and former parliamentary speaker, and allege there is a Russian link to the killing.

“We know this crime is not accidental. There is a Russian trace in it,” Ivan Vyhivskyi, head of the National Police of Ukraine, said in a statement posted to Facebook on Monday. Vyhivskyi confirmed a suspect was arrested in the Khmelnytskyi region 36 hours after Parubiy’s murder. Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said the suspect is a 52-year-old resident of Lviv.

On Saturday — in broad daylight — a gunman disguised as a food delivery worker fired eight bullets at Parubiy in central Kyiv, killing him. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the killer was well-prepared and organized.

Parubiy’s murder is the latest in a string of killings of prominent Ukrainian politicians and activists this year, following the assassinations of former MP Iryna Farion in Lviv and anti-Russian activist Demian Hanul in Odesa.

Parubiy played a major role in leading Ukraine’s pro-Western Euromaidan Revolution in 2013-2014, which ousted the Kremlin puppet regime of Viktor Yanukovych, who is now in exile in Russia. In the winter of 2014, Parubiy served as the commander of protestor self-defense units that clashed with rogue police squads on the streets of Kyiv. He was also one of the top ideologists pushing for Ukraine’s cultural, linguistic and religious exodus from the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.

Russian President Vladimir Putin paints the Euromaidan Revolution as a coup d’état staged by the West and denies the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government. He is also seeking to force Kyiv to fully reinstate the Russian Orthodox church and Russian as a state language in Ukraine as his price for agreeing to a peace deal.

The Contrarian, Global Commentary: The Most Communist President Ever, Jennifer Rubin, right, Sept. 1, 2025. How we lose our democracy and our economy. 

Republicans, before the Donald Trump cult took hold, frequently railed (rightly so) against communist and fascist regimes that nationalized industry, indulged in crony capitalism, and substituted propaganda for the free flow of reliable information. (The five-year plan is working!) Well, well. How times have changed.

Sadly, but predictably, rather than reject these practices when they come from the Oval Office, corporate America, like Republicans more generally, has generally gone along with or whistled past the graveyard of capitalism, maintaining the pretense that all is well. Just as the First Amendment is too important to leave to the legacy media, a prosperous economy is too vital to leave to the Intel, Amazon, Space X, and other Wall Street spinners of conventional wisdom.

Consciously or not, Wall Street investors, pundits, and analysts keep alive the pretense of normalcy, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, right, explained:

[M]arkets will remain calm until the illusion of normality becomes unsustainable. At that point market prices may “change violently.” The current technical term for this phenomenon is a “Wile E. Coyote moment” — the moment when the cartoon character, having run several steps off the edge of a cliff, looks down and realizes that there’s nothing supporting him. Only then, according to the laws of cartoon physics, does he fall.

Once a corrupt, dictatorial regime mars their reputations, investors, consumers, employers, and lenders might simply hunker down, put off decisions, and hope the dust settles. That paralysis, which we have already glimpsed in the fallout from tariffs, leads to recession—or, with a Fed untethered to reality and principled economics, to stagflation.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump’s Attempt to Repackage His Capitulation in Ukraine, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 1, 2025. The other day, Axios posted a ridiculous column (with Mike Allen as the first byline) beginning to lay the groundwork for Trump to repackage imminent failure on Ukraine. It starts by allowing senior White House officials anonymously and vaguely blame Europeans for Trump’s failure to craft a deal.

Frustrated Trump aides contend the blame should fall on European allies, not on Trump or even Russian President Vladimir Putin.

All three bases for that blame in the column are ridiculous:

• “White House officials are losing patience with European leaders, whom they claim are pushing Ukraine to hold out for unrealistic territorial concessions by Russia.”
• “U.S. officials believe [Countries besides the UK and France] want the U.S. to bear the full cost of the war, while putting no skin in the game themselves.”
• Europeans aren’t prepared to add sanctions against Russia, even though, “European countries are already working on a new set of sanctions against Russia.”

What appears to have happened is that Mike Allen let a bunch of White House officials make ridiculous claims with no pushback.

Remember: as JD claims he knows better than Russian experts, Tulsi Gabbard, right, is withholding their own intelligence on Russia even from Five Eyes partners. And Tulsi purged the top Russian expert who largely prepared the Alaska meeting over John Ratcliffe’s support by stripping her security clearance.

In the days leading up to President Donald Trump’s Aug. 15 Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of the CIA’s senior-most Russia experts worked grueling hours, helping Trump and his team prepare for high-stakes diplomacy over Ukraine and making sure they were adequately briefed, according to a former agency colleague.

Four days later, the CIA officer — whom The Washington Post is not naming for her protection — was at work at the spy agency’s Langley headquarters when she was abruptly ordered to report to the security office. She was informed that her clearance to look at classified material was being stripped. In a span of minutes, her 29-year career in public service was essentially over.

The officer had been expecting an imminent move to Europe to take up a prestigious assignment approved by CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Instead, she became the latest casualty of a widening cull by Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, fueled at times by far-right activist Laura Loomer, targeting national security professionals whom they deem to have engaged in “politicization or weaponization of intelligence to advance personal, partisan, or non-objective agendas,” according to Gabbard’s Aug. 19 memo announcing the revocation at Trump’s direction of security clearances.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, left, and President Xi Jinping of China on Sunday, Aug. 31, 2025,  on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, China, in a photo released by Mr. Modi’s office (Photo via Indian Prime Minister’s Office and Associated Press).

New York Times, Xi Uses Summit, Parade and History to Flaunt China’s Global Pull, David Pierson, Mujib Mashal and Nataliya Vasilyeva, Sept. 1, 2025 (print ed.). With the leaders of Russia and India visiting, China’s president will show how he can use statecraft, military might and history to push for global influence.

Xi Jinping could hardly have scripted a more favorable moment. This weekend, the leaders of India and Russia joined him at a security summit in China — one leader pushed away by President Trump’s tariffs, the other brought out of isolation by his embrace.

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, U.S. tariffs on Indian goods have raised doubts about leaning too heavily on Washington. For President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, his red-carpet treatment in Alaska by Mr. Trump blunted Western efforts to punish him for the invasion of Ukraine.

At the center is Mr. Xi, turning America’s alienation of India into an opportunity, and finding validation for his own long alignment with Mr. Putin.

The summit of more than 20 leaders, mostly from Central Asia, followed by a military parade in Beijing showcasing China’s newest missiles and warplanes, is not just pageantry. It shows how Mr. Xi is trying to turn history, diplomacy and military might into tools for reshaping a global order that has been dominated by the United States.

New York Times, India Was the Economic Alternative to China. Trump Ended That, Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar, Sept. 1, 2025. A lurch in policy has shaken the India-U.S. economic alliance against China, leaving India little choice but to consider reversing its own strategy.

President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs landed like a declaration of economic war on India, undercutting enormous investments made by American companies to hedge their dependency on China.

India’s hard work to present itself to the world as the best alternative to Chinese factories — what business executives and big money financiers have embraced as part of the China Plus One strategy — has been left in tatters.

Now, less than a week since the tariffs took full effect, officials and business leaders in New Delhi, and their American partners, are still trying to make sense of the suddenly altered landscape.

August

Aug. 30

Lev Remembers, Global Commentary: Witkoff Exposed — Trump’s Envoy Revealed as Kremlin Pawn, Lev Parnas, right,  Aug. 30, 2025. As Ukraine fights for survival, Trump’s fixer plays theatrics for Putin, trading peace for Russia’s power and money

Last night, Ukraine endured another hellish night. Russia launched one of its largest air assaults in months — 582 drones and missiles raining down from every direction. Entire cities shook. Apartment blocks in Zaporizhzhia collapsed. Children pulled from the rubble. A café burned, homes destroyed, power lines severed. Dnipro and Pavlohrad lit up in flames. Kyiv’s trains delayed by strikes on rail lines. Explosions echoed across 14 regions — west to east.

The Ukrainian Air Force fought like lions, shooting down 548 targets. But still, five missiles and 24 drones hit their mark. Still, families grieve. Still, hundreds of thousands sit in darkness without power, gas, or water.

And while this nightmare unfolds, while innocent civilians are buried under rubble, the media is trying to portray Trump’s “special envoy” Steve Witkoff, right, as incompetent and botching meetings and confusing Moscow’s lies with reality.

But you know who the real Steve Witkoff is, because for months I’ve been telling you — and now the world is beginning to see it too. My sources are telling me that after a meeting in New York between Andriy Yermak, Sergiy Kyslytsya, and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, the Ukrainians are now more convinced than ever that Witkoff is nothing more than another useful idiot for the Kremlin.

Politico and others report how U.S., Ukrainian, and European officials are all frustrated with him. He refuses to consult experts. He shows up unprepared. He parrots back nonsense after sitting with Putin. One day he believes Russia will give up territory; the next he thinks they agreed to NATO-style security guarantees. It’s chaos — but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just incompetence.

Let me make it very clear, Witkoff isn’t confused. He’s obsessed. Like Trump, he came up in the real estate world of the 1990s, making money with the same Russian oligarchs who answer directly to the Kremlin. They were both swimming in Moscow’s dirty money long before Ukraine was ever on the headlines.

That’s why I tell you: the real deals aren’t happening in public. They’re not in the leaks you see. They’re not in Witkoff’s babbling reports. The real manipulations are happening behind closed doors with his handler, Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s fixer.

For those of you who have been reading my letters and watching my lives, you already know — you’ve seen these theatrics playing out in real time. From the very first moment they announced that so-called “peace meeting” in Alaska, I told you it was never about peace. It was a distraction. A cover. A way for Trump to shift attention away from the Epstein files, and for Putin to claw back legitimacy on the world stage.

Think back: Trump in the Oval Office, surrounded by EU leaders and President Zelensky, staging the show. Right in the middle of those talks, he “calls Putin,” leaks out tidbits of information, dangles the promise of a meeting between Zelensky and Putin. Then Karoline Leavitt, from the press secretary’s pulpit, doubles down and claims Putin promised talks. But I told you then — it was a mirage. A script. A theater production designed to buy time for Putin and distract the world from Trump’s scandals.

And now, when the show collapses, they blame Witkoff. They tell you he misunderstood, he was confused, he didn’t get the message right. But hear me clearly: there was no misunderstanding. Witkoff didn’t mishear Putin. Trump didn’t misread the room. Putin didn’t misspeak. They all know exactly what the deal is. The only people being misled are the media, and through them, the entire world. This isn’t incompetence — it’s choreography. And it’s being written by Vladimir Putin, played out by his two useful idiots: Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump.

Don’t listen when the media tells you Witkoff is “confused.” That’s the cover story. This isn’t confusion. It’s a deliberate stalling tactic. A distraction. A way to buy time while Russia pounds Ukraine with drones and missiles.

The truth is, Trump, Putin, Witkoff, and their oligarch friends aren’t talking about peace. They’re talking about power, money, cryptocurrency, minerals, and energy. They’re carving up the future like a real estate transaction — with Ukraine as the land deal on the table.

And while they play these games, Ukraine bleeds. Twenty thousand children kidnapped by Russia. Cities like Zaporizhzhia left in ruins. Civilians terrorized night after night.

And yet, in all this darkness, there is hope. What the mainstream media often leaves out is that Ukraine is not just standing still, waiting to be bombed into dust — Ukraine is fighting back. Not against civilians, not against the elderly or children sleeping in their beds like Russia does night after night — but strategically, surgically, where it hurts the Kremlin most.

This week, Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russia, igniting fires at the Krasnodar oil refinery in the south and the Syzran refinery in Samara — two critical lifelines for Moscow’s war machine. These facilities together process over 11 million tons of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and oil products every year, much of it flowing straight to the Russian army. By hitting them, Ukraine is crippling Russia’s economy, cutting into its ability to fuel tanks, planes, and missiles, and slowly dragging Putin’s regime to its knees.

That’s why these backroom “deals” Trump is pushing through Witkoff matter so much to Moscow. Russia doesn’t want “peace talks.” They want survival. They need Trump to help them claw back international recognition, access to finance, and economic cover. Without it, without the lifeline Trump is dangling before them, they can’t sustain this war for much longer. That’s the truth you won’t hear on CNN or Fox News — but you’ll hear it here.

And while Ukraine strikes Russia where it hurts, thanks to all of you, Oleksandr is delivering aid to the hardest-hit regions. Your contributions are turning into much-needed hygiene supplies — the basic necessities most of us take for granted — carried straight to the front lines, into hospitals, and into bombed-out towns where families have nothing left. People who don’t have running water or electricity, who can’t even take a shower, now have some relief because of you. Thank you.

Lev Remembers, Opinion: Trump Defeated, Putin Wounded, Survivors Rising, Lev Parnas, right, Aug. 30, 2025. This week ends in victory—and September 3rd begins with truth that Trump can’t silence.

My friends, I want to take this moment and finally bring you some good news. I know that most of the time I come to you with the hard truths—the reality others sugarcoat or turn away from. I’ve never done that, and I never will. But this week, for once, ends with real victories. And it reminds us that when we fight together, when we stand up for what’s right, change is possible.

This week, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs were illegal. Let that sink in. The very same tariffs that crushed working families, raised prices, and handed more power to oligarchs around the world—struck down.

The court made it clear: Trump overstepped, abusing emergency powers in ways the Constitution never allowed. For months, he played dictator with our economy. This ruling is more than a technicality—it’s a reminder that the rule of law still matters, that no man is above it, not even a president. And while the tariffs remain in place temporarily until October 14, the legal precedent is set. Trump lost. America won.

Across the ocean, Ukraine delivered another blow that will echo through Moscow’s walls of power. Ukrainian forces have wiped out over 20% of Russia’s oil refineries. Think about that. Twenty percent of the infrastructure that fuels Putin’s war machine—gone.

This isn’t symbolic. This is strategic, calculated, and devastating. Every refinery destroyed means fewer missiles, fewer tanks, fewer engines of war. Every refinery destroyed deepens Russia’s economic collapse, strangles their ability to continue this illegal invasion, and proves yet again that Ukraine is not backing down. Against all odds, they’re still standing, still fighting, still winning.

And it doesn’t stop there. In Maryland, a federal judge has blocked the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man Trump tried to make an example of in his endless war against immigrants and the courts. Judge Paula Xinis extended the restraining order, keeping him safe here in the United States until at least October, with a hearing already set.

This matters. It’s not just about one man—it’s about the principle that due process, fairness, and humanity cannot be erased, no matter how loudly Trump demands it. It’s another reminder that truth and justice still have defenders in this country.

As Americans prepare to spend this long Labor Day weekend with family and friends, celebrating the dignity of hard work and the freedom to live, let’s not forget what this week showed us. We closed out a week with legal and strategic victories—but the week ahead begins with an even louder one.

Aug. 28 

The Daily Beast, European Leader Calls Trump a ‘Russian Asset,’ Erkki Forster, Aug. 28, 2025. COMRADE-IN-CHIEF. The European president said Donald Trump “functions as an asset,” slamming the president for his stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Portugal’s president has branded President Donald Trump a “Russian asset,” blasting him for his tepid response to Moscow while Ukraine struggles against Russia’s invasion.

Trump has wavered heavily in his public stance on the war that started when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale assault on Ukraine over three years ago.

While Trump has threatened Putin with higher sanctions and “severe consequences” if he presses on with the war, he has declined to follow through, often lashing out at Ukrainian President.

Aug. 27

Emptywheel, Analysis: Devlin Barrett and Mike Schmidt Mistake the Fox in the Henhouse for a Guard Puppy. Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Aug. 27, 2025.

I’m used to Mike Schmidt ignoring Trump’s weaponization of DOJ against his rivals during the first term. I’m used to Devlin Barrett credulously writing down propaganda that right wing law enforcement sources tell him to write down as if it were true.But this, from the two of them, is a remarkable exercise in disinformation in service of a weaponized investigation.

They describe that a fox is in the hen house, but are so ignorant, naive, or corrupt that they describe the fox, instead, as a guard dog.

The factual details the story describes are:

• Kash Patel, below, is investigating his claim that he found burn bags full of classified documents which, he claims, is proof people intended to destroy them (but which sources for the story explain is really dumb because any documents found in a burn bag would be on digital servers too)• Paul Abbate (who was considered a candidate to be Director of FBI after Jim Comey was fired) is a subject of the investigation• Kash put the investigation in WDVA, basing venue on a storage facility there, to avoid DC grand juries• The US Attorney for WDVA, Todd Gilbert, recently resigned shortly after being appointed• John Durham’s lead FBI Agent, Jack Eckenrode, who endorsed Kash to be FBI Director, is conducting interviews in the investigation• “One of the documents investigators have been asking about…was declassified in 2020, while Mr. Trump was in office”

The men describe the Durham Report as Devlin described it in 2023 when he credulously parroted [John] Durham’s claimed findings, without mentioning how badly the report itself undermined Durham’s claims.

Mr. Durham ultimately concluded that the F.B.I.’s work on the Russia investigation suffered from “confirmation bias” against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Durham brought two separate cases to trial on charges that people lied to the F.B.I. in the course of its Russia investigation, but both trials ended in quick acquittals.Such a description was sloppy in 2023 but is inexcusable now, in the wake of the declassification of the classified annex. The classified annex showed that by July 2021, Durham should have concluded that the premise of his entire investigation was based on documents fabricated by Russian spies to frame Hillary.

Here’s the NYT story on that, in case Devlin and NYT Mike have difficulties learning about this.

Once you understand that the classified annex disclosed that John Durham, right, and Jack Eckenrode knowingly spent years investigating Hillary’s people based off a Russian fabrication — literally committing the crime they were investigating — then Kash’s burn bag claim would most immediately implicate Durham and his team, including Eckenrode. Durham went to great lengths to obscure that he had been chasing Russian disinformation, even in his classified annex. Such an effort bespeaks guilty conscience, the kind of guilty conscience that might lead someone to attempt to destroy evidence.

If this were a real investigation, Eckenrode would be a suspect, not the lead investigator.

Worse still, if Kash imagines (or claims to imagine) he’s found new, hard copy versions of what he himself helped declassify in 2020 — documents that included a report about the SVR documents bearing John Ratcliffe’s name (but undoubtedly written with Kash), heavily redacted notes from John Brennan, and a somewhat redacted version of the CIA version of a referral to the FBI — then the steps that Durham’s team (that is, Eckenrode) took to access those documents in 2019 and afterwards would likewise be a central focus of any credible investigation.

Indeed, the apparent fact that Durham — that is, Eckenrode — never presented an FBI version of a September 7, 2016 referral purportedly sent to the FBI, which none of the FBI witnesses remember seeing, would be a central issue in any investigation.

That referral is something that, if it exists in hard copy, if it exists at all, might present new investigative leads.

But also would raise still more questions about the criminal conduct of Eckenrode and Durham — their willing quest to chase disinformation created by Russian spies to frame Hillary Clinton.

And it would raise real questions about whether, after chasing a Russian fabrication for years, Kash’s FBI decided to start fabricating evidence themselves.

This is an investigation led by someone who should be a chief suspect. Such investigations never turn out well.

Aug. 27

Lawfare via Brookings Institute, Armed Conflict Terrorism & Extremism: In Russia, Pardoned Former Convicts Return Home From War, Emily Hoge, Aug. 27, 2025. Russia has promised pardons to former convicts who volunteer in the war. Only eventually, some may return home—bringing violence with them.

Some of Dmitri Malyshev’s acquaintances from the village of Rakhina, near Volgograd, probably first learned that he was home from the war in Ukraine from social media. In September 2024, he posted a picture of himself reclining, with a drink in his hand, wearing sunglasses that showed the reflection of a nearby swimming pool. Malyshev had been wounded at the front—a broken jaw, ruptured ear drum, and some shrapnel in one of his hands—and had therefore been sent home to recover.

“Yes, he [Dmitry Malyshev] returned due to an injury,” the head of the Rakhina rural settlement told v1.ru, a Russian news site for the Volgograd region. “The day before yesterday I saw him in the store and greeted him. As he told me, he will be treated here and will go back to the SVO zone”—that is, the zone of the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Dmitri Malyshev is a cannibal. In 2015, Malyshev was convicted of murdering an acquaintance after the other man propositioned him for sex. Malyshev beat his friend with a crowbar and then filmed himself frying the man’s heart on the stove with onions, eating it, and trying to feed the table scraps to his pet cat. When asked why he had done this, he cheerfully told v1.ru, “You’d have to ask drunk me from ten years ago. I don’t understand drunk Dima either!”

This was not Malyshev’s first murder—he was also charged with a double homicide from 2013. But in May 2024, having served a little under 10 years of his 25-year sentence for murder and cannibalism, Malyshev was released from prison to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Since then, v1.ru has been regularly reporting on his movements—reflecting, perhaps, a certain amount of anxiety about the potential of unexpectedly running into a convicted cannibal at a local store.

After his month in Volgograd last September, Malyshev recovered and was sent back to the front, where he currently fights in the Storm-V prisoner battalion. He is one of thousands of Russian prisoners who have been recruited to fight in Ukraine, where his chances of survival are low. However, Malyshev represents a fundamental problem for the Russian government. At some point, if he gets very lucky, Malyshev, and other prisoner-soldiers like him, could come back to Russia for good. The return of these pardoned former convicts from the front has made the war visible at home—occasionally in the person of a cannibal sitting by the pool.

A range of strategies, including the recruitment of prisoners, has often obscured the war from those in Russia with the most social, economic, and political power. According to a public opinion poll from September 2024, only about 30 percent of Russians know someone directly who has fought in the war in Ukraine, compared to 80 percent of Ukrainians who know someone who has been killed or wounded. The cost of the war is being borne by a small fragment of the Russian population—and that fragment tends to be poorer, less educated, more rural, often not ethnically Russian, and sometimes in possession of a criminal record.

For other Russians—residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, for example, who have more social capital and whose opposition to the war could pose a problem for the regime—the war is less visible. Its effects are less apparent in daily life, and it is easier for them to simply shut their eyes and ignore it. That is how the Russian government would like it to stay. But, when it comes to the use of prisoners in war, this strategy has sometimes backfired as residents are faced with the return of convicts to their communities.

Russia has tended to rely on its numerical advantage in Ukraine, requiring large numbers of expendable troops. During the most recent offensive, the Russian military attempted to use small groups of mobile Russian troops to try to push through at points along the front where the Ukrainian military is stretched thin. Occasionally they succeed, as they briefly did near the town of Dobropillya, close to the city of Pokrovsk, shortly before the summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. (The breakthrough near Dobropillya seems to have since been contained.)

These missions are often one-way tickets for Russian soldiers, whose main purpose is to be cannon fodder. As one Ukrainian soldier told El Pais, “It’s like drop after drop of water falling on a stone until it makes a hole.” Or as a Ukrainian officer told RFE/RL, “We keep killing them, and they keep sending them. … It’s like the tactics ants use. They know there’s sugar there, and they all start heading there.” To maintain this approach, the Russian military needs a constant stream of new recruits to replace its losses, soldiers whose lives can be treated cheaply.

But the Russian government has so far tried to avoid a general mobilization. The partial mobilization Putin announced in 2022 led to widespread opposition, with significant protests and a mass exodus of military-aged men from Russia. Since then, the Russian government has employed a program of coercive measures and financial incentives to recruit instead, relying on a supply of vulnerable people to replenish its forces in Ukraine. That has meant using foreign troops, including North Koreans, and offering volunteers large signing bonuses, high monthly salaries, and substantial death payments, which are enticing to Russia’s poor. It has also meant the recruitment of prisoners.

It’s hard to say exactly how many prisoners have been recruited to fight in Ukraine, though the numbers are high. One Russian prisoners’ rights group has estimated at least 150,000 prisoners have been recruited, though some dispute this. 

Aug.26

The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: The Story I Haven’t Fully Told Until Now, Aaron Parnas, right (high-rated blogger and podcast host, and son of Lev Parnas), Aug. 26, 2025. This is a deeply personal story. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. This is going to be a deeply personal post, and I want to begin with honesty. If you don’t want to hear more about me, my life story, and the struggles I’ve faced along the way, I respect that—feel free to scroll past this.

But I’m writing this not for sympathy, not for applause, and certainly not for pity. I’m writing because stories matter. Transparency matters. And who I am—both as a journalist and as a human being—is inseparable from experiences that very few people truly know. I don’t want to exist as just a byline or a job title. I want you to understand the person behind it all.

And here’s the truth: if I expect you to trust me with telling the stories of others—the people whose lives I cover, whose struggles I shed light on—then I have to be willing to share my own. Many people run from their past. I’ve chosen the opposite. My past made me who I am, and it fuels the work I do every single day.

That’s why I am so grateful for this platform. It isn’t controlled by billionaires or corporate executives. It doesn’t bow to advertisers or donors. It only answers to you. If you believe in independent journalism rooted in honesty, please consider subscribing to help keep this work alive.Subscribed

This afternoon, I had the rare chance to stop—really stop. To pause the endless cycle of deadlines, obligations, and constant motion, and instead sit with my memories. I thought not just about the past seven months, but about the past seven years of my life. And when I look back, those seven years feel like decades—years defined by trauma, loss, resilience, and an education that no classroom could provide.

Seven years ago this week, I was 18 years old and walking into law school for the very first time. That alone might sound unusual. What makes it even stranger is that it was the first time I had ever truly left home.

My academic path was anything but normal. I started college at 14, graduating from both high school and college simultaneously at 18. While other kids were navigating dances, football games, and summer jobs, I was sitting in classrooms full of people years older than me—constantly called “Doogie Howser,” expected to perform with a maturity I hadn’t yet grown into.

On paper, it looked extraordinary. In reality, it was isolating. I grew up fast, maybe too fast. I missed the milestones that help young people discover who they are. I had to choose a career before I even had a license to drive. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, to fight for people who couldn’t fight for themselves. But I didn’t truly understand what that meant.

Arriving at law school at 18 was a shock unlike anything else. I was living on my own for the first time, learning how to navigate a city without family, and trying to keep up in classrooms full of peers who weren’t just older, but also more experienced and more confident. The maturity gap was a canyon, and I felt it every single day.

Still, I was proud. I was the first in my family to graduate college and attend law school. But pride had a price tag: $220,000 in student debt. Every time I signed another loan, I felt the chains tighten around my future. Still, I held on to the dream. Standing up in court one day, defending those who had no one else—that vision kept me going.

Then, everything collapsed.

Two years into law school, my father was arrested. Overnight, I wasn’t Aaron anymore. I was “Lev Parnas’ son.” My last name became a headline. My father’s face—and mine—were plastered across televisions and newspapers. My own identity vanished under the weight of his.

I wasn’t his lawyer, but I had to become one in spirit. I spent sleepless nights digging through documents, helping my family process the chaos, all while trying to survive law school myself. Job offers I had worked years for disappeared. The legal community slammed doors in my face—not for what I had done, but because of my last name.

And then came the conviction. My father was sentenced to twenty months in federal prison. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a young law student drowning in debt. I was the emotional and financial backbone of my family. Once again, I had to grow up before I was ready.

The past seven years have left scars—ones I will carry forever. They’ve been filled with trauma, humiliation, and nights where I wondered if I could keep going. But they’ve also taught me resilience. They’ve shown me what it means to rebuild when everything crumbles. They’ve forced me to hold onto my identity even when others tried to erase it.

I don’t share this for pity. I share it because it explains why I approach journalism the way I do. Why truth, accountability, and empathy are not just professional values to me—they’re personal imperatives. I know what it’s like to be defined by a headline. I know the human cost of scandal. And I know how much it matters to tell the full story, not just the convenient one.

That’s why I want to do more than just report news. I want to tell the story behind the story. The story of the person behind the headline. Because people matter. Their pasts matter. Their humanity matters.

That means shining a light where others won’t: on federal employees who were purged by Donald Trump. On the community of Boxtown, Tennessee, suffocating under pollution from Elon Musk’s xAI project. On the hidden histories of members of Congress and world leaders.

I want to put my investigative skills to work in a way that most outlets won’t. I want to dig deeper, ask harder questions, and bring forward the human truth that is too often ignored.

This is the next chapter of my work. And I hope you’ll be part of it.

New York Times, Trump Says He Will Meet With Putin in Alaska Next Week, Tyler Pager and David E. Sanger, Aug. 9, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. Trump also suggested that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine would include “some swapping of territories,” signaling that the U.S. may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to cede land.

President Trump said he would meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia next Friday in Alaska, as he tries to secure a deal to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Mr. Trump announced the meeting Friday shortly after he suggested that a peace deal between the two countries could include “some swapping of territories,” signaling that the United States may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to permanently cede some of its land.

“We’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched,” Mr. Trump said while hosting the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for a peace summit at the White House. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow.”

The meeting, the first in-person summit between an American and Russian president since President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with Mr. Putin in June 2021, reflects Mr. Trump’s confidence in his ability to persuade Mr. Putin in a face-to-face encounter, a goal that has eluded Mr. Trump and his predecessors. For Mr. Putin, the meeting itself is a victory after he spent the past several months largely isolated from the international community, with NATO leaders — other than Mr. Trump — refusing to communicate directly with him.

The meeting also presents a host of challenges. Ukrainian leaders have adamantly opposed relinquishing any of their land to Russia, and the country’s constitution bars President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine from ceding any territory.

The Real Michael Cohen, The Alaska Summit: A Photo-Op Farce, Michael Cohen, right, Aug. 9, 2025. When Trump and Putin negotiate “peace” without Ukraine, it’s not diplomacy; it’s a shameless power grab disguised as a historic moment. Ukraine’s voice? Silenced and sidelined.

People love to say I’m too cynical, even on the weekends. That I see ulterior motives in everything. But after more than a decade working for President Trump, I’ve learned you can’t be cynical enough. If you think he’s doing something for the greater good, you’re not looking closely enough. In fact, you might be in the cult. Which brings us to the traveling circus that is about to set up shop in Alaska: Trump and Vladimir Putin, together again, this time to “negotiate” the end of the war in Ukraine. Sounds noble, right? World peace, high-stakes diplomacy, two great powers coming together to stop the bloodshed. Cue the swelling violins.

Now here’s the reality check: the one person who isn’t invited to this so-called “peace summit” is the actual president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy; the guy whose country has been invaded, bombed daily, and carved up like it’s a real estate deal in Atlantic City circa 1987. You know, the guy whose soldiers are dying every single day on the front lines. The man elected to represent 44 million Ukrainians doesn’t get a seat at his own table. But Trump and Putin do.

Let me decode that for you. This is not a negotiation, it’s a photo-op. A show. A scripted performance in which the ending has already been decided; and not by the people of Ukraine. You see, Trump wants to slap “The Peace President” on a MAGA hat, maybe even pick out a tux for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. He’s thinking about legacy, not liberty. His legacy, not Ukraine’s. He knows the war has become a political liability in the U.S., and he’s betting that if he can “end” it; no matter how, it’ll be the crowning moment of his second term. More than Armenia and Azerbaijan. More than India and Pakistan. A moment he can ride straight into history books, preferably the glossy ones with his face on the cover.

Putin, on the other hand, isn’t flying to Alaska for the scenic glaciers. He’s there for the land he’s already stolen and the land he still wants; the occupied regions of Ukraine, plus the mineral rights, plus whatever other goodies are hiding in the fine print. He’s playing the long game, and for Putin, this meeting is the perfect opportunity to get what he wants without having to give up much of anything; if anything at all. All he has to do is toss Trump enough of a “win” to keep the handshake cameras clicking.

Here’s the dirty little secret about deals like this. They’re only deals for the people making them. Everyone else? They’re props. Ukraine, in this setup, is just a backdrop; a tragic story to be used as leverage in a negotiation they aren’t even allowed to attend. And without Zelenskyy in the room, any agreement reached will be about as legitimate as a diploma from Trump University.

Because let’s be honest: how can the president of Ukraine possibly permit two men with wildly conflicting personal agendas; both of whom have skin in the game that isn’t Ukrainian skin, to decide the fate of his country? He can’t. At least, not without betraying the very people who put him in office. Imagine you’re the CEO of a company under hostile takeover, and two rival executives get together in a boardroom to “solve” the problem without you. You think they’re there for your benefit? Please. They’re there to split the spoils.

This is the oldest trick in the Trump playbook; create the appearance of a monumental achievement while doing the bare minimum, or worse, doing exactly what the other side wanted all along. He’ll call it “historic,” slap it on Truth Social, Fox will blast it 24/7 as the biggest win in world history. And you can count on the fact that most Americans won’t bother to read the fine print that says Ukraine just got sold down the river. And Putin? He’ll go home with the receipts, the resources, and the satisfaction of knowing he manipulated an American president yet again.

We’ve seen this movie before. Think Singapore, 2018; Trump meets Kim Jong-un, proclaims North Korea no longer a nuclear threat, then… surprise! They’re still building nukes. The peace was an illusion, but the optics were fantastic. Trump strutted away claiming victory while nothing changed except the headlines. That’s exactly what Alaska will be; another stage-managed moment designed to make Trump look like a world-class dealmaker while the real costs are paid by someone else.

Now, here’s the bottom line; if the people most affected by a deal aren’t in the room, it’s not diplomacy, it’s theater. And in this theater, Trump and Putin are co-stars, the headliners, each with their own scripts, each angling for their own prize. The tragedy is that Ukraine is the set piece, the war is the plot device, and the lives lost are just collateral to the story they want to tell.

So when Trump inevitably struts out of Alaska, hand extended, grinning for the cameras with Putin by his side, and declares himself the man who ended the war, remember this; real peace isn’t forged in backroom deals between two men chasing their own glory. It’s built with the consent and courage of the people living; and dying, through the fight. Without them, it’s not peace. It’s a cheap reality show finale; two strongmen cutting a dirty deal, high-fiving for the cameras, and calling it the salvation of the free world.

The next big fight; which actor gets to accept the Emmy!

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Aug. 8, 2025 [Trump's 'Peace Plan' Promise], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Aug. 9, 2025. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed he could stop Russia’s war on Ukraine with a single phone call. Instead, Matt Murphy and Ned Davies of the BBC report that Russian attacks on Ukraine have doubled since Trump took office.

Today was the deadline the president had announced for Russian president Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire in his illegal invasion of Ukraine or face further sanctions. Instead, Trump announced this afternoon that he intends to meet with Putin on August 15 in Alaska.

Putin generally cannot travel outside Russia because he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including the theft of Ukrainian children. And yet Trump is welcoming him to the United States of America.

This welcome gives Putin the huge gift of letting him touch down on U.S. soil after he invaded Ukraine in defiance of the policy established after World War II to prevent another such devastating war. In 1945 the United Nations charter declared that “[a]ll Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The United States was the key guarantor of this principle until Trump took office.

The U.S. has stood against Russian invasions into Ukraine not only on this general principle, but because of security guarantees the U.S., along with the United Kingdom and Russia, gave to Ukraine in 1994. After the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In exchange for Ukraine’s giving up those weapons, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia agreed to secure Ukraine’s borders. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, they agreed they would not use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine. Russia violated that agreement with its 2014 and 2022 invasions.

Now Trump will welcome Putin to the United States, to territory that once belonged to Russia, reinforcing for Russian nationalists the dream of recreating Russia’s old empire. That dream has been part of the ideology of Russia’s drive to seize Ukrainian land.

Lev Remembers, Geo-Political Commentary: Trump–Putin Alaska Summit — With Zelensky and Ukraine on the Menu, Lev Parnas, right, Aug. 8-9, 2025. From Trump’s nuclear submarine show to Witkoff’s secret dealings with Putin — the inside story of how Alaska became the stage for a plan to carve up Ukraine. 

The Night Ukraine Was Hit From Every Direction: At 8:30 p.m. on August 7, the assault began. From Shatalovo, Kursk, Bryansk, and Primorsko-Akhtarsk in Russia — and from occupied Chauda in Crimea — Russia launched 108 aerial attacks on Ukraine :But 26 drones hit their targets in ten locations, with debris raining down in eight more.

This is what Trump is allowing — no, enabling — to happen. This is what delay looks like. And that delay is not random. It’s calculated.

According to my sources, this was all theatrics choreographed and set in motion by Vladimir Putin himself. With Russia’s economy breaking under pressure, Putin needed a way out that still kept all the territories he’s seized in the meantime.

My sources say Putin personally put together the deal, handed it to Witkoff, had Witkoff deliver it to Trump, and then had Trump send Witkoff to Ukraine — making it appear as if the deal was Trump’s own idea.

And here are some key points of that proposal:

• A temporary truce — not peace — freezing the front lines where they are now.
• Postponing the status of occupied territories for 49 to 99 years, leaving them under Russian control for decades.
• Gradual lifting of U.S. sanctions against Russia — the linchpin that makes the rest of the deal possible.
• Resumption of Russian energy imports to Europe over time — Nord Stream 1 & 2 suddenly back in the conversation.
• No commitments to halt NATO expansion — wasn’t this the whole reason why Putin went to war in the first place?
• No promises to stop military aid to Ukraine — because Trump has already shifted that burden onto Europe.
• My sources tell me this entire sequence — from Trump and Medvedev’s WWIII scare theatrics, to the “urgent” deadline, to a sudden meeting with Putin on U.S. soil in Alaska — was choreographed.

In diplomacy, there’s an old saying: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. With Trump and Putin meeting in Alaska and Zelensky nowhere in sight, Ukraine is the main course.

The goal? Corner Ukraine into a deal by letting Russia seize as much land as possible before talks. And that land isn’t just territory — it’s mineral-rich ground. Oil. Gas. Rare earth elements. Future leverage. This is about controlling the next century of energy and wealth.

If the EU helps broker such a ceasefire deal now, how could they later oppose Nord Stream’s reactivation? That’s the trap.

Even Rubio seemed out of the loop, telling reporters “we have to study and see.” Meanwhile, Trump was all smiles, saying “everything is moving fast” and Minutes later, Russian officials echoed his words. That’s not coincidence — that’s a direct Trump-Putin channel in action.

If this deal is real, Russia will get rewarded for their aggression and it will cement decades-long occupation and Economic Realignment: Reopening Russian energy flow, shifting the balance of global power.

It will be the most controversial peace overture yet — and it will put the Western alliance at a crossroads between ending the war at any cost and upholding the principles that bound them together.

Trump doesn’t want you to know this. Putin doesn’t want you to know this. They’re counting on backroom deals, manufactured deadlines, and a media distracted by circus headlines.Subscribed

That’s why I’m here, Speaking Truth To Power.

Emptywheel, Analysis: How John Durham Buried Evidence He Had Been Doing the Work of Russian Spies … and then Tulsi Gabbard Buried More, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Aug. 9, 2025. There are a lot of pieces of evidence that Durham not only chased a Russian conspiracy theory to frame Hillary Clinton, but did so knowingly.

Most telling is the way Durham, below left, obscured the timeline showing that the draft report he claimed to be chasing was created at least a day after a Russian discussion about creating a Deep State conspiracy theory.

As I’ve been showing, the Durham classified annex goes to significant lengths to hide that a Russian email discussing creating a conspiracy theory about the American Deep State, which he dates to July 26, precedes the draft SVR memo he claims has animated his years-long hunt, which dates to July 27 or later.

You can date the draft SVR memo (Durham doesn’t provide its date at all in the unclassified report, and if he does here, the date has been redacted) by tracking the inputs (red arrows) into the fake emails on which the draft memo is purportedly based (blue arrows), as I lay out here.

Lawfare, From Russian Interference to Revisionist Innuendo: What the Gabbard Files Actually Say, Renee DiResta (right, an Associate Research Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown and a contributing editor at Lawfare), Aug. 6, 2025. Tulsi Gabbard’s latest “revelations” are being spun as proof of a deep state conspiracy. The documents themselves tell a much duller story.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, right, has recently released a series of declassified documents she claims expose a “treasonous conspiracy” by former President Barack Obama and his top intelligence officials to sabotage Donald Trump.

Gabbard’s performance—part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to retcon “Russiagate”—led to an announcement yesterday by Attorney General Pam Bondi assigning an as-yet-unknown federal prosecutor to convene a grand jury investigation into President Obama and others.

Before diving into the barrage of documents Gabbard, right, declassified, and the allegations they don’t substantiate, we thought it would be useful to briefly cover the history she’s trying to rewrite. Because one of the clearest refutations of her claim that President Obama engaged in an “years-long coup” against Trump is simple: linear time.

Revisiting the History of 2016 Russian Interference and Its Aftermath

Russia interfered in the 2016 election in three distinct ways: First, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), also known as the “troll factory,” ran a disinformation campaign using fake social media accounts with content that reached more than 100 million people. The propaganda content surrounding the election aimed to depress the Black and liberal vote on the left, while promoting Trump on the right. During the Republican primary, following a brief effort to boost Rand Paul, they pivoted to Trump, denigrating primary opponents such as Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Contrary to the talking point that it was just “$150k in Facebook ads,” the IRA’s broader influence campaign cost around $10 million per year. It ultimately became the subject of a Department of Justice indictment against the IRA, its parent company, and individual operatives.

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, I Stand With Ukraine, Europe and Freedom. I Stand Against Putin, Trump, and Authoritarianism, Simon Rosenberg, Aug. 9, 2025. History and the world are watching. Will proud, American patriots stand and fight?

Next Friday, August 15th, Trump and Putin will meet, in Alaska, in the United States of America. Press reports suggest that Trump will in essence take Putin’s side in the war against Ukraine, Europe and what was the West.

It will not be “peace.” It will be appeasement, another extraordinary gift from Trump to Putin, the selling out of our allies (again) and another monumental step in Trump’s ferocious sabotaging of our great nation and the tearing down of the American-led liberal order that our party imagined and built after WWII, an order that has ushered in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity for America and the people of the world.

It is a day, if it goes as it appears it will go, that will surely live in infamy.

This morning I want to make something as clear as it can be:I stand with Ukraine, Europe and Freedom. I stand against Putin, Trump and Authoritarianism. 

Politico, Former FBI and CIA Director Who Rebuked Trump Dies at 101, Kenneal Patterson, Aug. 9, 2025. William H. Webster, the only person to have ever served as the head of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and spent his final years condemning President Donald Trump, has died at 101.

The iconic leader, whose career spanned decades,wrote a New York Times op-ed in 2019 calling Trump’s actions a “dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love.”

Webster (shown at right in a file photo) was “a dedicated public servant who spent over 60 years in service to our country, including in the U.S. Navy, as a federal judge, director of the CIA, and his term as our Director from 1978-1987,” according to a statement from the FBI. He served as FBI director under former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

He took on a role as CIA director from 1987 to 1991 under Reagan and former President George H.W. Bush. Webster’s family said that they were “proud of the extraordinary man we had our lives [sic] who spent a lifetime fighting to protect his country and its precious rule of law.”

Webster, born in St. Louis, Missouri, in1924, served as a U.S. Navy lieutenant in both World War II and the Korean War. He also served as a federal prosecutor and spent eight years as a federal judge. “

Every director of the CIA or the FBI should be prepared to resign in the event that he is asked to do something that he knows is wrong,” Webster once said. 

The Atlantic Daily, Commentary: What, Exactly, Is the ‘Russia Hoax’? David A. Graham, Aug. 5, 2025. To start with, it’s not a hoax.

One of Donald Trump’s tells is his talk of the “Russia hoax.” When that phrase passes his lips, it’s a sign that the president is agitated about something.

In the past two weeks, for example, as questions about the administration’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein have dominated headlines, Trump has been talking often about “the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and many other hoaxes too,” as he put it in an interview with Newsmax on Friday. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, also released documents last week that her office said shed new light on this “Russia hoax.” Attorney General Pam Bondi has reportedly ordered a grand-jury investigation into claims that Obama-administration officials broke laws while investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

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The DNI’s office doesn’t explain exactly what the “Russia hoax” is, and for good reason. First, although the phrase has achieved talismanic status in Trump world, it has no set definition, because Trump keeps changing the meaning. Second, and more important, it’s not a hoax.

Here’s what is not in dispute: The United States intelligence community concluded that Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 election and, according to a GOP-led Senate investigation, wanted to help Trump.

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote in a report summarizing his findings, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his campaign chair Paul Manafort met at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Russians who they believed would hand over “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. (Steve Bannon—Steve Bannon!—called the meeting “treasonous.”) A Trump 2016-campaign aide boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia was trying to help the Trump campaign, and then lied about his Russian contacts to FBI agents. Trump publicly called on Russia to hack Clinton’s emails in July 2016—jokingly, he has since said—and Russian agents attempted to do so that very day, according to the Justice Department. Hackers who the U.S. government believes were connected to Russia obtained emails from a number of Democratic Party officials and leaked them publicly, and Trump pal Roger Stone was apparently forewarned about some. Major tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter (now X), also confirmed that they had detected dubious Russian activity.

In spite of all of this evidence, or perhaps because of it, Trump has loudly insisted that it’s all a hoax. He’s used the phrase off and on since spring 2017, though he’s changed what he means. For a time, he made the claim—without evidence then, and without any since—that the federal government under Barack Obama had wiretapped or improperly surveilled him. At other times, he has claimed that the whole thing is a “witch hunt.” Often, he generically used the term hoax to refer to any allegations about Russian involvement in the 2016 election. He even sued the Pulitzer Prize Board over a statement honoring reporting on connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. (The case is ongoing.)

His attempts to instill doubt have been assisted by the fact that some of the wilder rumors and reports concerning his campaign didn’t turn out to be true. Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, was a bit of an eccentric character but not a traitor, as some suggested, much less the key to unraveling any grand conspiracy. Trump was probably not communicating with a Russian bank via a mysterious server. He was almost certainly not a longtime Russian-intelligence asset. The so-called Steele dossier was full of falsehoods. I argued at the time that BuzzFeed’s decision to publish it was a grievous error, and it warped conversation about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

Mueller’s highly anticipated investigation also landed with a big thud. First, expectations for his report had been inflated by an overeager circle of Trump critics who had expected shocking new revelations; the revelations were indeed shocking, but by the time Mueller published them, most had already filtered out in press accounts. Second, debate over Trump’s ties to Russia had focused on “collusion,” which is not a specific crime. This produced a semantic sideshow argument in which Trump insisted that he couldn’t have colluded, because he wasn’t charged with it. Third, Attorney General Bill Barr misrepresented Mueller’s findings. Fourth, Mueller did not recommend charges against Trump, thanks to Justice Department guidance against charging a sitting president, which meant that although the special counsel produced an unmistakable implicit accusation, Trump claimed vindication.

Trump’s use of pardons may have induced some of his confederates—including Stone and Manafort—to not cooperate with prosecutors, or to only partly cooperate, thus depriving the public of a chance at receiving a full accounting. This was a kind of legalized obstruction of justice.

Plenty of authorities have pointed out that Trump’s claim of a hoax is nonsense. In 2017, PolitiFact named that its lie of the year. In 2018, The Washington Post reported: “Trump’s Russia ‘Hoax’ Turns Out to Be Real.” In 2019, a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that, as my colleague Adam Serwer put it, “the ‘Russia hoax’ defense is itself a hoax, and a highly successful one, aimed at reassuring Trump supporters who might otherwise be troubled by the president’s behavior.” Still, the idea that the whole thing was a chimera has taken hold even within some precincts of the mainstream press, where the whole thing is treated as a weird passing obsession. The journalist Ben Smith, who made the decision to publish the Steele dossier, now contends, vaguely and in passive voice, that “Trump was in retrospect treated unfairly.”

Meanwhile, Trump world continues to cook up new iterations of the hoax claim. The most recent ones are driven by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who has a history of weaponizing intelligence, to use a term he’s a fan of, and Gabbard, who has for years repeated Kremlin talking points. Last month, Ratcliffe alleged that in 2016, three of the nation’s top intelligence officials “manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals—all to get Trump,” but as my colleague Shane Harris reported, he didn’t have evidence to back that up. Gabbard has released a dribble of documents intended to bolster it, but still nothing that matches the claims.

In recent days, MAGA allies have pushed a new and shocking allegation: that emails show Clinton actually approved a plan to smear Trump by claiming he was colluding with Russia. The problem is that, once again, investigations have debunked it. A special counsel appointed by Barr during Trump’s first term, with the goal of ferreting out political skulduggery in the Russia investigation, found that messages about Clinton being treated as a smoking gun were, in fact, likely concocted by the Russians. As The New York Times reported, “The special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.”

Durham’s finding of a Russian forgery is ironic: Someone has finally turned up a real Russia hoax. Rather than working to fight it, however, Trump’s aides are once more colluding with Russia to mislead the American people and further Trump’s political fortunes.  

Emptywheel, Analysis: Donald Trump’s Parallel Ghislaine Maxwell and Vladimir Putin Problems, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Aug. 4, 2025. As Trump attempts to look strong in the face of Vladimir Putin’s intransigence on Ukraine, consider the twin pillars of compromise Putin has on him.

There was a fake story circulating the Intertoobz that in some kind of Turkish broadcast, Dmitry Medvedev said: “Trump should not think that the video archive of his past immoralities is only in the hands of Mossad.”

The fake, as good fakes do, plays on something real about the moment, even while confirming what people want to be true.

After, earlier in the summer, giving Putin the time he wanted to finish whatever he wants in Ukraine, Trump has reversed course, sort of. He has been trying to stop Putin from doing what Putin was going to do anyway, wagging but not imposing sanctions. Five days ago, Trump declared he was imposing a ten day deadline on Putin or else he will stop the car (just like Dad used to threaten on long roadtrips).

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Russia must agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine by Aug. 8 or risk sanctions, accelerating a deadline that was previously up in the air.

Trump in July set a 50-day deadline for the agreement with Ukraine, threatening tariffs if a deal was not made. On Monday, during his meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he said he was shortening this deadline to “10 or 12 days.”

Aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, on his way back to the United States, Trump said the clock was ticking and it was “10 days from today.”

“And then we’re going to put on tariffs,” Trump added, “and I don’t know if it’s going to affect Russia, because he wants to, obviously, probably keep the war going.”

The president has flipped on his views on the war in Ukraine throughout his second administration, recently expressing he is “disappointed” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He said Tuesday he has not yet heard from Russia about the new timeline.

In response, Real Medvedev trolled Trump on Xitter, likening him to Joe Biden. Then Trump — still targeting Medvedev — claimed he was sending out his nukes.

Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances. Thank you for your attention to this matter!Trump got the reaction his tweets alway get from Pavlov’s press corps, a slew of headlines treating this as true and meaningful.

Russian experts, however, mostly noted Russia yawning.

Could this be the first time in history a social media spat triggers nuclear escalation?

President Donald Trump, offended by posts by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, says he’s ordered two nuclear submarines to move closer to Russia.

So, how will Moscow respond? Are we on a path to a nuclear standoff between America and Russia? An internet-age version of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis?

I doubt it, judging by initial reaction in Russia.

Russian news outlets have been rather dismissive of Trump’s announcement.

Speaking to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, a military commentator concluded that Trump was “throwing a temper tantrum”.

A retired lieutenant-general told Kommersant that the US president’s talk of submarines was “meaningless blather. It’s how he gets his kicks”.

Then Putin — not Medvedev — made it known that Trump has misunderstood the scope of Putin’s ambition.

“All disappointments arise from inflated expectations,” Putin said, in an apparent reference to Trump’s “disappointment” with the Russian leader for not bringing an end to the war.

[snip]

Speaking on Friday at the Valaam Monastery on an island in north-western Russia, Putin said he expected negotiations with Ukraine to continue, adding that he viewed “negotiations positively”.

But in a veiled reference to growing pressure from Ukraine and its Western allies to agree to a long-term ceasefire, he said: “As for any disappointments on the part of anyone, all disappointments arise from inflated expectations.

Both Putin and Medvedev are making Trump look weak — or rather exposing that he is weak.

My guess is they have good reason to know Trump’s is scared of exercising any real leverage over Putin, and for reasons that go well beyond any similarity to “Sleepy Joe.”This fake Medvedev interview plays into that, suggesting that Russia has leverage because they have the Epstein files.

The claim is not remotely outlandish. Craig Ungar has been focusing on the Russian aspects of Epstein’s past, including Svetlana Pozhidaeva, the woman trained as Russia trains its spies, who opened a modeling agency and then got a bunch of funding from Epstein to fund other things, as well as Masha Drokova, the pro-Russian activist who first served as Epstein’s publicist and then infiltrated Silicon Valley. More important, perhaps (since this is a fake Medvedev speech), is John Dougan, who was a West Palm Beach cop before he became — and still is — a Russian disinformation operative, one who overtly crafted anti-Harris disinformation in last year’s election.

His story begins in 2005 when Palm Beach authorities began investigating Epstein’s sex crimes. That meant the Epstein case had entered the court system, which in turn meant that his computers and videos became evidence, and new people—detectives, police, lawyers, and the like— suddenly had access to his secrets.

 

Politico, Russia targeting voters across EU, Moldova warns, Gabriel Gavin, Aug. 4, 2025. Moscow is hoping pro-European Moldovans living abroad don’t go out to vote in September’s elections, the country’s national security chief told Politico.

Russia is ramping up efforts to influence Moldovans living abroad across Europe to try to sway critical elections next month, the EU candidate country’s security chief has warned.

National Security Adviser Stanislav Secrieru told Politico that officials have seen a sharp uptick in disinformation aimed at the almost quarter of a million voters in the diaspora, ahead of the vote in September, where the pro-Western government faces a crucial test.

“Russia and its proxies are now actively focusing their efforts on the Moldovan diaspora,” Secrieru said, pointing to a renewed blitz from a Kremlin-backed network known as Matryoshka. The tactics include creating copycat fake outlets and using them to disseminate false reports.

“The campaign is designed to demobilize diaspora voters — encouraging them to stay home — and to manipulate those who do vote into supporting a fake pro-EU force. Disguised to imitate the look and tone of legitimate European media outlets, these fabricated reports aim to erode trust in Moldova’s democratic institutions and sow confusion among Moldovan communities abroad,” he added.

Moldova’s sizable population living outside the country overwhelmingly voted in favor of its liberal president, Maia Sandu, right, in an election last year that was marred by allegations of Russian interference.

A simultaneous referendum on the country’s EU membership bid narrowly passed because of ballots cast by post and at polling stations set up in other European cities. Moscow targeted that vote, Secrieru told POLITICO at the time, through a sophisticated scheme offering voters cash for backing pro-Russian opposition parties. 

Aug. 3

New York Times, ‘Clinton Plan’ Emails Were Likely Made by Russian Spies, Declassified Report Shows, Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman, Aug. 1, 2025 (print ed.). An annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows.

The information, a 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.DECLASSIFIED REPORTSRead the report about emails likely faked by Russian spies.

The release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.

The declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Even as the releases shed more light on a seismic political period nearly a decade ago, Mr. Trump and his allies have wildly overstated what the documents show, accusing former President Barack Obama of “treason.”

The release of the annex was no exception. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said in a statement that the materials proved that suspicions of Russian collusion stemmed from “a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”

And Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who has a long history of pushing false claims about the Russia investigation, declared on social media that the annex revealed “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”

In reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ahead of the 2020 election, Mr. Ratcliffe, as director of national intelligence in Mr. Trump’s first term, had declassified and released the crux of the July 27 email, even though he acknowledged doubts about its credibility. Officials did “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” he said.

Among some Trump supporters, the message became known as the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” as Mr. Durham put it in his final report.

In his report, Mr. Durham, left, used the U.S. government’s knowledge of the supposed plan, via the Russian memos, to criticize F.B.I. officials involved in the Russia investigation for not being more skeptical when they later received a copy of the Steele dossier and used it to obtain a wiretap order. The dossier, a compendium of Trump-Russia claims compiled by a former British spy, stemmed from a Democratic opposition research effort and was later discredited.

“Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false,” Mr. Durham wrote, agents should have been more cautious when approaching material that appeared to have partisan origins.

Mr. Durham’s report also mentioned that Mrs. Clinton and others in the campaign dismissed the allegation as ridiculous, positing that it was Russian disinformation. But Mr. Durham banished to the annex concrete details he had found that bolstered her campaign’s rebuttal, burying until now the conclusion that the email he called the “Clinton Plan intelligence” was almost certainly a product of Russian disinformation.

The annex shows that the person who supposedly sent the July 27 email, Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations network, told Mr. Durham in 2021 that he had never seen the message and did not write it. The network is the philanthropic arm of the liberal financier George Soros, who has been made out to be a villain by Russian state media and by some American conservatives.

The annex also cited a purported email from July 25, 2016, also attributed to Mr. Benardo. Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the message claimed that a Clinton adviser was proposing a plan “to demonize Putin and Trump,” adding, “Later the F.B.I. will put more oil into the fire.”

That message identified the adviser as “Julie,” while the July 27 one said “Julia.” An accompanying Russian intelligence memo identified the aide as Julianne Smith, a foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign who worked at the Center for a New American Security.

But the trove of Russian files contained two different versions of the July 25 message — one that somehow had an additional sentence. And Mr. Benardo denied sending it, telling Mr. Durham’s team that he did not know who “Julie” was and would not use a phrase like “pour more oil into the fire.”

Ms. Smith informed Mr. Durham in 2021 that she had no memory of proposing anything to campaign leadership about attacking Mr. Trump over Russia, although she “recalled conversations with others in the campaign expressing their genuine concerns that the D.N.C. hack was a threat to the electoral system, and that Trump and his advisers appeared to have troubling ties to Russia.”

The annex also shows that Mr. Durham obtained emails from several liberal-leaning think tanks mentioned in the Russian memos and did not find copies of the messages supposedly written by Mr. Benardo. The think tanks included the Open Society Foundations, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for a New American Security.

But Mr. Durham found other “emails, attachments and documents that contain language and references with the exact same or similar verbiage” to those messages. Those included a July 25 email by a Carnegie Endowment cyberexpert that contained an extensive passage about Russian hacking that was echoed, verbatim, in the purported July 25 message attributed to Mr. Benardo.

Mr. Durham also obtained text messages from Ms. Smith on July 25 showing that she had unsuccessfully tried to determine whether the F.B.I. had opened an investigation into the Democratic National Committee breach, although they did not mention Mr. Trump. And he obtained a July 27 email from Ms. Smith asking her colleagues at the think tank to sign a bipartisan statement criticizing Mr. Trump’s denunciations of the NATO alliance as reckless and too friendly to Russia.

Mr. Durham wrote that it would have been logical for someone to conclude that she played a role in efforts by the Clinton campaign to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. Her July 25 texts and July 27 email could be seen as support for the idea that such a plan existed, he added.

But ultimately, in weighing all the evidence, Mr. Durham concluded that the Russians had probably faked the key emails, the annex shows.

“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the U.S.-based think tanks, including the Open Society Foundations, the Carnegie Endowment and others,” it says.

The Russian intelligence memos first came to public attention in 2017 after The New York Times and The Washington Post explored a decision by James B. Comey Jr., the former F.B.I. director, to violate Justice Department procedure. In publicly addressing the investigation into Mrs. Clinton, he sharply criticized her use of a private email server but said no charges could be brought over it.

Mr. Comey later told Congress and an inspector general that he decided to be the face of the decision, rather than allowing Justice Department officials to do so, as is typical, in part because of something in the Russian memos. A Dutch spy agency had hacked the memos from a Russian spy agency’s server in 2016 and gave copies to the U.S. government.

Two of the memos described purported communications in January 2016 and March 2016 involving a top Democratic Party leader, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, one with Mr. Benardo and the other with a different official at the Open Society Foundations. The memos indicated that the attorney general at the time, Loretta E. Lynch, was pressuring the F.B.I. about the email inquiry and sharing confidential information about it with the Clinton campaign.

But Mr. Comey and other officials also said they believed that the memos described fake emails, in part because the January one also said that Mr. Comey himself was trying to help Republicans win the election. In 2017, Mr. Benardo and Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that they had never even met, let alone communicated about Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

The Trump administration has also declassified and released a report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that summarized unflattering claims about Mrs. Clinton from the Russian memos without flagging suspicions that the trove contained misinformation.

After the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Robert S. Mueller III, issued his final report, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, assigned Mr. Durham to hunt for evidence proving Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theory that the investigation had stemmed from a deep-state plot against him.

In 2020, as The New York Times has reported, after Mr. Durham failed to find evidence of intelligence abuses, he shifted to instead trying to find a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for the fact that Mr. Trump’s campaign had come under suspicion of colluding with Russia.

Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia, but he nevertheless used court filings and his final report to insinuate such suspicions. He brought charges of false statements against two people involved in outside efforts to scrutinize possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia, both of which ended in quick acquittals

  Notable Recent Immigration, Justice Department News 

September

Sept. 1

  

New York Times, Already Pardoned by Trump, Jan. 6 Rioters Push for Compensation, Alan Feuer, Sept. 1, 2025 (print ed.). One of the rioters’ lawyers wants to create a panel that would decide on financial damages for what the rioters (shown above) believe were unfair prosecutions.

The rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, secured a shocking double victory this year.

President Trump granted them clemency for their crimes on his first day back in the White House, and in the months that followed, he allowed his Justice Department to purge many of the federal agents and prosecutors who sought to hold them accountable.

But even though the president has given the rioters their freedom and has taken steps toward satisfying their desire for retribution, they are asking for more. In the past several weeks, the rioters and their lawyers have pushed the Trump administration to pay them restitution for what they believe were unfair prosecutions.

On Thursday, one of the lawyers, Mark McCloskey, said during a public meeting on social media that he had recently met with top officials at the Justice Department and pitched them on a plan to create a special panel that would dole out financial damages to the rioters — much like the arrangement of a special master to award money to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The panel, which Mr. McCloskey called a “voluntary nonjudicial resolution committee,” would consider rioters’ cases individually, he said, then assign them sums according to harms they had purportedly suffered at the hands of the federal government.

Mr. McCloskey said that he wanted the panel to be overseen by Jeanine Pirro, who runs the federal prosecutors’ office in Washington that took the lead in filing charges against nearly 1,600 rioters who joined in the Capitol attack.

“The only thing I can do as your lawyer,” he told the rioters who were at the online meeting, “is to turn your losses into dollar bills.”

Neither Ms. Pirro nor a spokesman for the Justice Department responded on Sunday to messages seeking comment on Mr. McCloskey’s plan, and it remains unclear how seriously top administration officials are taking it.

Still, the proposal represented a serious escalation of the efforts to rewrite the history of Jan. 6. If accepted, it would effectively designate members of the mob, whose Capitol break-in upset the lawful transfer of presidential power, as victims of the government and deserving of reparations.

Mr. McCloskey, who rose to prominence five years ago after he pointed an AR-15-style rifle at social justice protesters outside his home in St. Louis, has been leading the efforts to secure restitution for the rioters since at least March, when he announced that he and another lawyer, Peter Ticktin, a former classmate and longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s, were planning to sue the government.

The men originally said they were intending to bring claims that the people who were prosecuted for taking part in the Capitol attack had been mistreated by federal agencies like the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons.

In May, many of the rioters took heart when Mr. Trump’s Justice Department agreed to pay nearly $5 million to settle a separate legal action: a wrongful-death lawsuit that was brought during the Biden administration by the family of Ashli Babbitt, right, an Air Force veteran who was fatally shot by the police while she was in a crowd that was trying to break onto the House floor on Jan. 6.

The settlement raised hopes that the department might look with favor on other lawsuits filed by the rioters themselves. But late last month, those hopes were tempered after department lawyers formally opposed a lawsuit that was brought in June by five members of the Proud Boys who were charged with sedition in connection with Jan. 6. The lawsuit claimed that federal officials had subjected them to “political persecution” as “allies of President Trump.”

During the online meeting last week, Mr. McCloskey acknowledged that he and Mr. Ticktin had also run into “significant difficulties” in pursuing legal action on behalf of the rioters.

He acknowledged that there could be problems following through on his initial plan to file cases under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows individuals to sue the government for injuries caused by federal employees. He also said it could be challenging to overcome the two-year statute of limitations on bringing tort claims against the government for things that happened nearly five years ago.

But Mr. McCloskey assured the rioters that they had allies inside Mr. Trump’s Justice Department. Chief among them, he said, was Ed Martin, who runs the so-called weaponization working group, a body that was created to investigate those who investigated Jan. 6 and other people whom Mr. Trump perceives to be his enemies.

“He’s 100 percent on our side,” Mr. McCloskey said of Mr. Martin. 

The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: No Public Events for Trump on Labor Day and India Protests the Trump Administration, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 1, 2025. Indians protest the Trump Administration by burning Trump effigies, Trump requests voter data ahead of the 2026 elections, and ICE surges set to start.

On the first Labor Day of Trump’s second term, labor advocates say his administration has been “brazenly anti-worker,” slashing pay and protections, gutting unions by ending collective bargaining for 1 million federal employees, weakening safety rules, and rolling back wage increases, while the White House insists Trump is putting “American workers first” through job gains, tax breaks, and lower inflation.

The Trump administration, through the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, has demanded unredacted voter registration data from states—including names, addresses, birthdates, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers—sparking pushback from election officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and other states who call it an overreach and a threat to voter privacy, while critics fear the data could be used to fuel voter fraud claims ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed the Trump administration will expand ICE operations in major U.S. cities, including Chicago, amid reports of possible militarized federal activity; local leaders such as Chicago’s mayor and Illinois’ governor condemned the move as an abuse of power, while Noem insisted deployments are about safety and not politics, leaving open the possibility of National Guard involvement at Trump’s discretion.

The Trump administration has reportedly suspended visa approvals for nearly all Palestinian passport holders, expanding earlier restrictions on travelers from Gaza to now block access to the U.S. for medical treatment, education, and business; the move, which also included revoking visas for Palestinian Authority and PLO members ahead of the UN General Assembly, has drawn criticism for violating U.S. obligations as UN host and further aligns Washington with Israel’s right-wing government in rejecting a Palestinian state.

New York Times, U.S. Immigration: Judge Halts U.S. Effort to Deport Guatemalan Children as Planes Sit on Tarmac, Miriam Jordan and Aishvarya Kavi, Updated Sept. 1, 2025. The temporary block ended another last-minute flurry of legal action over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

With children already loaded onto planes, a federal judge on Sunday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting dozens of Guatemalan minors and demanded assurances that they would remain in shelters until a more permanent ruling.

The order brought to a close, for now, another last-minute flurry of court action in the administration’s mass deportation drive. Lawyers for the children said that they would face peril if they were sent to Guatemala and that doing so would deny them due process. They also argued that the government had ignored special protections for minors who cross the border alone.

In the early morning hours on Sunday, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order forbidding the administration from deporting the children after the National Immigration Law Center filed an emergency request.

Judge Sooknanan’s order was intended to be in place until an emergency hearing could be held in the afternoon. But there was initial confusion among lawyers whether the order applied to a limited number of children.

Dozens of children were then removed by immigration authorities from shelters overnight and boarded onto chartered planes. After lawyers for the children notified the judge, the emergency hearing was moved up to midday, and with planes awaiting takeoff in Texas, the judge clarified her order to apply to all Guatemalan children in the custody of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement for the next 14 days while the case is pending. She directed the government to take the children off the planes, and in a court document on Sunday evening, the government confirmed that was done.

About 2,000 children, a majority of them from Guatemala, are currently being held in dozens of shelters.

“I don’t want there to be any ambiguity about what I am ordering,” said the judge. “You cannot remove any children” while the case proceeds.

In the hearing, the judge expressed frustration with the government and her inability to reach its representatives the early hours of Sunday, before issuing her initial order.

“I have the government attempting to remove minor children from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising,” she said.

The government’s lawyer, Drew Ensign, said that the repatriations had been requested by the Guatemalan government and that the children were to be reunited with parents and guardians in their home country. 

At the Justice Department, Emil Bove III played an outsize role in the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to take control of the agency it argues has been “weaponized” against President Trump and other conservatives.

New York Times, Senate, Rejecting Whistle-Blower Alarms, Confirms Bove to Appeals Court, Devlin Barrett, July 30, 2025 (print ed.). The Trump loyalist was narrowly approved as Republicans brushed aside concerns about his conduct as a senior Justice Department official.

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Emil Bove III, a Trump loyalist whose short tenure in the top ranks of the Justice Department prompted whistle-blower complaints and a storm of criticism from agency veterans, to a powerful federal appeals court judgeship.

Mr. Bove had spurred outcries at the department by directing or overseeing the firing of dozens of employees and ordering the dismissal of bribery charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. According to one whistle-blower who went public, Mr. Bove also told government lawyers that they might ignore court orders in pursuit of President Trump’s immigration policy goals.

Mr. Bove has denied being anyone’s enforcer or henchman, but his nomination to a lifetime appointment one rung below the Supreme Court provoked an intense battle in the Senate. His approval to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which encompasses Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, came by a tiny margin, 50 to 49, with all Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, opposing him.

Still, the confirmation of Mr. Bove provided at least a tacit Senate endorsement of the president’s efforts to bend the justice system to his will. Most Republicans shrugged off concerns that Mr. Bove, 44 and a defense lawyer for Mr. Trump in his Manhattan criminal trial last year, had undermined the traditional independence of the Justice Department or aided in Mr. Trump’s standoffs with the courts.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called Mr. Bove’s confirmation “a dark, dark day.”

Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, complained that he had tried repeatedly to share the whistle-blowers’ accusations with G.O.P. lawmakers but that “no one wanted to even listen.”

Republicans dismissed such claims as disingenuous posturing. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Democrats had sought to manipulate the confirmation calendar to scuttle the president’s pick.

“Even if you accept most of the claims as true, there is still no scandal,” Mr. Grassley said.

The day before Mr. Bove’s confirmation hearing in June, Erez Reuveni, a former immigration lawyer at the department, came forward to assert that Mr. Bove had told subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill the president’s aggressive deportation promises.

In recent days, two more would-be whistle-blowers signaled they had additional derogatory information about Mr. Bove, according to lawmakers and advocates. One of those individuals suggested that Mr. Bove was untruthful in at least one of his answers about his efforts to dismiss the Adams case, while another has offered information to the Justice Department inspector general that would seem to support some of Mr. Reuveni’s claims.

Though his time as a senior Justice Department official was relatively brief, Mr. Bove played an outsize role in the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to take control of the agency it argues has been “weaponized” against Mr. Trump and other conservatives.

Because his position at the department did not require Senate confirmation, Mr. Bove was among the first Trump appointees to arrive at the department, overseeing a succession of major policy and personnel moves, starting with a memo threatening to prosecute state and city officials who refused to carry out immigration enforcement.

But the most defining episode of his tenure was the battle he waged against the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, where he once worked, over the administration’s insistence on dropping bribery charges against Mr. Adams — who had personally appealed to the White House for a legal reprieve.

Mr. Bove pressured top prosecutors in the office to drop the case. He claimed that the charges had been brought by an overzealous U.S. attorney appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and he argued that the case would hinder Mr. Adams’s capacity to cooperate with the White House on immigration enforcement.

The Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than sign off on Mr. Bove’s command. Other career prosecutors in the public integrity section resigned rather than accede to his demands.

Mr. Bove’s current boss, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who also served with him on Mr. Trump’s legal team, accused Mr. Bove’s critics of spreading slander and misinformation.

“Emil is the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known,” Mr. Blanche wrote in an opinion article for Fox News. “His legal acumen is extraordinary, and his moral clarity is above reproach.”

Emptywheel, Analysis: With Emil Bove’s Confirmation, Trump Hones His Criminal Protection Racket, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), July 30, 2025. Emil Bove’s confirmation to a lifetime appointment on the Third Circuit hones Trump’s criminal protection racket in a bunch of ways, both by rewarding those who engage in abuse for him and by punishing those who don’t.

After a 50-49 vote confirming him (Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against, with all Democrats), Emil Bove will be installed in New Jersey’s Third Circuit seat. He will remain there until retirement, death, impeachment, or criminal prosecution — or, quite possibly, promotion to SCOTUS — removes him.

It pains me to catalog the ways in which Bove’s confirmation serves and advances Trump’s crimina

Whistleblower Summit Events and Honorees

The 13th Annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival is primarily from July 30 to Aug. 1, 2025, with hybrid events from July 25 to Aug. 3. Join us as we celebrate those who speak truth to power and help build a more transparent, accountable world. The event this year is split into two overlapping segments.

One was based as usual in Washington, DC, led by Summit Co-Founder Marcel Reid at the U.S. House Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill and at the National Press Club. The other event, under the leadership of Summit Co-Founder Michael McCray, right, was at venues in Arkansas, including the Clinton Presidential Library Center, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, and the Martha Mitchell House & Museum, with extended hybrid programming running from July 25 to Aug. 3. 

Among the highlights for the July 29 program at the Rayburn House Building (Details: https://www.whistleblowersummit.com/): 

9 AM OPENING PLENARY. ACORN 8 and Justice Integrity Project open the Summit segment in the nation’s capital with Co-Founder Marcel Reid and a panel of community partners and grassroots organizers, including Dr. Rhonda Hamilton of MI Mothers Keepers. Five-time Emmy winner and acclaimed producer John Barbour will present a sample from his 2017 whistleblowing expose of the American media’s treatment of the life and death of President John F. Kennedy. The introduction by Andrew Kreig of the Justice Integrity Project will describe the importance of Barbour’s film, in light of the historic revelations led this year via whistleblowers and the House Operations and Government Reform Committee majority.

10 AM Know Your Rights Panel (Government Accountability Project, “GAP”). The Trump Administration’s proposals have the potential to cancel longstanding civil service and Whistleblower Protection Act rights for federal workers. Where has the dust settled, and what’s in the wings? What rights still exist, and what are the best options to enforce them? What are the survival strategies when legal rights are weak or nonexistent? Panelists will include 1) Tom Devine, GAP; 2) Rebecca Jones, House Office of Whistleblower Ombuds; 3) Joe Spielberger, POGO

11 AM ‘Seeds of Sovereignty’ (Live Film Presentation). (Live Film Presentation). Seeds of Sovereignty is a thought-provoking documentary that explores Mexico’s growing struggle with the United States to protect its biodiversity and food sovereignty. At the center of the conflict is U.S. pressure on Mexico to adopt GMO corn and industrial farming practices, posing a serious threat to the country’s traditional agriculture and environmental health. In response, the Mexican government and advocacy groups have mobilized to resist these efforts, sparking a powerful movement to safeguard food sovereignty, biodiversity, and sustainability. Through striking visuals and compelling narratives, Seeds of Sovereignty exposes the harmful effects of industrial farming in both nations and challenges viewers to reflect on a country’s right to provide its people with safe, nutritious food while preserving its environment and cultural heritage.

12 PM

1 PM Legislative Opportunities (GAP). With the disintegration of Civil Service Reform Act administrative remedies, whistleblowers need to receive alternative rights that bypass the CSRA. Further, there are genuine opportunities to earn rights for government contractor and AI whistleblowers. This panel will be a guide for the light out of the tunnel. Tentative participants will include 1) Tom Devine, GAP; 2) Joe Spielberger, POGO; 3) Tristan Leavitt, EMPOWER; 4) Representative from Civil Service Strong.

2 PM The Guardianship Abuse Nightmare is Real (NASGA). (NASGA). The National Association to Stop Guardianship Abuse hosts a panel about this Global Problem. Elder, disability and human rights advocate describe guardianship as a public wellness and health hazard, and a humanitarian crisis. Panelist include 1) Robin Austin, co-author of “The Probate Trap” 2) Luanne Fleming, co-author of “The Probate Trap” 3) Marcia Friedman, co-host on “The Probate Trap” 4) Aleene Carrino, co-host on “The Probate Trap” and 5) Leslie Ferderigos, Esq. (Ret.) author “The Lawyers v the People.”

3 PM State Organs (Live Film Screening). Screening). When two youths mysteriously disappeared in China, their families embarked on a perilous 20-year journey to search for lost loved ones. Along the way, they uncovered a most secretive state crime and a grassroots movement that inspired a nation and the world.

4: 15 PM Whistleblowing in the Military

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2140-whistleblowing-warriors-continue-their-vital-civic-leadership