Tag: security

“Despite the strong rhetoric, President [Vladimir] Putin and his allies have been able to continue ‘business as usual’ by hiding and laundering their corrupt assets in London,” the report said. “These assets, on which the Kremlin can call at any time, both directly and indirectly support President Putin’s campaign to subvert the international rules-based system, undermine our allies, and erode the mutually reinforcing international networks that support UK foreign policy.” Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, the committee chair, said: “We can no longer allow ‘business as usual’. “The scale of damage that this ‘dirty money’ can do to UK foreign policy interests dwarfs the benefit of Russian transactions in the City. There is no excuse for the UK to turn a blind eye as President Putin’s kleptocrats and human rights abusers use money laundered through London to corrupt our friends, weaken our alliances, and erode faith in our institutions.” The report said the UK’s weakness to act to stem the flow of potentially questionable Russian money was exposed just days after the UK expelled two dozen Russian diplomats following the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. “On 16 March – two days after the government announced the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats from the UK – Russia raised $4bn (£2.97bn) in eurobond issuances, nearly half of which were bought by investors from the UK,” the report said. A day earlier Russian energy company Gazprom raised €750m (£656m) in a bond sale, some of which were bought by UK investors according to VTB Capital, a Russian bank subjected to US sanctions. “We call on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to set out a coherent strategy on Russia that clearly links together the diplomatic, military and financial tools that the UK can use to counter Russian state aggression.” The committee recommended that the government close gaps in the sanctions regime that have allowed companies to use London markets while being sanctioned in other jurisdictions. Deripaska has previously described the grounds for including him on a US sanctions list as groundless, ridiculous and absurd. Speaking before the report’s publication, the Russian ambassador to London, Alexander Yakovenko, said: “We believe that the statements like ‘someone is a friend of somebody’ is not the legal basis for taking decisions against someone.” He warned that Russian citizens based in London “could go to the courts and put certain things in front of the courts. They are going to complain – some of them are preparing these moves and the government should think twice.” He added Britain had a reputation to protect as a believer in the rule of law.

WASHINGTON — President Trump named John R. Bolton, a hard-line former American ambassador to the United Nations, as his third national security adviser on Thursday, continuing a shake-up that creates one of the most hawkish national security teams of any White House in recent history. The move, which was sudden but not unexpected, signals a more confrontational approach in American foreign policy at a time when Mr. Trump faces mounting challenges, including from Iran and North Korea. The president replaced Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson last week with the C.I.A. In an interview on Thursday on Fox News, soon after his appointment was announced in a presidential tweet, he declined to say whether Mr. Trump should go through with a planned meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Trump, the White House officials said, also wanted to fill out his national security team before his meeting with Mr. Kim, which is scheduled to occur by the end of May. Mr. Bolton, who will take office April 9, has met regularly with Mr. Trump to discuss foreign policy. He described the job of national security adviser as making sure that the bureaucracy did not impede the decisions of the president. R. McMaster has served his country with distinction for more than 30 years,” the statement said. Their tensions seeped into public view in February, when General McMaster said at a security conference in Munich that the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was beyond dispute. General McMaster had been among the most hard-line administration officials in his approach to North Korea, publicly raising the specter of a “preventive war” against the North.

A bipartisan group of senators leading an inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election called on Tuesday for urgent action by Congress to help states protect their voting systems from future threats of foreign interference. With the 2018 congressional primaries already under way, members of the senate intelligence committee outlined a series of recommendations – the first public release from the panel’s yearlong investigation – that they say will help improve the cybersecurity of the nation’s election infrastructure. “We’re now at a point where we’ve wrapped up one piece of our investigation, which deals with election security,” said Republican senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the committee, who spoke alongside the Democratic vice-chair, Senator Mark Warner, and members of the committee. By and large, he said, “we need to be more effective at deterring our adversaries.” “The Russians were relentless in attempting to meddle in the 2016 elections and they will continue their efforts to undermine public confidence in western democracies and in the legitimacy of our elections,” Senator Susan Collins, another Republican member of the committee, added during the press conference. The election security recommendations were released a day ahead of full committee hearing to discuss the attempted hacks of several state voting systems in 2016 and federal and local response. Jeh Johnson, the former homeland security secretary and Kirstjen Nielsen, the current homeland security secretary, are scheduled to testify. The suggestions include more federal funding for states to replace outdated voting systems and improved information sharing between local and state agencies. There are currently 14 states that lack a paper trail of votes cast. The bipartisan nature of the Senate committee sharply contrasts with a parallel investigation in the House, which the Republicans recently ended after concluding that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Last month, in indictments handed down by a grand jury, Mueller alleged that 13 Russian citizens and three Russian organizations had sought to disrupt the 2016 election.

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Trump’s FBI speech was full of praise after slamming the bureau's work on twitter. Fmr. Asst. FBI Director Frank Figliuzzi says Trump’s behavior is “undermining the security of our communities." » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc About: MSNBC is the premier…