—
I cannot believe that the Putin Pawns in the White House, are letting this “false equivalency” stand.
That they have not abruptly dismissed this Putin tit-for-tat suggestion, out of hand as unacceptable.
“No way. No how. Absolutely Not!”
No instead, the Putin Fan Club is saying: “We’ll think about it. You know, bat the idea around.”
White House: Trump will consider letting Russia question investor, former ambassador
by ELEANOR MUELLER, politico.com — July 18, 2018
President Donald Trump will consider allowing Russian investigators to question U.S.-born investor Bill Browder, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and others after President Vladimir Putin floated the idea, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.
“He said it was an interesting idea. He didn’t commit to anything,” Sanders said at the daily press briefing. “He wants to work with his team and determine if there’s any validity that would be helpful to the process…It was an idea they threw out.”
For those unfamiliar with Bill Browder story — Well his testimony is WHY there are U.S. Sanctions against Russian Oligarchs now. Needless to say, the Putin-Oligarch-Cabal, hates Bill Browder (and presumably anyone associated with him) — with a red-hot passion.
Here are some of the more noteworthy things Mr. Browder has officially testified to, about the corruption behind the Putin regime ...
Transcript from www.theatlantic.com — July 25, 2017
—
The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways, by suspending American adoptions of Russian children.
That all changed in July 2003, when Putin arrested Russia’s biggest oligarch and richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Putin grabbed Khodorkovsky off his private jet, took him back to Moscow, put him on trial, and allowed television cameras to film Khodorkovsky sitting in a cage right in the middle of the courtroom. That image was extremely powerful, because none of the other oligarchs wanted to be in the same position. After Khodorkovsky’s conviction, the other oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin’s answer was, “Fifty percent.” He wasn’t saying 50 percent for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50 percent for Vladimir Putin personally. From that moment on, Putin became the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world, and my anti-corruption activities would no longer be tolerated.
Eighteen months after my expulsion a pair of simultaneous raids took place in Moscow. Over 25 Interior Ministry officials barged into my Moscow office and the office of the American law firm that represented me. The officials seized all the corporate documents connected to the investment holding companies of the funds that I advised. I didn’t know the purpose of these raids so I hired the smartest Russian lawyer I knew, a 35-year-old named Sergei Magnitsky. I asked Sergei to investigate the purpose of the raids and try to stop whatever illegal plans these officials had.
Sergei went out and investigated. He came back with the most astounding conclusion of corporate identity theft: The documents seized by the Interior Ministry were used to fraudulently re-register our Russian investment holding companies to a man named Viktor Markelov, a known criminal convicted of manslaughter. After more digging, Sergei discovered that the stolen companies were used by the perpetrators to misappropriate $230 million of taxes that our companies had paid to the Russian government in the previous year.
[...]
Sergei’s captors immediately started putting pressure on him to withdraw his testimony. They put him in cells with 14 inmates and eight beds, leaving the lights on 24 hours a day to impose sleep deprivation. They put him in cells with no heat and no windowpanes, and he nearly froze to death. They put him in cells with no toilet, just a hole in the floor and sewage bubbling up. They moved him from cell to cell in the middle of the night without any warning. During his 358 days in detention he was forcibly moved multiple times.
They did all of this because they wanted him to withdraw his testimony against the corrupt Interior Ministry officials, and to sign a false statement that he was the one who stole the $230 million—and that he had done so on my instruction [Bill Browder]. Sergei [Magnitsky] refused. In spite of the grave pain they inflicted upon him, he would not perjure himself or bear false witness.
[...]
After more than three months of untreated pancreatitis and gallstones, Sergei Magnitsky went into critical condition. The Butyrka authorities did not want to have responsibility for him, so they put him in an ambulance and sent him to another prison that had medical facilities. But when he arrived there, instead of putting him in the emergency room, they put him in an isolation cell, chained him to a bed, and eight riot guards came in and beat him with rubber batons.
That night he was found dead on the cell floor.
[...]
Answers to Questions from Senator Dick Durbin
by William Browder — 17 August 2017
1. Mr. Browder, given what you have seen with the corruption of Vladimir Putin’s regime, can you discuss the methods that Putin and his allies use to pay off those who serve their interests? Do they often use proxies, such as oligarchs from former Soviet States, and shell company transactions to help transmit these corrupt funds?
Answer [Bill Browder]:
President Putin and his regime rely on a class of ‘dependent oligarchs’ and organized crime figures to use 'black funds' to further their foreign policy interests.
As an example, we discovered that some of the $230 million stolen from the Russian government, that Sergei Magnitsky exposed and was killed over, was wired through Switzerland to Cyprus to a company called Balec. This company was owned by a Syrian/Russian dual national identified by the US government as being involved in providing material support to the Assad regime.
2. When President Trump held a second, undisclosed private meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit, President Trump told the New York Times that he and Putin talked “about adoption.” What do you think President Trump meant when he said that he talked “about adoption” with Putin?
Answer [Bill Browder]:
In the context of this story, the word ‘adoption’ is code for the Magnitsky Act. Shortly after the Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, Putin retaliated by banning the adoption of Russian orphans by American families. Putin was effectively taking his own orphans hostage and then offering to free the hostages if the US would repeal the Magnitsky Act. So when anyone from the Putin regime mentions adoptions, it is solely about repealing financial and travel sanctions imposed under the Magnitsky Act against some of the worst human rights abusers in the Putin regime.
This Putin-directed humanitarian outrage must not be allowed to continue, must not be allowed stand. Putin must not be further empowered to pursue his “attack America” agenda … which is now directly targeting American (and British) citizens … like Ambassador McFaul, and patriot Bill Browder.
— — —