You know who else should be investigated for Russian ties? Jill Stein. Shown below sitting across from Moscow Mike and Vladimir:
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Like Trump, Flynn and Stein have called for closer U.S. relations with Russia, despite its annexation of Crimea, its aggression in Ukraine and its threat to our allies in Europe.
Flynn has defended Russia’s intervention, in alliance with the brutal Assad regime, in the Syrian civil war and called for closer cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in the Middle East. The headline on the RT website story on his appointment called him “Russia-loving.”
As for Stein, she was criticized by the Russian Green Party for cozying up to Putin and not speaking out against Russia’s human rights abuses against the LGBT community, political dissidents and others her party is supposed to represent. Since the election, she’s the one who pushed for recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – three typically Democratic states that flipped and gave Trump the presidency. Her motive was suspect; her vote total didn’t rise, but her fundraising increased and so did doubts about the election.
Then we get the bizarre news that the leader of the #Calexit movement is living in Russia and working with an anti-American group backed by the Kremlin.
Whatever’s going on, Putin must be one happy despot.
Read more here: sacbee.com
Stein raised $893K in 2012 but $3.5M in 2016 (not counting the recount fundraising after the election). Did she get Russian money?
Every bit as pro-Putin as Donald:
Russia became a principal subject of foreign policy discussion in the 2016 presidential election. It was the most frequently mentioned foreign nation during the second presidential debate on October 9, 2016, and also criticized in both the Democratic and Republican platforms for "engaging in destabilizing actions along its borders" and being "[r]epressive at home and reckless abroad." [2] [3]
Two questions dominated the debate over Russia. The first was whether a no-fly zone should be established over Aleppo, Syria, to provide relief to civilians in rebel-controlled areas—a move which could be interpreted as hostile to Russia, which maintains some control over the region's airspace. The second was to what extent the United States should condemn or defend against Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
In October 2016, the WikiLeaks release of alleged Clinton campaign emails likely obtained with assistance from Russia, renewed conversations about European stability, the Syrian Civil War, cybersecurity, and Russia's influence on American elections.
Read what Jill Stein and the 2016 Green Platform said about Russia below.
Stein on Russia Jill Stein said in an interview on October 19, 2016, that the United States was "on the verge of nuclear war right now" with Russia. She continued, "[F]rom Russia’s point of view, they’ve been encroached upon, there have been missiles that have surrounded them now. And this has been going on for years. Now there are war games going on and exercises, and our negotiations have absolutely broken down. And both sides are moving their missiles in for exchange. So to my mind, this is the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse, on steroids." She advocated engaging Russia on nuclear disarmament and said that "it’s us who’s been slamming the door on nuclear disarmament progress." [4]In an interview on October 12, 2016, Stein had said that Hillary Clinton's foreign policy regarding Russia was more dangerous than Donald Trump's. "It is now Hillary Clinton that wants to start an air war with Russia over Syria by calling for a no fly zone. We have 2000 nuclear missiles on hairtrigger [sic] alert. They are saying we are closer to a nuclear war than we have ever been. Under Hillary Clinton, we could slide into nuclear war very quickly from her declared policy in Syria. I sure won't sleep well at night if Donald Trump is elected, but I sure won't sleep well at night if Hillary Clinton elected. We have another choice other than these two candidates who are both promoting lethal policies. On the issue of war and nuclear weapons, it is actually Hillary's policies which are much scarier than Donald Trump who does not want to go to war with Russia. He wants to seek modes of working together, which is the route that we need to follow not to go into confrontation and nuclear war with Russia," she said. [5]Commenting on Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Stein had stated in an interview published on September 14, 2016, "Ukraine was historically a part of Russia for quite some period of time, and we all know there was this conversation with Victoria Nuland about planning the coup and who was going to take over. Not that the other guy was some model of democracy. But the one they put in — with the support of the US and the CIA in this coup in Ukraine — that has not been a solution. Regime change is something we need to be very careful about. And this is a highly inflammatory regime change with a nuclear armed power next door. So I’m saying: Let’s just stop pretending there are good guys here and bad guys here. These are complicated situations. Yeah, Russia is doing lots of human rights abuse, but you know what? So are we.” [6]On September 10, 2016, Stein had written an open letter to Yevgeniya Chirikova and Nadezhda Kutepova, two Russian environmentalists who were critical of her policy positions on Russia. [7]Stein said that she had been "grossly misrepresented" by the media. "There is a growing tendency in American politics to label critics of the established order as agents of Russia working against the United States. For example, when WikiLeaks exposed massive corruption at the highest levels of the Democratic Party, high-ranking Democratic Party officials and their supporters in the media began attacking WikiLeaks as an alleged agent of Russia, despite their inability to produce any hard evidence to support this claim. This tactic of smearing critics as Russian agents is the mirror image of the Putin administration’s tactic of labeling Putin critics as agents of the West. It is reminiscent of the shameful history of Russia-baiting attacks against political opposition leaders like Martin Luther King Jr.," Stein said.Stein added that she did not confront Putin about human rights violations when she visited Moscow in 2015 because there was no interpreter present. She continued, "Clinton’s anti-Russian maneuvering will surely be used by Putin to justify further attacks on his political opponents as agents of the West, and Republican Donald Trump seems as uninterested in human rights as he is in environmental progress. What the Greens offer is completely different: we see Russians not as enemies to conquer or resources to exploit, but as members of the global community whom we must deal with. We seek principled collaboration to develop potential partnerships to create a world that works for all of us."In August 2016, Stein had called Russian President Vladimir Putin's goals in eastern Europe "not good." She continued, "I would have no faith and trust in Putin, but on the other hand I think to be needlessly militarizing this conflict is not in the interest of the American people. It’s certainly – and take the Middle East as a case in point, a case study of where we’ve had incredible chaos – who has benefitted from this? I don’t think the American people, I don’t think the people of the Middle East.” [8]Stein had traveled to Moscow, Russia, in December 2015 to participate in a panel organized by RT, a television network funded by the Russian government. She said that both the United States and Russia spend too much on the military. Stein also attended a dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "While the objective of that dinner was not to engage in serious discussions, Putin did appear to respond in his formal remarks to the call for greater dialogue and collaboration made by myself and three other political figures on the foreign policy panel earlier that day," Stein said. [9]Stein defended the trip and her participation in the panel in an interview on August 7, 2016. "My contribution to that panel was to tell Putin and everybody else that it was time for a peace initiative in the Middle East and we needed to stop the war in Syria. We needed to stop the bombing, we need a weapons embargo, and to freeze the funding of those countries that continued to fund terrorism. So I think they ought to. Hillary Clinton ought to pay attention to the kinds of policies I was actually talking to Putin about. And interestingly, Putin watched our conference and our panel, and his remarks that night at that dinner was that he had heard the foreign politicians and he was shocked to find that he agreed with us on the need to create a peaceful path forward on Syria," she said. [10]When asked in July 2015 if the United States should help Ukraine against Russia, Stein said, "We should encourage Ukraine to be neutral—we helped foment a coup against a democratically-elected government, [resulting in a government] where ultra-nationalists and ex-Nazis came to power. Imagine the inverse: if Russia did that in Canada—installed a government hostile to us—we saw something like that in Cuban Missile Crisis—that would not be acceptable to us. So let's not be single-issue—instead of fomenting a hostile Ukraine we should be leading the way in establishing a neutral Ukraine that would allow Russia to not feel under attack. We've made great strides—Putin is not a hero—but as Noam Chomsky points out, the Doomsday clock has moved closer to midnight than it has been since 1983. The hostile faceoff with Russia causes that and is entirely misplaced—led by war hawks in Obama administration—especially [Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs] Victoria Nuland, who cheered on an overthrow in Ukraine." [11]
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