and you know another. u.s. president postpones a second summit with president putin while the u.s. secretary of state is grilled over donald trump's dealings with the russian leader . donald trump on junk ordeal because strike a deal to avert a trade war between the u.s. . and islamic state claims responsibility for a wave of terror in southern syria which has reportedly claimed the lives of at least two hundred fifteen. the nations of the stories head to our team. at the top of the hour my colleague already saying she will be here with the latest news but coming up of course top debates the arrest of russian activist. on spying

charges in the u.s. . hello and welcome to crossfire where all things considered i'm peter lavelle can you think of a more intriguing story line one that includes an attractive russian woman money guns politics power and yes unfortunately. this is not a story line but her life at the moment is she the most recent victim of the west's phobia towards all things related to russia. talking to me i'm joined by my guest ray mcgovern in washington he's a poet. cia analyst and co-founder of veterans intelligence professionals for

sanity also in washington we have joe lauria he is the editor in chief of consortium news dot com and author of how i lost my hillary clinton with forward by julian is knowledge and in london we have alexander me curious and he's a writer on legal affairs as well as editor in chief of the duran dot com all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it ray let me go to you first in the swamp in washington d.c. . how do you what do you make of this story here because it is the timing is very interesting she's being charged for not being a. registering under the foreign law which i find quite interesting is that about half of washington d.c. does some kind of influence peddling for foreign countries and they're not registered as a foreign agent is she just being picked out because she's russian go ahead ray well peter first full disclosure i want you to hear this from me rather than from

the f.b.i. i may be called a coconspirator very quickly because i have met the oh my god oh oh why oh yeah there may even be a picture of alongside her and saw you eating i thought you were glowing i thought you were glowing ok go ahead keep going. it was at a midi meeting of the session an evening lecture committee for the republic very non non partisan actually mostly conservative group and i met her with about one hundred other people and there were a lot of people who had the energy of the evening so that's number one number two i attended the hearing last wednesday when she came in and her are in show suit there and was denied bail on the pretense that she was too dangerous a person that the f.b.i. did not have it in their capability to prevent her from getting into a russian embassy car and being spirited out of dulles airport to russia. number

three and last i have been watching analyzing reporting on russia for fifty five years i was chief of the soviet foreign policy branch at cia i am unabashedly in favor of a better relationship between the united states and russia i am also completely appalled at the russia gate drivel that is coming out from all ends now including from amy goodman just yes morning on democracy now who had what's his name greg gordon gordon reporting on how the n.r.a. funneled money it's you know the conspiracy is right there and i have to tell you i talked to greg gordon just two or three months ago personally and he completely drunk all the kool-aid about russia gate it's really really ridiculous when amy goodman and rachel maddow cannot be distinguished one from the other amazing joe

let me go to you she's denied bail because she's identity is flight risk here ok i mean looking at her biography and look at her instagram very provocative pictures folks ok food and her love of guns ok and her love of america which is very very clear i mean is this you know we don't have a lot of evidence i read part of the indictment here. this seems like it's a nice ingredient to the russia russia russia mantra go ahead joe. you know i think it's more than that peter i've read the criminal complaint and the f.b.i. agents affidavit in the case and i think it's pretty clear that they're setting this up to be the so-called evidence for collusion as you were everyone knows the miller in the last miller indictment of the the alleged twelve russian g.r.u. agents did not have anything to do with anyone on the trumped team this crime that she's being accused of is trying to build better u.s.

russian relations with informal dialogue dinners maybe that was one of the ones ray was at. they're setting achievement would person american u.s. person want a u.s. person to i predict i suspect that this of one and two will be somehow linked to the campaign because she met with a political party one the complaint says and that was a part of it used to be hostile to russia in the past you have to think that's the republicans so this is all being set up and all she may have violated as you pointed out peter at the beginning is not registering as a foreign agent as a lobbyist now where she working for the russian government apparently she was working and had worked in the office of the deputy central bank governor of russia and she continued to be in touch with a ham and may have been an interpreter at some of the meetings that it had when he came to the to the u.s. that she's in the she's being accused of illegal activities but in that illegal

activity according to the f.b.i. was trying to have better relations between the u.s. and russia that's what this is come to yes alexander i mean i it's already been mentioned here we have the g.o.p. and we have the n.r.a. and if that says one little you know smith of inch away from donald trump is this the gambit that's in play here twenty nine year old russian woman a successful entrepreneur likes guns wants to bring the second amendment to russia and she's a conservative in america she she still linchpin go ahead alexander i think that he's exactly what it's all about if you look at the last indictment. published which has been discussed by the way. on consult you can use the thing that stood out to me about is that there is actually no collusion allegation involved in it in relation to the hack of the democratic national committee's computers so what

they're now trying to do and i think joe's absolutely right is they're trying to find some evidence of collusion in some of the way and what they've done is they've . found a young russian woman who as far as i could see was live living her own life i mean she had her ideas about guns good views which i don't personally agree with by the way but she had ideas about guns she wanted russia to adopt something like american gun culture she's very well known in russia as a supporter of american ideas about gun control or the lack of it and has campaigned in russia for that she's been involved in russia with those sort of activities she had a life in the united states she's now caught in the middle she is the person around whom this whole threadbare collusion narrative is now going to be diverted given that the original collusion narrative has over collapsed you know ray i think what i worry about is that i don't know what kind of legal defense that she has

fled she's going to be under enormous amount of pressure here she faces a ten year prison sentence i worry that under pressure she might saying and then start composing you get my drift go ahead ray. well that's the name of the game here of course you wrap somebody up and then you say you know we can put you away for ten years but you know if you could just remember about this rush inclusion if you just remember this as manna for it that's all manner of people that the f.b.i. has wrapped up i have to say here i feel really strongly about this because the f.b.i. lies a lot the f.b.i. falsifies documents and i have to can cite simply my good friend tom drake he was being they want to put him away for twenty six years right and they they took the documents that had been unclassified and they put a secret stamp on it ok and that was part of the evidence they used with this court

in the state of maryland now thank god james bamford had the original unclassified so he took it to the judge and said look this is what you're dealing with here and the department of justice and the f.b.i. and the judge threw it out and he said to those justices department of justice lawyers you still don't ever darken my doorstep again i don't want to see you ever in court you perjured yourselves get out of here case dismissed so that's the kind of thing that the f.b.i. and the department of as bill binney says just us what the kind of behavior they exhibit i want to add one more thing and that would be very brief i have to defend myself not only against the f.b.i. but against my liberal friends who think that i'm defending donald trump i think donald trump is the worst person in the united states ever had ok the only thing i agree with him and i would point out that a broken clock is correct twice a day is that there's no reason in god's world why we can't have a better relationship with russia and i stand by that judgment ok well joe is this

what it's really all about is this really what it's all about you know right before the helsinki summit we have the indictment come out after how think he and then everybody's got their hair on fire even. people at fox news and then we have this young woman caught in the middle of it i mean is this is this is this all choreographed in your mind go ahead i don't want to be very clear we need more evidence i'm asking people to speculate with reason go ahead joe. you know i do think it's corrugated obviously career graph to specially the timing of the indictment he was meeting with the queen in windsor castle the exact moment that rosenstein the deputy attorney general made the announcement of these indictments and it was a couple of days before the world cup final and of course the summit in helsinki we also if you could throw into that doing a song he was about to be turned over to british authorities he's linked of course to this case because we can leaks is named as organization one in the indictments

as having received the pearland documents when you look at this f.b.i. as an affidavit about marina you've see that it starts with a long political statement highly politicized statement full of the typical russophobia saying that russia is trying to destroy our democratic institutions this is an influence operation and she is part of this show it's a low cost low risk operation of russia to influence the united states i mean up against the the the machine of corporate media this woman is influencing the united states this is the kind of thing we see in another thing that needs to be said about her is that i have heard and that she's actually in of all news supported the opposite is. the leader would such small numbers in russia and she says in her in the criminal and sorry in the affidavit that putina was talking to americans about post putin russia and future russian governments she was told to talk about that

without undermining the current president of russia so that would fit into someone who doesn't really like putin very much and was not working on his behalf it gets more and more complicated after a short break we'll continue our discussion and. stay with our team. joining me every thursday on the alex simon sure and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics school business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. some people.

use indigenous people as you know we that the. people treat. most so you can say that. out of a man just. told me. i said i will never be in the if they will not allow me. if they will shoot week. long a million me indeed i'm deaf and i think. that you could have been killed but if you think that i think i'm you know i mean.

welcome back across like we're all things are considered to remind you we're talking about the latest victim of russia get. let's go back to alexander in london you know alex i watched peter struck testimony and i'm reminded by what we've just heard from ray. ok i'll give you my opinion i think an informed opinion because i've had to deal with this ridiculous story for two years like the public here he was clearly lying and missed. very very deceptive ok now it's ex-girlfriend it looks like she's thrown him under the bus couldn't happen to a nicer guy you know but it's really about the culture of law enforcement at the highest levels in the united states now i don't know enough

a lot about this maria girl i learned a lot about her know last few days here but she's certainly not a big fish if i can use that term and like i said i really worry you know once you pressure someone like that you may tend to sing and then they'll they'll can pose for you here i mean this story is not only a tragic story about destroying still another person's life but it really is about how lawn for sman works and it seems to be quite politicized and quite westernized as well go ahead alexander. well i'm glad you brought up the destructor because of course what we're now hearing and of course these are reports but they seem to be valid reports is that there was a texas change between strong and liza page in which you said that there was no there there and it seems that liza page has confirmed and there there is collusion and that text was sent three days after robert muller was appointed

special counsel to investigate pollution and these are the two people struck who is at the very heart of the collusion investigation so that seems to me to point very strongly towards a politicized investigation which is what donald trump and others have been saying it is and i don't really have any doubt about that now if we go back to marina maria. well i think we've already talked about how the fact that the collusion allegation has collapsed in connection with the central hacking allegation and it seems that any russian now who is any contact with people of any importance in the united states is now risk of being dragged into this thing and if i can just go back to two things that were said before. one i think by yourself about pressure

important people to talk and say things a judge i think his name was judge ellis actually said that he said directly to the f.b.i. and the justice department in the manifold case you're really interested in manner for you're trying to pressure man a fort so you can get it trump and he didn't really deny it so that is exactly that the agenda that's been followed here it was followed with michael flynn also donald trump's former national security advisor and it seems to me there's a real risk that that might happen and of course in terms of. and the allegations against the idea that the national the the n.r.a. one of the most or patchouli ot organizations in america could be swung round and brought under the influence of the kremlin why one twenty nine year old russian woman is so far fetched in his complete numbers no no no let that is going on no

i'll tell you what is being asked to really know what out there what's pathetic here are kind of you know a sleight of hand here no it's not outrageous because remember liberals used to be very distrustful of the national security state they're not anymore let me go to ray you know the contrast in the last few news cycles you have clapper brennan and komi ok you know heralding the virtues of the secure national security state and then we have this young twenty nine one tract of woman that really just wanted to have better relations and she liked guns and she was a conservative and you could do better for her cards in the united states we look at these three people on the tarp that were running the national security state at one point in time if this is the face and i think it's very duplicitous ok i did these people are not to be trusted and people like that are prosecuting this young woman go ahead. peter the proof is in the putting people like comin

john brennan are running scared yet you know yet that the house intelligence committee that's serious about this investigation has the goods on them yep they can go to jail yep the matter of fact devon newness the head of the intelligence committee in the house has said precisely that if they're guilty they're going to be put on trial this is a new phenomena mn the food the so new deal here in the united states getting back to you know the fable the drivel about russia gate it was very very clear on amy goodman this morning less than two hours ago live ok she ended up after giving greg gordon of mcclatchy twenty minutes she ended up saying now i have to point out that this is all speculation right well the speculation was this was this as follows ok . robert muller has no russians as as alexander point out there's no russians that we've been able to get and we indicted a whole bunch if we can indict

a ham sandwich what we but here's a russian oh i'm already a put in a we've got her now and she's the only game in town ok and we're going to make sure that this works because if we have a russian the word was use we have the holy grail a person that we can set up and say aha see she was working in this intricate skim through the end ira and everything else to make sure that trump beat hillary clinton i have to tell you i've never seen it sillier season as i have seen it now in washington yeah but you know when you get a job here but i mean raise absolutely right but i mean if you watch c.n.n. and m s n b c they don't listen to anything about facts and decisions that it may do some of the can of congressional committees some of the documents they've had to claw out of the justice department it even they'll even say this is good news for my. or are they just don't talk about it it's really it's amazing to me this is

this is it really is a slow motion cooed it's going on here and now they have a redhead russian woman twenty nine years old case closed they've done their job that's going to be the message i'm afraid go ahead joe yeah it's not only the silly season it's a dangerous season because you've got the corp corporate media who's let's in one example takes an indictment which is only an accusation and is not evidence it doesn't have to contain evidence it's not in itself evidence as absolutely established fact they are going on that and they've convinced a huge part of the american population of this and i think this is what moralism what robert miller's mission is is to create russian guilt in the public consciousness and once it's settled in by the aid of a fevered media campaign his mission is accomplished they are guilty and we've reached that point now no matter what happens the facts any kind of analysis of detail is irrelevant and maria patino if she's going to be railroaded as the cook

is the linchpin as you called her of collusion and that's what's going to happen i think we're moving towards a resolution of this entire two plus year. so-called scandal of russia gay and it's either going to be the house intelligence committee and the republicans who who can bring down some people inside the f.b.i. even rule himself as being politically motivated or they're going to win the other side who will win and we're going to see her in jail for tina that is as a colluding person and then that will be the basis for the impeachment of donald trump because that's what this is all been about you printed struck you talked about in his text was deciding with his lover police a page whether to try to stay on and become an assistant district attorney or to join ruelas team and he wanted a journalist in which he did because it could lead to the impeachment of donald trump you know alexander the these. people bradenton and the clappers and the coal

mines they get there get it they're going to i think they're going to skate through this here because they have the whole national security state defending them protecting them and they have the liberal media giving them cover every step of the way and anyone that disagrees with them is just putin's puppet i mean that message it's working it's not working for smart people but the their political agenda this is what but on the other on the other side this is the elites arguing among themselves a recent gallup poll most americans could care less about any of this it didn't even reach a point of meaningfulness ok it was it was way down on the bottom here this is a war at the top this is what it's all about it's not about what the american people think it's about the power that people want to maintain and get back go ahead alexander well i think that's all true but i think the thing we've always got to remember is this is cool see impeachment is something which is carried out by

congress which is one definition the elite is the elite decides to go down this road they have the power to do it because that is that is what the powers that the constitution gives them so certainly it's true the wider population of these the republican party voting part of the population may not be very engaging the elite itself is obsessed with it but of course that points to another danger which is that you have in the united states and i think this is becoming increasingly clear . a disassociation between what people think and of thinking within the beltway within the elite generally and the concerns that old enemy americans have and here i'm going to say something about not just right wing americans i mean left wing americans to joe's perhaps better able to talk about that than i can gray also the point is that i think what americans right and left wing americans are concerned

about jobs housing student debt all of those sorts of issues and i think is this continues to very much longer more and more people are going to start saying to themselves the elite in the united states is not working for off and at that point they we could easily see the whole trump situation revising get on one of the young maria here that it's the system is going to work for her either here am going to give the last thirty seconds of the program go ahead ray well i agree with alexander and i would caution that even the smart people are taken in by the eighty five percent of the media that keep drumming drumming russia gate and that's really bad i last word here as a former intelligence officer i would ask anyone to take a look at the trade craft the trade craft exhibited by.

there is no trade craft she's a russian agent my god the noise issue put everything right out there where everybody everybody and his brother and sister heard it and and entirely and apparently it's because a funny story she communicated with her handler via e-mail while wasn't that devious that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks my guess was as you might been reminded by their rank they were viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember last time. i've been saying the numbers mean something they matter the u.s. has over one trillion dollars in debt more than ten like colored fine tamping each

day. eighty five percent of global wealth you longs to be all for the rich eight point six percent market saw thirty percent rise last year some with four hundred to five hundred trade per second per second and bitcoin rose to twenty thousand dollars. china is building a two point one billion dollar a i industrial park but don't let the numbers overwhelm. the only number you need to remember is one to one business shows you can't afford to miss the one and only . hold a job or the current jr to go on to go the little death. oh oh oh we're. very different conclude. video good.

reason i'm so over we're deep down. but i will say that the way the law was written. i didn't have it in my mind that i would be walking down the corridor of a totally free person but i'm thinking it's twenty years here which is also

a lot yes a lot but not in texas standards because texas turns out life sentences like this candy. these are the two options that could happen here and we need your vehicle pop out ok and where do i fall from that from here you would call this way ok so that doesn't make sense that it makes sense or ok the only one is if i'm getting in a vehicle and you're turning to do whatever you got to do is. yes he's already here pow pow so that's what happened and what's going to happen you're going to follow this why this and this is what happened this is what they said i'm not sure if i'm going in the vehicle. i need your vehicle and then i. i'm not sure if he felt like this or like this but the.