Background Briefing: March 17, 2021

On By gram

 

The National Intelligence Council’s “Foreign Threats to the 2020 U.S. Federal Elections” Report

We begin with the declassified report from the National Intelligence Council “Foreign Threats to the 2020 U.S. Federal Elections” that singles out Russia as the main attacker of our democratic elections using Ukrainian proxies who are active Russian intelligence operatives with the FSB and GRU who have close ties to Trump’s lawyer Giuliani and his former campaign manager Manafort.  Anders Aslund, a professor at the Center for Eurasian and East European Studies at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who was a Swedish diplomat in Moscow and served as an economic advisor to the governments of Russia and Ukraine and is the author of Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy, joins us. We discuss the possibility that Giuliani could be tried for treason and the intervention of former Attorney General Barr who quashed a search warrant to get into Giuliani’s electronic devices to gather evidence of his collusion with Russian intelligence operatives, one of whom now has a bounty of $250,000 on his head.

 

The Just-Released ODNI, Homeland Security, DOJ Report on the Growing Threat of Domestic Terrorism

Then we examine another report just released by the Office or the Directorate of National Intelligence, Homeland Security and the DOJ on the imminent threat of white supremacist and racially-motivated violence from domestic terrorists who are likely to cause mass casualty events. Adam Klasfeld, a Senior Reporter and Editor at Law and Crime News who was previously a reporter for Courthouse New Service, joins us to discuss this long-overdue focus on domestic extremists and the importance of putting these criminals who see themselves as “patriots” in jail.

 

Today’s Testimony Before Bernie Sanders’ Senate Budget Committee on Income Inequality

Then finally we speak with Sarah Anderson who directs the Global Economy Project and is the co-director of inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of the institute’s 20th anniversary Executive Excess report, “Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted“. She testified earlier today at a Senate Budget Committee hearing chaired by Bernie Sanders on income inequality and wealth inequality in America and joins us to discuss the Sanders bill to cap CEO pay which will be part of a forthcoming Covid recovery bill that will not be subject to a Senate filibuster.