cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/39560686

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25921559

Link above goes to the Daily Kos post that discovered the scrubbing. Here's the text of the original article:

Former Intelligence Officer Claims KGB Recruited Trump

Isabel Van Brugen – The Daily Beast – 21 February 2025

A former Soviet intelligence officer has alleged that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.”

Alnur Mussayev, 71, a former Kazakh intelligence chief, made the explosive claim in a Facebook post on Thursday. He claimed that he served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. One of its key objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”

Mussayev wrote that in 1987 “our directorate recruited Donald Trump, a 40-year-old American businessman, under the pseudonym Krasnov.”

He reiterated that the department specialized in recruiting spies and intelligence sources from the West, asserting once again that Trump had been brought into the fold.

“I hope I’ll survive a third assassination attempt,” he said in a comment below his post.

He made another shocking allegation in another comment, saying: “Today, the personal file of resident ‘Krasnov’ has been removed from the FSB. It is being privately managed by one of Putin’s close associates.”

Mussayev’s allegations, while unfounded, add to ongoing speculation about Trump’s connections to Russia. Trump’s first visit to Moscow as a real estate developer in 1987 drew intense scrutiny and speculation that the trip was arranged by the KGB for dubious reasons.

According to Politico, in 1985, the KGB updated a secret personality questionnaire distributed among the agency, advising case officers what to look for in a successful recruitment operation.

The document instructed agents to target “prominent figures in the West” with the goal of drawing them “into some form of collaboration with us… as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.”

Trump has denied any improper ties to Moscow or collusion with President Vladimir Putin.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Russia’s Foreign Ministry for comment.

U.S. officials have also expressed concerns about Trump’s relationship with Putin.

Anthony Scaramucci who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017, said during an episode of “The Rest Is Politics: US” podcast with co-host Katty Kay on Friday that he thinks there is a mysterious “hold” on the president.

Scaramucci did not elaborate on what he believes that “hold” might be, adding only: “I don’t know why it’s like this. [H.R.] McMaster couldn’t figure it out, [James] Mattis couldn’t figure it out, [John] Kelly couldn’t figure it out.”

It might seem like a small matter, just a disagreement over whether a body of water should be called one name or another.

But it’s really about much bigger things: Trump-style intimidation, a clear violation of the first amendment – and the extent to which news organizations will stick together in each other’s defense, or will comply with the powerful for the sake of their own access.

Even more broadly, it is about Donald Trump’s wide-ranging effort to control the media and be able to spread propaganda and interfere with the flow of accurate information.

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Pro-Kremlin outlets are focusing their attentions on the imminent German Bundestag elections, with narratives stoking tension and division in society. The patterns we highlighted in our recent article continue, and remind us of what we saw at the time of the Olympic Games and the European Parliament elections, tactics such as Doppelganger campaigns, hijacking credibility from reputable outlets, and smearing prominent political leaders with fake videos, social media posts, and other false material.

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Russia smells the ‘good old days’

Russian state outlets seek to reinvigorate the ‘good old days’ when the USSR and the United States were dominant and responsible for world order. The narrative suggests that Ukraine created a security problem and was hijacked by ‘neo-Nazis’ and warmongers across Europe as well as by former US presidents Obama and Biden. Now, Moscow and Washington, Putin and Trump, have to fix the situation, suppressing the cold fact that Putin himself decided to create the situation: to invade Crimea in 2014, start a war in Donbas, and launch a full-scale invasion three years ago, on 24 February 2022.

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After U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, President Donald Trump made several false and misleading statements about the conflict and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

• Trump falsely claimed that Ukraine had “started” the war with Russia, saying the country could have made a “deal.” Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

• He inflated the amount of U.S. aid for Ukraine and wrongly said the U.S. gave “$200 billion more than Europe.” Aid from Europe is higher than that from the U.S.

• Trump distorted comments Zelenskyy made to claim that the Ukrainian president “admits that half of the money that we sent them is missing.” A Trump administration official has said the U.S. tracks the money.

• Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator” and misleadingly said that he “refuses” to have elections. Because of the war, the country is under martial law and can’t have an election, according to Ukrainian law.

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President Donald Trump made a series of dubious claims about Ukraine and its leader as he seeks to negotiate an end to the country’s three-year war with Russia.

Trump’s relationship with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly soured as Trump called Zelenskyy a "dictator" and said he "started" the country’s war with Russia, a claim we rated Pants on Fire. Zelenskyy accused Trump of spreading Russian disinformation.

Trump, who sent a team to Saudi Arabia Feb. 18 to begin negotiations that did not include Ukraine on ending the war, described Zelenskyy as a "modestly successful comedian," who was only good at playing former President Joe Biden "like a fiddle."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Here, we fact-checked six of Trump’s claims. [...]

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Visit us @ !fediverse_vs_disinfo@lemmy.dbzer0.com for all the latest news on the topics of astroturfing, propaganda and disinformation.

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Earlier this month, President Donald Trump said that the US will “take over the Gaza Strip” and “own” it for the “long-term” (AP, 2/5/25), and that its Palestinian inhabitants will be “permanently” exiled (AP, 2/4/25). Subsequently, when reporters asked Trump whether Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza under his plan, he said “no” (BBC, 2/10/25).

After Trump’s remarks, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (Reuters, 2/5/25) said “it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing.”

Navi Pillay (Politico, 2/9/25), chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said that

Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Human Rights Watch (2/5/25) said that, if Trump’s plan were implemented, it would “amount to an alarming escalation of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.”

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When President Donald Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America via executive order (USA Today, 2/10/25), the days of “freedom fries” flashed back for many of us. Once again, the country’s woes were placed on another country; everything from drugs to economic anxiety could be blamed on our neighbor to the south, now run by a woman, left-wing, Jewish climate scientist (FAIR.org, 6/4/24). Like the neocons in the post-9/11 moment flexed their imperialist muscle against “old Europe” (RFE/RL, 1/24/03), renaming the gulf is another way for this revanchist and expansionist Republican administration to assert that the Monroe Doctrine is back in a big way, and the rest of the hemisphere had better get used to it.

Much like “freedom fries,” the whole “Gulf of America” show feels like the lunacy of a dictator who’s off his rocker, akin to the fictional Latin American president in the Woody Allen movie Bananas who declares that his country’s official language will now be Swedish. But sadly, it’s not funny.

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