The Grayzone news articles and reports on US President Donald Trump
By Ben Norton
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Update posted on 11/16/2018: A U.S. prosecutor has inadvertently revealed that Julian Assange has been secretly charged by the U.S. government, confirming this report.
On May 23, activist and satirist Randy Credico met with the staff of Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and de facto leader of the House’s investigation into Russian meddling. Credico described the discussions to me hours after his meeting.
According to Credico, Schiff requested the interview after a brief chat with Schiff at the White House Press and Correspondents Association gala last month. An email from House Intelligence Committee senior counsel Shannon Green to Credico (below) demonstrates Schiff’s interest in the encounter.
Schiff was interested exclusively in gathering evidence to bolster the Russiagate narrative of Credico as a secret liaison between Julian Assange, who has been branded without evidence by the CIA as a hostile foreign intelligence asset rather than a journalist, and former Trump campaign aide Roger Stone.
(Credico, an erstwhile associate of Stone and fervent advocate for Assange’s freedom, was subpoenaed last November by Schiff. He invoked the Fifth Amendment at the time).
But once Credico arrived in Schiff’s office, he sent the congressman’s staff in an unexpected – and politically inconvenient – direction.
“I told them three times that Mr. Assange is wiling to meet with him,” Credico said. “And if Schiff is serious he can get this stuff cleared up. I’m just a courier to deal with this. And they [Schiff’s staff] just sat there and said, ‘Well noted.’ I said, if Nixon went to China, if the orange man Trump’s going to Korea, Schiff has the street cred — go meet with Assange.”
Two days later, Credico was invited onto MSNBC’s “The Beat” with Ari Melber. Melber and his producers had no idea that Assange had offered to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee. Like Schiff, they were merely interested in pumping Credico for details on communications between Stone and Assange that reinforced the narrative of Trump-Russia collusion.
“They have an agenda at MSNBC that’s anti-Assange, pro-war against Russia,” Credico remarked. “They pre-taped me because they got nervous, but they kept most of what I had to say. So what all the stuff about Stone did was give me a chance to talk about Assange.”
When Credico revealed his “secret mission” to Schiff to deliver Assange’s offer of an interview, Melber reacted with astonishment. He took to Twitter to publicize the offer that Credico disclosed, prompting a revealing reply from the congressman’s office:
“Rep. Schiff’s office just gave us this response:,” Melber tweeted. “‘Our committee would be willing to interview Julian Assange when he is in U.S. custody, not before.’”
Continue reading “Did Rep. Adam Schiff Just Admit the US Has a Secret Indictment of Julian Assange?”
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
President Donald Trump’s unilateral exit from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) has triggered a frenzied push inside the administration to support color revolution-style regime change operations in Iran.
According to the neoconservative Free Beacon, National Security Director John Bolton has authorized the publication and distribution of an internal white paper urging “a strategy by which the Trump administration can actively work to assist an already aggravated Iranian public topple the hardline ruling regime through a democratization strategy that focuses on driving a deeper wedge between the Iranian people and the ruling regime.”
The white paper was produced by Jim Hanson, a self-proclaimed expert “practitioner of the art of war” who is virtually unknown in Washington. I know of Hanson primarily through his prolific presence on Twitter, where he operates under the handle, “Uncle Jimbo,” generally behaves like a far-right troll, and has eloquently branded me a “#JihaDbag.”
Says the apologist for Palestinian terrorism#JihaDbag https://t.co/F4ZXoriSGU
— Jim Hanson (@Uncle_Jimbo) April 8, 2016
Hanson is the director of the Security Studies Group (SSG), a little-known think tank staffed by former employees of Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. Like Gaffney, who has spilled gallons of ink trying to prove that Barack Obama was a Muslim, Hanson and his colleagues are fervent anti-Islam zealots who emerged from the fever swamps of right-wing online media, touting their military experience and mock scholarship to market themselves as counter-terror experts.
During the 2016 campaign, Hanson and his crew insinuated themselves into the campaign of Ted Cruz before moving into Trump’s orbit thanks to sponsorship from Steve Bannon and his alt-national security council, the Strategic Initiatives Group. Bannon was eventually removed from the White House under pressure from the national security establishment, but the subsequent replacement of H.R. McMaster with Bolton at the NSC has brought Hanson and his SSG back into the fray. The resurgence of these counter-terror cranks suggests that Trump’s Iran policy is heading towards a dangerous and very strange place.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Dec. 18 was a day like any other in the Donbas region, the flashpoint of a grinding civil war between the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists. That afternoon, a girl was badly wounded by a shell fired by Ukrainians into the separatist-held Golmovsky. A few hours later, a hail of Grad rockets fired by pro-Russian forces poured down on the Ukrainian-controlled town of Novoluhanske, killing eight civilians in the middle of a community celebration and damaging over 100 buildings. The shelling continued into the night, killing three in the pro-Russian town of Stakhanov, including a 94-year-old woman.
Continue reading “How ‘Russiagate’ Helped Secure a Dangerous Arms Deal”
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
As Qatar faces pressure to suppress an Al Jazeera report on the Israel lobby, Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah discuss how the climate of censorship and fear around Russiagate has empowered those long attacking Palestinian rights
Continue reading “Will Russiagate Help the Israel Lobby Censor Al Jazeera?”
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
However much Russiagate may annoy Trump personally, administration officials like H.R. McMaster are seizing on it to advance a militarist agenda at home and abroad. Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss
Continue reading “Can Trump’s Neocons Exploit Russiagate? (2/2)”
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Robert Mueller’s charges against 13 Russians and their troll farm for “information warfare” against the U.S. has prompted comparisons to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Max Blumenthal breaks down the indictment and the overblown reaction
Continue reading “Why is a Russian Troll Farm Being Compared to 9/11?”
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
