Greg Olear's Blog

Yours Truly. Photo by Franco Vogt.

I’m setting this page up for quick and easy reference. A full list of threads is available here. My new podcast is available here. Info on my book, Dirty Rubles, can be found here. If you want to support my work, please buy a book or two, or visit the Zibbet store.

Trump, Putin, & the Russian mob

Trump is a Russian asset & mob money launderer (pinned)

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Since at least the dawn of the silent film era, the United States has been remarkably chill about rich, powerful, famous men getting it on…

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Dimitri Simes and his alleged handler, Sergei Lavrov

On 14 March 2016, Jared Kushner attended a lunch event at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan. The keynote speaker at the event was Henry Kissinger, the former national security adviser to Richard Nixon who has subsequently met 17 times with Vladimir Putin. The lunch was organized by the Center for the National Interest, a foreign policy think tank once known as the Nixon Center, whose head, the Russian-born Dimitri Simes, had been friendly...

Rand Paul + Konstantin Kosachev = “engagement.” Photo by Sputnik.

Once upon a time, Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, likened Donald Trump to a singularly loathsome and pathetic J.R.R. Tolkien character. “I have compared him to Gollum from Lord of the Rings,” he quipped on Comedy Central’s “The Nightly Show.” Gollum — the hideous, friendless creature who cares only for his precious ring and will allow the world to destroy itself to protect it. Sounds about right.

On the same broa...

On 21 July 2017, in a piece called “Compromised: Is Jared Kushner Taking Orders From Vladimir Putin?,” I concluded: “For all we know, Jared Kushner is the greatest threat to national security since Julius & Ethel Rosenberg. Certainly he should be viewed as such until we know for sure.”

Eighteen months later, we are certain: Kushner is among the most corrupt and seditious figures ever to work in the White House. The son-in-law and top adviser to the President, the de facto US ambassador to Saud...

In the wake of Michael Cohen’s surprise plea deal, even Donald Trump himself was forced to concede that yes, despite all the indignant protests to the contrary, he and his associates were indeed in communication with the Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump Tower Moscow didn’t make it past the planning stages, but the President may have consummated another secret deal in Russia, worth considerably more money.

That’s what it says in the so-called Steele dossier, the series of i...

A report released yesterday by the CIA concluded that Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist who was living in the United States, was assassinated on direct orders from Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom dispatched a 15-man “death squad” to Istanbul, comprised of members of MbS’s own security detail, to make the hit. On 2 October, the assassins concocted a reason to lure Khashoggi into the consulate. There, they spent seven full minutes tortur...

As we await today’s historic election with trepidation — the very future of the republic hinges on the result, after all — let us not forget that, win or lose, the Special Counsel’s investigation marches on.

Already, Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn, and Trump personal attorney and RNC deputy finance chair Michael Cohen have been convicted of major crimes, to say nothing of the lower-level collaborators like George Papadopoulos. But there are many,...

I hear you. It’s really a narrative that is both dumb AND obviously false. I’m not sure the best way to phrase it.

Wohl and Burkman. Photo: Right Wing Watch.

Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, two Trumpist provocateurs, held a press conference at a chain hotel in Virginia yesterday, in a hapless attempt to smear Robert Mueller. They’d promised to reveal an “accuser” who’d allegedly been raped by the Special Counsel. As all sentient humans expected, the accuser never materialized.

It’s impossible to overstate how stupid this all was. Neither of the conspiracy theory peddlers had a scintilla of credibility. Burkman...