Pretty sure this guy was a character in one of the Harry Potter movies.
2 Likes
OT. The UK authorities now know how the poisoned couple came to be exposed to the Novichok
The man who found the bottle of the nerve agent Novichok which killed his partner said it was in a glass bottle within an âexpensive-lookingâ box.
Charlie Rowley, who was also poisoned, said he gave his partner Dawn Sturgess the box - which he believed to be perfume - as a present.
He described the bottle as having a plastic dispenser which was held in a cardboard box with a plastic moulding.
He said it looked expensive and that Ms Sturgess recognised the brand on the box.
In an interview with ITV News, he said: "I do have a memory of her spraying it on her wrists and rubbing them together.
"I guess thatâs how she applied it and became ill. I guess how I got in contact with it is when I put the spray part to the bottle⌠I ended tipping some on my hands, but I washed it off under the tap.
Explains why she died and he survived. So it was smuggled in to the UK in an atomizer made to look like perfume or cologne.
9 Likes
How about justâŚguilty?
One complicating factor here is that just as the U.S. has a uniquely constrained definition of âtreason,â it also has a narrower definition of âespionage.â For whatever reason, we define âespionageâ in terms of stealing military secrets or âdefense information.â Itâs also a crime to steal or knowingly communicate classified information, but that isnât really âespionageâ under our law. In practice, this has resulted in âdefense informationâ being interpreted rather broadly, but there it is.
She seems likely to have broken a bunch of laws, but none of them really count as âspyingâ under our law but very much would in most other countries.
(Espionage Act, as revised, here for those interested)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-37
5 Likes
Mariya PutainaâŚ
1 Like
What To Call Mariia Butina?
Easy, she was a businesswomen who collaborated with the Republican party, the NRA and Russia to defraud the United States.
Agent, operative, plant, spy? No, those all give her the benefit of the doubt in being an anomoly in the Republican gun-rights movement, when she and her actions were part and parcel.
2 Likes
âRussian skankâ works well for me.
5 Likes
A spy is here to âspyâ on youâŚsee what you are up to. Thatâs not what Butina was up to. She wasnât here to see what we are doing as much as she was here trying to get us to do something.
This is one issue that needs the âanalysisâ around it shit canned so we can all see the obvious. Putin wanted Trump elected becuse he thought him pliable enough to get the Magnitsky act sanctions lifted. That is what this is about. Not better relations or any of the other shit being tossed about. Putin thought Trump stupid enough to undo the sanctions Obama set in place. One, because Trump is stupid and Two because Trump suffers an enormous inferiority complex when it comes to Obama. Nuff said.
Russia launched a multi-pronged effort to get that done. The hacking, the election meddling from mother Russia but some of the plan had to go down face to face in the USA. MoneyâŚitâs what elections in America are about. Putin knows that. So send a pretty girl to the USA on a student visa and set her to task. That taskâŚget the NRA to take Russian money to help elect Trump. Thatâs it folks. Nothing more. Not a spy. A financial criminal and immigrant law breaker.
2 Likes
âI just met a spy named Mariia . . .â
Really dude, you repaired your glasses frame with a band-aid and showed up on TV wearing them?
Did Butina break them with her Onatop thigh lock?
1 Like
1 Like
1 Like
You can point to her lack of tradecraft and clumsy ways and say she was a bumbling freelancer, but the great patriots in the Republican leadership and the NRA ate it all up. The great patriots took the Russian money and the Russians gained influence. She was precisely what was needed to secure the influence Putin wanted.
No I think downplaying Mariia Butina and her impact does a disservice to all of us. It sets the stage for the great patriots to quietly walk away from responsibility for their lack of patriotism.
3 Likes
âHer tradecraft, her basic operational security was sufficiently amateurish that she does not strike me as someone who has been trained,â
Meaning she was more than a match for the NRA and GOP.
It doesnât take a lot of training to be dangerous, just look at any 5-year-old who gets their daddyâs loaded gun.
3 Likes
In that outfit? Oscar Wilde?
That photo is disgusting. I donât care what the animals did.
1 Like
Melania?
I know what to call her:
Outta here.
And into a Federal Womenâs PrisonâŚ
My apologies for stealing your thunder.