Russia Sends U.S. Marine to Soviet-Era Gulag
Trevor Reed has been imprisoned in Russia for more than one year
Russian authorities transferred a U.S. Marine veteran imprisoned in the country for more than a year to a penal colony in a region known for Soviet-era gulags.
Trevor Reed, who served in a Marine security detail tasked with protecting then-president Barack Obama, will likely serve the remainder of a nine-year sentence in a penal colony some 217 miles away from Moscow.
Reed spent last year in multiple prisons. The American embassy and Reed's family say Russia subjected the Marine veteran to brutal conditions, denied him medical treatment, and limited his access to diplomatic services. In March, Russia moved Reed to a maximum-security facility in Moscow without notifying American diplomats, likely violating international treaty law.
A Russian human rights organization said Friday that Reed was transferred from his small cell in Moscow to Mordovia, a region with penal colonies for political prisoners. Reed will join fellow Marine veteran and American citizen Paul Whelan in the region. Whelan, who was arrested on espionage charges in 2018, was moved to a penal colony in August 2020. He has complained of abuse and mistreatment from Russian authorities.
Lawmakers have called for Reed's release for months, with House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Michael McCaul (R., Texas) and Reed's congressman, August Pfluger (R., Texas), leading the efforts. In more than seven months in office, the Biden administration has secured the release of just 1 hostage abroad, while over 50 Americans remain detained.
A resolution pressuring the Biden administration to bring Reed home passed the House in June and awaits a vote in the Senate. President Biden first raised Reed and Whelan's status in his June summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Biden has given no public update since then. In June, Putin called Reed a "drunk" and said he needs more time to consider a prisoner swap.
Reed's transfer comes days after Biden climate envoy John Kerry met with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to advance cooperation on climate change policy. Lavrov, who has defended the Putin regime's human rights violations, has acted as the State Department's primary point of contact for discussing Trevor Reed.
Rep. Don Bacon (R, Neb.), who cochairs the House Baltic Caucus, told the Washington Free Beacon that the president's inaction on Reed's case is just one of several missteps on Russia.
"President Biden now and over the years has talked loudly but carried a small stick in regards to Russia," Bacon said. "Pulling sanctions on the Russian pipeline while shutting down our Keystone Pipeline and American jobs, caving on strategic nuclear talks, and not pushing Putin on dissidents and hostages reflect that. Actions speak louder than words."
The State Department did not return a request for comment.
Biden Administration Green Lights Putin’s Pipeline
Nord Stream 2 will boost the Russian president's influence in Europe
The Biden administration will drop opposition to Nord Stream 2, a controversial gas pipeline that will help Russian president Vladimir Putin gain influence in Europe, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The United States and Germany struck an agreement that will allow the completion of the pipeline, which will transport gas directly from Russia to Germany. Details of the deal could be released as early as Wednesday, according to the Journal. The Trump administration vigorously opposed the project, and Congress passed laws in 2019 and 2020 that required sanctions against companies helping to build the 764-mile pipeline. But the Biden administration waived the sanctions in May, effectively allowing the pipeline to be completed.
Biden has said that while he opposes completion of the pipeline because it will help Russia, he does not want to disrupt relations with Germany by imposing sanctions against it. The Ukrainian government opposes the pipeline, saying that it will give Russia more power over Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle slammed the pending agreement between the United States and Germany. Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) said Biden is making a "major mistake" by allowing the deal to go through. In a speech on Tuesday, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Ohio) said that "when Germany and Russia collude, the people of Central and Eastern Europe pay the price."
The administration’s agreement to allow the pipeline to go through seemingly undercuts claims by Biden and Democrats to support Ukraine. Democrats impeached former president Trump over allegations that he withheld military equipment from Ukraine in exchange for political help from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Democrats said that Ukraine needed the arsenal in order to defend itself from Russia’s military aggression on Ukraine’s eastern border.
The administration has pressured Ukrainian officials not to speak out against the U.S.-Germany deal on the pipeline, Politico reported on Tuesday.
According to the Journal, the United States and Germany will invest $50 million in renewable energy projects in Ukraine. The two countries will also strive to ensure that Ukraine receives $3 billion in annual transfer fees that it would otherwise lose because of the Nord Stream 2 project.
Companies invested in the pipeline have waged a years-long campaign lobbying Congress and the State Department. Richard Burt and Frances Burwell, two officials at the influential Atlantic Council, have received more than $3 million to lobby on behalf of five European companies invested in the pipeline. The Swiss-based company building the pipeline, Nord Stream 2 AG, has paid BGR Group and Roberti Global millions of dollars to lobby for the pipeline. Nord Stream 2 AG is owned by Gazprom, the Russia state-controlled gas giant.
DOJ Nominee Worked with Hunter Biden at Law Firm Tied To Ukrainian Energy Giant
Hunter Biden laptop emails indicate he attended private dinner with DOJ nominee Hampton Dellinger
Joe Biden’s nominee for a top Justice Department position worked alongside Hunter Biden at a prominent law firm that represented Ukrainian energy giant Burisma Holdings, emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop show.
Hampton Dellinger, who President Biden nominated on Friday to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, worked on the Crisis Management and Government Response team at Boies Schiller Flexner, an international law firm where Biden served as counsel. Emails from Biden’s laptop show he worked closely with lawyers on Boies Schiller Flexner’s crisis management team. He referred Burisma Holdings to the crisis unit as a client in April 2014. Biden’s laptop emails also indicate he attended a private dinner party with Dellinger and several other Boies Schiller Flexner lawyers in March 2014.
The link could pose a potential conflict of interest as the Justice Department is investigating Hunter Biden over his tax affairs and foreign business dealings. Federal prosecutors are also reportedly investigating whether a Democratic consulting firm that worked closely with Biden illegally lobbied for Burisma. While Dellinger would likely not oversee the criminal investigations if confirmed as chief of the Office of Legal Policy, previous leaders of the policy office have moved on to other jobs at the agency that perform criminal oversight.
Dellinger’s work at Boies Schiller Flexner is likely to come up during his Senate confirmation process, says a former chief investigative counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"Senators should want to learn more about Mr. Dellinger’s interactions with Hunter Biden," Jason Foster told the Washington Free Beacon. "Senators are likely to question Mr. Dellinger on what he knew about his firm’s dealings with Biden and Burisma at the time."
Dellinger, who served as deputy attorney general for North Carolina in the 2000s, is the second prominent Biden Justice Department nominee with ties to Hunter Biden. Nicholas McQuaid, who was picked to temporarily lead the Justice Department’s criminal division, worked closely with one of Biden’s criminal defense lawyers, Chris Clark. McQuaid has since recused himself from taking part in any Hunter Biden-related matters.
Emails from Biden’s laptop show Boies Schiller Flexner partner William Isaacson arranged a dinner at his home for members of the Crisis Management and Government Response team in March 2014. Isaacson wrote in one email that Biden, Dellinger, and several others had confirmed their attendance at the party.
Biden asked in an email on March 17, 2014, to seven of his Boies Schiller Flexner colleagues, including Dellinger, whether the dinner party was still on for that night.
The next day, Heather King, a partner at the firm, asked Biden whether he would be available to meet with the Crisis Management and Government Response team.
Biden introduced Burisma Holdings as a possible client for Boies Schiller Flexner the following month.
Biden wrote to Isaacson and Chris Boies, a partner at the firm, on April 15, 2014, that he had recommended to Burisma that the firm retain Boies Schiller Flexner. He said he had been working with Burisma to "think strategically about the current crisis and expansion of their existing domestic operations." He recommended that they have a conference call with members of the Crisis Management and Government Response team.
Hunter Biden has come under intense scrutiny over his work for Burisma. At the time, then-Vice President Joe Biden was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts in Ukraine. Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer, received more than $80,000 per month beginning in April 2014 to serve on Burisma’s board of directors.
Biden, who joined Boies Schiller Flexner in 2010 as an adviser, tapped the law firm to provide public relations and business consulting for Burisma. Boies Schiller Flexner partners also helped secure a lobbying firm and private investigative firm to work for Burisma.
It is unclear whether Dellinger did any work on the Burisma account, but an archive of the Boies Schiller Flexner website shows him listed as an attorney with the 12-person Crisis Management and Government Response team as of June 2014. Dellinger left Boies Schiller Flexner last year to form his own private practice.
Dellinger did not respond to a list of questions about Hunter Biden and his work at Boies Schiller Flexner.
If confirmed by the Senate, Dellinger will oversee the office that advises the White House on judicial nominations and serves as primary policy adviser to the attorney general. The position has served as a stepping stone for other Justice Department officials to other areas of the agency. Biden nominated the current acting Office of Legal Policy chief, Christian Schroeder, to serve as the Justice Department’s head of the Office of Legal Counsel.
Rachel Brand, who served under President Trump as associate attorney general, the third most senior position at the Justice Department, served as chief of the Office of Legal Policy during the George W. Bush administration.
Cruz on Reported Pipeline Deal: ‘Biden Is Defying U.S. Law and Has Utterly Surrendered to Putin’
(CNSNews.com) – With mounting criticism over reports that the U.S. has struck a deal with Germany to allow the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to go ahead, the State Department on Tuesday continued to maintain that its approach to the issue was better than that of the Trump administration.
But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) slammed President Biden over the reported agreement, saying if true, “this will be a generational geopolitical win for [President Vladimir] Putin and a catastrophe for the United States and our allies.”
“President Biden is defying U.S. law and has utterly surrendered to Putin,” said Cruz, one of two Republicans who authored sanctions legislation in 2019 that prompted a suspension of work on the pipeline through most of last year. (It only resumed after the 2020 election.)
“Decades from now, Russian dictators will still be reaping billions from Biden’s gift, and Europe will still be subject to Russian energy blackmail,” he said. “We always knew Biden was in bed with Putin, now they’re spooning.”
In May the Biden administration chose to waive sanctions against the project’s central figures, arguing that the pipeline had been too close to completion by the time it took office for sanctions to have made any difference.
The administration also maintained that sanctioning those targets – Nord Stream 2 AG, a consortium led by the Russian state-owned Gazprom and its corporate officers, including its German CEO, Putin crony Matthias Warnig – would have upset ties with an important ally, Germany.
The $11-billion project, a 760-mile pipeline under the Baltic Sea, aims to double the amount of natural gas flowing from Russia to Germany.
Bipartisan critics in Congress worry it will significantly increase western Europe’s dependence on Moscow for energy, and make Ukraine even more exposed to the Kremlin’s pressure than it is already. Ukraine earns billions of dollars in crucial transit fees on Russian gas now piped through its territory en route to Europe.
The Biden administration has not disputed that. State Department spokesman Ned Price reiterated Tuesday that it sees the pipeline “as a Kremlin geopolitical project that is intended to expand Russia’s influence over Europe’s energy resources and to circumvent Ukraine.”
But it continues to defend its handling of what it characterizes as a problem inherited from its predecessor.
Price even argued that the administration’s decision to waive the sanctions – a move criticized by congressional Republicans and Democrats – had had a positive impact.
“The waivers that were issued were in fact instrumental in bringing Germany to the table to discuss how together we might be able to address the risk Nord Stream 2 poses to Ukraine and to broader European energy security,” he said.
He noted that Biden in his joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last Thursday had said the two nations were “united in conviction that Russia must not be allowed to use energy as a weapon to coerce or threaten its neighbors.”
Price said the Germans had “put forward useful proposals and we have been able to make progress on steps to achieve that shared goal.”
“We don’t have any final details to announce yet.”
Derek Chollet, a State Department adviser, is this week visiting Ukraine and Poland, the two European countries most bitterly opposed to Nord Stream 2. Price said he would discussing with those two governments a range of issues including “Nord Stream 2 and energy security more broadly.”
It’s unclear what the U.S. and Germany have agreed, but Reuters said that according to sources familiar with the matter, “the deal would include commitments by both sides to ensure increased investment in Ukraine’s energy sector to offset any negative fallout from the new pipeline.”
Responding to the reports, House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Biden and Merkel fail to understand that “the Putin regime will use the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a weapon of coercion against Ukraine and transatlantic energy security as soon as it is operational.”
“Promises to invest in future Ukrainian energy projects and ambiguous threats of consequences won’t change that reality,” he said.
“Time and again we have seen this administration’s approach to Russia sound tough, but in reality be incredibly weak.”
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