Lindsey Graham dishes on Trump in hoax calls with Russians
Source: Politico
By NATASHA BERTRAND
10/10/2019 03:18 PM EDT
Excerpt:
. . . Kevin Bishop, a spokesman for Graham, confirmed the calls authenticity to POLITICO. We have been successful in stopping many efforts to prank Senator Graham and the office, but this one slipped through the cracks, he said. They got him.
The substance of Grahams conversation with Stolyarov, who was posing as Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, is newly relevant in light of the South Carolina senators push for sanctions on Turkey as punishment for their offensive against the Kurds in northern Syria. Graham labeled the Kurds a threat to Turkey in the call, seemingly contradicting what he has said publicly in recent days.
Graham also mentions Trumps personal interest in a Turkish bank case in the call that appears to refer to a U.S. case involving Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader and client of Trumps personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Trump had asked then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017 to help persuade the Justice Department to drop the Zarrab case.
The pranksters conversation with Graham, a Trump ally who has the presidents ear on national security issues, also raises obvious questions about potential security breaches. While the pranks appear on their face to have been relatively harmless, the incident suggests its getting easier for bad actors to elicit sensitive information from policymakers. Stolyarov provided POLITICO with a recording of their call.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/10/lindsey-graham-trump-hoax-call-043991
vsrazdem
(2,177 posts)PERSONAL interests in a Turkish bank case. This should be plastered everywhere
Frustratedlady
(16,254 posts)Make up your mind, Lindsey!
Blue Owl
(50,498 posts)Hey-ooo!
trof
(54,256 posts)58Sunliner
(4,398 posts)SergeStorms
(19,204 posts)even when he has...........something in it.