| Steve Witkoff interview by Tucker Carson 08:10 - Mar 23 with 3100 views | DJR |
I heard this on the World Service overnight but it doesn't seem to have been widely reported.
"White House envoy Steve Witkoff has praised Vladimir Putin in glowing terms as trustworthy and said the Russian leader told him he had prayed for his "friend" US President Donald Trump when he was shot.
Witkoff met with Putin over multiple hours last week in Moscow and told US media the talks – which involved discussions about forging a path towards ending Russia's war in Ukraine – were constructive and "solution-based."
In an interview with right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson, the envoy said he has come to regard Putin as not a "bad guy," and that the Russian president was a "great" leader seeking to end Moscow's deadly three-year conflict with Kyiv.
"I liked him. I thought he was straight up with me," Witkoff said in the interview aired Friday.
"I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war, and all the ingredients that led up to it."
He also described a "personal" element of the discussion in which Putin recalled his reaction to the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024 as the Republican held a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Putin "told me a story... about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president," Witkoff said.
"Not because... he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend."
During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was "a false country" and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.
Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.
He said: "The largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names and there are two others."
The five regions - or oblasts - are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes much of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Witkoff made several assertions that are either not true or disputed:
He said Ukrainian troops in Kursk were surrounded, something denied by Ukraine's government and uncorroborated by any open-source data
He said the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine had held "referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule". There were referendums only in some of the occupied parts of Ukraine at different times and the methodology and results were widely discredited and disputed
He said the four partially occupied oblasts were Russian-speaking. There are many Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine but this has never indicated support for Russia.
Witkoff also repeated several Kremlin talking points about the cause of Russia's full-scale invasion. He said it was "correct" that from the Russian perspective the partially occupied territories were now part of Russia: "The elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?"
He added: "There's a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is just a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that's what is the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War Two, and that's something nobody wants to talk about."
Putin has repeatedly said that the "root causes" of his invasion were the threat posed to Russia by an expanded Nato and the sheer existence of Ukraine as an independent country.
[Post edited 23 Mar 8:14]
|  | | |  |
| Steve Witkoff interview by Tucker Carson on 09:19 - Mar 24 with 189 views | soupytwist |
| Steve Witkoff interview by Tucker Carson on 18:41 - Mar 23 by BLUEBEAT |
And then there is this…
——————————
Jessica Aber’s death feels like one of those stories that’s meant to fade quietly into the background — a tragic headline that people are supposed to forget. But when a career prosecutor who spent her life chasing Russian cybercriminals, CIA leaks, and war criminals turns up dead just weeks after resigning, forgetting isn’t an option.
Aber, the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was found dead at her home in Alexandria on March 22. She was 43 years old. Police haven’t said how she died, but the timing — and her unfinished business — makes it impossible to ignore.
THE PROSECUTOR WHO WOULDN’T BACK DOWN
Jessica Aber wasn’t just a lawyer — she was the person you sent in when things got messy.
In January, just before her resignation, Aber helped put Asif Rahman, a former CIA analyst, behind bars for leaking top-secret information about Israeli military plans against Iran. The information ended up splashed across social media in October 2024.
Aber didn’t mince words when Rahman pleaded guilty. She warned that his leak had “placed lives at risk” and “compromised our ability to collect vital intelligence in the future.” That’s prosecutor-speak for this guy seriously screwed things up. Whatever Rahman leaked, it wasn’t just embarrassing — it was dangerous.
BIG CASES, BIGGER ENEMIES
Aber’s cases didn’t stop there. In November 2024, her office prosecuted a Virginia-based company accused of funneling sensitive U.S. technology to a Russian telecom firm with Kremlin ties. It wasn’t exactly an accident — the company allegedly disguised shipments and played fast and loose with American tech that Russia wasn’t supposed to have.
Then there was the war crimes indictment. Aber’s office charged four Russian-linked individuals with torturing and unlawfully detaining a U.S. national in Ukraine. She wasn’t just making legal noise — she was putting serious pressure on powerful figures with deep connections.
Aber’s career was a parade of people you wouldn’t want showing up at your funeral — oligarchs, cybercriminals, and corrupt players with resources to make problems disappear.
A SUSPICIOUS EXIT
Aber resigned in January 2025, just after Donald Trump returned to power. Nobody’s said she was forced out, but resigning from one of the country’s most powerful U.S. Attorney’s offices weeks after jailing a rogue CIA analyst feels a little too clean.
It’s not hard to imagine why someone like Aber might suddenly find herself in a tight spot. Trump’s return came with a wave of loyalty tests and DOJ shakeups — and Aber’s aggressive pursuit of Russian networks and CIA leaks doesn’t exactly scream “team player” in this new political climate.
If she was pressured to resign, what cases got quietly buried when she left?
A SYSTEM THAT’S GONE SOFT ON POWER
The Supreme Court’s ruling in July 2024 handed Trump near-total immunity for “core presidential powers,” including military command. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that this decision could allow a president to order an assassination — and face no legal consequences.
By the time Aber resigned, that ruling had already cast a long shadow over the Department of Justice. Prosecutors like Aber — the kind who took on powerful players with foreign connections — were now working in an environment where accountability had been gutted.
If Aber’s investigations had exposed something that threatened powerful interests, the court’s ruling would have made it easier for those interests to apply pressure — or worse — without consequence.
Her resignation may have been voluntary. It may not have been. But by the time Aber walked away from her post, the guardrails protecting prosecutors like her were already crumbling.
WHAT DID ABER KNOW?
Jessica Aber knew things that mattered — things that powerful people wanted buried. She chased down Russian cybercriminals, locked up a CIA leaker who compromised military intelligence, and tangled with foreign operatives who wouldn’t hesitate to make problems disappear.
Now she’s gone, and the timing stinks.
Maybe her death was just an awful coincidence. Maybe it wasn’t. But when the people investigating corruption start turning up dead, there’s only one responsible thing to do:
Start asking louder questions. |
I read an article on The Guardian website yesterday about her death. It didn't go into much detail so seemed like an odd thing to put on their homepage. This extra information sheds more light as to why it's potentially significant.
I don't see why prosecuting the CIA person for leaking Israeli secrets would make her problematic in the Trump administration's eyes though. |  | | |
| |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
