turner, michael Rep
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MAGA MIKE TURFED HIM OUT ANTI-RUSSIA?!
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jun an
June 12, 2025
A Republican lawyer nearly grit his teeth in the U.S. House today when U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth refused to deny the White House had a plan to invade and conquer the island of Greenland.
Rep. Mike Turner, (R-Ohio) claimed he wanted to clear the air for Hegesth during Thursday’s House Armed Services Committee meeting and get the story straight on any potential misunderstanding of President Donald Trump’s claim of wanting to invade and capture the island of Greenland, which is currently the territory of U.S. European ally Denmark.
“Lawyer here,” Turner said, explaining his motives at the “4:28” mark of the embedded video below. “I just want to help you out because people try to twist your words. You are not confirming in your testimony today that the Pentagon has plans for invading or taking by force Greenland, correct?”
READ MORE: 'Let me get something straight with you': Democrats take turns smacking down Treasury head
“All my testimony is … is that the Pentagon has plans for any number of contingencies —" Hegseth offered.
At that point, Turner cut Hegesth off with a terse prod for clarification
“— It is not your testimony today that there are plans at the Pentagon for taking by force or invading Greenland, correct?” Turner demanded, “because I sure as hell hope that is not your testimony.”
READ MORE:'We are really in trouble': House GOP leader concerned about fate of under-the-radar bill
“We look forward to working with Greenland to ensure that it is secured from any potential threats,” Hegseth said.
“Excellent. I yield my time,” replied Turner.
Greenland and the kingdom of Denmark are both members of NATO, but that did not stop Trump from publicly mulling the idea of invading the island and “liberating” it from Denmark. Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen recently told Newsweek that the U.S. president still has not ruled out using force to acquire Greenland, whose residents do seek full independence from Denmark but oppose a U.S. takeover.
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OMFG // BONDI LIFT SANCTIONS USSR DAY ONE?!
A prominent Republican congressman, the former House Intelligence Committee chair, appeared shocked on national television when he learned that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a top Pentagon agency, U.S. Cyber Command, to suspend operations and planning against Russia’s cyber offensives.
Secretary Hegseth’s “stand down” order, while allegedly temporary, is expected to “last for the foreseeable future,” according to The Record (https://therecord.media/hegseth-orders-cyber-command-stand-down-russia-planning), a cybersecurity news site which first reported the news.
CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/02/politics/us-cyber-operations-russia-suspend/index.html) reported that a senior U.S. official called Hegseth’s order “a major blow.”
According to the network, “planning for such operations takes time and research to carry out. The concern, the official said, is that the pause on offensive cyber operations against Russia will make the U.S. more vulnerable to potential cyberattacks from Moscow, which has a formidable cadre of hackers capable of disrupting U.S. critical infrastructure and collecting sensitive intelligence.”
READ MORE: World Leaders Rush to Support Zelenskyy as Americans Debate Trump’s Allegiance (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/02/world-leaders-rush-to-support-zelenskyy-as-americans-debate-trumps-allegiance/https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/02/world-leaders-rush-to-support-zelenskyy-as-americans-debate-trumps-allegiance/)
The development has received widespread coverage over the weekend.
“Russia is not a significant cyber threat to the U.S. anymore, Trump’s new Defense Secretary says,” the science and technology website Gizmodo (https://gizmodo.com/trumps-defense-secretary-hegseth-orders-cyber-command-to-stand-down-on-all-russia-operations-2000570343) reported. “The policy shift represents a complete 180-degree turn from America’s posture over the past decade, which has consistently considered Russia one of the top cybersecurity threats. Credible reporting and government investigations have shown that Russia has hacked into U.S. systems countless times.”
Experts were also stunned.
Veteran cyber expert James Lewis, formerly of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said “it’s delusional to think” the stand down order “will turn Russia and the FSB \the Russian security agency] into our friends,” [The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/trump-russia-hacking-cyber-security) reported. “They hate the U.S. and are still mad about losing the cold war. Pretending otherwise won’t change this.”
The order appears to extend past the Department of Defense, suggesting it may have originated at the highest levels of the executive branch.
Analysts at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) received a new priorities directive that included China, but not Russia, The Guardian also reported. One source “said analysts at the agency were verbally informed that they were not to follow or report on Russian threats, even though this had previously been a main focus for the agency.”
“Russia and China are our biggest adversaries,” that source said. “With all the cuts being made to different agencies, a lot of cybersecurity personnel have been fired. Our systems are not going to be protected and our adversaries know this.”
READ MORE: ‘What the Hell Is This?’: GOP Group’s Andrew Tate Invitation Draws Bipartisan Outrage (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/02/what-the-hell-is-this-gop-groups-andrew-tate-invitation-draws-bipartisan-outrage/)
“People are saying Russia is winning,” they added. “Putin is on the inside now.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) has decades of defense experience in Congress, having served on several committees on the armed forces and veterans affairs, and as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence until January—when Speaker Mike Johnson unexpectedly removed him from that critical position. He is a strong supporter of Ukraine and opposes Russia.
At the time of his removal, The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol remarked (https://x.com/BillKristol/status/1879693874408652891), “If you’re going to sell out Ukraine to Putin, makes sense to get Turner out of the way first.”
Last year, Turner was also one of a few House Republicans who “were warning about how elements of their party had been infected by Russian propaganda,” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted (https://x.com/AaronBlake/status/1896546415675076857) on Monday. (Video of Turner from last year here (https://x.com/CNNSOTU/status/1776984100592636247).) Turner, he added, “was removed 7 months later as chair of the House intel committee.”
In February 2024, Turner issued a “national security threat” warning on Russia’s activities in space so dire that President Biden’s National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby was forced to deliver a statement (https://x.com/therecount/status/1758210523156373615) from the White House press briefing room.
On Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan told Congressman Turner (video below), that “CBS has confirmed these reports that Defense Secretary Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to temporarily halt cyber operations and planning against Russia. The Washington Post reports that that’s as long as the negotiations continue. There are no negotiations under way. Does this concern you? Have you been briefed on this?”
A stunned and stammering Rep. Turner delivered his response.
“I can’t – I don’t – no, I’m not – unaware of that. And I don’t believe that that would be – there are too many, I’m certain, considerations there for that to be an accurate statement, so blanket,” he said, according to the official CBS transcript (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-full-transcript-03-02-2025/).
“But they have ordered Cyber Command to halt cyber operations,” Brennan reiterated.
“Considering what I know that – that – considering what I know what – what Russia is currently doing against the United States, that would, I’m certain, not be an accurate statement of the current status of the United States’ operations,” Turner insisted, despite multiple news reports confirming the stand down order.
“I’m confident, considering what Russia is currently doing against the United States, that the United States, the status against Russia would not be that, considering what we are facing from Russia operations,” Turner added.
Watch the video below or at this link (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/03/considering-what-we-are-facing-us-cyber-defense-halt-against-russia-stuns-republican/).
---ly:Merriweather"):
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an raw 5 23 no lnx
no lnx
two House Republican leaders on Wednesday in a letter to CIA Director William J. Burns threatened to subpoena the agency over documents that they say show a coordinated effort to falsely discredit an ongoing Hunter Biden investigation.
Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Turner, both Ohio Republicans, said in a news release that they have “renewed their requests for documents related to the investigation and warned that compulsory process may be necessary if the agency does not comply.”
Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, and Turner, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, in the letter said their committees are investigating an Oct. 10, 2020 “Public Statement” signed by 51 former intelligence community officials on the president’s son’s emails.
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“This statement, signed by former intelligence community officials using their official titles and emphasizing their national security credentials, suggested that public reporting about Hunter Biden’s business dealings and Biden family influence-peddling ‘ha[d] all the hallmarks of a Russian information operation,’” the letter said.
“We have since learned that the statement was drafted and disseminated following communications between former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell and Biden campaign advisor—now Secretary of State—Antony Blinken.”
Jordan and Turner in the letter said the CIA is in possession of documents that are “responsive to our requests and necessary to our oversight.”
“The Committees have received evidence that the CIA, or at least an employee of the CIA, may have helped to solicit signatories for the statement about Hunter Biden,” the letter said.
“If accurate, this information raises fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA in helping to falsely discredit allegations about the Biden family in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.”
The letter said that the CIA provided a “minimal production of documents” on May 9 but said the CIA admitted it hadn’t performed a comprehensive records search, noting that a CIA staffer in a May 12 phone conversation, committed to cooperating in full with the Committees’ oversight.
“We fully expect the CIA to produce all responsive documents to the Committees’ March 21, 2023, request in unredacted form no later than May 30, 2023. If the CIA does not produce all responsive documents, the Committees may resort to compulsory process.”
Read the full letter here.
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an 1 23
United States Representative Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, claimed during an interview on Sunday's edition of This Week that President Joe Biden snuck classified documents from Washington "on the train back home" to Delaware while he was serving in the Senate and then as vice president.
The conversation was focused on how and why sensitive materials keep turning up at the homes of high-level elected officials such as Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. While no crimes have been alleged, Turner nonetheless believes that Biden acted suspiciously. And ABC moderator Martha Raddatz was deeply skeptical of that assessment.
Biden "clearly was taking them repeatedly on the train back home and putting them in boxes in his garage. That repeated action is certainly concerning, but the overall evidence that it was a repeated action, these are classified," Turner said.
READ MORE: Republicans blasted as 'hyperbolic hypocrites' for double standard on Biden and Pence documents
When Raddatz requested proof to substantiate that accusation, Turner had none to provide.
"Do you have any evidence it was a repeated action? Sir, do you have evidence or anything about the train, for instance?" Raddatz asked.
Turner offered a lengthy dodge:
What you actually have reported yourself, that some of these documents relate back to when he was a senator and some of these documents relate to the time when he was vice president. That's over several decades and over a great deal of time, and he famously tells us he was on the train going from Washington DC to his house. We know they didn't just fly there on their own. He would have had to have taken them. And having done so over a series of decades certainly is of a concern because it's a practice. But the point that you're making, which I think is the, the one we need to focus on, is that these classified documents contain information that we don't want anyone else to see, that we don't want anyone else to know, because they put at risk our country. They put at risk, as you reported – with great report, by the way – about the concerns of classified documents, that these actually put people's lives at risk who are working to try to protect our country and to keep our secrets safe.
Raddatz, however, was still curious about the origin of Turner's train tale – which she pointed out was not herself.
"And I just want to go back to the train? Because I certainly didn't report that he did that on the train," Raddatz noted. "Do you think Mike Pence brought those documents to his home just the same way you're saying that Biden did, or we just don't know?"
Turner steadfastly maintained his speculation:
Well, we don't know. But what we do know is that the vice president has said that he was not involved in the packing of these, that they were transported to his house after he was vice president. We don't know. Obviously, the chain of custody in each of these issues is going to be important. It certainly should be part of the Department of justice investigation. How did these documents get where they were going and where we ultimately found them, but also what happened to them in the interim? How did they get into the hands of both the vice president/senator, President Biden, the Vice President Pence and, of course, [former] President [Donald] Trump? How did they get into their hands and then how did they get where we ultimately found them?
Watch below or at this link.
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an 1 23
no lnx
House Republican fact-checked after calling President Joe Biden 'a serial classified document hoarder'
Brandon Gage
January 22, 2023
Editor's note: This article has been corrected and updated with additional information.
On Sunday's edition of Face the Nation, CBS moderator Margaret Brennan fact-checked United States Congressman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) after he accused President Joe Biden of stealing and exploiting classified documents that were uncovered during a Federal Bureau of Investigation search of his Wilmington, Delaware home on Friday.
"Clearly, he's, he's become a serial classified document hoarder. Why did he have these? Who did he show them to? I mean, the only reason you can think of as to why anyone would take classified documents out of a classified space at home is to, is to show them to somebody. Who did he show them to?" Turner posited. "This is going to be crucial, I think, to the special counsel's investigation, is why did the president have these documents? Who did he show them to, and is it connected to the Biden family businesses?"
Brennan quickly pointed out that Turner's allegations are not akin to the handfuls of texts found in Biden's house and office – which predate his White House tenure – but rather to the trove of hundreds of top secret materials that were recovered by the FBI at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida on August 8th.
READ MORE: 'A cool keepsake': Trump shares new, bizarre explanation for the classified documents confiscated at Mar-a-Lago
"Well, you know, the differences, of course, too. I want to talk about the Biden situation, but just to clarify, when you reference President Trump, there were 300 classified documents. There was a warrant. There was refusal to comply in terms of handing things over. And the White House and the president's lawyer are pointing out that in the case of Biden, he granted permission, and this was consensual for the DOJ to come in and search. Does the fact that the Justice Department conducted the search signify anything more to you and give any insight into the sensitivity of the documents?" she asked.
Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned special counsel Robert Hur – whom Trump appointed as US attorney for the District of Maryland in 2018 – to oversee the Biden probe. Yet Turner, the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, insisted that the Department of Justice is protecting Biden.
:{:{"Sure. Absolutely," he said. "I think this looks more like a cover-up than an investigation."}:
Brennan questioned that assertion:
Do you have any facts to back up your allegation that he was hoarding things in terms of intention to take classified material?}:
READ MORE: Donald Trump accuses the 'fake news media' of downplaying the Joe 'Bidden' documents story
Turner alluded to the "chain of custody" in his rebuttal:
Well, they didn't fly to his home without him. They went on a train with him from his Senate offices and then in boxes that he was in charge of.
Watch below or at this link.
\u201cBREAKING: Likely House Intel Chair @RepMikeTurner calls Pres. Biden a "serial classified document hoarder" after 6 new classified items were found at Biden\u2019s Delaware home. Turner also says the DOJ's treatment of the situation "looks more like a cover-up than an investigation."\u201d
— Face The Nation (@Face The Nation) 1674395040
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an 1 23
Do you sometimes feel like the punditariat is watching a different Congress from the one you’re watching? It’s like the opiniontalkers can’t let go of their sacred cows long enough to see the reality that’s goring them. We could cheer on their faith in America, I guess. Honestly, though, there’s hope, then there’s abject confabulation.
Yet some in the punditariat can’t help themselves. They have to weigh their observations of what’s happening in Washington against their idea of what should be happening, and what should be happening is rooted deeply in what they believe America is.
They won’t assess America on its own terms. They won’t see the idea of America through the lens of its reality. When Alexander Vindman said during testimony that, “Here, right matters,” that warmed the cockles of pundits’ hearts. He validated their civic-religious dreams. Unsaid, however, is this – right usually has nothing to do with it.
If you’re like me, and read a lot of opiniontalkers, you know this cast of mind is everywhere. ThePost’s Jennifer Rubinis hardly alone. But her recent column – “The GOP can’t slam Biden on classified documents without condemning Trump” – illustrates my point.
It’s a heartbreaking work of staggering naivete.
LMAOOO!
The documents in question are the ones found recently in Joe Biden’s office in Washington’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. He used it sometimes when he was the vice president. His attorneys were there recently. They found about 10 documents, some classified, in a secured space. They turned them over to the National Archives and notified officials at the Department of Justice.
READ MORE: New analysis highlights the 'big difference' between Trump and Biden’s classified documents cases
The Republicans quickly compared the news to Donald Trump’s fantasia of corruption at Mar-a-Lago, where the criminal former president hid state secrets after leaving Washington. He withheld dozens of classified documents. None were secure. “When a grand jury issued a subpoena demanding that they be returned,” Rubin wrote. “Trump’s lawyers handed over 38 documents, stating that no other documents were in Trump’s possession.” There were 100 more.
According to Rubin, this isn’t bad news for Biden so much as bad news for the Republicans for two reasons. One, “if they decide to investigate the documents at Biden’s office, it’s entirely possible they will find no wrongdoing. Two, if they insist Biden’s case is super serious, they wind up conceding that Trump’s actions — willful, egregious and aggravated by his own obstruction — are, too.”
Finally, this howler (italics mine):
If they return to the standard they once used for Hillary Clinton — that no one who mishandles classified information should be president — then Republicans would have to demand that Trump not run for president and agree that he should be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
LMAOOO!
Standard denial
Again, I don’t know which Congress Rubin is watching but it’s not the Congress I’m watching. “They wind up conceding” – stop right there. Conceding? Remember, we just watched Kevin McCarthy enbrown his nose to become House speaker. He is, at best, a puppet poobah. At what point are we to recognize a level of integrity among the Republicans compelling them to recognize the authority of a fact?
I haven’t seen it yet.
“If they return to the standard they once used for Hillary Clinton” – no, yeah, no. They might make up a new one if it’s convenient. But otherwise, the past never happened. Again, virtuous people with integrity would try to be consistent when applying standards. The Republican anarchists don’t try to be consistent. They don’t try to be fair. They don’t try at all. They deny standards applied equally.
They won’t tolerate any limit on their appetite for power.
“Demand that Trump not run for president”?
Come (TF) on.
Projecting intellectual honesty
As the Post was posting Rubin’s piece, Roll Call reported that the House GOP decided the past never happened and “are escalating their calls for swift federal action” on the Biden documents. They want an “immediate review and damage assessment,” the paper said.
“This discovery of classified information would put President Biden in potential violation of laws protecting national security, including the Espionage Act and Presidential Records Act,” said Ohio Congressman Michael Turner of the House Intelligence Committee.
So much for “they wind up conceding.” They concede nothing. They will use “the standard they once used for Hillary Clinton,” because it was intended for the GOP. Standards apply to the Democrats only. The Republicans are intellectually dishonest. They keep telling us as much. We shouldn’t project intellectual honesty where there’s none.
To the extent that the past did happen, the House Republicans want the Justice Department to give the current president the same treatment it’s giving to the criminal former president – though the facts at hand are so different as to be virtually unrelated cases. The Biden case appears to be one of basic human error. The Trump case appears to be one of greed, contempt, espionage and betrayal.
The goal here is to make the Biden case seem really bad while making the Trump case seem almost good by comparison. Kevin McCarthy, the ensniveler, revealed that goal when he said that the Democrats “overplayed their hands” in their handling of the Mar-a-Lago case.
They can and they will
John Dewey, the philosopher, once said western philosophy would make more sense if philosophers stopped paying so much attention to “the problems of philosophy” and more to the “problems of men.”
His point, as I see it, was about the difference between abstractions and things. Or rather, that you can’t have one without the other. Poet William Carlos Williams probably said it best: “No ideas but in things.”
Pundits can be so in love with the idea of America that they can’t see what America is. Instead of loving the idea in the thing, they love the idea only. For Rubin, it’s as if she can’t envision an America in which fairness is arbitrary. “The GOP can’t slam Biden on classified documents without condemning Trump”? They can. They will.
READ MORE: Why Donald Trump now 'resembles' the Norma Desmond character from 'Sunset Boulevard': journalist
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aha/hmmn paranoid style earth2 has just taken over gop trumpista qanon and/or boebert mirror rubber/glue mock BLM defund police (never really a thing) and/or just kneejerk gubmint (recall // deep state intel) but FBI storied literally; they are running out of allies/institution woke corps, DoD etc; just fundraising clicks?
an 8 22
...Others have attempted to defend the former president. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said, “You can say nuclear weapons, but there are things that are highly, highly classified, there are things that are not extremely classified."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is now selling merchandise on her website in support of a call to "defund the FBI" while Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted, "I will support a complete dismantling and elimination of the democrat brown shirts known as the FBI."
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...But the journey was only one of the benefits the lawmakers received from parties involved in planning the event. At least five of the lawmakers who attended the conference received tens of thousands of dollars since 2011 from board members and employees of the two nonprofits as well as individuals affiliated with several other Texas-based organizations linked to Gulen. Two of them sponsored bills that appear to benefit Azerbaijani natural gas interests and efforts to build a pipeline through the region.
The trip to Baku was not a secret, nor was it on its face unusual. Lawmakers may take trips at others’ expense — as long as those picking up the tab aren’t foreign governments or lobbyists. The House Ethics Committee must approve the trips in advance, and did so in this case. But the nonprofits misrepresented themselves to the Ethics Committee and were actually funded by SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, according to the Post‘s account of the ethics report. The lawmakers who took the trip – and whose travel costs ran into the tens of thousands of dollars each, including gifts like carpets and tea sets — have denied knowing the true source of the funding.
Rauf Mammedov, SOCAR’s representative in the United States and a board member of AFAZ, told OpenSecrets Blog that it is true that his company funded AFAZ, but insisted it was never a secret.
“SOCAR gave funds to AFAZ in 2013 and those funds were intended to help facilitate the conference,” Mammedov said. “In return, AFAZ was to ensure that SOCAR would be publicly and prominently identified as a main sponsor of the conference.” Mammedov also said that SOCAR does no lobbying.
But Chris Rizek, an attorney representing AFAZ, said in a statement that AFAZ did not fund the congressional trips, and on travel disclosure forms it appears the Turquoise Council paid for the lawmakers to go to Baku. Representatives of the Turquoise Council did not respond to multiple requests seeking an interview as to the source of the money.
Most of the members of the congressional delegation, including those whose travel was not covered by the nonprofits, seem to have had a long and friendly relationship with the Gulen movement and those interested in expanding oil and gas interests in the Caspian Sea region. OpenSecrets Blog analyzed donations made by board members of the two foundations, along with any identifiable family members, and directors and employees of several other nonprofit organizations with ties to the Gulen movement, and found hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Congress and at least $196,000 to the campaigns of five members of the delegation to Baku since 2008.
Taking an interest in Azerbaijan
The development of natural gas fields in the Caspian Sea involves an intersection of Turkish and Azerbaijani interests. While the conference was held in Baku, where SOCAR is based, the gas would have to travel via a pipeline through Turkey in order to make it to markets in Europe or elsewhere. In fact, many members of the congressional delegation traveled on to Turkey after the conference.
The overlap between those involved in the two nonprofits that shuttled members of Congress to Baku and donors to the lawmakers adds a further element of intrigue to the story. Many of the donors, as well as the two nonprofits, appear to be affiliated with the religious and political movement associated with Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish imam who went into self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania in the late 1990s. Gulen, whose followers number in the millions worldwide, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have had an antagonistic relationship, particularly in the wake of a corruption scandal that has weakened Erdogan’s administration.
Shortly after returning from the conference, which took place on May 28-29, 2013, Rep. James Bridenstine (R-Okla.) sponsored an amendment to the annual defense appropriations bill that would have required the Department of Defense to issue reports on the strategic importance of natural gas interests in the Caspian Sea area and the value of building a pipeline out of the region.
On June 13, a mere two weeks after the conference, his office issued not one, but two press releases proclaiming his support for the amendment.
“Full exploitation of Caspian resources and pipeline diversification could have big implications for both NATO energy security and the political independence of the post-Soviet world,” Bridenstine’s press release claimed.
The amendment — which was included in the final version of the bill passed by the House, but not the version ultimately signed into law — specifically called for the Department of Defense to submit “a detailed report on the implications of new energy resource development and distribution networks, both planned and under construction, in the areas surrounding the Caspian Sea for energy security strategies of the United States and NATO.”
In December 2013, Bridenstine took a flurry of further actions to promote the idea of developing Caspian Sea natural gas interests.
On Dec. 10, he published an op-ed in the Washington Times, in which he railed against Russia and declared that “rather than capitulate to Moscow’s bullying, Baku builds oil and gas pipelines that specifically avoid the trap of crossing into Russian territory.”
“Fortunately, Azerbaijan’s energy boom – a genuine partnership with private enterprise – provides an additional way to ensure energy security,” Bridenstine wrote. “The United States should fully support Azerbaijan’s energy development so that Baku is not forced to choose between integrating with the West or being coerced into Vladimir Putin’s dreams of a new Russian imperium.”
Bridenstine also argued that Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act of 1992 should be repealed. That language bans Azerbaijan from participating in a number of aid and economic programs open to other former Soviet republics. A waiver of the ban has been in place since 2001.
Rep. James Bridenstine (R-Ohio) with Irina Akhoundova, AFAZ board member and president of Houston-Baku Sister City Association. (via HoustonBaku.org)
Rep. James Bridenstine (R-Okla.) with Irada Akhoundova, AFAZ board member and president of Houston-Baku Sister City Association. (via HoustonBaku.org)
On Dec. 15, Bridenstine visited the Azerbaijan Center in Houston for an event sponsored by the Houston-Baku Sister City Association — an organization run by Irada Akhoundova, a board member of AFAZ.
On his disclosure forms, Bridenstine valued the Baku trip at more than $14,100. But that’s not all that came his way. In the 2014 election cycle alone, the Oklahoma congressman also received $29,000 from donors in the network associated with AFAZ or the Turquoise Council, an OpenSecrets analysis shows. There were 11 different donors, and all the money came in on three dates: three weeks before the Baku trip, on May 7, 2013; nine days after his op-ed, on Dec. 19, 2013; and Oct. 27, 2014.
Bridenstine’s office said it did not have time to respond to questions on the subject. But others on the Baku trip also tried to bring Congress’s attention to development of natural gas interests in the Caspian Sea after their return.
Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), who attended the conference but, according to his office, was a speaker and did not have his expenses paid by AFAZ or Turquoise Council, has sponsored two House resolutions “[e]xpressing the sense of the House of Representatives with respect to promoting energy security of European allies through opening up the Southern Gas Corridor.” Specifically, the resolutions highlight the value of the pipeline sought by organizers of the Baku conference. The first iteration was sponsored on June 27, 2013, one month after the Baku conference.
Seven of the 10 other members on the Baku trip, including Bridenstine, signed on as cosponsors to the first version, and four of the 10 signed on to the more recent one, which Turner sponsored in March.
According to an OpenSecrets Blog analysis of Turner’s campaign finances, he has received at least $38,200 over his career from donors linked to AFAZ, Turquoise Council or the other Gulen-affiliated groups. Again, many of the donations came on the same date...
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/05/lawmakers-who-traveled-to-azerbaijan-urged-action-benefiting-state-oil-company-that-funded-trip/
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