NEWSLINK: “Putin wanted to interrogate me. Trump called it ‘an incredible offer.’ Why? When foreign affairs are, literally, personal.” – Washington Post/Michael McFaul

Ambassador Mike McFaul file photo

“I thought I was done worrying about Vladimir Putin. … his proxies falsely argued that I had been sent by President Barack Obama to fund the opposition and foment revolution; that I hoped Putin would end up like Serbian autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, dislodged and imprisoned; and that I was a pedophile. …. But this month, at the Helsinki summit between Presidents Trump and Putin, Putin was after me again, and at first I didn’t understand how sinister his attack was. During his two-hour one-on-one meeting with Trump, Putin made his American counterpart an offer: He would permit U.S. law enforcement officials to witness the Russian interrogation of 12 Russian spies accused by the United States of interfering in the 2016 campaign, if his own agents could observe the interrogation of a similar number of American intelligence officers who, Russia alleges, committed crimes on Russian soil. … On the flight home, Russian journalists began pinging me, asking for my reaction to a statement from the spokesman for the top Russian prosecutor that implied I was under investigation for violating Russian law! ‘We’re ready to send another request to the US authorities to grant us permission to question these very employees of the US intelligence agencies, as well as a number of other US government officials and businessmen, in order to charge them for the crimes committed by Browder,’ it said, citing my name as one of those government officials. …”

 

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