Tag: Brexit

FBI’s McCabe and UK spy chief feared Russian link between Trump and Brexit: report

AlterNet logoThe former FBI deputy director and his counterpart at the U.K.’s MI5 intelligence agency privately shared concerns about the possible connections between the Brexit vote and Russia’s efforts to promote Donald Trump’s campaign.

Andrew McCabe, then the second-ranking FBI official, and Jeremy Fleming, the second-ranking British intelligence agency official at the time, exchanged text messages revealing their mutual surprise at the result of the EU referendum that U.S. officials saw as a “wake-up call,” reported The Guardian.

A person familiar with the matter told the newspaper that American officials were wary of Russian interference in western elections, but some within the FBI saw the Brexit vote as confirmation that those efforts had been successful.

View the complete July 30 article vey Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

How the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’ forged ties with Russia and the Trump campaign — and came under investigators’ scrutiny

The following article by Manuel Roig-Franzia, Rosalind S. Helderman, William booth and Tom Hamburger was posted on the Washington Post website June 28, 2018:

Three British men who played major roles in the Brexit vote had several meetings with a Russian Ambassador sometimes days before meeting with Trump’s campaign. (Video: Joyce Koh/Photo: (Wigmore/Finn/WENN)/The Washington Post)

BRISTOL, England — On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks, a wealthy British businessman, sat down at the palatial residence of the Russian ambassador to London for a lunch of wild halibut and Belevskaya pastila apple sweets accompanied by Russian white wine.

Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit, the campaign to disentangle the United Kingdom from the European Union that had earned a jaw-dropping victory at the polls two months earlier. Continue reading “How the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’ forged ties with Russia and the Trump campaign — and came under investigators’ scrutiny”

Leading Brexit Campaigner Apparently Passed Documents on U.S. Probe into George Cottrell to the Russians

The following article by Nico Hines was posted on the Daily Beast website June 16, 2018:

A top Brexit campaigner, who met repeatedly with Russian officials, appeared to share details of the indictment of George Cottrell, a dark web operator working for the campaign.

Credit: Elizabeth Brockway, The Daily Beast

LONDON—One of the Brexit campaign chiefs appeared to pass documents detailing an American law enforcement investigation to a Russian official, according to a cache of leaked emails.

The papers, which detailed a probe into dark web money laundering, were apparently shared with the Russian embassy in London by Leave.EU executive Andy Wigmore. They concerned the arrest of Brexit financier George Cottrell, who was seized at an airport on the way home from the Republican convention in 2016 where Donald Trump had just been nominated as the presidential candidate. Continue reading “Leading Brexit Campaigner Apparently Passed Documents on U.S. Probe into George Cottrell to the Russians”