The day-to-day news cycle focuses on critically important national security issues, such as North Korea saber rattling, the ongoing Russia investigation, or whatever else happens to be the national security topic du jour. This flood of daily national security news makes it difficult to take a step back from the day-to-day news cycle and look at the broader security and geopolitical trends that are taking place—but that is exactly what climate change and its corresponding security impacts demand.…   continue »

Reports of “health attacks” in Cuba which left several American and Canadian diplomats with health problems and hearing loss has led to wide and dramatic speculation.  Several stories have hyped possible “acoustic attacks” that may be related to weapons used by police for riot control, or even weapons developed by the U.S.…   continue »

[This article was first published on Aug. 3, 2017 at 9:55am ET and updated on Aug. 4, 2017 at 7:10am ET]

Just yesterday, an unhappy President Donald Trump signed H.R. 3364, America’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions,” which targets a rogue’s gallery of Iran, North Korea and Russia, all of whom pose serious security threats to the United States and its allies.  …   continue »

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THE TRUMP-RUSSIA CONNECTION

The list of attendees at a Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaigners and Russians grows, Trump and Putin meet a second time, and Mueller’s investigation expands to finances as Trump expresses his discontent.…   continue »

As reported Monday by Rob Berschinski and Adam Nagy, the Magnitsky Act is back in the news in connection with media reporting on the June 2016 meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr. prior to the election. The meeting was apparently originally arranged to convey damaging information about Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton; as it turns out, it may have been aimed at getting the Magnitsky sanctions loosened….…   continue »

Since last week’s revelation of Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and several of her associates, much of the legal focus has been on which crimes, if any, Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort may have committed.…   continue »

When Donald Trump Jr. sat down with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya last June, he hoped to receive information from the Russian government that would, in the words of an intermediary, “incriminate” his father’s political opponent Hillary Clinton, according to his recently released emails.…   continue »

The Russia-Trump story accelerated this week as it was revealed that Don Jr.’s now infamous June 9 meeting at Trump Tower had little to do with adoptions, as he first claimed. Instead, he expected to meet a “Russian government attorney” who possibly had “very high level” and “ultra sensitive” information that could incriminate Hillary Clinton and that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr.…   continue »

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THE TRUMP-RUSSIA CONNECTION

A meeting between a Russian lawyer with Kremlin connections, a former Soviet counterintelligence official, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort is the first evidence the Trump campaign was aware of Russian efforts to aid it.…   continue »

The disclosure of emails documenting Donald Trump, Jr.’s arrangement of a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskay has lots of people asking whether he or the Trump campaign violated federal campaign finance law.  The pivotal question is whether they illegally solicited an in-kind contribution from a foreign national by attempting to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from a Russian national, including incriminating documents.…   continue »