By Al Mayadeen English
Today 08:54
FBI agents raided the Virginia home of Dimitri Simes, a Russian-born policy analyst with ties to Donald Trump's campaign, prompting concerns of political intimidation and double standards.
Simes' name has been mentioned over 100 times in the 2019 Mueller report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
- "I’m puzzled and concerned," he said, before adding,
- "I have not seen a warrant. I was not contacted by any law enforcement or anyone else whatsoever."
- On his part, Simes' son Dimitri Simes Jr. told Sputnik that his father, since 2022, has not been to the US.
Antonov calls out US for 'witch-hunt'
Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov commented on the incident saying that the "attacks by the US authorities on the TV presenter of Channel One are one of many facts of the ‘witch hunt’ unfolding here with renewed vigor."
- Antonov explained that these attacks come against the backdrop of the US election campaigns amid a growing nationwide crackdown against those who Washington claims are Russian foreign assets working "in violation of foreign agent laws."
HomeWorld News
US moving towards total censorship – Moscow
A witch hunt is underway in America ahead of the presidential election, Russia’s ambassador to Washington has said
The diplomat was commenting on an FBI search at the home of Russian-born US political analyst and author Dimitri Simes in Virginia, on Tuesday.
- Simes, a critic of President Joe Biden’s administration, has been co-hosting a geopolitical talk show on Russia’s Channel 1 since 2018.
"Hundreds of people are declared undesirable just because they dare to contradict the policies of the administration. They are forbidden from having their own point of view” and government agents are “breaking into homes, performing searches and seizing documents,” he stated.
"The local ruling circles have decisively embarked on the path of total censorship. Freedom of speech in modern America is sacred only if this speech is pro-American. All dissidents are subject to political inquisition, especially when it comes to those who fight against one-sided and biased views on Russia,” he said.
- While “easily” neglecting the rights provided by the First Amendment at home, US officials, “at the same time continue to lecture the whole world on democratic values and human rights,” he wrote.
Simes is a naturalized US citizen, who immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1973. He served as an aide to President Richard Nixon and as the publisher and CEO of National Interest magazine, which advocates a realist approach to international relations and geopolitics.
At the height of Russiagate, Simes was among those investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a suspected contact between Donald Trump and the Russian government.
- The report by Muller in 2019, which failed to find any evidence of collusion between Moscow and Trump’s 2016 campaign, also vindicated Simes.
- FBI agents arrived at his property in Virginia a week after a search took place at the home of former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in New York state.
The raid began on 13 August, the FBI told the local Rappahannock News, which first reported the story.
Simes, whose name was included more than 100 times in the 2019 Mueller report into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, told the paper he was out of the country and had not been notified about the search ahead of time. He was not aware he was the focus of any current law enforcement investigation, he said.
“I’m puzzled and concerned,” he said. “I have not seen a warrant. I was not contacted by any law enforcement or anyone else whatsoever.”
In an interview with Russian government-owned Sputnik News, Simes said on Friday that the raid “clearly is an attempt to intimidate, not only somebody from Russia, but just anyone who goes against official policies and particularly against the deep state”.
He added: “My suspicion is that instead of trying to get me to come to the United States and to interrogate me or even to arrest me, their real purpose is to make sure that I would not come back.”
Simes’s son, Dimitri Simes Jr, told Sputnik News that his father has not been in the United States since October 2022. “The Biden regime is terrified of being called out over Ukraine and Israel,” he tweeted on Friday. In another tweet, he added: “Elements of Biden regime are trying to disrupt any possibility for deescalation with Russia and plunge America into World War III.”
Simes, who was born in Moscow, emigrated to the United States in 1973. He served as an informal foreign policy adviser to President Richard Nixon before leading the Center for the National Interest for nearly three decades.
After meeting Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner at a luncheon in honor of Henry Kissinger in March 2016, Simes began providing the Trump campaign with informal counsel on foreign policy, including advising on a speech Trump gave envisioning greater cooperation with Russia.
Simes and the Center for the National Interest featured prominently in the Mueller report, which cleared them of any wrongdoing. Around the same time, Simes underwent a Senate finance committee investigation into his contacts with Russian Central Bank official Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to infiltrate US conservative groups before the 2016 election.
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