Russia threatens American media outlets because the Justice Department is forcing RT to register as a foreign agent.

Courtesy of Mother Jones: 

Russian lawmakers vowed Friday to adopt legislation targeting American media outlets in response to the US Justice Department forcing RT, the English-language Russia television channel, to register as a foreign agent. 

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s State Duma, said Russian legislators will amend a law related to foreign agents to include foreign media. Volodin, a former Putin aide, said the Duma could adopt the new legislation as soon as next week, according to news reports. “Since such decisions are being made in the United States in relation to our television companies, it is right for us to respond to these actions,” Volodin said, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 

The measure would initially target CNN, Voice of America, and Radio Liberty,” said Senator Alexei Pushkov, who chairs the upper house of parliament’s media policy committee. Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, indicated the law could also target Moscow-based correspondents from newspapers including the New York Times and the Washington Post. 

RT, formerly Russia Today, said Thursday in a statement posted on its website that the DOJ threatened to freeze its bank accounts and arrest its top US executive if it fails to register by Monday under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law that requires representatives of foreign governments to disclose information, such as employees’ contacts with government officials and political donations, in publicly available filings to the department.

Gee what is Russia going to do, start having their highly placed double agent start publicly referring to reporting by American news outlets as "fake news?" 

Oh, wait.

Yet another member of Donald Trump's campaign has registered as a foreign agent.

Courtesy of AP:

President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman is registering as a foreign agent. 

Paul Manafort's spokesman says he was in talks with the government about registering before the 2016 election and is now "taking appropriate steps" in response to "formal guidance" from the government. 

The spokesman says Manafort's lobbying work was not conducted on behalf of the Russian government and began before Manafort started working with the Trump campaign. 

It's unclear whether Trump was aware that Manafort was in talks with the government about registering before he hired him.

Probably not, I am fairly certain that Trump was not aware of much during the campaign outside of poll numbers and crowd reactions.

You may remember that Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn had previously registered as a foreign agent for Turkey.

Now having one member of your campaign or administration register as a foreign agent is odd enough, but to have two?

And if that was not enough, we are also learning that Paul Manafort received money from Trump associates on the day that he stepped down as the campaign manager:

Aug. 19 was an eventful day for Paul Manafort. 

That morning, he stepped down from guiding Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, after a brief tenure during which Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination, Democrats’ emails were hacked and the campaign’s contacts with Russia came under scrutiny. Dogged by revelations about past financial dealings in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort retreated from public view. 

But behind the scenes, he was busy with other matters. Papers were recorded that same day creating a shell company controlled by Mr. Manafort that soon received $13 million in loans from two businesses with ties to Mr. Trump, including one that partners with a Ukrainian-born billionaire and another led by a Trump economic adviser. They were among $20 million in loans secured by properties belonging to Mr. Manafort and his wife. 

The purpose of the loans is unstated in public records, although at least some of them appear to be part of an effort by Mr. Manafort to stave off a personal financial crisis stemming from failed investments with his son-in-law.

So to sum up, Paul Manafort was working as a foreign agent for Ukraine during his time as Trump's campaign manager,  he received at least 1.2 million in secret payments from Ukraine before coming to work for Trump's campaign, and then received around 13 million "in loans" after he was forced to leave that campaign when his ties to Russia and Ukraine were made public.

But hey, no reason to be suspicious. Right?

Wait, so Donald Trump's former national security advisor was working for the Turkish government?

Courtesy of Politico:  

President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn wrote an op-ed on Election Day calling for the U.S. to kick out an anti-government Turkish cleric without disclosing he was being paid by a firm linked to the Turkish government, according to documents newly filed with the Justice Department. 

POLITICO reported in November that Flynn's consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, was lobbying for a Dutch consulting firm with ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The new documents confirm that Flynn lobbied for the Turkish-linked firm, Inovo BV, before and immediately after the election. They also reveal that Flynn’s firm secretly met with the Turkish foreign and energy ministers in New York less than two months before the election. According to Inovo’s founder, Kamil Ekim Alptekin, the meeting was with Flynn himself.

The documents reveal that Inovo BV paid Flynn's firm $535,000 between Sept. 9 and Nov. 14. The firm's assignment focused on Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania whom the Turkish government accuses of masterminding a failed coup against Erdogan last summer.

Apparently Flynn's firm admitted that they were lobbying for Inovo, but Flynn himself never bothered to register himself as a foreign agent. (Would be kind of embarrassing since he was working for Trump as well.)

Now that has changed.

Courtesy of the AP:

President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who was fired from his prominent White House job last month, has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for $530,000 worth of lobbying work before Election Day that may have aided the Turkish government. 

Paperwork filed Tuesday with the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Unit said Flynn and his firm were voluntarily registering for lobbying from August through November that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." It was filed by a lawyer on behalf of the former U.S. Army lieutenant general and intelligence chief.

Okay first off the question to ask is "Is anybody on the Trump team not compromised by a relationship with a foreign government?" 

And the second question to ask is "Does anybody have a scorecard that we can use to keep track of all of the different moving parts?"

For those like myself a little surprised that Flynn turned out to be a "foreign agent" working for Turkey instead of Russia, as it turns out Russia and Turkey have a kind of on again, off again, relationship that for right now seems to be on again.

In other words what's good for Turkey could in fact also be good for Russia.