Russia

Following the unexpected death of 65-year-old Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin, conspiracy theorists were stirred up as the ongoing Russophobic Deep State war combined with the deaths of nine Russian diplomats in the last year raised many coincident-questioning eyebrows. Now, as The Hill reports, pouring further fuel on that fire, the State Department asked the New York Medical Examiner not to publicly release information about Churkin's cause of death.

Ahead of Angela Merkel's first official meeting with the new administration at the White House next week, Reuters reports that President Trump will ask the German Chancellor for her views on how the United States can help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine when they meet next week, senior Trump administration officials said on Friday. Trump will reportedly also ask for Merkel's advice on how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, advice which is pretty clear to anyone following the establishment German press over the past few years.

Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, has confirmed that it hired the consultancy of Tony Podesta, the elder brother of John Podesta who chaired Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, for lobbying its interests in the United States and proactively seeking the removal of various Obama-era sanctions, the press service of the Russian institution told TASS on Thursday.

"The New York office of Sberbank CIB indeed hired Podesta Group. Engagement of external consultants is part of standard business practices for us," Sberbank said.

As had been periodically leaked over the past several weeks, overnight both Poliico and the WSJ confirm that President Trump has offered former Utah governor Jon Huntsman the job of U.S. ambassador to Russia and is in the process of submitting paperwork to accept the position; Huntsman is said to have accepted the offer. This is the latest sign of backtracking from plans for Washington-Moscow conciliation, a development which will make future reports based on "anonymous sources" that Trump is a Kremlin puppet even more problematic.

Via Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com,

Everyone is suddenly talking about the Deep State – the configuration of spy agencies, career bureaucrats, and overseas spooks whose murky omnipresence has been brought to light by President Trump’s contention that he was “wiretapped” by his predecessor.