British ex-spy claims Kremlin blocked Trump from naming Mitt Romney as secretary of state: report

Authored by rawstory.com and submitted by ghqwertt

Donald Trump and Mitt Romney (Twitter)

Former MI6 spy Christopher Steele has reportedly told special counsel Robert Mueller that he believes the Russian government directly intervened to block President Donald Trump from appointing Mitt Romney as his secretary of state.

In a New Yorker profile of Steele published Monday, reporter Jane Mayer writes that Steele — who authored the infamous Fusion GPS dossier alleging deep ties between President Donald Trump and the Russian government — wrote a memo in late 2016 claiming that Russia worked to stop then-President elect Trump from making noted Russia hawk Romney his chief diplomat.

“This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as ‘a senior Russian official,'” writes Mayer. “The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney.”

As Mayer notes, however, Trump had plenty of reasons to reject Romney as his secretary of state other than his views on Russia, including Romney’s own blistering criticism of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump did eventually pass over Romney and instead named former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his top diplomat.

EsotericForest on March 5th, 2018 at 18:03 UTC »

Mitt Romney, I am sorry I totally remember laughing off the Russia threat in 2012 and now I am doing no laughing.

Clemson_was_a_racist on March 5th, 2018 at 14:22 UTC »

Poor Mitt must feel like he's on crazy pills. Tried to warn everyone about Russia in 2012, and democrats laughed at him. Tried to warn everyone about Russia in 2016 and republicans laughed at him. and Now russians are blocking him from cabinet positions too.

ghqwertt on March 5th, 2018 at 13:21 UTC »

Original New Yorker article. Note that the allegation that Romney was blocked was discovered after the election (but before the dossier became public).

This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President.

Note that it was five weeks ago that Trump refused to implement the new sanctions, thereby breaking a law passed almost unanimously by Congress.

P.S. Want to have a free-wheeling discussion about Trump and Russia in subreddit that welcomes all points of view? Come to /r/RussiaLago!