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Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
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Jul 29 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Phenomenal news: Alexander Ionov, the Russian national who spent years organizing Texas secessionists' trips to Moscow, has been sanctioned by the U.S.

home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/…
Ionov's "Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia," which bankrolled the Texas and California secessionists' travels in Russia, has also been officially sanctioned.

This was the main group that used Kremlin funding to organize Western separatist movements.
Ionov is a "FSB co-optee" who "promulgate[d] the Kremlin's disinformation and malign influence agenda," per Treasury.

Ionov has also been involved in identifying certain candidates worth supporting in U.S. elections.
Oh wow: There's also a formal DOJ indictment against Ionov for helping bankroll secessionist movements in the U.S. justice.gov/opa/pr/russian…

"Ionov allegedly orchestrated a brazen influence campaign, turning U.S. political groups and U.S. citizens into instruments of [Russia]."
Two of the groups mentioned (but unnamed) in this indictment for working with Ionov are @YesCalifornia, the main California secession group, and Uhuru, a Black nationalist separatist movement working with Ionov through earlier this year.

Here is the formal indictment against Ionov: scribd.com/document/58470…

This indictment is a long time coming. Ionov's involvement in stoking American separatist movements dates to at least 2014, when he first linked up with Texas secessionists and brought them to Moscow.
Our 2021 report from @4freerussia_org has everything you need to know about Russia's links with multiple American secessionist groups, and Ionov's leading role therein:
This is new: Russia's links to the @YesCalifornia California secession group continued through at least 2018, funding protests in Sacramento.

Ionov wrote "that FSB OFFICER 1 had asked for 'turmoil' and 'there you go.'"
On a personal note: I never would have started covering Russian interference efforts in the U.S. without Ionov. It was his work with Texas secessionists that launched this prong of my work.

(This is him with Nate Smith, exec. director of @TexasNatMov.)

One last thought: This is the first confirmation that the FSB itself was directly involved in stoking American secessionist movements over the past few years.

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More from @cjcmichel

Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
Jul 29
One under-appreciated element: Putin has guaranteed that an entire *generation* of Western policy-makers, especially in the US, are going to be severely more hawkish on Moscow than their predecessors.
And why wouldn’t they be? Who would trust any “deal” or “compromise” with Moscow now? Who would defer to the Kremlin on regional policy now? Who would view Russia as the appropriate security guarantor in the region now—especially as former colonized nations push for distance?
There’s an entire new generation of Western policy-makers looking at the mistakes of the 1990s—thinking open markets and free-ish elections could quell Russian revanchism—and realizing those mistakes can’t be made again.

Realizing Moscow won’t stop until Russia is decolonized.
Read 4 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
Jul 15
Massive step in the right direction in passing this in the House—American enablers have opened the doors for illicit finance, perfectly legally, for years.
‘The ENABLERS Act would require professional service providers who serve as key gatekeepers to the U.S. financial system… to adopt anti-money laundering (“AML”) procedures’ us.transparency.org/news/house-pas…
Continues to be impressive how *bipartisan* the US’s counter-kleptocracy reforms have been.

From shell company reform to transparency proposals regarding think tanks, now to due diligence for other American enablers—bipartisanship remains the rule, not the exception.
Read 4 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
Jun 30
Earlier this month, for the first time since 1861, an American state's ruling party formally endorsed a vote on secession.

Here's why that matters, and what that portends for the Trumpist right, and potential political violence in the U.S.: thebulwark.com/texas-republic…
Would any attempted state fracture in the U.S. likely succeed? Presumably not.

Which is why the Troubles in Northern Ireland—which had a casualty rate on par with the U.S. Civil War—comes to mind as a potential parallel. (See @ThePlumLineGS: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…)
Secession and state fracture is only going to become more appealing to the Trumpist right. And after Jan. 6, and developments in Texas in the past two years, it's time to stop dismissing it out of hand.

It's a failure of imagination to think otherwise.
Read 4 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
Jun 20
There are some fantastic provisions in this new bipartisan "Fighting Foreign Influence Act," introduced last week in the House: golden.house.gov/media/press-re…
1. The bill would force American think tanks and non-profits to publicly disclose high-dollar gifts from foreign governments/political parties.

Treasury will then publish these total amounts from each foreign governments/political parties.

golden.house.gov/sites/evo-subs…
2. This bill will impose a lifetime ban on former US presidents, vice presidents, senior executive branch officials, military officers, and members of Congress(!) from lobbying for foreign entities.

responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/06/16/bip…
Read 5 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
Jun 20
The now-former head of Brookings told the Qataris that they should engage in "black" information operations, which "are typically covert and sometimes illegal." apnews.com/article/politi…
If Brookings wanted to make any changes at its satellite center in Qatar, they would first have to get the Qatari foreign ministry's approval: politico.com/news/magazine/…
Brookings' suspect relationship with Qatari money made a cameo in my Master's thesis in the mid-2010s, on how American think tanks had transformed into lobbying vehicles for foreign governments: Image
Read 8 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
Jun 19
This is the first time the @TexasGOP has formally endorsed a specific time/referendum on Texas secession.

In years prior, it was an abstract endorsement. This is far more specific.
It's been remarkable watching how quickly pro-secession organizing has taken off in the @TexasGOP—the past two years alone have seen it catch fire, in very tangible ways. politico.com/news/magazine/…
(Completely unsurprising that the @TexasGOP's lurch toward secession comes amid a broader reckoning of the state's history—and the state's demographic changes.) newrepublic.com/article/161685…
Read 8 tweets

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