CNN
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Is there a direct link between what US President Donald Trump says and what Russian President Vladimir Putin does?

Certainly, the harsh words and bitter violence of recent days in Ukraine suggest the answer is maybe.

First, President Trump vented his frustrations at the lack of commitment from his Russian counterpart to engage in a serious peace process.

“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump blustered in a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “He’s very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” he complained.

The very next day, as if infuriated by the remarks, Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine, sending 728 drones and 13 missiles to strike cities around the country in multiple waves.

It was a “telling attack,” observed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who condemned the strikes as timed to rebuff peace efforts.

There are apparent signs of a pattern.

Last week, after Trump publicly bemoaned that he had made “no progress” towards a ceasefire after a lengthy telephone call with the Kremlin leader, Russia unleashed yet another massive barrage on Ukraine. It rained down 539 drones and 11 missiles in what Ukrainian officials described as one of the worst attacks of the conflict.

You might be forgiven for thinking that every time President Trump expresses anger, frustration or even negativity about his Kremlin counterpart, the immediate response from Russia is to step up the ruthless punishment it metes out to its Ukrainian neighbor.

But it’s not as straightforward as that.

The problem is, Russia also carries out devastating strikes on Ukraine during periods when the US president is relatively silent about the conflict he notoriously vowed to end in a single day.

On June 29, for example, Moscow launched 477 drones and 60 missiles against Ukraine – at the time, the biggest Russian aerial assault of the war. Yet President Trump had made few significant public comments about Russia in the days before.

Furthermore, when President Trump told fellow G7 leaders of industrialized democracies that he essentially regretted the absence of Putin at the June summit, and criticized previous leaders for kicking Russia out of what was then the G8. Moscow went on to ratchet up attacks on Kyiv, killing at least 28 people in a single night of drone and missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital days later.

Even positive remarks from the US president, which you might reasonably expect to temper any simmering Russian anger at how it is spoken about in the White House, do not appear to act as a brake on the Kremlin’s excesses.

For its part, the Kremlin has played down any suggestion that President Trump’s recent critical outburst has had much impact.

“We are taking it quite calmly,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on a daily conference call, adding that “Trump, in general, tends to use a fairly tough style and expressions.”

In reality, Russian military tactics are much more likely to be driven by its own unrelenting military objective of seizing as much territory as possible before the grinding conflict in Ukraine, now in its fourth year, ultimately comes to a halt.

Likewise, the terrifying increase in the use of Russian drones in recent weeks is more likely to be a reflection of missile shortages and increased drone production in Russia than any angry Putin retort to one of President Trump’s off-hand comments.

CNN
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A bipartisan Russia sanctions bill is gaining momentum in the Senate and could soon come to a vote as Republican lawmakers attempt to strike a careful balance with President Donald Trump.

Key supporters of the bill have expressed optimism that the package has the backing of the president, and Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday that the Senate could take up the legislation before the August recess.

A bill with bipartisan support and more than 80 cosponsors could move fast in the chamber, but a challenge for GOP leaders has been to not get ahead of the White House. GOP senators have taken steps not to appear to be jamming the president on the issue, especially as Trump’s views over Russia and Ukraine have at times appeared to change and evolve.

Thune said senators have been in close contact with the White House and their House colleagues as GOP leadership aims to vote on the bipartisan bill this month.

Asked if he’s been talking to Trump about when the bill will come to the Senate floor, Thune answered, “We are communicating with the White House. Our team’s been in touch with theirs on a regular basis.”

“We’ve got individual senators, members who are talking to the White House and to our colleagues in the House, and we’re sort of gaming out how that might ultimately be accomplished,” he continued.

Thune has indicated that he would not advance the legislation without Trump’s blessing. The president told reporters on Tuesday that he was “looking at” the bill, and remarked that the Senate will potentially pass it “totally at [his] option.”

Trump on Tuesday decried what he called “bullsh*t” being peddled by his Russian counterpart, venting anger toward President Vladimir Putin as his efforts to broker peace in Ukraine fall short.

The remark was the clearest indication yet of Trump’s frustrations at Moscow, which has shown no willingness to end its war in Ukraine as it enters a fourth summer.

On Wednesday, Thune called the sanctions bill, which would levy heavy tariffs on imports from countries that purchase Russian uranium, gas and oil, an “important message to send, especially now.”

Republicans have also emphasized that the legislation would give the president leverage. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, has touted the its inclusion of a measure giving Trump the ability to waive sanctions at a later date.

Graham said Wednesday, “My goal is to get to the president’s desk before the August break … there’s a waiver in the bill to give the president leverage. I talked to the president last week about it. He thinks the bill will be helpful. So we’ll get it to him.”

The South Carolina Republican told reporters on Tuesday Trump “told me it’s time to move. So we’re going to move” on the package.

“You can tell yesterday the president’s willing to change course, and this bill will give him significant leverage over China and India, who prop up Putin’s war machine. And only way we’re ever going to end this war is to have Putin’s customers put pressure on Putin, and my goal is to give President Trump a tool he doesn’t have today from the Congress with a presidential waiver,” Graham said on Wednesday.

Asked if he is supportive of the sanctions bill, GOP Sen. Josh Hawley said on Wednesday, “I’m going to talk to the president about that. I know that he, Lindsey, has said that the president is supportive it, wants to move on that. I’m scheduled to talk to the president about that shortly.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the lead Democratic co-sponsor of the bill, argued that Trump’s waiver authority is “very limited and constrained” in the package.

“Very importantly, in this bill, there’s congressional oversight. We can override the president if we disagree with him, and so it’s not unbridled or unconstrained authority simply to waive the sanctions,” said Blumenthal.

“Nobody here should presume that there will be a waiver of these sanctions. They are scorching. They are bone crushing. Vladimir Putin should get the word if he wants to come to the table, now is the time. Otherwise, his economy is going to be hit hard, because India and China will have every incentive to shop elsewhere for their oil and gas,” he added.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

CNN
 — 

The FBI is investigating former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for possible false statements to Congress following a referral from the current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The referral came after Ratcliffe last week released a review that criticized the 2016 US intelligence community assessment, long criticized by President Donald Trump and his allies, that found Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to intervene in the election on Trump’s behalf. In a post on X, Ratcliffe said the new review found that the original assessment “was conducted through an atypical & corrupt process under the politically charged environments of former Dir. Brennan & former FBI Dir. Comey.”

The Ratcliffe review did not dispute the intelligence community’s core judgment that Putin preferred Trump to then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton but argued that agency leadership rushed the process and then Brennan “risked stifling analytic debate” by “signaling that agency heads had already reached consensus before the ICA was even coordinated.” The review made no mention of Comey.

It’s not clear whether the FBI probe, first reported by Fox News, has moved beyond a preliminary stage.

“We do not comment on ongoing investigations,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

The CIA declined to comment. Representatives for Comey and Brennan also declined to comment.

On Wednesday, Trump told reporters at the White House he wasn’t aware of the reported investigation of Brennan and Comey but repeated his accusation that they are “very dishonest people.”

At the center of the dispute are statements by both men to Congress about the 2016 investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, and the decision to examine claims in a dossier from former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, funded by the Clinton campaign, which alleged coordination between the Russian government and people associated with the Trump campaign.

Last month’s CIA report also argued that Brennan restricted access to key intelligence and “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness” when faced with internal objections including information from the dossier.

Brennan, in his memoir, said he opposed including information from the Steele dossier in a briefing document provided to President Barack Obama. Officials decided instead to append a summary of the dossier’s allegations to the briefing document.

Comey tells CNN how interview with Secret Service went amid social media controversy

Comey tells CNN how interview with Secret Service went amid social media controversy

01:45

The FBI’s criminal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia began in 2016 and stretched into the first Trump administration. It became the subject of investigations by the Justice Department’s inspector general and by special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to also examine the handling of intelligence that led to the Trump-Russia probe. The Durham probe ended with no finding of wrongdoing in the handling of the intelligence, but it did end with the indictment of three people, including a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to falsifying information in a surveillance warrant request targeting a Trump campaign aide.

Comey has been a focus of the administration before and was brought in for an interview with the Secret Service in May after posting a political message on social media.

The former FBI director was interviewed by agents investigating a photo he posted to social media Thursday showing shells in the sand on a beach spelling out “86 47,” which has become a popular social media code for removing Trump from the presidency.

CNN’s Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.