CIA chief reportedly warns Russia against attacking Nato countries on visit to Moscow – US politics live | US politics
CIA director warned Russia not to attack Nato members during meeting termed ‘semi-routine’ by Trump
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
A trip by the CIA director to Moscow this week was to warn Russia against any attack on Nato member states, US media reported, after Donald Trump attempted to downplay the visit.
The Wall Street Journal and CBS News reported CIA director John Ratcliffe aimed to dissuade Russia from attacking Nato members amid US intelligence assessments that Moscow could seek to test the alliance. Ratcliffe was reported to have flown to Moscow on a government transport plane on Tuesday, taking off from the Andrews air force base in Maryland.
Interviewed by the conservative radio host Glenn Beck, Trump poured cold water on speculation that Ratcliffe had travelled in response to fears that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was planning to “test Nato resolve” or to win Moscow’s cooperation for intensified US sanctions on Iran.
“None of the above,” the US president said in response to Beck, who referred to the speculation as “crazy”. “He’s there, you know, very sort of semi-routine. I hate to disappoint people. We would like to see the war with Ukraine end,” Trump said.
“John Ratcliffe is a fantastic guy. He’s the head of the CIA, and he is not in there for any of the things that you said. Now something may come … out of it. We’re working very hard to get that war ended, and frankly, they both want to see it ended at this point.”
Ratcliffe is one of the highest-ranking US officials to visit Russia since its war with Ukraine started in 2022.
Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, confirmed that he had held a “working-level meeting” with Ratcliffe in Moscow and that they had discussed unspecified and sensitive matters falling within the remit of their respective intelligence services. Naryshkin claimed the fact that they had met was nothing unusual.
The Kremlin added that “scare stories” have nothing to do with reality, in response to the reports.
Read the full story:
In other developments:
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Two dozen mainly Democratic‑led states filed a fresh lawsuit to block Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting in this year’s midterm elections.
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Lawyers for Lisa Cook wrote to the White House on Wednesday, rejecting a new attempt to force the Federal Reserve governor to resign for allegedly listing two properties as her primary residence on mortgage applications. The letter goes on to detail the numerous other individuals who have made the same mistake on mortgage forms, starting with Trump.
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The chief spokesperson for the US Secret Service and two other communications staffers are under investigation for “potential misconduct” and have been suspended, according to the agency and media reports.
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A geography professor alleges in a lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Manhattan that he was fired from his tenured position at the US Military Academy at West Point “because he taught that humans influenced climate change”.
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The US army announced on Wednesday that it has awarded to $2.2bn to five contractors “to own, construct and operate nuclear microreactors on military installations” in five states.
Key events
RFK Jr lied in Senate confirmation hearings, newly revealed documents indicate
Michelle R Smith
Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, telling lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony. In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in the Pacific island nation. In it, he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times.
“I am writing this letter to you in the hope that we might be helpful to the people of your great nation,” he wrote, adding that he believed the deaths of two children there after an MMR vaccine could have resulted from manufacturing issues.
“I would propose my team conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines,” Kennedy wrote.
Kennedy’s Samoa visit – just months before a measles outbreak swept through the island, killing 83 people – has become one of the most controversial events in his career. At the time, he was leading a nonprofit known for its anti-vaccine activism. The visit was seen by critics as having emboldened anti-vaccine activists in Samoa.
Beyond shedding light on the intent of Kennedy’s visit, the letter raises questions about the health secretary’s integrity and how truthful he was in testimony before Congress. During the confirmation process Kennedy also pledged to maintain vaccine policies that, once in office, he moved to change.
Read the full report:
As we bring you the latest about John Ratcliffe’s covert trip to Moscow this week, it’s worth noting that this is the first time a CIA director has traveled to Russia since November 2021.
Then, William Burns met with Putin to urge him against sending troops into Ukraine. But just months later, Russia launched its invasion.
As we noted earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people briefed on the visit, that the reason for the CIA director’s trip was to warn Moscow not to attack Nato countries — something that Donald Trump previously dismissed in a radio interview on Wednesday.
“I hate to disappoint people. We would like to see the war with Ukraine end,” Trump added, after being asked by Glen Beck, a conservative commentator, whether Ratcliffe had travelled in response to fears that Vladimir Putin was planning to “test Nato resolve”, or whether he was attempting to win Moscow’s cooperation for intensified US sanctions on Iran.
“He is not in there for any of the things that you said,” Trump insisted.
On Wednesday, Trump officially signed a proclamation on Wednesday that suspends higher tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef imports for 90 days. This comes after backlash to the proposal – designed to lower grocery costs for Americans in the run-up to the November midterms.
Several Republicans – in states with sizable cattle farming industries – have criticized the policy, saying it is a short term solution that will stymie ranchers’ ability to rebuild their herds.
Four leading livestock and agricultural organizations also wrote a letter to the president on Wednesday urging him to reverse course.
“Flooding the market with discounted foreign beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd, strengthen food security, or lower grocery bills in a lasting way,” the groups wrote.
Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington, before traveling to Houston, Texas where he’ll headline a Republican National Commitee (RNC) fundraiser, and help boost Ken Paxton — the state’s attorney general and Republican nominee for Senate.
A reminder that Paxton beat long serving Senator John Cornyn in the GOP primary earlier this year after receiving Trump’s endorsement. Paxton is set to face Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico in November.
Michael Sainato
The Republican congressman Ryan Mackenzie has been accused of embellishing his résumé with private sector experience in real estate sales amid an acrimonious showdown over his Pennsylvania seat.
Mackenzie, who has previously been accused of lying about his age on Tinder, “was a real estate salesperson licensed in PA”, according to his LinkedIn profile, and biographies have consistently listed it has his former profession.
In a statement to the Guardian, however, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) accused the congressman of having “fabricated a career … that never existed”.
His campaign would not comment on whether he ever used his real estate license, or made any sales. His office also did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the Tinder allegations, or reports of a staffer scrubbing the story from Wikipedia.
Mackenzie is attempting to keep his seat in a Pennsylvania’s seventh congressional district, where he won his first term in 2024 by 1% of the vote. Trump won Pennsylvania in the US presidential election two years ago, after losing the state to Joe Biden in 2020.
Mackenzie is running for his seat against Democrat Bob Brooks, former president of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association – and has called his opponent a “fraud”, a “conman”, a “lobbyist”, a “dumpster fire candidate” and a “union boss”. Mackenzie’s campaign manager claimed Brooks has “all the hallmarks of a common criminal”.
Europe has made progress in taking over the responsibility for its conventional defence but more needs to be done, US Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby told allies in Brussels ahead of talks about potential US troops cuts in Europe.
“Let’s look at some of things like access, basing, overflight. Well, there is a lot of good, but there’s some things that we need to work out to make sense going forward,” Colby said at Nato headquarters, adding Europe would remain a critical interest of the US and he had come in a spirit of consultation.
Ex-JPMorgan Chase executive shared confidential bank information with Epstein
Former JPMorgan Chase executive Jes Staley told US lawmakers he repeatedly shared confidential and market-sensitive bank information with Jeffrey Epstein and was at one point named as a trustee of his estate, according to a transcript released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday.
These admissions come as lawmakers investigate the late convicted sex offender’s ties with political and business elites. Staley appeared before the committee in July as part of its investigation into Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Transcripts from the meeting were released on Wednesday.
In the closed-door, voluntary interview conducted on 24 July, Staley said he divulged to Epstein the bank’s communications with the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis, a figure of $44bn in private bank inflows over two weeks and details of pending deals. Staley also admitted to sharing other confidential information about JPMorgan with Epstein, according to the transcript.
Lawmakers also questioned him about communications in which he discussed matters including his compensation, client relationships and developments related to his eventual move to Barclays.
Staley defended the exchanges, saying he believed he had the authority to share information when he considered it appropriate. He has maintained he had a close professional relationship with Epstein, but was unaware of his crimes.
He also testified that he informed Epstein about the bank’s concerns over his large cash withdrawals and told him he had been designated a high-risk client.
JPMorgan declined to comment. Staley’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A man who is serving time in a federal prison in New York advanced on Wednesday from the primary for Alaska’s lone US House seat.
Eric Hafner, a registered Democrat, also ran for the seat in 2024 and secured a spot on the general election ballot that November despite a challenge brought by the Alaska Democratic party.
Hafner pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges of making threats against police officers, judges and others. He is set to be released in 2036.
The leading candidates in the race are the incumbent, Republican Nick Begich, and independent Bill Hill, a commercial fisher and retired educator.
Hafner’s success in the primary as one of the candidates moving on to the general election is almost certain to draw another legal challenge because the US constitution requires candidates to live in the state they will represent at the time of the election.
In the candidate information he filed with the state, he listed the same Box Elder, South Dakota, mailing address and New York phone number as his mother, Carol Hafner. Neither has any apparent ties to Alaska.
China’s foreign minister said his country and the United States should overcome obstacles between the nations ahead of an expected summit next month between the US president, Donald Trump, and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
Wang Yi met the US ambassador to China, David Perdue, on Wednesday and called on both sides to “focus on the positive agenda, properly manage differences, remove interference and overcome obstacles to high-level exchanges between the two countries”, the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday.
China-US relations “still face various risks and challenges,” he acknowledged in a statement released by CCTV.
The Trump administration is considering a new round of sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, Politico reported on Thursday, citing eight people familiar with discussions.
A new tariff proposal could tax a wider range of tech goods. Instead of just targeting microchips, the duties would also apply to products that use them, such as laptops, gaming consoles and data center servers, the report said.
The commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, favors a structure that will tie foreign companies’ relief from the tariffs to investment in US chip manufacturing to boost local production, the report said.
Washington is also mulling a phase-in period for the new tariffs and the framework could still be substantially revised in the coming weeks or months, Politico reported.
Kremlin dismisses US media ‘scare stories’ on CIA chief’s Moscow visit
The Kremlin dismissed US media reports that Russia could attack a Nato member state and that the purpose of CIA director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow this week had been to warn Moscow against such a move.
Asked to comment on the reports, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said:
A lot of this kind of scare-story material is being published right now. Of course, it has nothing to do with reality and nothing to do with the intentions of the Russian Federation.
Earlier on Thursday, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service said he had held a “working-level meeting” with Ratcliffe and that they had discussed unspecified and sensitive matters falling within the remit of their respective intelligence services.
CIA director warned Russia not to attack Nato members during meeting termed ‘semi-routine’ by Trump
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
A trip by the CIA director to Moscow this week was to warn Russia against any attack on Nato member states, US media reported, after Donald Trump attempted to downplay the visit.
The Wall Street Journal and CBS News reported CIA director John Ratcliffe aimed to dissuade Russia from attacking Nato members amid US intelligence assessments that Moscow could seek to test the alliance. Ratcliffe was reported to have flown to Moscow on a government transport plane on Tuesday, taking off from the Andrews air force base in Maryland.
Interviewed by the conservative radio host Glenn Beck, Trump poured cold water on speculation that Ratcliffe had travelled in response to fears that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was planning to “test Nato resolve” or to win Moscow’s cooperation for intensified US sanctions on Iran.
“None of the above,” the US president said in response to Beck, who referred to the speculation as “crazy”. “He’s there, you know, very sort of semi-routine. I hate to disappoint people. We would like to see the war with Ukraine end,” Trump said.
“John Ratcliffe is a fantastic guy. He’s the head of the CIA, and he is not in there for any of the things that you said. Now something may come … out of it. We’re working very hard to get that war ended, and frankly, they both want to see it ended at this point.”
Ratcliffe is one of the highest-ranking US officials to visit Russia since its war with Ukraine started in 2022.
Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, confirmed that he had held a “working-level meeting” with Ratcliffe in Moscow and that they had discussed unspecified and sensitive matters falling within the remit of their respective intelligence services. Naryshkin claimed the fact that they had met was nothing unusual.
The Kremlin added that “scare stories” have nothing to do with reality, in response to the reports.
Read the full story:
In other developments:
-
Two dozen mainly Democratic‑led states filed a fresh lawsuit to block Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting in this year’s midterm elections.
-
Lawyers for Lisa Cook wrote to the White House on Wednesday, rejecting a new attempt to force the Federal Reserve governor to resign for allegedly listing two properties as her primary residence on mortgage applications. The letter goes on to detail the numerous other individuals who have made the same mistake on mortgage forms, starting with Trump.
-
The chief spokesperson for the US Secret Service and two other communications staffers are under investigation for “potential misconduct” and have been suspended, according to the agency and media reports.
-
A geography professor alleges in a lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Manhattan that he was fired from his tenured position at the US Military Academy at West Point “because he taught that humans influenced climate change”.
-
The US army announced on Wednesday that it has awarded to $2.2bn to five contractors “to own, construct and operate nuclear microreactors on military installations” in five states.
