Page 20 - Dan Fried News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Would react negatively about the provision of javelins to the ukraine. she's a defense witness, pentagon witness. croft: i can broadly say all of the policy agencies were in support. question: you mean in support of providing the javelins? croft: correct. this was the key offensive weapon that the trump administration is claiming went well beyond the obama administration, it's true, the obama administration, dan, did nonlethal weapons. but this pentagon witness makes it very clear that mick mulvaney was concerned about what vladimir putin's reacting would be to ukraine getting the weapons it n...

Affairs reporter for nbc's investigation unit. dan, how did she manage to pull this off? >> that's an excellent question. she tried to leverage her ngo, linking the world, and she presented herself as a globe trotting hue mmanitarianhumanit. there's one key detail, she had one key friend or contact, the undersecretary at the state department, a lifelong friend of mike pompeo, the secretary of state, a west point classmate of his. he did attend a fundraiser for her ngo in dallas and donated more than $5,000. that was the one connection we found to the trump administration, because she doesn't h...

We never even get down to that, never had the time to start the negotiations. >> joining me now, the man at the center of it all, ambassador dan fried. so you are a longtime civil servant in the state department, and you were contacted by the politicals who had come in, appointees of the new administration. basically they were giving directives in the building over at foggy bottom to say, we want to look into how quickly and how we would rescind the sanctions, is that right? >> um, not quite. i never got a directive myself. what i heard from many of my colleagues throughout the government, inc...

And now i'm reaping the benefits of that. that was one long troll of the united states and it puts donald trump in an awkward position because he has tried to pretend that we don't know who the hacking was done by. vladimir putin made only the faintest gesture toward that position when everybody knows and our intelligence community knows that russia and vladimir putin personally, as nbc news has reported, was involved in that. >> and he really tried to downplay it, saying simply that a 3-year-old could have achieved what was done allegedly in his mind. heidi, we have nbc news reporting that th...

This was an idea floating around and a spectacularly bad one. and bad ideas don't have immunity. what would you have us -- what would the critics have us do? sit on our hands and not respond to a bad idea that meets no american interest i can identify? >> all right. ambassador dan fried, well said. thanks for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> just hours ago, russian president vladimir putin once again deflected the blame for the hacking of democratic campaigns in the 2016 election, telling nbc's megyn kelly in an exclusive interview that it could have been anyone. >> translator: hackers can be an...