The 57-year-old millionaire was found dead the morning of Nov. 5 in his room, lying on the floor. His family told media outlets that the former aide to Russian President VladiÂmir Putin had suffered a heart attack.
But on Thursday, the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office said Lesin died of blunt force trauma to the head and had bruises on other areas of his body. The examiner reached no conclusion about whether the man who was a trusted member of Putin’s inner circle and once ruled a media empire died because of a crime, an accident or some other means.
He was found just before 7 a.m. on Election Day, lying on the floor of the Russian Consulate on the Upper East Side.
The man was unconscious and unresponsive, with an unidentified head wound — “blunt force trauma,†in cop parlance. By the time emergency responders reached him, he was dead.
Initial reports said the nameless man had plunged to his death from the roof of the consulate. As journalists rushed to the scene, consular officials quickly changed the narrative. The anonymous man had not fallen dozens of feet from the roof of the consular building, they said, but rather had suffered a heart attack in the security office, and died.
An ex-KGB chief suspected of helping the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile his dossier on Donald Trump may have been murdered by the Kremlin and his death covered up. it has been claimed.
Oleg Erovinkin, a former general in the KGB and its successor the FSB, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on Boxing Day in mysterious circumstances.
Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, who is repeatedly named in the dossier.
[...]
No cause of death has been confirmed and the FSB continues to investigate. Media reports suggested his death was a result of foul play.
It was later claimed he died of a heart attack.
Churkin died one day before his 65th birthday. He was known as a deeply intelligent, combative, disarming and humorous fixture at the UN Security Council.
The diplomat suffered from cardiac arrest while at the Russian Mission on East 67th Street, a law enforcement official said. He was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he died.
Preliminary information suggests there was no foul play in Churkin's death, New York police Lt. Thomas Antonetti said. But authorities are waiting for reports from the New York City medical examiner's office before releasing the official cause of death.
The Russia angle is most troubling to the IC. Behind closed doors, plenty of American intelligence experts believe that President Trump is the pawn of the Kremlin, wittingly or not, and assess that it’s only a matter of time before unseemly Moscow ties are exposed and the White House enters unsurvivable political crisis.
Rebellion is brewing in Washington. The resignation of the CIA’s spokesman, a career intelligence analyst, is a sign of how fragile IC morale has gotten under the new administration. If President Trump keeps upping the ante in his war on the spies, he can expect more damaging leaks to reach the media. Leaks happen in every administration, and Nixon’s ignominious fall ought to serve as a cautionary tale to any president who thinks he can find the right “plumbers†to fix the leaky faucet.
Jeff Sessions wants to revoke protections for transgender students. Betsy DeVos doesn't.
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 22, 2017
Trump sided with Sessions. https://t.co/QX84Y2H2qY pic.twitter.com/53pEMJ1vOD
Quote by Raine:Jeff Sessions wants to revoke protections for transgender students. Betsy DeVos doesn't.
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 22, 2017
Trump sided with Sessions. https://t.co/QX84Y2H2qY pic.twitter.com/53pEMJ1vOD
Quote by Mondobubba:
A-HEM that is Burger King AND Tim Horton's!
Quote by Raine:Quote by Mondobubba:
A-HEM that is Burger King AND Tim Horton's!
Popey's is pretty meh to me.
I like Church's when we are on the road.
Quote by BobR:Quote by Raine:Quote by Mondobubba:
A-HEM that is Burger King AND Tim Horton's!
Popey's is pretty meh to me.
I like Church's when we are on the road.
I prefer Bojangles
Quote by wickedpam:Quote by BobR:Quote by Raine:Quote by Mondobubba:
A-HEM that is Burger King AND Tim Horton's!
Popey's is pretty meh to me.
I like Church's when we are on the road.
I prefer Bojangles
Bojangles for biscuits
Church's for chicken and wedges
dang, now I want fried chicken...
This is the title of an actual #CPAC 2017 panel. This is not satire. pic.twitter.com/pB5bwXWwih
— J.H. Swanson (@jh_swanson) February 21, 2017
A former senior campaign official said Nunberg and his successor, former communications director Jason Miller, were particularly skilled at using alternative media like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Fox News, Infowars and the Daily Caller to show Trump positive coverage.
And once they got the stories published, campaign officials with large numbers of Twitter followers would tweet them out.
They would also go to media amplifiers like Fox News hosts and conservative columnists to encourage them to tweet out the story so that they could print out and show a two-page list of tweets that show that they were steering the message. While Trump still couldn't contain his Twitter-rage with Machado, and ended up tweeting about a mystery sex-tape of the Hillary Clinton surrogate, aides say they dialed back even more posts.
Quote by Scoopster:
This is the title of an actual #CPAC 2017 panel. This is not satire. pic.twitter.com/pB5bwXWwih
— J.H. Swanson (@jh_swanson) February 21, 2017