A billboard of Trump and Putin has been authenticated by fact-checking organization Snopes.
Concern regarding Russian involvement in the U.S. presidential election continues to dominate the news.
Mother Jones reported last week that Admiral Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, called on Congress to investigate Russian interference in the election adding that “Several House Democrats, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, have urged the FBI to investigate links between Trump’s team and Russia, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has done the same.”
Esquire reports that “we have no freaking idea how much the president-elect may owe to various financial institutions” within the Russian Federation, and The Washington Post reports that “as President-elect Trump talks normalization of relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Republicans in Congress are moving to stake out a tough stance against Russia.”
“[Trump] wants to reset with Russia. Maybe he can do it, but here’s my view about Russia: They’re a bad actor in the world, they need to be reined in,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday. He added that it would be up to Congress to let Russia “know the rules of the road pretty early,” even under a friendlier Trump administration.
In the midst of all this controversy, two photographs of a billboard with President-Elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been making the rounds on social media.
Snopes, a fact-checking site specializing in e-mail forwards, internet rumors and urban legends, researched photographs, concluding they are authentic.
As Snopes explains, one photograph was first published by American stock photography agency Getty Images on November 16, 2016 with the title: “Cars pass by a billboard showing US President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin placed by pro-Serbian movement in the town of Danilovgrad on November 16, 2016.”
The other photograph was published the same day by the international news agency Reuters with the caption: “A billboard showing a pictures of President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen through pedestrians in Danilovgrad, Montenegro.”
From Kremlinology to sealing off Mosul, here's Reuters Select: https://t.co/8l3gKEbKBf pic.twitter.com/jB70Wkls6e
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) November 17, 2016
As both Getty Images and Reuters note, the image is not from Russia, rather it is from the Balkan country of Montenegro.
So why is this important in light of the controversy surrounding Russia and the U.S. presidential election? For one thing Russia has strong economic ties to Montenegro Monstat reporting in 2012 that Russian businessmen have majority shares 32% of foreign enterprises present in the country. For another, ABC News reported today that two Russians are being probed in connection with a failed coup attempt during the country’s October 16 general election.
Two Russian citizens are among those suspected of involvement in an alleged election day plot in Montenegro to assassinate the country’s prime minister and take power because of the government’s NATO membership bid, prosecutors said Monday. […]
Montenegrin prosecutors have said the investigation leads to the conclusion that “nationalists from Russia” organized a criminal group that planned to break into Montenegro’s parliament on election day, kill Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and bring a pro-Russia coalition to power.
As Esquire reports, “It’s shoveling sand against the tide to ask this question again, but why isn’t the fact that Russia played monkey-mischief with the recent presidential election—and the fact that we have no freaking idea how much the president-elect may owe to various financial institutions with connection to that kleptocratic regime—a much bigger story than it has been?”
Questions remain and it seems that only time will tell what ties, financial or otherwise, a Trump administration may have with Russia. What we do know is that intelligence sources have confirmed with media outlets like NBC News that “the FBI has been conducting a preliminary inquiry into Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s foreign business connections” to include alleged ties to the Russian government.
NBC News reported in August that “Manafort was a key player in multi-million-dollar business propositions with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs — one of them a close Putin ally with alleged ties to organized crime — which foreign policy experts said raised questions about the pro-Russian bent of the Trump candidacy.”
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