POISON IN THE SYSTEM

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Re: POISON IN THE SYSTEM

Postby Sounder » Thu Feb 14, 2019 4:19 pm

SLAD wrote...

we all swallow our chosen poison don't we Sounder?


(I love your transparency.)

I was thinking more along the lines that the basic function of the mighty Wurlitzer is to maintain the position that if only this or that poison were to be removed, then the system would function properly. But the System depends on the production of enemies, such that the 'better' the System works the more problems are created for the average person.

It is another case of projection where the System identifies enemies, when the only real enemy is the System itself.




So, what's that again, the Russians are the poison in the system? More so I suppose if they are prompted to use active measures in support of Venezuela as they did in Syria.

SLAD wrote..e

love that word projection ...it's one of your favorites...isn't it Sounder?




Well, it does seem to often apply, as in the following case where Mufti Hassoun shows clearly that what is under attack is Syrian long established pluralist traditions, to be replaced by strident sectarians. Essentially sponsored by Western racists spouting 'humanitarian ideals' that are increasingly empty of substance. Why should people listen to your version of 'The poison in the system', when clearly other interpretations of where the poison lies, carry greater coherence with facts and human experience than do the badjacketing productions high priced think tanks and PR hacks.


Indoctrination is nobody's friend.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: POISON IN THE SYSTEM

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 14, 2019 4:54 pm

could you get the quotes correctly attributed?

and this thread is not about Syria so I won't be addressing that issue

Image

"Everyone thinks he was whacked"



Judge Orders Officials To Turn Over Lesin Autopsy Records

Mike Eckel
WASHINGTON -- A Washington judge has ordered the city medical examiner to turn over dozens of autopsy records and other files in the investigation of Mikhail Lesin, the former Russian press minister who was found dead in a D.C. hotel room under suspicious circumstances more than three years ago.

The February 13 ruling came in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by RFE/RL, which has sought the files as part of its ongoing probe into Lesin's November 2015 death.

Once a powerful media adviser to President Vladimir Putin, Lesin fell out of favor sometime around 2012, and had largely been out of sight before his body was found in the Dupont Circle Hotel. Despite the official conclusion he died of blunt force trauma, suspicion has focused on whether he was killed to keep him from sharing information with the Justice Department.

Judge Hiram Puig-Lugo ordered the city by February 20 to turn over the files -- which include medical records, toxicology reports, e-mails, and other materials -- with certain information including names and personal details redacted.

In his ruling, Puig-Lugo rejected arguments by city lawyers that privacy interests of Lesin's family outweigh the public interest in the circumstances surrounding his death. And he chided city officials for what he said were overly broad arguments that turning over the documents that could compromise how D.C. city police, or even the FBI, conducted their investigations.

It was unclear whether the city would appeal the ruling. The plaintiff in the case is the author of this article.

BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA

Lesin's body was found in the Dupont Circle Hotel on November 5, 2015, just a few blocks from the White House. An initial report by the medical examiner's office the following March declared Lesin's death to be caused by blunt force trauma, but said the manner of death was "undetermined."

But the final report, released in October 2016 by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Washington and city police, called his death accidental, caused by blunt force injuries to the neck, torso, and lower upper extremities "which were induced by falls." Acute ethanol intoxication was cited as a contributing factor.

The report was met with deep suspicion by business acquaintances and others familiar with the once-powerful, wealthy Kremlin insider who was instrumental in Russia's crackdown on independent TV and in the creation of the international broadcaster RT.

One person who had direct access to the hotel room where Lesin was found told RFE/RL in 2016 that it was physically impossible for him to have died alone in the room. Photographs released by police showed bottles of beer and liquor, stacks of dollar bills, and crumpled clothing on the floor. Associates of Lesin have argued that the Dupont Circle Hotel did not match his known tastes for expensive goods and lodging.

Prior to the Dupont Circle Hotel, Lesin had spent time at the posher Four Seasons Hotel, in another part of Washington. According to the D.C. police report, officials at the Four Seasons had called the U.S. Secret Service on November 3 when Lesin appeared to be heavily intoxicated, and the Secret Service advised that a guard be posted at his door to prevent him from leaving. He checked into the Dupont Circle Hotel a day later.

There has been no public explanation why the Secret Service was contacted.

RUSSIA TODAY

As Putin's press minister in the early 2000s, Lesin was instrumental in bringing the country's national TV channels under Kremlin control, primarily NTV, a channel known at the time for its hard-hitting journalism. He went on to set up Russia Today, the global Kremlin mouthpiece known today as RT.

Much of his wealth came from a private company he set up in the 1990s to sell television advertising on Russia's exploding TV-advertising market. That company, called Video International, or VI, was later acquired by Yury Kovalchuk, the main shareholder of Bank Rossia, which has been closely linked to the Kremlin.

He lost favor with the Kremlin for unknown reasons sometime between 2012 and 2014, and he largely fell out of the public eye.

In 2014, a year before his death, Lesin had drawn attention from the U.S. Senate, where one lawmaker had called on the FBI to investigate him for possible money laundering.

Lesin owned mansions in Beverly Hills, California, where his children and estranged wife live, and owned a yacht valued at $40 million. Months before his death, Russian media alleged that he was engaged to a Russian model much younger than him, and that she was pregnant with their child.

The whereabouts of the woman, identified as Viktoriya Rakhimbaeva, is unknown.

Lesin was not known to be a regular visitor to Washington. But shortly after his death, it emerged that one of his reasons for being in the U.S. capital was to attend a scheduled gala fund-raiser at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute on November 3, two days before his body was found.

One of the philanthropists being honored that night was the influential Russian banker Pyotr Aven. Lesin never attended the event.

Aven also attended a private event at the Atlantic Council, another Washington think tank, on November 4. According to a person with knowledge of that event, Lesin had sought to attend as well, but the organizers declined to include him.

One person in contact with federal law enforcement officials told RFE/RL that Lesin had been in contact with the Justice Department in the months leading up to his death. In March 2018, the website BuzzFeed cited unnamed sources as saying that former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele had given the FBI a report stating that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin. The identity of the oligarch was not revealed in the BuzzFeed report.

Steele later became famous because of a series of memos detailing President Donald Trump’s alleged connections to Russia. Known as the Steele Dossier, the memos were circulated among Washington reporters in late 2016, and published in full by BuzzFeed in January 2017.

In its December 2017 report, D.C. police said that Lesin had been drinking heavily in the days prior to his death. A month later, the FBI released a 56-page file on its investigation, including the work by forensic experts into the closed-circuit video footage of the Dupont Circle Hotel.

The FBI files also included 29 pages from report by the city medical examiner's office that were the basis of the official reason given by the city for his death. However, the pages were redacted almost entirely.

The asking price for the yacht was 36 million euros.

​Russian officials have said little publicly about Lesin's death, aside from indicating early on that they expected U.S. law enforcement to provide full details.

Since his death, some of Lesin's assets have been gradually sold off. His yacht was sold in Florida in 2016.

In 2017, his two Beverly Hills mansions were listed for sale, at $23 million and $29 million. It wasn't immediately clear if the homes had sold already.

Mike Eckel is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL based in Washington.
https://www.rferl.org/a/judge-lesin-aut ... 68604.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: POISON IN THE SYSTEM

Postby Sounder » Thu Feb 14, 2019 5:10 pm

and this thread is not about Syria so I won't be addressing that issue.


The thread is about poison in the system, as a result I continue with that theme. There are many sources of poison in this system, so there will be much to talk about.

You titled the thread, you do not own it.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: POISON IN THE SYSTEM

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 14, 2019 5:13 pm

I don't own it but I will not discuss anything that derails this thread..this thread is about Russian POISON IN THE SYSTEM please see first post not about Syria...there is a Syrian thread


please address your quoting problem...you don't own my words nor can you demand that I engage in your off topic posts
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: POISON IN THE SYSTEM

Postby Sounder » Thu Feb 14, 2019 5:37 pm

please address your quoting problem


Actually, that is your problem and I could not care less about a request from you.

As you may have noticed if observant, I have no inclination to bend to your will.
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Re: POISON IN THE SYSTEM

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 14, 2019 5:49 pm

meow :P


just to make it clear you are putting words into my mouth ...you have attributed words to me that are not mine ...you seem to not know how to correctly use the quote feature
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: POISON IN THE SYSTEM

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:00 pm


Exclusive: Washington Autopsy Files Reveal Lesin Sustained Broken Bone In Neck


WASHINGTON -- Mikhail Lesin, the former Russian press minister who turned up dead in a Washington hotel room in 2015, sustained a fracture to a neck bone just below the jaw line "at or near the time" of his death, according to documents released by the city's medical examiner that provide new details about his final days.

The finding does not provide clear-cut evidence of foul play in Lesin's death; another statement in the documents suggests the bone could have been damaged "after death" -- possibly during the autopsy.


Mikhail Lesin stands, speaking with Vladimir Putin.

That detail, however, and others contained in the 149-page file released exclusively to RFE/RL offer the most precise scientific description to date about Lesin's death, which officials ruled accidental and said was caused by blunt-force injuries amid excessive alcohol consumption.

Once a powerful media adviser to President Vladimir Putin, Lesin fell out of favor with the Kremlin elite sometime around 2012 and had lowered his public profile before he was discovered dead in the Dupont Circle Hotel, located a few blocks from the White House, on November 5, 2015.

The files were released by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed nearly two years ago by RFE/RL. Washington Judge Hiram Puig-Lugo last month ordered the city to turn over the files.

Among the new details revealed by the documents:

• Lesin's hyoid -- a bone located about midway between the larynx and the jaw bone -- was completely fractured;

• The FBI considered possibly taking over the case in early 2016. It wasn't clear whether the agency formally did so, though earlier files released by the agency show its agents were involved in questioning witnesses and examining video recordings from hotel cameras;

• Lesin's son, Anton, who lives in Beverly Hills, California, told investigators he did not know why his father was in the U.S. capital, and also reported that Lesin regularly had serious bouts of drinking while on business trips;

• The day after the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner released an initial report, one of its officials was summoned to appear before a criminal grand jury looking into Lesin's death;

• In a report filed the day of Lesin's death, a forensic investigator with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner wrote that a detective had called and said a "friend" of the former Russian official had contacted him and "inquired about the decedent's location."

Despite the official conclusion that his death was "accidental," Lesin's links with Russia's ruling elite, the bizarre circumstances of his demise, and a string of strange deaths of Russians across the globe have fueled persistent speculation that he may have been killed.

Blunt-Force Trauma

On March 10, 2016, four months after Lesin's death, an initial report by the medical examiner's office declared Lesin died of blunt-force trauma to the head, neck, torso, upper and lower extremities, but said the manner of death was "undetermined."

The day after that announcement, according to the newly obtained files, an official from the medical examiner's office was subpoenaed to appear before a criminal grand jury investigating Lesin's death.

Mikhail Lesin stands behind former President Boris Yeltsin (left), his wife, Naina, and his daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko.

​A final report, released in October 2016 by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Washington and Metropolitan Police Department, called his death accidental, caused or contributed to by blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, torso, and upper and lower extremities "which were induced by falls." Acute ethanol intoxication was cited as a factor.

The autopsy records obtained by RFE/RL show the extent of the cuts and bruising over his head, neck, upper torso, and lower torso, but do not say how the injuries occurred.

In a supplemental report from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner dated April 1, 2016, an official recounted a conversation with an unidentified individual who had called to ask questions about the forensic anthropology report -- focusing on skeletal analysis -- in the Lesin case.

The caller, whose name and title was redacted in the document, asked "if the injury could have occurred with a fall," the official wrote.

"I explained that the position of the hyoid is protected by the mandible and that fractures are commonly associated with hanging or manual strangulation. I also said that I could not exclude a significant fall as a cause for the fracture, but I would expect soft-tissue injury to be associated with the impact," the official, whose name was also redacted, wrote.

The official also explained that an "autopsy artifact" -- or a change introduced into a corpse that can lead to forensic misinterpretation -- "must be considered as a possible cause of the fracture," according to the report.

The autopsy record said the fracture in the hyoid bone was a "complete transverse fracture." It also said that cartilage from the nearby thyroid was "atraumatic."

"The fracture margins are sharp and there is no gross evidence of healing indicating the trauma occurred at or near the time of death," it said.

According to a 2015 article published by the National Institute for Health, "fractures of hyoid bone resulting from trauma other than strangulation are very rare; hyoid bone fracture associated with panfacial trauma are even rarer."

Room And Board

The medical examiner's official report released in October 2016 was met with deep suspicion by business acquaintances and others familiar with the once-powerful, wealthy Kremlin insider who was instrumental in Russia's crackdown on independent TV and in the creation of the international broadcaster RT.

One person who had direct access to the hotel room where Lesin was found told RFE/RL in 2016 that it was physically impossible for him to have died alone in the room. Photographs released by police showed bottles of beer and liquor, stacks of dollar bills, and crumpled clothing on the floor. Associates of Lesin have argued that the Dupont Circle Hotel did not match his known tastes for expensive goods and lodging.

Mikhail Lesin
Prior to the Dupont Circle Hotel, Lesin had spent time at the more upscale Four Seasons Hotel in another part of Washington. According to the D.C. police report, officials at the Four Seasons had called the U.S. Secret Service on November 3 when Lesin appeared to be heavily intoxicated, and the Secret Service advised that a guard be posted at his door to prevent him from leaving. He checked into the Dupont Circle Hotel a day later.

According to the records, the Secret Service was already in the hotel, working to guard an unnamed official staying there.

Lesin drank most of the alcohol in the hotel room minibar, according to the new files, and on at least one occasion, was found wandering the hallway wearing only his underpants and a shirt.

A 'Friend' Was Looking For Lesin

In the newly released files, one document dated November 5, 2015, shows a forensic investigator with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner who wrote that a detective had called and said a "friend" of Lesin had called him and "inquired about the decedent's location."

"Caller advised the decedent was last known alive Tuesday [November 3, 2015] in the afternoon leaving the Four Seasons hotel," the forensic investigator wrote.

There is no indication who the friend was.

Russia Today

Much of Lesin's vast wealth came from a private company he set up in the 1990s to sell television advertising on Russia's exploding TV-advertising market. That company, called Video International (VI), was later acquired by Yury Kovalchuk, the main shareholder of Bank Rossia, which has been closely linked to the Kremlin.

Lesin played a major role in the 1996 election campaign of Boris Yeltsin, and served as his main spokesman in the latter part of Yeltsin's tenure, including during Yeltsin's abrupt decision to resign, announced on December 31, 1999, and the appointment of Putin to be his successor.

As Putin's press minister in the early 2000s, Lesin was instrumental in bringing the country's national TV channels under Kremlin control, primarily NTV, a channel known at the time for its hard-hitting journalism. He went on to set up Russia Today, the global Kremlin mouthpiece known today as RT.

He lost favor with the Kremlin for unknown reasons sometime between 2012 and 2014, and he largely fell out of the public eye.

In 2014, a year before his death, Lesin had drawn the attention of the U.S. Senate, where one lawmaker had called on the FBI to investigate him for possible money laundering.

Lesin owned mansions in Beverly Hills, California, where his children and estranged wife live, and owned a yacht valued at $40 million. Months before his death, Russian media alleged that he was engaged to a Russian model much younger than him, and that she was pregnant with their child.

RFE/RL has been unable to confirm the whereabouts of the woman, identified as Viktoria Rakhimbayeva.

Lesin was not known to be a regular visitor to Washington. But shortly after his death, it emerged that one of his reasons for being in the U.S. capital was to attend a scheduled gala fundraiser at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute on November 3, two days before his body was found.

One of the philanthropists being honored that night was the influential Russian banker Pyotr Aven. Lesin never attended the event.

Aven also attended a private event at the Atlantic Council, another Washington think tank, on November 4. According to a person with knowledge of that event, Lesin had sought to attend as well, but the organizers declined to include him.

When law enforcement agents interviewed Lesin's son, Anton, sometime during the investigation, he said he did not know why his father had traveled to Washington, D.C., according to the newly released files.

One person in contact with federal law enforcement officials told RFE/RL that Lesin had been in contact with the Justice Department in the months leading up to his death. In March 2018, the website BuzzFeed quoted unnamed sources as saying that former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele had given the FBI a report stating that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin. The identity of the oligarch was not revealed in the BuzzFeed report.

Steele later became famous because of a series of memos detailing President Donald Trump's alleged connections to Russia. Known as the Steele Dossier, the memos were circulated among Washington reporters in late 2016, and published in full by BuzzFeed in January 2017.

Mikhail Lesin (right) stands with former President Boris Yeltsin and his daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko

In their December 2017 report, D.C. police said that Lesin had been drinking heavily in the days prior to his death. A month later, the FBI released a 56-page file on its investigation, including the work by forensic experts into the closed-circuit video footage of the Dupont Circle Hotel.

The FBI files also included 29 pages from a report by the city medical examiner's office that were the basis of the official reason given by the city for his death. However, the pages were redacted almost entirely.

Russian officials have said little publicly about Lesin's death, aside from indicating early on that they expected U.S. law enforcement to provide full details.

Since his death, some of Lesin's assets have been gradually sold off. His yacht was sold in Florida in 2016.

In 2017, his two Beverly Hills mansions were listed for sale, at $23 million and $29 million. It isn't immediately clear if the homes have been sold yet.

https://www.rferl.org/a/lesin-autopsy-r ... 24566.html





High-Profile Russian Death In Washington Was No Accident — It Was Murder, Officials Say

The US government ruled Mikhail Lesin’s death an accident, but multiple intelligence and law enforcement officials suspect it was a Russian hit. The government is withholding information, so today BuzzFeed News has filed a lawsuit to pry the records loose.



Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was murdered in Washington, DC, on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US government’s official explanation of his death.

Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015, with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost yearlong "comprehensive investigation," a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an "accident," and prosecutors closed the case.

But the two FBI agents — as well as a third agent and a serving US intelligence officer — said Lesin was actually bludgeoned to death. None of these officials were directly involved in the government’s investigation, but they said they learned about it from colleagues who were.

“Lesin was beaten to death,” one of the FBI agents said. “I would implore you to say as much. There seems to be an effort here to cover up that fact for reasons I can't get into.”

Mikhail Lesin in Moscow in 2002.
Alexander Natruskin / Reuters

He continued: “What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died. Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.”

In another previously unreported revelation, the two FBI agents said it was the Department of Justice that paid for the hotel room where Lesin died. DOJ officials had invited the Russian to Washington to interview him about the inner workings of RT, the Kremlin-funded network that Lesin founded, they said.

But Lesin never made it to the interview. He died the night before it was scheduled to take place.

Last month, a two-year investigation by BuzzFeed News revealed explosive evidence pointing to Russia in 14 suspicious deaths on British soil that the UK government had largely ignored. Four high-ranking US intelligence officials confirmed that those deaths had been linked to Russian security services or mafia gangs, two groups that sometimes work in tandem, by “intelligence gathered in the field and analysed” by US spies and handed to Britain’s security services. But the UK police publicly declared that none of the 14 incidents involved foul play. As a result, the public has been kept in the dark about what national security officials have long suspected: Russian assassins may have murdered in the UK with impunity.

Some American officials now fear the threat has hit home. Lesin’s death raised “concerns” that the Kremlin would start “doing here what they do with some regularity in London,” said a former high-level national security official who recently left government. Altogether, 18 current and former intelligence, law enforcement, and other federal officials told BuzzFeed News that they question the official story of how Lesin died.

The FBI, which assisted with the investigation, and the Department of Justice declined to comment. The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said it had nothing to add beyond its statement last year calling Lesin’s death an accident. The DC medical examiner’s office said it is barred by law from releasing details of the autopsy, so would not comment beyond the US Attorney’s statement and a brief summary of its own findings that it released in March 2016. A spokesperson for the DC Metropolitan Police — which led the investigation, deploying homicide detectives — told BuzzFeed News that “we have no evidence to suggest this death involved foul play. However, we will certainly reinvestigate should additional evidence be brought to light."

Urgent questions remain about Lesin’s death. The government is withholding the FBI’s investigative file, which includes critical evidence ranging from surveillance tapes to witness interviews. So today, BuzzFeed News filed a lawsuit to pry that information loose.

A BuzzFeed News reporter submitted requests under the Freedom of Information Act for the FBI’s and the Department of Justice’s complete records of the investigation in 2016. But recently the FBI said that if it can release any documents, it may take as long as two more years for it to do so. The suit, filed in US District Court in Washington, DC, aims to speed up that process.

Mikhail Lesin in 2000.
AFP / Getty Images


Lesin, the son of a military construction worker, rose to become one of Russia’s most powerful and influential media officials. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he ran a wildly successful advertising agency and developed the ad campaign that helped Boris Yeltsin win the presidency in 1996. Lesin went on to serve as Yeltsin’s press minister. Vladimir Putin kept him on during his first term as president, and Lesin muzzled anti-Putin critics by helping to consolidate control over the country’s mass media under the Kremlin. The move earned Lesin, a stocky man with a large head, a nickname: “The Bulldozer.”

During Putin’s second term, Lesin was named senior presidential adviser and rose to the top of Putin’s propaganda machine when he conceived and founded Russia Today, which he once described as a news channel to counter Western spin disseminated by news networks such as CNN and the BBC. Later renamed RT, the state-owned media channel broadcasts in the US on cable and via the internet.

Lesin’s career in government ended in 2009 when Dmitry Medvedev took over Russia’s presidency. Over the next three years, Lesin traveled the world and spent lavishly. He owned a yacht — reportedly valued at $40 million — that he named Serenity, and property records show that companies he’s associated with spent at least $28 million on luxury real estate, purchasing sprawling estates in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Brentwood for himself; his daughter, Ekaterina Lesina; an RT bureau chief; and his son, Anton Lessine, an up-and-coming Hollywood producer. Multiple sources said Lesin helped finance his son’s films, such as Dirty Grandpa starring Robert De Niro, and Fury starring Brad Pitt.

Neither Lessine nor Lesina, who are based in the US, returned multiple calls and emails seeking comment.

When Putin was elected to a third term in 2012, Lesin returned to Moscow, took over state-owned Gazprom Media, and acquired the conglomerate ProfMedia in what was seen by opposition critics as another effort by the Kremlin to crack down on independent voices in the media.

Lesin abruptly resigned from Gazprom in December 2014.

At that point, his activities became more murky. Intelligence and law enforcement sources said Lesin had a falling out with Putin’s close confidants and then went into hiding abroad. But five sources told BuzzFeed News he was forced out of Gazprom after US Senator Roger Wicker got wind of Lesin’s US spending spree and wrote to the Department of Justice demanding it investigate. The Justice Department, in turn, referred the matter to the FBI.

Lesin “was feeling good until that letter came out,” said the US intelligence officer. But “Putin decided to cut him loose as a potential liability. Once Putin ditched him, once he lost his protection, Lesin’s partners and competitors started going after him.”

A second US intelligence official said Lesin was hiding out in the Swiss Alps during the summer of 2015, fearful that he would be killed.

Lesin “was running out of options of where to live and hide,” the second intelligence official said. “At this point he was a defector. He contacted the Justice Department and the FBI through a third party. He was worried about his kids and their safety so he wanted to cooperate.”

Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Lesin in the Kremlin.
Itar Tass / Reuters

The three FBI agents who claim Lesin was beaten to death said they were told by colleagues who were assisting Metropolitan Police detectives with the investigation. Two of the agents said they were told that the FBI has obtained evidence and conducted witness interviews that indicate that Lesin was murdered. Neither agent would describe the evidence or give details about who the witnesses were, or what exactly they said. The third said that a colleague working on the case told him in January that Lesin was beaten to death.




The intelligence officer would not say how he knew Lesin was bludgeoned but said that the weapon was a baseball bat. Another source — with direct knowledge of the autopsy performed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Washington, DC — offered new information about Lesin’s injuries: He had fractured ribs, a detail that has not been previously reported.

One of the FBI agents said that he learned Lesin was put up by the Justice Department at the Dupont Circle Hotel — a midrange hotel out of keeping with Lesin’s extravagant lifestyle — during an informal “water cooler talk” with a “case agent” working on the investigation. Lesin, he was told, “was going to talk about the inner workings of RT — basically, how the propaganda machine works. DOJ was investigating RT. These are the types of meetings we have with people when we want to recruit them as informants.”

Does he believe Lesin was murdered over RT? “Whether it was over RT, money, pissing off Putin or a combo or all of it, I don’t know,” he answered. “But falling down drunk? Come on. That’s bullshit.”.

The second FBI agent said he learned that the Justice Department had put Lesin up at the hotel from a DOJ official on the case. The DOJ “was investigating something with RT,” he recalled being told, and investigators planned to ask Lesin “how the station operated — how it was run and how the Kremlin used it.”


The Dupont Circle Hotel declined to provide any information about Lesin, citing its policy of protecting guests’ privacy.

BuzzFeed News filed suit today to compel the swift release of investigative records and other documents about Lesin because American intelligence agencies have said that Russia interfered in the US presidential election, ties to Russia are at the heart of the investigations underway involving President Donald Trump’s campaign, and we have revealed that US intelligence officials suspect Russian involvement in 14 deaths on the territory of one of America’s closest allies, Great Britain.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ja ... eting-feds
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: POISON IN THE SYSTEM

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 20, 2019 5:51 pm

southpaw


Multiple forensic pathologists cast doubt on DC Medical Examiner’s conclusion Mikhail Lesin died in a drunken fall, suggesting the fracture of his hyoid bone points to homicide. https://www.rferl.org/a/of-suspicious-m ... 32963.html

Image
Props to @Mike_Eckel whose dogged pursuit of a FOIA lawsuit against the DC Medical Examiner unearthed these autopsy documents.

The hyoid fracture was documented by a forensic anthropologist two weeks after Lesin died in 2015.

Image
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The Lesin autopsy documents show that officials with the Diplomatic Security office of the State Department (presumably) and the Russian embassy were involved in the case from the first night, on the phone with the forensic investigators. https://www.scribd.com/document/402286633/Lesin-File

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After the pathologist finds the hyoid fracture on Nov. 19, 2015, two weeks after Lesin's death, it isn't mentioned again in the OCME documents--not even in investigators' chronologies--until Apr. 1, 2016, when someone associated with the US Attorney's Office calls to ask about it

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A disparity: A 2017 BF article (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ja ... eting-feds …) cites a "serving US intelligence officer" who offers that Lesin was beaten with a baseball bat and a source w/ "direct knowledge of the autopsy" who said Lesin had broken ribs...

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Radio Free Europe's experts (https://www.rferl.org/a/of-suspicious-m ... 32963.html …) unanimously say Lesin's reported injuries are not consistent with a bat, and the autopsy records make no mention of broken ribs, afaik. They say the skeleton is intact, a conclusion amended only to include the hyoid fracture.

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https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/ ... 7399729152


er that should be nearly* unanimously I guess

Of Suspicious Minds: Medical Experts Cast Doubt On Lesin Autopsy

WASHINGTON -- A neck bone that rarely breaks, and when it does, it is almost always due to strangulation or asphyxiation. Soft-tissue hemorrhaging on muscles running along the sides and back of the neck. A swollen brain. Extensive bruising and cuts on legs, arms, hands, chest, face, and skull.

The official conclusion is that former Kremlin media adviser Mikhail Lesin's death in a Washington hotel room on November 5, 2015, was an accident, caused by blunt-force trauma to the head and other parts of the body suffered from falls during a drinking binge.

Yet multiple forensic pathologists and medical examiners who pored over autopsy results and other documents obtained by RFE/RL from the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner have raised fresh questions about whether the wealthy former Kremlin insider might have been murdered.

"I've done 12,000 autopsies over my career," said Donald Jason, a forensic pathology consultant and retired professor from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina. "A good number have been alcoholics. And I've never seen a fractured hyoid bone on someone who's falling around drunk."

Hyoid Connected To A Mystery

The fact that Lesin's hyoid bone -- a thin, C-shaped bone that sits at the very top of the neck, above the larynx, and just underneath the jaw bone -- was broken is just one aspect of the autopsy highlighted by the experts who spoke to RFE/RL.

The autopsy report obtained by RFE/RL following more than two years of litigation over Freedom Of Information Act requests is incomplete; some pages are heavily redacted; signatures are whited out. But the details of laboratory results, observations by pathologists from the chief medical examiner's office and Georgetown University hospital, and an unidentified forensic anthropologist are included in relatively precise detail.

According to the experts who spoke to RFE/RL, however, it also raises multiple questions about the official conclusion that Lesin's death was accidental, caused by "blunt-force injuries to his head, with contributing causes being blunt-force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities which were induced by falls, with acute ethanol intoxication."

"I’ve never seen anything quite like this," said Tom Andrews, who retired in 2017 as chief medical examiner for the state of New Hampshire, and reviewed the file at RFE/RL's request.

"This is an unusual case, the complexity of the injuries, even for an alcoholic," he said. "It’s an unusual constellation of injuries to see in an accidental death, in a fall or a series of falls, from a standing height."

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner did not answer an e-mail seeking further comment by the time of publication of this article.

Fallen Theory?

On March 10, 2016, the city medical examiner released its initial report, identifying "blunt-force trauma" as the cause of death. Weeks later, an official with the examiner's office responded to queries by an unnamed assistant U.S. attorney. Among the questions were the timing and possible causes of the break of the hyoid, which had been removed and separated from Lesin's body.

Documenting the conversation in a supplemental report dated April 1, 2016, and included in the file handed over to RFE/RL, the official notes that the fracture occurred "at or near the time" of death. While other causes could not be ruled out -- including a "significant fall" or that the bone was broken during the autopsy -- such an injury was "commonly associated with hanging or manual strangulation," the official wrote.

In the event of strangulation, the official added, "I would expect soft-tissue injury to be associated with the impact."

In the notations included in the autopsy report, an unnamed examiner describes there being some trauma to the tissue of the left side of Lesin’s neck.



The hyoid is so well-protected, according to multiple medical experts who spoke to RFE/RL, that breaking it requires a precise blow: an exact fall on a sharp edge of a object, for example, or a blow or chop to the neck.

A known alcoholic, Lesin was heavily intoxicated at the time of his death, according to the police report and the medical record attributing his injuries to falls.

Like all the experts interviewed by RFE/RL, Jason reviewed the report in its entirety. He said he was unconvinced by the official explanation. "He could have been beaten up, and almost tortured, he has knee injuries, could be from falling down, hard to say," said Jason, who has performed autopsies for four decades.

The examiners interviewed by RFE/RL all said that while it was not unheard of for a hyoid to be broken in an autopsy, it was rare -- even exceedingly rare in the words of one expert. Andrews, the former New Hampshire chief medical examiner, also highlighted the lack of complete information in the autopsy, such as the usual mention in the notations of the medical examiner should a hyoid be broken in the course of an autopsy.

More Questions Than Answers

Andrews and other experts said the medical notations and lab results suggested that Lesin may have been in a coma at 8 p.m. on the evening before he was found dead. At 8:17 p.m., a security guard and a manager from the Dupont Circle Hotel carried out a welfare check and found Lesin in his room, passed out and face down on the rug, but still breathing. After unsuccessfully trying to wake him, they left Lesin's room. It was the last time he was known to have been seen alive.

Andrews said the available evidence appeared to point to Lesin dying slowly, perhaps within a couple hours of him last being seen alive.

"He survived fairly long enough after sustaining the head injury that his brain was then able to swell significantly," he said, referring to to the ultimate cause of Lesin's death.

"At first blush, limited to what I’m seeing now, it does appear to be, to my eyes, to be someone who was assaulted, injured about the neck by an assailant, and may or may not have defensive injuries to his hands," Andrews said. "I think he has very suspicious injuries."


Some of the experts consulted by RFE/RL considered the official conclusion given for Lesin's death as plausible, but still problematic.

Lee Ann Grossberg, who worked in the medical examiner's office for Harris County, Texas, where the city of Houston is located, said the information available in the autopsy record would appear to support the conclusions of the Washington medical examiner.

"What is most concerning to me is that, in addition to numerous injuries that appear consistent with accidental injuries, there are also numerous injuries that appear consistent with inflicted injuries, such as those sustained in some type of physical altercation," she told RFE/RL in an e-mail.

Grossberg, who said she had been consulting on forensic pathology cases for 18 years, said these injuries included multiple areas of blunt-force trauma to the head, neck, and face -- some in locations and in numbers that do not appear to be consistent with accidental injuries. She said they also include hemorrhages noted in the muscles of the neck and the possible fracture of the hyoid bone.

"It is unknown whether the accidental or inflicted injuries or a combination of the two contributed to or caused the death. Therefore, my opinion, based on the limited information I have available, would be that the manner is undetermined," she told RFE/RL.

Kendall Crowns, deputy chief medical examiner for Travis County, Texas, where the state capital of Austin is located, said that Lesin indeed might have merely died from a fall.

The fracture of the hyoid bone with no correlating "petechial hemorrhages" in the eyes, in particular, were the among the things that led him to reach his conclusion. Add to that, he said, the lack of mention of damage to the artery at the base of the neck.

"What he does have is all these bruises in prominent areas which he could have gotten in a fall, and then he has this wonky fracture of the neck, that without the information, I am hard-pressed that it’s anything less than an odd, incidental fall," he said.

No Clear-Cut Case

Both the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI released documents related to Lesin's death, which made mention of video taken by the Dupont Circle Hotel closed-circuit cameras. Around 300 hours of footage was taken by the FBI for examination, according to the agency’s document release.

Police records, however, state that there was a "problem" with the disk that was storing the video footage from the 9th-floor penthouse where Lesin was staying. An unidentified agent states that he was unable to review footage of the 9th-floor hallway from 1:02 p.m. until 11:14 p.m. due to the problem with the disk -- a period that includes nearly three hours after Lesin was last known to have been seen alive.

It’s unclear whether that specific footage was ever reviewed.

Asked for further comment on the question of the footage, the Metropolitan Police Department referred questions to the U.S. Justice Department, which oversees both the FBI as well as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The Justice Department, meanwhile, referred queries from RFE/RL to the Metropolitan Police Department.

The cache of documents obtained by RFE/RL this week, however, includes one titled "903 camera footage timeline" -- a reference to the room at the Dupont Circle Hotel where Lesin's body was discovered. The timeline chronicles Lesin and hotel staff going in and out of his room on the day he was last seen alive, including the final visit that day by hotel personnel.

A Death In The Dupont: Photos From Mikhail Lesin's Hotel Room
Photo Gallery:
A Death In The Dupont: Photos From Mikhail Lesin's Hotel Room

The FBI’s Forensic Audio, Video, and Image Analysis Unit was asked by the agency's Washington field office in July 2016 to examine surveillance video from one camera -- whose location was redacted -- at the Dupont Circle Hotel to determine whether it "has been tampered with in any way." The unit found "no indication...of editing or alteration of the content."

On May 16, 2016, two police officers and an official from the U.S. attorney’s office visited the hotel room. The report notes that the initial police photographs taken of the hotel room on November 5 showed a broken piece of wood from the leg of the bed, lying on the floor beneath the bed. It also said the initial police photographs showed the room contained a round table that appeared to have had a metal piece broken off. The table had been replaced with a wooden table at the time of the May 16, 2016, visit.

Death Of A Media Tycoon

Even before his death in November 2015, Lesin's career had been scrutinized by close watchers of President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

Much of Lesin's vast wealth came from a private company he set up in the 1990s to sell television advertising on Russia's exploding TV-advertising market. That company, called Video International, was later acquired by Yury Kovalchuk, the main shareholder of Bank Rossia, which has been closely linked to the Kremlin.

Lesin played a major role in the 1996 election campaign of Boris Yeltsin, and served as his main spokesman in the latter part of Yeltsin's tenure, including during Yeltsin's abrupt decision to resign, announced on December 31, 1999, and the appointment of Putin to be his successor.

As Putin's press minister in the early 2000s, Lesin was instrumental in bringing the country's national TV channels under Kremlin control, primarily NTV, a channel known at the time for its hard-hitting journalism. He went on to set up Russia Today, the global Kremlin mouthpiece known today as RT.

He lost favor with the Kremlin for unknown reasons sometime between 2012 and 2014, and he largely fell out of the public eye.

Among the many questions circling the question of Lesin's final days is what he was doing in the U.S. capital in the first place. Questioned by investigators, his son, Anton, who lived in California, said he did not know.

Lesin was not known to be a regular visitor to Washington. But shortly after his death, it emerged that one of his reasons for being in the U.S. capital was to attend a scheduled gala fundraiser at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute on November 3, two days before his body was found.

One of the philanthropists being honored that night was the influential Russian banker Pyotr Aven. Lesin never attended the event.

Aven also attended a private event at the Atlantic Council, another Washington think tank, on November 4. According to a person with knowledge of that event, Lesin had sought to attend as well, but the organizers declined to include him.

Final Determination Is Undetermined

Karl Williams, chief medical examiner of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, echoed other observations that the absence of further information from the police investigative records makes it harder to get a full picture.

"The key to this case lies in what's not in the medical examiner's file," he said. "There's more missing in the medical examiner's file than what's there."

As for the hyoid, he said, "It would be extraordinarily rare to see this fractured from a fall."

"This is the essence of it. Everything in it just makes me feel it just doesn't look like a fall," Williams said.

Amid the skepticism, two common observations were shared by nearly all the experts consulted by RFE/RL: first, that Lesin was certainly not bludgeoned to death by a baseball bat or similar object, a theory that had been discussed early on.

And secondly, as Williams said, "The manner of death should be considered undetermined."

Written by Mike Eckel from Washington, with additional reporting by Carl Schreck in Prague. Editing by Michael Scollon

Mike Eckel is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL based in Washington.
https://www.rferl.org/a/of-suspicious-m ... 32963.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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