First reported in the Rappahannock News and picked up by The Guardian and other outlets in the last day, the FBI has conducted a raid on the expansive home of Russian agent Dimitri Simes, a Russian agent recently departed for Moscow, a man profiled in the Mueller Report who was an advisor to Trump in the 2016 presidential election. No information yet on what the FBI was looking for or found, but it can be assumed it had to do with ongoing Russian attempts to interfere with this fall’s presidential election.

     Simes, who as a TV show in Moscow, has been among those criticizing Biden for condoning the recent military incursion into Russian territory by Ukrainians saying it is bad for the west, much like the headline in the Washington Post that the effort damaged peace talks. This, of course, is contrary to the reality that the Ukrainian offensive has badly hurt the Russian war effort against Ukraine in a variety of ways. Lawrence Freedman writing in today’s Financial Times, “Ukraine’s Incursion Has Disrupted Putin’s War of Attempted Conquest,” which notes that “Russia lacks ample capable reserves to divert to expelling the invaders,” makes this case.

     At any rate, news of the FBI raid on Simes’ 130-acre ranch raises important questions and we hope we will learn what it  is they were looking for and hopefully found. It draws new attention to Simes’ role from the time he emigrated to the U.S. in 1973 and became an advisor to Nixon which occured at the same time that massive numbers of thugs and criminals were exported by the then-Soviet Union to the U.S. to become the dominant Russian mafia here under the guise of detente. It also marked the transformation of the fringe “left” in the U.S. to a new rightwing force to serve Moscow and became what is now the MAGA movement, as I have reported elsewhere.