Simes Interview: ‘Biden Is Out To Get Me’ by Ripping Up Constitution

Sept. 13—RT reports on a lengthy interview that Kommersant correspondent Elena Chernenko published with Dimitri Simes on Sept. 9, in which the veteran Russian journalist discussed the lengthy FBI raid of his Virginia residence Aug. 15, accompanied by charges of sanctions violations carrying a 60-year sentence for Simes and his wife. The 76-year-old Simes was born in Moscow but left the Soviet Union at the age of 26. “In the U.S.,” RT reported, “he was a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He also ran the Soviet policy program at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies and taught at the University of California at Berkeley and at Columbia University. Simes, at the request of former President Richard Nixon, served as president of the Nixon Center and later as president and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, a major Republican-party aligned think tank…. He left National Interest in 2022 and returned to Moscow, where he hosts the show ‘The Great Game’ on Russia’s Channel One.”

Simes expressed outrage at the FBI raid and the charges. "As for the accusation that I allegedly violated the U.S. sanctions imposed on Channel One, first of all I would like to remind you that there is one thing that the Biden administration does not take seriously. I’m talking about the United States Constitution and the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press. And I insist that everything I have done as a journalist I have done within the framework of the First Amendment of the American Constitution….

“I think the White House decided to go ahead and stir up the issue of Russian interference in the American election again…. Not only do I not consider myself guilty of anything but I feel as if I am being persecuted by the Gestapo. And at least from a moral point of view I think I’m doing absolutely the right thing. And I’m going to fight it, I’m going to actively work to make sure that such actions by the Biden administration do not go unpunished….

“There is a climate of totalitarian political correctness in the U.S., where it’s impossible to even discuss the issue of relations with Russia, because as soon as a person starts to say something that differs from the general Russophobic line, they are immediately told: ‘Oh, we’ve already heard that from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.’”

Simes then raised the issue of Ukrainian involvement with the FBI. "As far as interference is concerned, it would probably be more interesting to look at the demands of Ukrainian officials who have been urging the White House to take action against me for a long time. We are talking about Ukrainian interference at quite a high level. The ‘[Andrey] Yermak-[Michael] McFaul Expert Group on Russian Sanctions’ [run by Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s NATO puppet master and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia known for his hatred of Russia}, set up to develop recommendations on sanctions is working on this conspiracy. This is a legalized form of high-level Ukrainian interference in decision-making in Washington.

“And I would be very interested to understand how it was that when my house [in the U.S.] was searched [in August], which lasted four days, and things were taken out by trucks with trailers, how it was that on my lawn, according to the neighbors, there were about 50 people, many of whom came not in official cars, as the FBI usually does, but in private cars. And how was it that these people, some of whom later turned up in a shop in a neighboring small town, somehow spoke Ukrainian? I would really like to understand what role Ukrainian interference in American politics played in this situation.”