Category: Michael Novakhov – SharedNewsLinks℠

With the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, there has been a flurry of speculation over the possible trajectory of US foreign policy in this second Trump term.  Much of this predictive analysis has focused on either the serious implications for US policy toward Russia and Ukraine or the sensational comments regarding Greenland and Canada. But with a flurry of moves, the first weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidential term have been marked by a dangerous combination of disruption and uncertainty. 

And the real momentum is not driven by the Trump Administration’s preference for “disruption”, it is the volatility in Washington that has abruptly triggered a wave of uncertainty. Amid this upheaval in Washington, the three countries of the South Caucasus — Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia — hold wildly different expectations and have dramatically divergent strategies to deal with the incoming Trump Administration.

This degree of disruption was most evident in President Trump’s surprise decision on January 20 imposing a sweeping freeze of US foreign assistance. For each of the three countries in the South Caucasus, this introduced a sudden halt to a number of aid projects and assistance programmes.

While the impact was less for Azerbaijan, which has already banned the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from working in the country, both Georgia and Armenia were victims of the move. The impact was especially profound, weakening an already hobbled civil society in Georgia and curtailing several programmes in Armenia, including much needed aid for Armenians forcibly displaced from their homes in Nagorno Karabakh.

Nevertheless, the dramatic cutoff in US assistance and funding to the region has only reinforced a notable pre-existing trend of Azerbaijan and Georgia favouring relations with Russia over any aspirations for deeper relations with the West. For these two authoritarian countries, neither the EU nor the US is seen as an attractive partner. With expectations of a Trump Administration that will elevate transactional “deals” over any values-based policies, Tbilisi and Baku are only encouraged to pursue relations with Moscow.  Moreover, the likely Georgian and Azerbaijani strategic embrace of Russia will also be seen as incurring little liability and no negative response by the Trump Administration. Against that backdrop, Armenia, the sole struggling democracy in the South Caucasus, remains as isolated and vulnerable as ever.  

For Armenia, there are few direct implications, especially as Armenia’s political influence in Washington has long rested in the Congress, not the White House, and that bipartisan power remains unchanged and unchallenged.  Nevertheless, the indirect impact on Armenia is likely to be profound, stemming from the “spillover” from changes in US policy toward Russia, Turkey and Iran.

Another reason driving Armenia’s lack of concern over a Trump presidency was confidence in the signing of a new “strategic partnership” with the United States. Signed on January 14, the new charter was timed to enter into force prior to the inauguration of Trump’s second term.  Although coordinated with incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the signing was specifically designed to provide Armenia with a foundation for deeper relations with Washington that would define the Trump Administration’s policy toward Armenia while preempting any radical shift or retreat from American support.

For the two other countries of the South Caucasus, Trump’s victory was a welcome relief from US policy preferences and priorities for democracy and human rights. This is most evident in the gleeful reaction from authoritarian Azerbaijan, particularly as it remains intent on maintaining its latest wave of repression directed against the opposition, independent media and civil society.  

Georgia’s relief at Trump’s election

And for Georgia, the Trump reelection is perceived in Tbilisi as a validation of the Georgian government’s defiance of its own population in seeking accommodation of Russia and reversing traditional Georgian aspirations of joining the EU and Nato. The Georgian government’s relief at Trump’s election is also due to expectations in Tbilisi that the recent period of punitive measures and punishment from Washington has passed.

In fact, under the Biden Administration, Georgia’s long-standing strategic partnership agreement with the US was invalidated following a flawed election that sparked a serious and violent crackdown by the Georgian government.

But it is Armenia where developments in Georgia have more direct and threatening repercussions. More specifically, now that the Georgian government has only accelerated its move away from Europe and closer to Russia, Armenia is faced with a new challenge. For the Armenian government, Georgia’s turn against the West is a move that only promotes Armenia’s position in the region as the only democracy. Yet the Armenian government is wary, seeing developments in an increasingly pro-Russian Georgia as a threat to Armenia, risking a more isolated Armenia standing alone with the West and prone to provoking a more vengeful Russia.

The crisis in Georgia has also resulted in a Western shift of focus, with rewards for Armenia. The EU’s policy response to developments in Georgia has already led to a more engaged and focused EU view of Armenia. This is most clearly demonstrated by two significant trends: the unprecedented deployment (and recent two-year extension) of an EU civilian monitoring mission to Armenia and, second, the first-ever crafting of new EU security assistance to Armenia.  

Both of these developments are further significant as pioneering efforts of engagement with a country like Armenia, which is still host to a Russian military base and a member of both the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).  

Thus, as the EU moves to punish Georgia’s flagrant disregard for democracy and retreat from democracy, the EU is expected to only increase its engagement in Armenia, focusing on efforts to reward Armenia’s hard-won gains in democratisation and to bolster resilience to preempt and prevent any possible regress.

An emboldened Azerbaijan

But Trump’s re-election was most welcome in Azerbaijan.  Reflecting a near euphoria over dealing with a drastically new US foreign policy, Azerbaijan’s autocratic leader, President Ilham Aliyev, seemingly feels emboldened to continue with his concerted crackdown on civil society and persecution of both dissent and independent media.

As Azerbaijan has little expectation of response from the new Trump Administration, there is a risk of yet another escalation and round of military assaults by Azerbaijan against southern Armenia. This is largely due to the fact that Azerbaijan is empowered by its recent military victory and remains encouraged by its perception of Turkish support, Israeli backing and the lack of any Western leverage over Azerbaijan.

Against that backdrop, there is still no deterrence and little real incentive for Azerbaijan to stop now. Rather, there is a demonstrable danger that Azerbaijan will only continue to rely on military force, going beyond its conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and moving against Armenia proper. The only realistic path forward for the negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan is through Western facilitation. Such external engagement is crucial because Azerbaijan continues to pressure Armenia, maintains a maximalist position and is confrontational in its position to reject diplomacy.  

The dangerous “day after”

Another challenge stems from the weakness of post-war diplomacy between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This is due to the fact that there is no international guarantor of the peace treaty, which means that there is no real guarantee that Azerbaijan will implement the terms of the peace treaty or that Baku will stick to the terms of any such peace treaty. Just as there is nothing to deter Azerbaijan from using force against Armenia, there is also no pressure and no price for Azerbaijan if it fails to uphold the peace treaty.

And this reveals that the obstacle is from the “day after” the signing of any peace deal. There is little likelihood that Azerbaijan will stop or be satisfied with the treaty and instead will continue to demand more from Armenia. In that context, Azerbaijan remains the most significant threat to regional security and stability.

Despite everything else, there is a rare opportunity for a return to regional cooperation, however, with the post-war geopolitical landscape in the South Caucasus offering a degree of promise over peril. More specifically, this opportunity for regional cooperation stems from the outlook for the restoration of regional trade and transport. And for Armenia, regional stability now depends on restoring deterrence, promoting economic and trade interdependence to prevent continued hostilities.

Richard Giragosian is the director of the Regional Studies Center (RSC), an independent think tank in Yerevan, Armenia.

Calls for job protection amid scrutiny of January 6 investigations raise urgent concerns within the Bureau.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Sunday that President Trump’s purge of the FBI is “incredibly dangerous” to national security.

In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” Christie described the lengthy process of onboarding FBI agents and said the country cannot afford to lose good agents.

“Understand how long it takes to get a new FBI agent on board. If you fire hundreds — if not thousands, and it would be thousands on this list of FBI agents — it takes 12-18 months to get them on board. By the time you go through the interviewing process, the vetting process, then they go to Quantico for their training, and then become onboarded as a brand new FBI agent,” Christie said.

“In the threat assessment we have right now across the world, to lose that many agents, and then take a year to a year-and-a-half to try to replace them, is incredibly dangerous for our national security,” Christie continued. “And for what? Because they did their jobs.”

The Trump administration forced out a number of FBI officials Friday, removing agents who worked on Trump’s criminal cases as well as the heads of various field offices.

A source familiar told The Hill that agents who had worked on the Mar-a-Lago and Jan. 6 investigations were escorted out of the Washington Field Office and that officials in charge of the Washington, D.C., Miami, Seattle, New Orleans and Las Vegas field offices were removed.

The Hill reported earlier Friday that the five executive assistant directors of the bureau were notified they would be demoted. That move targeted the band of top officials who oversee the FBI’s five internal branches and are among the highest-ranking career positions in the bureau.

The removals follow a similar purge at the Justice Department, where prosecutors who worked on Trump’s two federal criminal investigations were also fired .

The attorneys were told specifically that they were removed due to their work on the cases, blaming the Biden administration for a “systemic campaign against its perceived political opponents.”

Christie, a former prosecutor, said he’s hearing from sources around the FBI that “they are stunned by what’s happening.”

Christie noted that the FBI agents who worked on Trump’s criminal cases are civil servants, not political appointees.

“None of these agents who worked on the Jan. 6 cases volunteered. That’s not the way it works,” Christie said. “In fact, at the FBI, they do the opposite. They don’t want you volunteering and self-selecting for an investigation, because that may mean you bring some bias to it. You go and you select these people.”

“So they were instructed by their bosses to work on the Jan. 6 cases, and what happened as a result of that? Hundreds of convictions in front of juries, in front of judges that were appointed by both Republican and Democratic administrations,” Christe said.

“And so if the president wants to pardon those people, that’s his right to do, but it’s not then his right to fire these folks,” Christie added.

Christie, a former Trump ally, has become one of the president’s most vocal GOP critics in recent years, especially during the 2024 presidential election season, when they both sought the GOP nomination.

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OP-ED     I and other former FBI-related people are expecting an employment-termination “bloodbath” at FBI today and tomorrow.  

My guess is acting FBI director Brian Driscoll will be gone by this evening for defying a direct order seeking names of FBI employees—perhaps more than 6,000—involved in Jan 6 cases.

It is hard for me to see how James Dennehy, who runs the NY field office, keeps his job after sending defiant email to colleagues over the weekend promising to “dig in” and not step down or follow orders.

The NYT obtained the email. Dennehy: “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy,” Dennehy wrote.

“Good people” my ass. This FBI needs to be abolished or purged. Sounds like Trump is going the route of the purge. Let’s just hope the purge is thorough and complete.  I have no empathy for the members of the FBI that allowed themselves to be used as a weapon against a political enemy of the last administration.

And his people also “did their job?” Were they also “doing their job” when they ignored the ANTIFA and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots and violence in the summer of 2020…?

Did their job?  That remark is so absurd, so utterly out of touch and fraudulent, cartoons are being made of it:

I seem to remember a common phrase spoken at the Nuremberg Trials “I was just following orders”. Didn’t work out too well then. Let’s hope it does not work out well here. 

Dennehy also said the removal of top officials including at Miami and Washington field offices have caused “fear and angst within the F.B.I. ranks.”

Just imagine the fear and angst those innocent J6ers and their families felt when raided at dawn by FBI swat teams!

Can’t be worse than the “fear and angst” that we the people have felt for the past decade watching our government turn against us!!!

The FBI under Democratic Party rule became a full-blown Deep State cartel – protecting cronies, crushing dissent, and weaponizing justice against political enemies. Now, as the rot gets exposed, the insubordinate foot soldiers are squealing about ‘fear and angst.’ Sorry Dennehy, you’re not a war hero, you’re just another bureaucratic thug who thought his badge made him untouchable. Pack your shit and get out.

It seems to me that if the FBI live in fear of pissing off the American People, things are proceeding as they should.

Dennehy then compared his insubordination . . .  to being a Marine “in the early 1990s, . . .  when he dug a small foxhole five feet deep and hunkered down for safety. “It sucked,” he wrote. “But it worked.”

Perhaps part of Dennehy’s “foxhole” over these ongoing FBI Firings is one of the factors leading to what is reportedly going to be some type of large FBI Agent protest in Washington, DC, over the J6 firings. 

One wonders if the FBI will be using it’s typical Protestor Uniforms:

You remember those “protesters” don’t you?  Turned out to be mostly FBI agents masquerading as “Patriot Front” to arrest folks they lured-in to the allegedly patriotic group!

Now guys like Dennehy are trying to pretend they’re the good guys.  Or maybe he’s not pretending?  Maybe he actually believes his own bullcrap?

The hubris of the deep state has always been its greatest weakness. They really do believe they run the world and the voters are their subjects.

I don’t believe this is going to end well for Mr. Dennehy; If someone tells him he’s fired, he’s still fired whether he has dug a foxhole or not.

And if he is among those being fired (purged) then that’s fine with me. I say oust him and everyone who acted like him. 

It should serve to remind everyone ELSE at FBI (and other federal agencies) they work for us.  We don’t work for them.  They serve us, we don’t serve them.

We keep the Constitution to safeguard our rights.  If they violate it, they get fired. Period. Full stop.

Arresting people for memes, making personal visits to private citizen homes over “remarks on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/X etc.” . . . is not what we pay FBI to do.

Today seems to be a sort of Reckoning; the Trump Administration on behalf of the American people, seems poised to clean house.

Mr. President, please “get to it” expeditiously. 

About intelNews
Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying, by Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis and Ian Allen.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration intensified its efforts to identify and target for retaliation FBI personnel connected to the now-closed investigations into Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, and his absconding with dozens of classified documents he was not entitled to retain per the Presidential Records Act. 

In the wake of the administration’s Friday mass purge of senior FBI leaders in Washington and elsewhere across the country, ABC News reported on February 2 that a 12-question survey was sent to FBI personnel “asking about their work related to investigating the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.” The FBI Agents Association (FBIAA) apparently provided the tip to ABC and told the network that,

Employees carrying out their duties to investigate allegations of criminal activity with integrity and within the rule of law should never be treated as those who have engaged in actual misconduct.

This morning, the Washington Times reported that Acting FBI Director and former FBI Newark Field Office head Brian Driscoll had apparently refused an order by Acting Attorney General Emile Bove “to compile a list of all current and former FBI employees assigned ‘at any time’ to the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol for review ‘to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.’ 

The Times also reported that,

The FBI told The Washington Times that Mr. Driscoll is still the acting director, but there is speculation among current and former FBI agents over whether he will remain in that position after refusing Mr. Bove’s order.

Sources said that Mr. Driscoll’s team drove him to Newark, New Jersey, where he previously headed the field office.

It’s that last sentence that really caught my attention. 

Maybe Driscoll needed to visit the Newark office in connection with one or more ongoing investigations. But the fact that the Times’ sources made a point of noting that Driscoll’s “team” drove him to Newark means that he’s got subordinates with guns at his side for a very different reason.

The Times also reported that “a protest by employees and former employees Monday at the Washington Field Office and headquarters is in the planning stages.”

I cannot recall a time in FBI history when current or former employees have planned to gather in numbers to protest on federal property a sitting chief executive’s personnel actions. At the same time, no prior president has attempted a Stalinist-like purge of career federal law enforcement officers at any point in US history.

It’s also worth noting that the abrupt removal of hundreds or even thousands of FBI personnel will inevitably jeopardize ongoing counterintelligence, counterterrorism, cyber, and child sexual trafficking investigations, among many others, something former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R‑NJ) also noted over the weekend.

On January 23, 2025, the FBIAA issued a statement condemning Trump’s mass pardons and sentence commutations of those convicted or pled out for their role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. A request to FBIAA for comment on these latest administration personnel actions targeting FBI employees was not answered prior to the publication of this piece.