Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm

Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the latest display of Putin's capture of Trump, who after standing next to

Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago saying he was 95% on the way to a peace deal to end Russia's war on Ukraine,

reversed himself after a call from Putin, accepting the lie that Ukraine had struck one of Putin's residences, which Putin is using as an excuse to scuttle any peace deal, which he clearly has no interest in.

Joining us is Olga Lautman, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center of European Policy Analysis,

who is also the creator and co-host of the Kremlin FIr podcast series, which features expert

discussions on the Kremlin's internal affairs, global operations and tactics used from their

hybrid warfare toolkit to destabilize Western democracies.

She has a sub Substack newsletter covering

Russia, Ukraine, Eastern, and Central Europe with a focus on Russia's intelligence operations

available at Olga Latman.substack.com, where our latest article we will discuss is Trump delivers

a Christmas gift to Putin by targeting Europe's democracies.

Then Sasha Lyndon Cohen interviews Luke Goldstein and Investee reporter at the Lever.

He was previously a writing fellow at the American Prospect, a reporter at the Washington Monthly,

and served as a research associate at the Open Markets Institute.

She will discuss Luke's recent article at the lever, Google Bankrolled Secret Summit for key state lawmakers.

Then finally, with Marjorie Taylor Green telling the New York Times, Trump screamed at her for supporting the release of the Epstein

files because, quote, my friends will get hurt with Melania possibly included in the list,

we will go to one of the more impactful interviews of 2025 on the enduring scandal

that above all other outrages might bring Trump down.

We were joined on November 24th by Anand Guidditas,

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