Loud & Clear

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Mark Sleboda, an international affairs and security analyst.President Trump yesterday gave a highly unusual press conference to announce that a special forces operation the night before resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. After a short statement, the President launched into a highly detailed-and probably highly classified--account of how Baghdadi was killed. He insulted Baghdadi and went on to talk about the US invasion of Iraq, advocating taking Iraq’s oil, which would be a war crime. Russian student Maria Butina was finally released from prison over the weekend. She had been incarcerated since July 2018 for failing to register as a foreign agent. Butina was targeted by the Justice Department, smeared in the press, given a sentence greater than the maximum recommended by law, and will finally be expelled from the United States. Robert Driscoll, who leads the Washington DC office of the law firm of McG