Agents of the FBI have raided and searched the Virginia home of Dmitri Simes, a prominent political commentator and author who hosts a current-affairs program on Russia’s state-run Channel One television, the newspaper Rappahannock News reported on August 16.
The FBI told the paper the search began on August 13 but declined to comment further, RFE/RL's Russian Service reported.
Simes told the paper he is currently out of the country, but was "puzzled and concerned" by the FBI's action. He told the Russian state news agency TASS on August 16 that the reports that FBI agents were at his home were true, although he had not been officially notified.
Simes was born in Moscow in 1947 and emigrated to the United States in 1973. He served as an informal adviser to former U.S. President Richard Nixon and regularly traveled with Nixon to the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries.
In 1994, Nixon named him to head the Center for the National Interest, which at the time was called the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. Simes retired from the position in 2022.
Simes also advised the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and arranged an important 2016 foreign-policy speech in which Trump outlined a vision for greater cooperation with Russia.
Simes's name was mentioned more than 100 times in a 2019 report by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller entitled Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.
Simes moderated a question-and-answer session with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2023.
Earlier this month, Fox News reported that FBI agents had raided the New York home of Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq who has been a frequent contributor to Russian government media including RT and Sputnik. An FBI spokesperson told Fox the search was part of an "ongoing" investigation.
Scott Ritter (file photo)
Ritter has supported Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and in January he addressed thousands of Chechen soldiers on a central square in the Chechen capital, Grozny.
In June, U.S. authorities seized Ritter's passport and prevented him from travelling to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.